The Conventions & The Election

My sister asked me to write about my thoughts on the Republican National Convention last week. Tom Toles did a better job summarizing the message from the RNC than I could. Take a look at his editorial cartoon from this week.

It sounds to me like McCain's campaign has decided to forget about their attempt to draw in undecided, independent, and conservative Democratic voters. It's all about the base of the Republican party now. The choice of Sarah Palin for VP has excited religious conservatives and NRA members, but you cannot call yourself a Maverick while kowtowing to the conservative base of your party. A convention that mocked community organizers and featured repeated chanting of "Drill, Baby, Drill!" seems happy to write off voters younger than 40.

With the two convention completed, in some ways the real election has started. Casual voters will start to pay attention now. The first debate is on September 30. Polls still don't mean very much and are not worth paying attention to until October. The fundamentals, like the state of the economy and the fact of Republican incumbency, still point to an Obama victory.

I think the biggest wildcard is Iraq. If there continues to be relative stability (and by relative, I mean something less than total civil war) then it might not be too much of a factor. But if things change, either towards more open civil war or towards actual political reconciliation, then who knows? If it gets obviously worse, will undecided and weakly committed voters blame the Republicans or will they decide that McCain's "experience" makes him the best person to deal with the problem? If it gets obviously better, will those same voters give McCain credit for advocating the surge, or will they decide Iraq does not matter and focus just on the economy?

Obama has been saying, most recently in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, that he welcomes a debate with McCain on foreign policy. This is great news for lots of reasons, but from an electoral standpoint, it will show the public that he is better on Iraq whether things there take a turn for the better or the worse.