Super Bowl Tuesday

Super Tweak Week
One of the strange synchronicities resulting from the condensed primary season this year is the mere two-day gap between Super Bowl Sunday and Super Tuesday. Since both events are already framed in the same language and with the same metaphors, I suppose this is fitting, though the ease with which reporters have melded the two stories is a bit scary.

But what really surprised me was that, like the Super Bowl, the Presidential election has become a major boon for advertisers. When asked why advertising revenue would stay solid in 2008 despite a likely recession, a senior economist at Goldman Sachs responded that three major events would save they day: The Olympics, the European World Cup, and the US Presidential Election.

I’m not sure which is weirder – that Wall Street is looking to the elections to boost advertising revenue or that the media is covering politics like a football game. But I know it’s weird.

State of Play
In my last blog I speculated about the role Edwards might play in a brokered convention and how he might help Obama with his delegates. With Edwards out of the race, a brokered convention looks less likely (as does an Obama victory). Having Edwards out of the race makes me think Hillary is even stronger - his voters tended to be more like hers than Obama's: older voters who felt the economy was not going in the right direction.

At the same time it seems unlikely we will have a candidate selected at the end of Super Tuesday, mainly because the Democrats do not have a “winner take all system,” for any of the states, so the two leading candidates are likely to split the delegates closely. Super Tuesday, then, is going to be more about who can claim to have momentum. Watch for lots of “spin” on this front.

California
Obama needs to get a win in the Golden State. And he has momentum here - he's closed the polling gap to about 2.5 points, which is totally within the margin of error. And some polls actually have him up by 4 points. This is a huge swing from Hillary’s commanding lead of more than 20 points just a month ago.

Granted, he could lose CA and win IL, GA, CT and a few other states and Hillary still wouldn't have the 50% she needs to win. But she'd be hard to beat at that point. Current polling suggests that she will win NY, NJ, MO, AZ, TN and CA. Again, that won't necessarily give her the delegates she'll need to clinch the nomination, but it would be a pretty fatal blow for Obama if he couldn't win in FL, CA, or NY.

The latest polling I saw (Zogby) had him up by 4 here in CA. But I have to admit that this has the same feel as his surging polling numbers following IA that didn't translate into surging voters in NH. But CA is way different that NH and I am pretty certain that a lot of CA "undecideds" were very turned off by Billary's campaign tactics prior to SC. Another big help for Obama is that "independent" voters in CA can't vote in the R primary but can vote in the D primary, and that has to hurt Hillary since Indys hate her and they make up 20% of the voters in CA (credit to Papa Simons for this tidbit).

The Iowa Electronic Market shows Obama trending up, but he's still trading at 20 cents below HRC (which is substantial for these kinds of predictive markets). He still has a ray of hope, but my humble opinion is that it is dimming quickly. If at all possible, the press would like to cover this as a nail biter until the end, but that doesn’t make it true.

Dem Vs. McCain
Obama is still outpolling Hillary in head-to-heads against McCain, but both of them are within a percentage point of their likely R rival – so statistically speaking they are all at the same place. But hidden within this, in my view, is an advantage for Hillary. She is hated, but at least we know exactly how much she is hated. Therefore she is less likely to have a major drop in support. Obama, on the other hand, is still more or less an unknown. He could go up, he could go down. . we just don’t know.

Take this small case as an example: most voters are not currently aware that Barrack’s middle name is Hussein. If Obama is the Dem candidate, you can be sure that the Republicans will find some way to get voters to connect “Osama” “Obama” and “Hussein.”

Would that kill him in the General Election? As unfortunate a statement as it is to make about our country, I have to say that I think it would. But even if it didn’t kill him, any sober look at politics today will tell you that something as seemingly benign as a Muslim middle name could badly damage a candidate. Please know that I find this supposition reprehensible, but I don’t for a second doubt that the Republicans would use this against him early and often. If you doubt it, go check out the right wing blogosphere – it’s already alive with this stuff
http://mediamatters.org/items/200612200005

A solution?
As our elections become more like sporting events, one wishes for a referee to come in and call foul to stop deceptive tactics like push polling and race baiting. Unfortunately, our “fourth branch of government” – the media – which in theory should be playing this role – perversely has a vested interest in encouraging, rather than calling fouls. You don’t sell advertising, after all, by doing a 6-page story comparing legislative records.

This of course makes most of us complicit since the media is only giving us what we want. Perhaps for the 2012 Primaries we should just do away with the whole fiction of a convention and instead choose our candidates during the half time at the Super Bowl with a naked tag team mud wrestling match. Not only would that be more fun, but it would also finally shatter the increasingly fragile premise that there is any difference between America's two favorite pastimes (my girlfriend says that would be baseball and porn, but I'm going with Football and Elections if you trust the adverstising numbers).