We analyzed the first night of the Democratic Convention. Someone mentioned the headline from FOX News – CASTRO ADDRESSES THE DNC! The most effective parts of the night before the excellent speech by Michelle Obama were the speeches by Deval Patrick, Lilly Ledbetter, and Julian Castro and the tribute to Teddy Kennedy. By following the twitter feed at the convention, you get a very different perspective than just watching it on TV. It was particularly noticeable after the Clint Eastwood performance last week. The contrasts to this point of the two conventions are that the Republicans were speaking to the small business owner and the Democrats to the workers. Both conventions are aiming at their base and not independents. The Democrats seemed to be more upbeat and enthusiastic on their first night than the Republicans. Their talks were better coordinated on the first day in Charlotte than on the first day in Tampa, but part of that was the result of scheduling problems brought on by Isaac. There also seem to be more emphasis on accomplishments and abortion than expected in Charlotte and less on attacking the Republican ticket than we had anticipated last week. The Republican enthusiasm seemed to build from Day One to Day Three. The Democrats must avoid having enthusiasm wane during their three days.
The question “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” is hanging over the Democrats. They muffed the question on the Sunday morning shows, but Biden’s bumper-sticker statement that “Bin-Laden is dead. General Motors is Alive” seems to be shoring up their answer. In the twitter world the hash tag “rubetteroff” seems to be backfiring on the Republicans as more Democrats seem to be paying attention this week than Republicans. The jobs report on Friday will be critical. We disagreed on whether maintaining the current unemployment rate is good enough for Obama or if he needs a drop in at least 0.1%.
The big talk is about convention bounces. It is difficult to calculate a bounce with the conventions back-to-back. If we look at the RCP numbers since August 15 (the Wednesday after the Paul Ryan announcement in Norfolk) and today Romney-Ryan has put MI and WI in play for a 16 electoral-vote bounce, the head-to-head RCP average has shrunk from an Obama lead of 3.7 to 0.1 for a 3.6% bounce, a drop of 0.5% favorability rating for Obama and a jump of 1.5% favorability for Romney for a 2.0% bounce, a 0.1% increase in Obama’s unfavorability rating of 0.1% and decrease in Romney’s unfavorability rating of 1.4% for a Romney bounce of 1.5%, and finally an increase of 1.6% in Intrade Real Time Quotes for Obama and a decrease of 0.1% for Romney leading to a dip of 1.7%. Thus, Romney has seen a bounce in four of these five measures. Possible reasons for the Intrade results may be that it is a more sensitive measure than the others and the Tampa convention did not live up to expectations of the traders. A comparable period will be between now and September 26 to see if Obama can bounce back. If he doesn’t get at least some of the electoral votes and head-to-head advantage back by then, he is in trouble. If he gets all of it back, Romney is in trouble. One of us predicted that the Democrats would get a significant bounce out of Charlotte. The rest of us were more guarded.
The topic of Super PACs came up. Most of us thought that the Republicans will have a significant advantage in money to spend, but one of us stated that the difference would be much smaller than currently believed. Wall Street seems to have deserted Obama due to his anti-business rhetoric and his policies. If Romney has the monetary advantage with the high unemployment rate as it is, we will have to re-evaluate many of our previous assumptions about Presidential elections if Obama wins. A recent article claims that Obama hasn’t had a tough GOP opponent to this point. Will Romney be that tough GOP opponent? The results will probably settle that issue. If Obama wins, Romney will become a weak opponent. If Romney wins, then he will be the only tough opponent Obama faced.
We are looking forward to Bill Clinton’s (the comeback vegan) talk this evening. Some questions raised include – Will he redefine the election as a choice instead of a referendum on Obama? Can he bring the party back to the center? Will his emaciated appearance detract from the substance of his talk for those who have not kept up with his weight loss?
Parting shots included Paul Ryan’s statements on his marathon times in and of itself is not a problem, but it feeds into a narrative (sorry, Justin) that he exaggerates or shades the truth coming from his statements on the GM plant in Janesville and Medicare savings in his Tampa talk. It turns out that John Edwards and Sarah Palin have better marathon times than Paul Ryan, but he did beat Al Gore’s time. See
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/09/paul_ryan_marathon_which_politician_had_the_fastest_marathon_time_a_slate_interactive_.html
The press will look at his statements more carefully now to see if it fits the narrative. A similar narrative hurt Al Gore. The next two weeks will be critical for the Obama campaign. Dell pointed out that Carter and Mondale have lived longer after leaving office than any other President-VP combination. In second place are Adams and Jefferson. Also, the last time we had three Presidents complete two terms consecutively was from 1801-1825 with Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.
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