One of the big stories — for those who like watching and dogging the DC press corps — over the next two years will be watching the slow disconnect between the people the prestige DC pundits think should be the top candidates and those who are the top candidates. The numbers will arch away from the conventional wisdom. But when will disconnect become too big to ignore?
Let’s start with some recent numbers.
There’s some very deserved buzz about the new poll out which has Hillary over John McCain by a 50% to 43% margin.
But I want to focus not on Hillary but on McCain. Let’s start with this passage from an article last week in the Washington Post, discussing their latest poll …
McCain’s favorability ratings have declined over the past nine months. Among independents, his support has dropped 15 percentage points since March. Independents were his strongest supporters when he sought the Republican nomination in 2000. The decline comes at a time when McCain is calling for sending more troops to Iraq and has aggressively reached out to conservative groups and Christian conservative leaders.
Dan Balz hits on the key points. Self-identified independents are McCain’s big constituency. And his popularity in this group has dropped substantially over the last year.
Now, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. McCain’s rep, from the late 90s onward has been based on three things — a perceived stance of political independence, an embrace of a number of Democratic positions which are more popular than Republican ones (the case for most everything outside national security issues, though that’s changing), and his soft-pedaling his actual hard-right positions on things like choice, etc.
For anyone who’s paying attention, the independence rep is toast. He’s been toadying to conservative orthodoxies for the past year. Something that makes him seem doubly non-independent and craven since it’s pretty clear he’s doing it just because he wants to be president. That is to say, he’s not like longstanding toadies like Bill Frist and others like him. He’s also embracing an extremely unpopular position on Iraq — a war that is extremely unpopular amongst independents. And of course he’s George Bush’s new best friend.
The idea that John McCain is going to stay the darling of self-identified independents and centrist Democrats while acting like a partisan right-winger and supporting a deeply unpopular war reminds me of those dingbat prognosticators who argue, in so many words, that now that the GOP has the racist vote sewn up all they have to do is get the blacks too and then the Dems won’t ever be able to win an election again.
People aren’t that stupid.
Why do we think John McCain is going to play like he did in 2000 after he’s turned himself into a gruffer version of George W. Bush?
