Home › Blogs › Patrick Ruffini's blog ›

VP Selection and Timing Critical to Momentum

Submitted by Patrick Ruffini on Mon, 08/18/2008 - 22:58

The 2004 election was won on two dates. The first was sometime in 2002 when the White House determined the '04 national convention would be held right before Labor Day, giving Bush the last word before a crucial psychological milestone of the campaign. And the second was July 6, 2004, when John Kerry blew it by announcing his VP pick three weeks early.

Looking back at the '04 RCP averages, Kerry's lead peaked not at his Convention but when he selected Edwards. His peak vote share was the same as at the Democratic convention, but Bush's had hardened by about 2 points during the month of July.

By moving up his post-VP selection honeymoon, Kerry made a crucial strategic error, one not to be repeated by either candidate this cycle. Whatever bounce Kerry got from the VP selection had dissipated by the national convention, leaving the convention alone to carry him. But Kerry endured a series of gaffes during his convention (bunny suit) and was outshined by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. This left him stalling in August, and left Bush to swoop in with a successful pre-Labor Day convention that generated a lead outside the margin not to be tamed until the first debate.

This is why McCain's decision to jam up Obama's news cycle with a VP pick on August 29th and compress his newsmaking opportunities into a few days could be a crucial milestone.

As Soren has noted, Obama has become adept at maneuvers both grand (Berlin) and tactical (VP selection rope-a-dope) that seem to move press coverage for short periods, but seem to come too soon (i.e. before the next two weeks).

In the two months that encompassed both conventions and the VP selection, the 2004 race from Kerry +2 to Bush +8.

In 2000, Gore was viewed to have had a successful VP selection with Joe Lieberman and Bush less so with Dick Cheney, and the race moved significantly in his direction during convention season, from something like -5 to +5.

In 2000 and 2004, there weren't two bounces that canceled each other out. Convention/VP season provided the most net movement of the entire year, and were crucial to determing who had momentum at the end.

With the conventions bunched up later than ever, the race could look dramatically different two weeks from now.

5
Your rating: None Average: 5 (1 vote)

Comments

It's the content not the timing - Country First + Obama Nation

Submitted by Freedoms Truth on Mon, 08/18/2008 - 23:55.

"The 2004 election was won on two dates."

IMHO: The date of the Swiftboating book publication, and the date that that kerry said "I did vote for that $89 billion dollars before I voted against it." Kerry stalled in August because of the swiftboat veterans exposed his convention salute as yet another bio-scrub that ignored the legacy of 'winter soldier' false accusations against the military.

I would argue that August is important but that it was more important what issues are out there 'on the table' that are laid out in summer and pounded home in the fall. In 2004, it was the swiftboating debunking of Kerry's attempt to run as Wesley Clark plus the flip-flopping charge which combined with Kerry's liberal Massachusetts record kept him off balance. Kerry was dogged by it

The Democrats continue to be aghast and shocked every 4 years in the fall that they actually have to campaign and fight against narratives that dont fit their script... even when they lie. They are running a less experienced and more extreme version of kerry. The revealing quote  that Soren Dayton shared from TNR highlights the arrogance at work:

""The whole Obama narrative is built around this narrative that Obama and David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it's not entirely true."

They sell a misleading product and expect people to buy it?!? Like Kerry, Obama is running on a bio that has been (ahem) white-washed of obama's extreme race consciousness, swimming in the streams of Black Liberation Theology, marxist professors (Ayers etc), and leftwing activism (ACORN). His bio is faked, his experience is paper-thin, his judgement is questionable, and he folds like a cheap empty suit. If he was a Republican, he'd be 30 points behind right now.

So the Obama over-reaction to "Obama Nation" which through their debunking actually validates much of the Corsi book (yes, he was registered as a muslim student in grade school in Indonesia; yes, his mentor "Frank" in his first book is CPUSA Communist Frank Davis Marshall; yes, his father was a polygamist and an alcoholic; yes, he had numerous extremist and leftwing people and groups that he worked with, such as ACORN in Chicago; etc.)

I was pounding the table for McCain to use "COUNTRY FIRST" as his campaign slogan here on NextRight for many weeks now, to amplify what I saw as the key "decision point" that would win moderate patriotic Dems and independent conservatives. I saw it on an internet banner ad for the first time.   COUNTRY FIRST + OBAMA NATION is the 1-2 punch that equates to what got Kerry in 2004. Only it is more effective because the truth is even more so on the side of the Republicans. 

Country First plus the Saddleback homerun for McCain is the kind of setup we need for a winning campaign. Since it's the content more than the timing of the summer events that impacts the election, the bigger question will be who is picked not when they are announced.

 

Brilliant Timing

Submitted by texicali on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 02:00.

the McCain campaign has come up with a brilliant event to announce the VP selection....kudos to those who came up with this plan and to the entire campaign for getting it put together....I love the offense I'm seeing  keep it up guys!

I kind of figured that JMC would wait

Submitted by section9 on Tue, 08/19/2008 - 07:36.

There was nothing, nothing to be gained by McCain going early for his pick. 

There was everything to be gained by stepping all over Obama's "Loaves and Fishes" Tour after his "Sermon in the Stadium". You have to hand it to McCain, as the underdog who knows he's in a dogfight, he's not going to give Obama the weekend-he's going to announce.

The closer this gets to the convention, the more I suspect that McCain will pick an outside-the-box choice to wipe out all of the Oxygen from Obama and focus everything on McCain and his running mate.