8/30/2008
According to a recent Zogby poll, there’s lots of bad news for Senator Obama right now. For example, Zogby’s data shows that “Republican John McCain’s surprise announcement Friday of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate - some 16 hours after Democrat Barack Obama’s historic speech accepting his party’s presidential nomination - has possibly stunted any Obama convention bump.”
Certainly the McCain decision owned the news cycle yesterday. That trend is likely to last through this long holiday weekend. But there’s more. Zogby also noted that his “interactive survey shows that 22% of those voters who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in their primary elections or caucus earlier this year are now supporting John McCain.”
In addition, Zogby’s poll found that “among those who said they shop regularly at Wal-Mart, Obama is getting walloped by McCain. Winning 62% support from weekly Wal-Mart shoppers, McCain wins these voters at a rate similar to what President Bush won in 2004. Obama wins 24% support from these voters.”
Zogby does state his belief that the race overall is likely to remain tight until probably the final week of the election, where he feels that the race will then likely break decisively for one candidate or another. What noone can predict, however, is what other factors might come into play to swing voter opinions one way or another.
In regards to Governor Palin, there is this issue, now being hotly debated by bloggers, of undue pressure being placed on a former state employee to fire a state trooper. The complication is that the state trooper was Palin’s former brother-in-law. However, I’ve also heard reports that the trooper was fired before Palin became Governor, and the complaint was a trumped up one from a disgruntled former employee. There has been an investigation from what I understand and nothing has come of this accusation.
It is fair to say that a reformist governor like Sarah Palin is sure to have many enemies, even among her own party. After all, she ran against an incumbent Republican Governor, wiped him out in the primaries, then went on to narrowly defeat her popular Democratic rival.
You can see why Governor Palin’s nickname in High School was “Sarah Barracuda.” Palin earned the nickname while playing point guard for her state championship basketball team. She was known for her aggressive play and determination. She played the entire game during the championship, despite being injured.
For Obama, there remains many questions relating to his association with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, whose only complaint has been that he didn’t do enough bombing of government sites back in the 1960’s. Obama has been claiming that they merely know each other from their neighborhood, but recently uncovered documents by National Review journalist Stanley Kurtz shows a much closer relationship.
In addition, Obama has yet to fully explain his relationship with former campaign fundraiser Tony Rezko, who helped Obama to purchase his $1.5 million home at $300,000 below the market value. In addition, Rezko’s wife, who has no financial assets of her own, purchased and then sold an additional half-acre lot to the Obama’s to increase their total lot size. Of course, Rezko was recently convicted of 16 counts of fraud.
So, in examining who has more issues to deal with over the next 66 days, it’s likely that Obama has many more deficits than Palin. And Palin is tougher to boot.
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