Despite the upsets, the Democrats may have done just enough to secure victory in the presidential race

By Matthew Doyle

—Ever since Henry Kissinger’s announcement of a peace deal in Vietnam just before the 1972 presidential election, politicians have lived in fear of the infamous ‘October surprise’.

For Democrats this year, that surprise arrived in spades with the first presidential debate in Denver, which saw a race that had been looking predictable thrown a ‘curve ball’.

Despite looking competitive in key battleground states earlier in the summer, Republican candidate Mitt Romney had been on the defensive ever since the exposure of his taped remarks at a Florida fundraiser which wrote off 47 per cent of the American electorate. Solid prime time performances for three nights at the Democratic convention in September helped the Obama campaign secure its lead.

But the first presidential debate saw the Democrats rattled and Republicans with their tails up as President Obama gave way to Professor Obama. All the concerns the Democrat establishment had before 2008 about the Chicagoan’s abilities as a retail politician came rushing back.

This has always been part of Barack Obama’s enigma: while he is undoubtedly the best public speaker of his generation, the president is not a natural populist. And that is a problem in a polarised nation where subtlety will struggle to win through. Indeed, throughout the campaign it has been left to Vice-president Joe Biden to repeatedly deliver the sort of populist refrain that Obama has not, with his take on four years of economic and security policy: ‘Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.’

Obama’s style as president, while praised by academics as truer to the vision the founding fathers had of the office, has infuriated many on his own side with a real lack of ‘red meat’ politics.

Take healthcare. Having seen what happened when Bill Clinton tried to drive healthcare reform through Congress from the White House, the Obama administration was convinced that the only way to achieve the historic goal was to cede much of the running to legislators on Capitol Hill. But, despite being left with the political downside of the ‘Obamacare’ tag, this left it looking like the president was following events, rather than shaping them.

Indeed, both campaigns have been suffering from an ‘inspiration gap’. Obama is trying to motivate the young voters who turned out so full of hope for him in 2008, while Romney is trying to overcome the suspicion of the Tea party activists who turned out in force in the midterm elections in 2010 but who view their party’s candidate as managerialist.

Which brings us back to the question: how much does that first debate wobble matter?  As the Democrat Strategist Bob Mulholland reminds us, in his first debate with Democrat Walter Mondale in 1984, ‘Ronald Reagan looked so out of touch that people were speculating he was less than a year away from a nursing home. Reagan won 49 states.’

And after the second ‘town hall’ debate, the snapshot polls gave the debate to Obama, which Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg attributes to the president being much clearer on what he would do with a second term. ‘What was most important in the second debate was [the president] laying out the four points of his plan to create jobs and improve the economy,’ Greenberg explained.

‘Up until that point … neither Biden nor Obama had said what they were going to do on the economy and jobs. What were the plans? Why did they want a second term? That was the big change in the race.’
Democrats also believe they are ahead on the ‘ground game’: rather than being battered by a primary season, the Obama campaign has been quietly building a formidable ‘get out the vote’ campaign. Due to early voting this has already started making a real difference.

But Josh Deckard, former White House assistant press secretary to President George W Bush, sees it differently: ‘Governor Romney leads among critically important independent voters and those who support his candidacy report much higher enthusiasm to turn out on election day.’

So, as the campaign draws to a close, how does either side close the deal?

‘President Obama needs to remind people of the 47 per cent comments because that is Mitt Romney’s achilles heel,’ Republican pollster Frank Luntz told me. ‘Up to now it was Romney who attacked Obama for divisive politics, but with the 47 per cent remarks it allows Obama to attack back, and no matter how rich or poor you are, you want a president who is a leader of all Americans, not just some segment. That’s why it is very damaging.

‘Romney needs to focus not on if you are better off than four years ago, but is America better off than it was four years ago. Voters’ response to that frame is 15 points more negative. On all the attributes, voters feel more negative about the country as a whole rather than just themselves.’

But, warns Luntz, ‘it is not enough for Romney to say how Obama has failed, [he] has to show he is an alternative.’ He compares it to the 1992 British general election where Neil Kinnock effectively made the case against the Tories, but never made it for himself.

On this there is bipartisan agreement, with Greenberg telling me: ‘When Romney was only attacking Obama’s performance, they got no traction, but voters coming out of this kind of Great Recession and prolonged income erosion want to know about the future, not the past.’

Democrats remain, however, confident that the president’s re-election prospects are secure because they are convinced Romney will not win Ohio, not least because of his stance against the auto bailout. As Democrat political consultant Bob Mulholland puts it: ‘Romney said “let the auto industry go broke” and one in eight voters in Ohio, job-wise, are connected to the auto industry and Obama has to keep reminding the Ohio voters that he saved the industry and Romney was against Ohio and without Ohio, Romney cannot win.’

Luntz acknowledges that, without Ohio, Romney may not have the 270 electoral college votes necessary to win the White House. The election, he says, is not won by national polls. Instead, he says, ‘the road to the White House goes through Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.’

Democrats will hope the October surprise has passed and, as the president is freed from the White House in the campaign’s closing days, voters will remember why they loved him the first time around and ensure that second Obama term progressives so desperately want. But, to do that, he will need to keep Professor Obama in check.

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Matthew Doyle was a political adviser to Tony Blair from 2005-12

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Photo: porchlife