"McCain may well win this thing. But he'll win it after September, not before."

You've slept through the '08 general election campaign.

If McCain wins this thing, he'll actually have won it in late July to early August.

If he wins it, he'll have won it based on the short battle that took place from the "Celebrity" ad to the "Race Card" kerfuffle. That shuffled the landscape in some pretty fundamental ways that will affect the future action - it provided some degree of inoculation against Obama's convention and set McCain up to not lose the debates.

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More broadly, Presidential campaigns are, with very few exceptions, won or lost before Labor Day, not after.

And we can see from some recent elections that the July-August period specifically has been a time of crucial reformats of races:

- Bush beat Kerry in August.

- Clinton beat Bush the Elder in July.

- Bush the Elder beat Dukakis in August.

The basic profiles of the candidates get firmed up in the summer, not the fall. If you get defined badly during the summer, you face a long fall.

If you go back 40 years, the only campaigns where the crucial battles took place after Labor Day are 1980, and arguably 2000.

I completely agree with you, and I hope that the Obama campaign is smart enough to have planned a message for the convention that is not all about Obama. Yes, it's good for them to continue to introduce Obama to the American people and, in fact, that was essential for Clinton to have done in 1992.

But elections are always choices and what people need to focus on is that choice. I'd like to see Obama go hard after McCain on policy and on the labeling of Obama -- and therefore also much of the American public -- as unconcerned with America's security because of the belief this war should end. There is ample room for a "Have you no shame?" moment and it could be well-delivered by any number of Democratic leaders.

We all know that the Republican convention will be aimed at developing the theme that you can't trust Obama. Speaking out about that at the Democratic convention - and then having an active campaign and surrogate operation during the Republican convention to repeat that - will inoculate Obama from that to a good extent.

Petey is right about this. By the time Labor Day arrives, the dynamics of the campaign are already set, and there's really not much room to maneuver after that.

Our perspectives may be distorted because in 2000, the race really *did* come down to what happened after Labor Day, and in 2004, we fooled ourselves into thinking it was possible for Kerry to win it after Labor Day, but for the most part, what happens in July and August sets the stage for November.

The only difference is that the party conventions occur rather late, now, and it's possible -- though unlikely -- that this might result in election campaigns whose significant events occur much later in the cycle.

Ezra, have you been reading our resident math whiz, Nate Silver, recently? If he's panicking then I'm panicking. Let's not get complacent in the face of subtle yet significant shifts in the electorate. If a Democrat can't win this year, especially against a candidate like McCain, with his near-total embrace of Bush's policies, then we'll never get back the White House.

Has Obama learned the lessons that Hillary Clinton tried to teach him? I see no evidence that he has. Maybe he's relying on an unprecedented turn-out model to push this thing through, but I'm nervous as hell.

I have to agree with Petey. Now is when the narrative is set. Kerry was a flip flopper by the conventions. Al Gore invented the interwebs by the conventions. And even worse, Bush was the guy you want to have a beer with by the conventions. The Democrats missed their chance to influence the narrative because they didn't take these months seriously. I'm afraid that we're seeing the same mistake, and if we win this time it'll be because of the Republican's last few years of self inflicted damage, not because of the Obama teams skills.

I just don't buy it that the narrative is set right now. Actually there is still fluidity and the Obama campaign and a robust surrogate operation (with Bill Clinton and the Clintonites fully on board) can do a lot to promote narratives that support an Obama win.

McCain is massively outspending Obama in numerous swing states and he's still behind. The Obama campaign has been tougher on message than the national media credit them for, and, yes, they could do better. But let's not flip out and assume that the parameters of the race are settled now.

Not only the Obama campaign but the rest of us have a lot to say about what frames will prevail. If we each sat down and wrote a letter to the editor or an op-ed to a local paper, we can promote Obama and explain the contrast between him and McCain. There are hundreds of smaller papers around the country that need decent content to print. All of us can play a part in supplying that.

I don't buy the idea of these narratives. I know that this is supposed to be how Clinton beat Dole and Bush beat Kerry and all the rest, but it seems to me that what's happening in those months -- like in other months -- is that the candidates are chosen and narratives settle around what's basically the actual events of the day. So Clinton wins a predictably large victory on his roaring economy, and he does so using language that DOle isn't high tech enough. And Bush wins a predictable small victory off wartime presidency and a decent economy, and does so by saying Kerry isn't trustworthy to handle war. Saying that it's about the narratives gets it backwards, I think.

I don't do tracking polls, and I don't get worked up over minor dips that are probably the result of McCain screaming on every TV set in the country while Obama takes a vacation.

And for once I agree with Ezra. We looks for big reasons why the candidate that wins does so. In reality, it's all the background factors that really contribute to the win/loss of a candidate. Clinton didn't beat Dole because he 'defined him early', he beat Dole because the Economy was better than it had been in 20 years and people were optimistic about the future. People pretend that Bush walloped Kerry, but in reality Kerry almost won, when the economy was decent and there was a war going on. Those were the factors that really determined the winner. Not Swift Boating and Bob Dole falling on his ass.

I'm on Petey's side here. I think Democrat's right that there's still plenty of fluidity, but the window's about to close: when McCain makes his acceptance speech at the GOP convention, the opportunity for the Democrats to have defined him first (which is a hell of a lot easier than re-branding him after he's defined himself) will be gone.

I disagree with Ezra's claim that the narratives tend to "settle around what's basically the actual events of the day." They settle around all sorts of things, from Love Story to Love Canal to inventing the Internet to sighs to brown suits. And half the time, it's made-up stuff with minimal connection to the events of the day, but is the basis of how voters decide how a candidate's likely to respond to those events.

Was Gore a prevaricator? No, but they turned him into one, and that's why the popular vote was close enough for him to lose the election by a 5-4 vote in the Supreme Court.

Was Kerry a flip-flopper? Not really, but they turned him into one, and turned his Vietnam heroism into Band-Aid scratches to ridicule. Could a different perception of Kerry have caused 1.5% of the electorate to switch their votes? Quite possibly.

This stuff is important. And the Dems, having had months to define McCain, have only a couple of weeks left to tell a story about him that will make this election about him as well as about Obama.

They'd better move fast.

It's one thing to say that fundamentals determined the 1996 and 2004 outcomes, but then you get to 2000. The fundamentals say Gore should have won in a walk. He didn't. Don't tell me that the narratives about each candidate can't make a big difference.

If he wins it, he'll have won it based on the short battle that took place from the "Celebrity" ad to the "Race Card" kerfuffle. That shuffled the landscape in some pretty fundamental ways that will affect the future action - it provided some degree of inoculation against Obama's convention and set McCain up to not lose the debates.

Are you shaking in your boots yet? McCain has moderately cut into some of Obama's advantages!

I think Petey's got things right in the above paragraph, which is why I'm confused about his negativity. What McCain did, which is clear from polling data, from any simple analysis of his rhetoric, was to shore up his base. McCain now gets really, really good numbers from Republican-identifiers. He has done this by running hard-right culturally and rightish substantively. He has inoculated himself well against a possible sloughing-off of conservative votes leading to an Obama landslide.

He has made very few inroads with independents or democrats, and he's set himself up very poorly to go after their votes. (Unless he plans on running right culturally and left economically, as Clinton did, but that's impossible at this point.)

In an election where the fundamentals favor a Democrat strongly, McCain is running "not to lose" by large margins, to get "some degree of inoculation" against Obama's lead. This is good.

As for the Nate Silver reference, he has Obama winning the majority of the time. Obama's lead is now slimmer by a couple points, but "panicking" would be a really silly word to describe the tone at fivethirtyeight.

one thing i dont understand....
there are many powerful figures who are capable of fanning out and refuting the lies and misperceptions being hammered out by the mccain campaign.
where are they?
i used to see claire mccaskill frequently on tv. she was a forceful surrogate, speaking out almost everyday.
...so was richardson...and dodd...biden.
why arent people like barney frank, robert reich, jesse jackson, even bruce springsteen and others, fanning out all across the country now on a daily basis, refuting the lies and contributing to enthusiasm?
the clintons are being treated with great respect and graciousness at this convention. since they helped to sow seeds of mistruth and reinforce some of the narratives that the republicans are now using, i hope they feel a sense of strong conscience to work as hard as they can to undo some of the effects of their collaborations during the next few months.
bill clinton still has not gotten out front to help the democratic party.
he has to put country first at some point.

this is the absolute time for every supporter, especially those with more powerful and influential voices, to speak out.
evil gains a foothold when enough good people stand by and do nothing.

I'm on Ezra's side.

We don't know what the turnout model is. Neither do the pollsters. I'd guess that about 30% of the population don't even know who's running for president.

The only thing predictable here is the Chicken Little act that comes because McCain hasn't been pushed over a cliff in a wheelchair yet. Take a couple of fucking weeks off from the scratchcard high of 'who won the day'.

Also, Petey's predictions are shit.

"I think Petey's got things right in the above paragraph, which is why I'm confused about his negativity."

Don't get me wrong. I'd bet Obama at even money odds.

But I think McCain is far better situated than he was a month ago. And he's not just better situated in terms of tracking polls, (which do contain quite useful information), but also in terms of strategic positioning going forward.

The wind is strongly at the Democrats' backs, which means that Obama has a decent shot at being able to win the election even if he loses the campaign. That's basically what happened to Carter in 1976, which I think is the template election for what is going on this year.

But campaigns matter. And no matter how strongly the wind is at your back, you can easily lose an election if you lose the campaign.

Obama's Veep selection is going to contain a lot of information on whether Team Chicago is going to keep trying to run out the clock, or if they're actually playing to win.

"McCain may well win this thing. But he'll win it after September, not before."

I would rephrase that more accurately. Obama may well lose this thing, whenever and however, but McCain doesn't stand much chance of winning, except if Obama does him the favor of losing.

Also:
"- Bush beat Kerry in August.

- Clinton beat Bush the Elder in July.

- Bush the Elder beat Dukakis in August.

The basic profiles of the candidates get firmed"

While this may certainly be true, it's not what was indicated by the polls at the time. The polls only start growing closer to the actual election results around September/October.

If you believe polls this far out have much of relevance to say, then Ezra is right.

- Bush beat Kerry in August.

- Clinton beat Bush the Elder in July.

- Bush the Elder beat Dukakis in August.

In other words, during and after the conventions. The conventions are later this year.

So long as the median voter is a not very bright white guy who thinks he's electing a president but actually hiring a contract killer -- which is what all that 3-AM-phone-commander-in-chiefing nonsense amounts to -- McCain's the favorite. McCain's actually killed swarthies, and promises us he'll do more.

And that same median voter, faced with the risk that our national mythological tribal-leader-cum-demigod might be a shvartze? Fuggedaboutit. Any sane constitution separates the Head of State from the Leader of the Government for a reason.

You an fight,but can't beat, the national lizard brain. In evidence I enter Petey.

So it's McCain's race to lose, not Obama's. McCain wins both Ohio and Colorado, with a combined margin of less than 200,000, and hfinishes second in the popular vote by nearly a million, while we elect a 59-41 Dem Senate, and a 250-185 Dem House.

Deadlock, vetoes, filibusters -- nothing gets done for four years as the nation circles the toilet and McCain's VP goes around the White House taking the batteries out of the defibrilators.

Good times, good times.

why arent people like barney frank, robert reich, jesse jackson, even bruce springsteen and others, fanning out all across the country now on a daily basis, refuting the lies and contributing to enthusiasm?

If a Republic falls in a forest, and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

"In other words, during and after the conventions"

No. Before and during the conventions, not after.

The '04, '92, and '88 races were all upended before the conventions were over.

Once the conventions are done, the battle lines are usually set.

After reading your "PARTY OF OBAMA" piece, it occurs to me that it might be strategic to keep the race close.

If it looks like a blowout, what happens to the army of grass-roots supporters?

If Obama is both under-performing the party AND the inspiration for the GOTV operation -- Isn't generating that sense of urgency a good strategy to maximize Obama's coattails.

Of course this rope-a-dope strategy implies a huge amount of confidence, but if Ali could pull it off maybe Obama and Axelrod can too.

Deadlock, vetoes, filibusters -- nothing gets done for four years as the nation circles the toilet and McCain's VP goes around the White House taking the batteries out of the defibrilators.

Shorter Davis X. Machina: "Democrats will not have unfettered ability to cram their socialist agenda down the throats of the people....".

It's interesting now to watch the inchoate narratives forming which will be invoked in November to explain why Obama's loss wasn't Obama's fault.

Jackie's preferred BS story, that it's all Bill and Hillary's fault, will be especially popular, I predict.

I doubt, however, that her "not enough Bruce Springsteen" excuse will catch on. But who knows? Anything to deny the obvious: that we have a turkey of a candidate.

Didn't you once post an article about how the Democrats can't win if the nomination isn't decided until the convention, because they need all that time to make their case to the public about why McCain sucks and the Democratic nominee doesn't?

But now you say everything before September is meaningless?

Well, which is true?

It's interesting that Petey's "only 1980 was decided after September" has gone unremarked on, when 1980 is the only recent election year to which this one bears any resemblance. It's rare for an incumbvent party to be in as piss-poor shape as the GOP is this year, and in all such years ('20, '32, '52 and '80), the out-party has won a thumping victory, even, as in '52 and '80, when polls showed it much closer. (Petey, I'd disagree with you about '76 being in that category, primarily because that election year economy was booming -- plus Ford's ascension had removed some of the stain of Watergate)
Hell, Obama's been consistently polling well better than Reagan ever did in 1980 -- yet somehow Dems have been persuaded they should kill themselves because of what a two-day reading in Rasmussen or Gallup's tracking says.

No one will ever convince me Willie Horton or the Pledge of Allegiance beat Dukakis, when all the fundamentals said it was clearly Bush's race from the start. (It's only if you paid too much to day-by-day polling, as many are now, that you ever thought Dukakis had a chance) And the 2000 metrics didn't indicate a Gore blowout, but a small-bore Gore win -- precisely what, in a honest world, he got.

I'm standing pat: Obama wins by a quite comfortable margin in November -- I'd say close to double-digits, except I think the racial component will shave it a bit. And everyone will hunt for some mythical event that "turned the tide" at the end (like they pretend Reagan's '80 debate performance swung 10% of the electorate in a fortnight). People seem desperate not to believe elections turn on fundamentals, despite the fact that time after time it ends up the way the fundamentals predict.

I get the feeling the purpose of the campaigns in these early months is media-directed, not voter-directed. Each campaign is trying to define the other candidate by appealing to the media, and trying to change the way coverage will occur post-Labor Day. And appeals to the media can only be so negative before incurring the wrath of the village people. After that point, however, the tone of the ads will be much different. You think the lowest McCain's going to sink is the celebrity ads? We're going to see more Rev. Wright, we're going to hear more about Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers, we're going to see video of primary-era Hillary Clinton saying McCain has passed the "C-in-C threshold" while Obama has not. We are going to see more and younger and whiter women fawning over Obama. And that's just the official campaign. It's going to get much, much uglier, and I think we will look back on July and August and laugh that we thought any of this pre-season BS mattered. Enjoy the relative calm of the last couple weeks before the regular season.

"People seem desperate not to believe elections turn on fundamentals, despite the fact that time after time it ends up the way the fundamentals predict."

The problem is that "the fundamentals" are always defined by models that are derived by fitting to a small number of previous results.

If I were to look at the past three elections, I could come up with a great model of "the fundamentals" that shows that the candidate whose last name starts with the letter that comes earlier in the alphabet is guaranteed to win this election. That's where fitting to the results gets you. And via this model, McCain is a lock in '08.

Now, I'm not saying "the fundamentals" don't exist. I definitely think that there is a wind at the Democrats' back this year, but campaigns matter. They matter a lot. How you conduct your electoral politics actually matters. The pro-Obama forces have gotten themselves into a box where they are invested in arguing that campaigns don't matter, and they're dead wrong.

Again, I do think there is a very real chance of a '76 type scenario where Obama loses the campaign and still wins the election, due to the strong Democratic wind. But Presidential elections have a very strong personality factor, and losing the campaign runs a significant risk of losing the election in a year when Democrats have no business losing.

Many battles have been lost by side that held the higher ground because how you conduct the battle itself actually matters. I'd generally take bad fundamentals and good strategic command over the reverse position.

The easiest way to prove this to yourself is to imagine a constitutionally eligible Arnold Schwarzenegger running against Dennis Kucinich this year. Do you think "the fundamentals" would save the Dems in that campaign?

"No one will ever convince me Willie Horton or the Pledge of Allegiance beat Dukakis, when all the fundamentals said it was clearly Bush's race from the start."

See, one model is vogue this cycle among the pro-Obama forces (for obvious reasons) is that when a party has been in office for two terms, "the fundamental" work to have the "out" party win. But how'd that model work back in '88, for example?

Politics is not mechanistic at the level you prefer, especially at the personalty and narrative driven Presidential level. To repeat myself: campaigns matter.

There's nothing more Pathetic than panicking because we dropped a statistically insignificant 2.3% in the polls over the last 2 months. OMG! We're winning by less now!

These things always tighten at the end, because Republicans will always return home. It's worth noting that most of the polls that are truly 'good' news for McCain severely undercount the youth vote and the black vote. While it's possible that neither of those votes will be higher than they were in 2004, it's very unlikely that either of them will be lower than they were in 2004. McCain is down by more than 1. You people need to get a grip on yourselves. If Obama doesn't start the serious spending after the convention, I'll be worried. If McCain ever manages to actually raise his own numbers, instead of slightly lowering Obama's, I'll be worried. Right now, you people just look like idiots.

Petey, people might pay attention to you if it wasn't clear a long time ago that you so desperately want Obama to lose.

"I'd generally take bad fundamentals and good strategic command over the reverse position."

Then we stand at different ends of the street. I'll take Michael Dukakis' campaign this year over either of Bill Clinton's in '88.

As for the two-term thing -- that's the kind of faux fundamental I'd never cite; anything that simplistic isn't much different from the first letter/last name parody example you throw out. What I'm talking about is the comprehensive, exhaustive review of the evidence over a four-year term advocated by Lichtman and Abramowitz in their systems. Even there, I wouldn't be overweeningly confident if the metrics suggested a close-ish win. But this year isn't that: it's a once-a-quarter-century or better set-up, and I don't see any sign that Obama is "blowing it", any more than Reagan was blowing it when he trailed Carter by 6 points in summertime.

In fact, the 1980 race was a watershed in my own political awareness. Desperately wanting to believe disaster could be avoided, I bought into the prvailing narrative that fall: that it was super-close, that maybe the president would pull it out. Watching the horror that unfolded on election night, I came to the realization that any GOPer would have won that year -- that Reagan's caricaturable rightiness had only masked that fact; that the fundamentals made it an impossible year for the incumbent to hold on.

And since then, sorry to toot my own horn, I've been right about every election -- never buying into the Dukakis lead; telling people in late Spring '92 that Clinton would win (people told me I was INSANE). My only "error" was thinking that Gore's win would hold up under an assault on the system.

Tell you what, Petey: if Obama runs essentially the same campaign between now and election day and wins by the sort of margin I'm suggesting, will you consider revising your view? I'll make the promise right now: if Obama loses -- or even if his win is of the up-all-night variety -- I'll concede you had it more right than I.

Petey thinking that Obama will lose is actually good news since Petey’s predictions are almost always wrong.

He first supported John Edwards. Thank God he lost the nomination, otherwise we would be doomed. Then he said there was no way Obama would beat Hillary, which, yeah, great surprise, proved to be wrong.

Fortunately, Petey is predicting Obama will lose, which is a very good thing, since Petey predictions are always wrong.

Petey is so amazingly consistently wrong in his predictions that I wish he would give stock market advice so that I could do the opposite and make a fortune.

"Tell you what, Petey: if Obama runs essentially the same campaign between now and election day and wins by the sort of margin I'm suggesting, will you consider revising your view?"

I don't think the '80 scenario is impossible this year.

It's certainly possible that it'll be close two weeks out, and Obama will end up winning comfortably.

My only real point here is that campaigns matter. We can't say based on "the fundamentals" that it'll end up that way. The way the two sides play out their hands will determine the actual results.

Given what we know so far about Team Chicago's psychology of playing not to lose, I tend to think a '76 scenario is more likely than an '80 scenario, but I don't know that for sure. That's why they play the games on the field, rather than on paper.

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"Reagan's caricaturable rightiness had only masked that fact; that the fundamentals made it an impossible year for the incumbent to hold on."

One big difference between '80 and '08 to me is that Carter was on the ballot in '80, and Bush isn't on the ballot in '08. Merely making Obama acceptable won't necessarily mean a last minute surge away from McCain in the way that making Reagan acceptable guaranteed a last minute surge away from Carter.

He first supported John Edwards. Thank God he lost the nomination, otherwise we would be doomed. Then he said there was no way Obama would beat Hillary, which, yeah, great surprise, proved to be wrong.

Petey also thought Isiah Thomas was a good general manager.

It takes talent to be so consistently wrong. Luck can't explain it.