Three Was a Crowd in 1992

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In 1992, nationally televised debates between the major party nominees for president were still a fairly recent development in American politics.

Vice presidential debates were newer still. The first televised presidential debates were in 1960, and the first vice presidential debate was in 1976.

But, what happened in 1992 was a first that has been unmatched in presidential debate history. The debates that year featured three participants, not two.

And the debate that was held 20 years ago tonight on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta was even more groundbreaking. It was only the fourth time that vice presidential candidates had met in a debate (the vice presidential candidates did not debate in 1980), and it was the first (and, so far, only) time that the vice presidential debate featured three participants.

The Perot–Stockdale ticket really shook things up in 1992. In November, nearly 20 million people voted for it. (No state actually voted for Perot, although political historians will point out that the Perot–Stockdale ticket finished slightly ahead of the Bush–Quayle ticket in Maine that year.)

And it was kind of a weird night two decades ago — the night of the 1992 vice presidential debate.

In part, it was a vindication of the low expectations theory in which a debate participant is said to benefit from low expectations because just about anything good that happens for him/her during the debate will be seen as a triumph.

And, if enough good things — or, at least, enough not bad things — happen, an upset victory in the debate can be claimed — and accepted as plausible by most viewers.

For Vice President Dan Quayle, it probably couldn't have worked out much better. Widely viewed as a lightweight — and with the memory of his epic putdown by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen in the vice presidential debate four years earlier still reasonably fresh in the public's minds — expectations were very low for Quayle.

In comparison to the public's pre–debate expectations, Quayle triumphed in his 1992 debate, and my memory is that a plurality at least saw him as the debate's winner.

But, in my memory and the memories of most observers, what lingers is not the image of an unexpectedly deft and skillful debate performance by Quayle but rather an embarrassingly poor one by Admiral James Stockdale.

To be fair to Stockdale, it wasn't really his fault.

A national three–person debate had only occurred once — a few days earlier, when the presidential candidates debated — and it wasn't even decided until roughly a week before the running mates debated that Stockdale would be allowed to participate.

Stockdale, one of the Navy's most decorated officers, was a rather late addition to Perot's campaign as well, but he was thought by many political observers to bring a certain amount of gravitas, at least in foreign affairs, to the ticket via his military career.

But he was still largely unknown to many Americans.

So, on this night 20 years ago, Stockdale sought to capitalize a bit on his status as the unknown candidate. "Who am I? Why am I here?" he began his opening statement, paving the way for a clever introduction of himself to the viewers.

The problem was that he sort of ran out of gas — or, to borrow a phrase Stockdale later used to explain the abrupt conclusion of one of his answers, he was "out of ammo."

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Thus, a distinguished veteran with a lifetime's worth of service to his country was reduced to a punch line, and nowhere were the jokes more biting than on Saturday Night Live.

Practically since its debut in 1975, SNL has made a name for itself poking fun at political figures, especially in debates. In that category, I would say that SNL has established itself as the gold standard. For more than 35 years, a presidential election campaign has not been complete until SNL parodies at least one of its debates.

After Stockdale's performance, though, SNL's writers apparently decided to poke fun at it but not to mimic it directly.

The result was savagely funny.

Perot (portrayed by Dana Carvey) and Stockdale (Phil Hartman) were going for a post–debate ride in the country — a "joyride," Perot/Carvey called it.

But Perot's true objective was to ditch Stockdale out in the sticks.

It didn't work, however, as Perot learned, to his chagrin, "never try to ditch a war hero — tenacious with a capital T."

Admiral Stockdale died in 2005.

When Vice Presidential Candidates Collide

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Walter Mondale and Bob Dole met in the first vice presidential debate in 1976.

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History will be made tomorrow night in Danville, Ky., when Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan meet in the vice presidential debate.

This isn't the first time a debate has been held in Danville (population about 16.000). Nor will it be the first time vice presidential candidates have debated. In fact, it will be the ninth time.

It has been said that vice presidential debates have little, if any, influence on the outcome of a presidential election. But they have often been noteworthy.

The first time that vice presidential candidates debated was 36 years ago next Monday, when Walter Mondale and Bob Dole met in Houston.

That night, Dole made a sneering comment about "Democrat wars" and Mondale called him on it.

The vice presidential candidates did not debate in 1980, but, on this day in 1984, the first woman on a major party ticket, Geraldine Ferraro, debated Vice President George H.W. Bush in Philadelphia.

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What stands out in my mind about that debate was the blatantly obvious condescending tone of the vice president's remarks. He was a man with an extensive background in foreign affairs, and he appeared to feel that it was beneath him to debate Ferraro, who had a certain amount of knowledge about foreign policy acquired in three terms in the House as well as her experience dealing with appropriations on the House Budget Committee — but nothing remotely comparable to Bush's resume.

Ferraro was right to tell Bush that she "resented" his attitude, but my memory is that Bush was judged the winner that night.

The victory gave a much–needed boost to 73–year–old President Ronald Reagan's campaign for re–election. Reagan had stumbled badly in his first debate with Mondale only four days earlier, and public opinion polls had begun to show some shakiness in his standing with the voters.

(In the aftermath of his widely panned debate performance last week, Barack Obama can only hope that Biden hands him such a gift tomorrow night.)

When Reagan met Mondale in their second and final debate a week and half later, he seemed energized, and he gave a much stronger performance, essentially locking up his 49–state landslide.

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The vice presidential candidates debated early in October in 1988 — on Oct. 5, a date that has been chosen for vice presidential debates three times. It was on that first occasion — in Omaha, Neb. — that Sen. Lloyd Bentsen told Sen. Dan Quayle that he was "no Jack Kennedy."

Twenty years ago this Saturday, the first — and, so far, only — three–way vice presidential debate was held in Atlanta.

(The first–ever three–way presidential debate was held 20 years ago tomorrow.)

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The vice presidential debate in 1992 was memorable for the things the third wheel in that debate — Ross Perot's running mate, Admiral James Stockdale — said.

I always thought that was something of a pity because Stockdale was an intelligent and exceptionally brave individual. He spent seven years in a Viet Cong POW camp and suffered severe physical injuries during his captivity.

He had earned the right to be treated with respect, but the fact that he was not a career politician worked against him in an arena where that kind of experience would have served him well.

After the debate, jokes were made about his halting and confused delivery, his opening statement ("Who am I? Why am I here?") and other nifty sound bites that, taken together, made Stockdale look old and foolish.

But the truth was that Stockdale did not know he would be participating in the debate until about a week before, and he got no advice from Perot. He was about as unprepared as a man could be for a nationally televised debate — and it showed.

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Two days ago was the 16th anniversary of the debate between Vice President Al Gore and Jack Kemp in St. Petersburg, Fla., during the 1996 campaign.

On Oct. 5, 2000, Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman debated in Danville.

Four years later, to the day, now–Vice President Cheney debated John Edwards in Cleveland.

Four years ago, on Oct, 2, Biden debated Sarah Palin in St. Louis.

If you have no real memory of those debates, don't worry about it. As I say, they don't seem to matter much when people make up their minds how to vote.

But they can be quite entertaining.

The Best and the Worst in One Night

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Twenty years ago tonight, the Republican Party put on public display both its best side and its worst.

Now, for quite some time, I have observed the evolution of the absorption of an incendiary term like hate in our national political discourse.

In my experience, political campaigns have always been contentious. I grew up in Arkansas, about a mile from a prominent political family. The patriarch was a well–known segregationist who was not above using fiery rhetoric in his speeches, and he sought statewide office a couple of times when I was a child.

But, even in that environment (and, admittedly, I was quite young so there may be things I do not recall), the word hate was seldom, if ever, used. Looking back on those days, I feel it would have been considered bad form to use that word, even if it really did describe how a politician felt about his adversary and vice versa (and, no doubt, it did).

That word is tossed around so casually these days. Both Democrats and Republicans regard people who disagree with them as haters, but I believe both sides make the mistake of confusing dissent with hate.

Just because someone disagrees with you does not mean that person hates you. Look up the words in the dictionary. You'll find that the terms are not interchangeable.

This really seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon — in the context of American history, at least. When I was growing up, I knew Republicans and Democrats disagreed on many things, but only the most extreme members of either party accused the other of hatred. At the end of the day, both sides made an effort to reach a compromise.

In that time, both sides seemed to understand the meaning of the word civility.

But politics has become so polarized in this country that, today, neither seems to know what civility is, even though they give lip service to the word. Neither side is willing to give an inch — and both sides are all too eager to accuse the other of hatred. Civility gets lip service and little else.

When did this transformation happen?

I have been unable to determine the precise moment when it became socially acceptable to accuse those with whom one disagrees of hatred. I can identify points in its evolutionary line when behavior that was once considered extreme became the norm, but I can't say exactly when that transformation began.

Some would say it started with Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," designed to exploit racial tensions and help him win the presidency in 1968. Others would point to Ronald Reagan kicking off his 1980 general election campaign with a reference to the racially charged code words states' rights in Mississippi.

And those were certainly covert points in the timeline of the acceptance of hate as a political argument. A more overt brand of political hate emerged in 1988, which is still regarded by some as the most mean–spirited campaign in American history — although, when all is said and done, the 2012 campaign may well exceed it.

It's already getting close to it, and we haven't even reached Labor Day yet.

(In case you don't remember, let me refresh your memory. 1988 was the year backers of George H.W. Bush's campaign unleashed the Willie Horton commercial against Michael Dukakis.)

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Those were all significant milestones in the evolution of hate in American politics, and there certainly have been others since, but I always felt that the most blatant appeal to hate occurred 20 years ago tonight — when Pat Buchanan spoke to the Republican National Convention in Houston.

Buchanan, who had challenged Bush in the primaries and caused the president considerable discomfort when he was forced to work for a nomination he expected would be his for the taking, gave what has been dubbed his "culture war" speech, railing against the opposition with such venom that I am hesitant to quote it directly today.

(With Barack Obama's class warfare, I suppose things have now come full circle.)

But I will quote this much: Buchanan ranted, at length, about "abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat" — all things he said a Clinton administration would impose on America.

The speech, delivered early in the evening, probably had its desired effect. It stirred up the conservative base, which was considered shaky for Bush at best in 1992.

Now, I can tell you that Texas is a fine place to whip conservatives into a frenzy, and Buchanan clearly was working on it that night. But it was an appeal to the worst of Republican instincts.

However, the possibility of redemption was at hand. Former President Reagan was about to give his final national address.

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At the time, of course, no one knew it would be his final address. He didn't reveal to the public that he was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease until a couple of years later.

After he left the presidency, Reagan made relatively few public appearances before sharing his condition with the public. Each time I saw him speak in those years, there was always the thought that it might be his last one. In fact, I remember having that thought 20 years ago tonight.

But, at the time, I suppose, I believed there would be another. There was always another with Reagan. He was less than four years removed from his presidency, and the memory of his administration still cast a warm glow over the Republican Party. He was its rock star, even at the age of 81. He was its elder statesman, its president emeritus. The night he spoke to the 1992 Republican convention, they passed out placards for the delegates to wave when he came out to speak.

I didn't attend the convention, but I remember seeing the placards — in the flesh, as it were.

I was about to begin my first semester teaching journalism at the University of Oklahoma. Many staffers from the student newspaper had press passes for the convention, and they brought the placards back with them and put some up on the walls and file cabinets in the newsroom.

The placards said something like "Thank the Gipper for all he has done for our country!" — and, occasionally, on this night 20 years ago, the delegates burst into a chant of "Thank You, Ron!" and waved their placards.

Before he told the American public that he had Alzheimer's disease, Reagan was kind of like the Brett Favre of American politics. Most quarterbacks suffer a serious injury of some kind by the time that they're in their 30s, but Favre was different. He never got hurt, and he kept playing into his 40s.

Favre was the exception to the rule in football, and, I must admit, I believed Reagan was the exception to the rule in American politics. After all, three of the four men on Mount Rushmore died before reaching the age at which Reagan was first elected president. I saw no reason to think he would not be around for many more years — and, in fact, when he died, he had lived longer than anyone else who served as president.

As I have mentioned here many times, I did not agree with Reagan on most policy issues.

But it was not necessary to agree with Reagan on anything to understand that he was very effective as a public speaker. It was for that skill more than anything else that he was granted the rarest of tributes a president can receive — a moniker that is positive, not negative.

Even before he left the White House, Reagan was called "the Great Communicator."

That skill that Reagan had was on full display in Houston 20 years ago tonight. It was not what it once was. He was, as I say, in his 80s. But he could still bring the delegates to their feet and, at times, to tears. He spoke with optimism about America's future ("We were meant to be masters of destiny," he said, "not victims of fate"), and he brought the house down with a one–liner about then–Gov. Bill Clinton portraying himself as another Thomas Jefferson ("I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine. And, Governor, you're no Thomas Jefferson").

It was vintage Ronald Reagan, and modern politicians could learn from his example.

Take away the political philosophy, and you could sum up Reagan's approach in a song title — "Accentuate the Positive." That is what politicians of all stripes can learn from Reagan.

I don't know how Reagan felt about that song, but it perfectly describes his sunny disposition. That was what really appealed to people about Ronald Reagan. Even his political opponents had to concede that they liked him.

And, on a night when the worst of the Republican Party was presented to the American people, Reagan provided balance with its best.

Clinton's Covenant

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Twenty years ago tonight, Bill Clinton accepted the presidential nomination for the first time.

That was a memorable time in my life. Just four years earlier, I had moved from Arkansas, where I grew up, went to school and began my adult life, to Texas, where I intended to enroll in graduate school.

I had already voted for Clinton for governor several times by 1988. In fact, because Arkansas elected its governors to two–year terms until the voters approved in 1984 an amendment to the state constitution that changed the length of state officials' terms to four years, starting with the 1986 elections, Clinton was on the ballot in every election after I turned 18.

That would have changed if I had been in Arkansas when the 1988 election was held — because 1988 was only two years into the four–year term Clinton won in 1986.

Anyway, by July 1992, I had finished work on my master's degree. In fact, I had just been offered a teaching job in Oklahoma, and I was packing to move. But, on this night 20 years ago, I took a break from my packing to watch Clinton give his acceptance speech.

And I felt a sense of pride, of historical inevitability, when Clinton spoke to the convention of a New Covenant with the American voters.

The New Covenant was the theme of speeches Clinton gave in the leadup to the announcement of his presidential candidacy. On this night 20 years ago, it was mentioned prominently and frequently in what was probably the first Clinton speech many Americans had ever heard.

I knew, from years of watching Clinton run for governor of Arkansas, that he was a gifted speaker. And I also knew he could be longwinded at times. But that wasn't anything special. In Arkansas, we were accustomed to politicians who were like the Energizer Bunnies of politics.

At times I thought Arkansas elections were dueling filibusters, endurance contests in which the prize was the office that was being sought. It went to the last man standing, sort of like one of those dance marathons.

Of course, that wasn't how it worked. Never was how it worked, actually — although it might as well have, what with all the other ways that people won elections in Arkansas when I was growing up.

There were political machines all over the state, and there was one that controlled the politics in my home county and a neighboring county. This machine continued to run things as long as the county voted by paper ballot — because, no matter what popular sentiment might be, it was always possible to stuff enough ballot boxes to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat — and the machine's grip on the people of those counties only came to an end when the county's residents voted to purchase voting machines.

(A state judge who presided over cases in the '60s and '70s that were intended to break the grip of these political machines wrote his autobiography a few years ago, and the title was a wry reference to those days — "Waiting for the Cemetery Vote.")

I always thought it was ironic that many people who were just becoming acquainted with Bill Clinton in 1992 believed he came from a powerful and wealthy family. They must have confused him with a Kennedy. In fact, he came from very humble beginnings.

When I was growing up in Arkansas, rich generally seemed to refer to people who had come there from other places — Winthrop Rockefeller, for example. Later on, that list grew to include the likes of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart and Sam's Club, who made his fortune in Arkansas but was born in central Oklahoma and grew up in Missouri.

If someone grew up in Arkansas and somehow found fame and fortune, so the thinking went, that person would surely move to another state. And some have. But some have not, and I tend to think Clinton's victory on the national stage contributed to that.

The unspoken belief when I was a child was that someone from Arkansas might become influential, but he would never be president. Some had tried; others had been called rising stars by the pundits. But none had succeeded. It was the always–a–bridesmaid–never–a–bride school of thought.

Bill Clinton grew up in rural Arkansas, as I did, and we heard the same speeches from the same politicians.

Clinton was much older — still is — but the same governors who shaped his daily life shaped mine. And I rather doubt that the state itself changed much from the time when Clinton enrolled in elementary school to the time when I did — although my hometown had changed quite a bit by the time I was in first grade.

My class was the first in my hometown's history to be integrated from first grade all the way through high school graduation. Clinton started elementary school in the early 1950s. I don't know if his graduating class was ever integrated, but I am 100% certain it wasn't integrated from start to finish.

So perhaps you could say that we didn't really grow up in the same place — although enough of the old Arkansas that molded Clinton was still in place when I came along.

But Arkansans discovered that Clinton was not an old–style Arkansas politician. Well, not entirely. He was always good at the back–slapping brand of politicking that served generations of Arkansas politicians so well.

But he was thoughtful and articulate, too, and his policies were departures from the past. He really was a new Democrat — especially when compared to the other nominees the Democrats had offered to the nation in recent elections.

What is often forgotten about the '92 campaign is that, just as Clinton was about to give his acceptance speech, Ross Perot withdrew from the race, and polls indicated that most of his support gravitated to Clinton.

Clinton took a big lead in the polls that July, a lead he never relinquished even after Perot jumped back in the race in October.

Choosing a Running Mate

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With the primaries over and the battle for the Republican presidential nomination apparently decided, political writers find themselves in an historically dreary period until the parties gather for their conventions.

It is at this time when there is much speculation about the ultimate identity of at least one of the major parties' running mates.

Of course, in 2012, we already know the name of one of the running mates. That would be Joe Biden, the incumbent vice president.

Four years ago, it was a much less common situation — in which no incumbent was running — so there was a great deal of speculation regarding the identities of both party nominees' running mates.

But this year, as I say, we already know who will be the running mate on the Democrats' ticket — unless, as a few folks have predicted, Barack Obama decides to drop Biden and put Hillary Clinton on his ticket.

I have argued repeatedly that this is highly unlikely. In their zeal to whip up a discussion about a non–issue, such observers show an appreciation only for drama, not history.

Realistically, only Republican Mitt Romney will be selecting a running mate in this election cycle.

Recent speculation about Romney's eventual running mate has focused, as usual, on the most well–known names — but history tells us that presidential nominees, in what is often described as their first presidential–level decision, are likely to surprise just about everyone — perhaps spectacularly so.

I believe the reason for that is, while it is always possible that a vice president could become president at any time, presidential nominees don't tend to treat the decision with the kind of reverence it deserves.

Don't get me wrong; it's an important decision, but the overriding consideration is usually political — which potential running mate can give the ticket the most bang for the buck on Election Day?

Thus, the decision offers a fascinating glimpse into the logic of the nominee, but, as a barometer for the kind of decisions he might be likely to make in office, it is virtually worthless.

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Like four years ago.

There was a lot of speculation about the running mates Obama and John McCain would choose, but, in the end, the selections of Biden and Sarah Palin were complete surprises — and seemingly motivated by entirely different considerations (even though both choices came down to politics — as usual — no matter how the campaigns chose to spin the decisions).

They addressed weaknesses — either real or perceived — of the presidential nominees.

Domestically, in 2008, there had been concerns about gas and food prices, but there were also international tensions that summer, and foreign policy was an area in which McCain, a Vietnam–era prisoner of war, was believed to have an advantage.

As a presidential candidate, Biden hadn't attracted much support, and he came from a tiny state that was already believed to be in the bag for the Democrats, but he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and, as such, he brought foreign policy credibility to the Democratic ticket.

So, while conventional wisdom holds that a running mate is chosen in large part because of the votes he can bring or the states he can help the nominee carry, that didn't appear to play much of a role in Obama's decision. The selection of Biden was praised because it was believed to have addressed an administrative need, not an electoral one.

But it was political in the sense that it was designed to reassure voters who saw the war on terrorism and border security as the most crucial issues in 2008 (remember, when the Democrats convened in Denver, the economic collapse had not yet happened.)

McCain's apparent motivation in selecting a female running mate, on the other hand, was to appeal to the millions of women who had supported Hillary Clinton's campaign and were said to be lukewarm on Obama.

It was an electorally motivated decision, and it was seen for the transparent maneuver that it was. The Republicans entirely overlooked the fact that women who participated in the Democratic primaries had an ideological agenda, too. Palin was simply too extreme for most of them.

In fact, after the votes had been counted, I heard several people second–guessing McCain's choice. They argued — correctly — that there were centrist Republican women who could have had broader appeal to female voters.

(Most of those people, it is worth noting, had nothing but praise for Palin when she was chosen and during the campaign.)

But, on the other hand, Palin had to be extreme to keep the conservatives in line. There was already a widespread perception of McCain as a "RINO" (a "Republican in Name Only"), and he needed to give the conservatives a reason to show up at the polls.

Also — although it was hardly mentioned — Palin was the only candidate who, as a governor, brought executive experience to the table.

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Traditionally, there are many factors involved in choosing a running mate, most aimed at providing some kind of balance to the ticket. Everyone has shortcomings, and the philosophy behind running mate selection has emphasized minimizing them.

As I said, Palin's executive experience carried some weight with voters who saw nothing but legislative experience from Obama, McCain and Biden.

In 2004, John Kerry apparently felt party unity was the most important factor so he chose North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to be his running mate.

Edwards had been Kerry's chief rival and the second–leading vote getter in the Democratic primaries — even though he won only two. It must have been a disappointment indeed for the Kerry team when their candidate received virtually no post–convention bounce in the polls. I'm sure they expected something, if only from the disgruntled Democrats whom they sought to appease.

Party unity never seemed to be a factor when George W. Bush made his choice in 2000. In fact, he appointed Dick Cheney to lead his vice–presidential search committee, but then Bush took the remarkable step of asking Cheney himself to be his running mate.

Had party unity been at the top of Bush's concerns, he probably would have picked McCain, his main rival for the nomination, to be his running mate.

Party unity apparently was behind Ronald Reagan's selection of George H.W. Bush in 1980.

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Things got a little out of hand at that year's Republican convention. A rumor that former President Gerald Ford would be Reagan's running mate swept through the delegations like wildfire.

The idea was that Ford and Reagan, who had waged a bitter campaign for the GOP nomination four years earlier, would be co–presidents.

But negotiations broke down, and the dream ticket never came to fruition. In the end, Reagan picked Bush, who had been his chief rival for the nomination that year.

One of the longest–standing considerations in choosing a running mate has been geographical. The idea was to attract votes in states and/or regions that the presidential nominee might not otherwise get. I'm inclined to think that was more important in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but, with the rapid emergence of technology in the last 50 or 60 years, geographical factors have become less important.

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Certainly Bill Clinton, in 1992, did not feel it was necessary to select someone who would provide geographical balance.

He chose Al Gore, a senator from Tennessee, one of the states that borders on Clinton's home state of Arkansas. Perhaps Clinton wanted to double down on his Southern credentials; most Southern states, after all, had only voted for Democrats once, perhaps twice, in the previous 30 years.

Also, with two Southerners on the ticket, the Bush campaign could not portray either candidate as a Northern liberal like previous Democratic candidates (i.e., George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis), and Gore's military service negated criticism Clinton had received on that during the primaries.

In his memoir "My Life," Clinton said of Gore, "I liked him and was convinced that he ... would be a big addition to our campaign."

Sometimes personal chemistry trumps everything else.

Presidential nominees choose their running mates for reasons that probably wouldn't occur to most people.

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In 1968, Richard Nixon reportedly was so impressed with Spiro Agnew's speech placing his name in nomination that he offered him the second spot on the ticket.

Agnew was virtually unknown outside his home state of Maryland, but Nixon believed Maryland could be his beachhead in the South.

Nixon didn't carry Maryland in 1968, but he did carry five Southern states as he introduced the Southern strategy to modern American politics.

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And, in 1964, Barry Goldwater picked New York Rep. Bill Miller to be his running mate because Miller was known to be the congressman who annoyed Goldwater's opponent, President Lyndon Johnson, the most.

There will be a lot of talk in the next two months about who will run with Romney in the fall, and the names you're likely to hear the most are the rising stars in Republican circles — Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie and others.

But don't be surprised if, when the smoke clears, someone you never heard of is standing on that podium with Romney in late August.

Joe Biden Is Not the Problem

I first heard the rumblings nearly two years ago.

In August of 2010, I wrote about former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder's suggestion that Barack Obama should replace Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton in 2012, but my tendency then was to dismiss it as idle talk by people who really didn't know what they were talking about.

The topic reappeared last fall, and, when I heard it said that good ol' Joe Biden had to go, that he was a drag on Obama, I responded by writing that "too much emphasis is placed on the vice presidential nomination."

I wrote that "I don't think replacing Biden with anyone, Hillary or anyone else, is the answer for what ails Obama."

And I still believe that, even though I read articles at least once a week now suggesting that Obama needs to drop Biden.

It seems to me that, whenever incumbent presidents have been preparing to run for a second term, this kind of talk always seems to surface.

Sometimes it makes sense. In 1992, for example, there was a lot of talk about how George H.W. Bush needed to replace Dan Quayle on his ticket. Quayle had gained a reputation, whether fairly or unfairly, for always saying something stupid, and some people felt he was a drag on the ticket.

Now, in 1992, I was never going to vote for Bush, anyway, but I could sympathize with the sentiment. Quayle was ridiculed so much in those days that it really didn't take much persuading to convince anyone that Bush was bound to do better with someone else on his ticket.

Bush wound up keeping Quayle on the ticket, though, and, in hindsight, it is hard to imagine anyone who could have helped Bush win more than 100 electoral votes from Clinton. I think the challenger was going to win that election.

Some years are like that. I have to say that 1980 was like that. President Jimmy Carter was on shaky ground in all aspects of his presidency, and the talk that surfaced during his battle with Ted Kennedy for the Democratic nomination about dropping Vice President Walter Mondale probably had a lot to do with strategy and little, if anything, to do with Mondale's actual performance in office.

Mondale remained on the ticket, and I can't see how any other Democrat could have helped Carter avoid his landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan.

Usually such talk is frivolous. I don't know where it comes from. Perhaps it is a trial balloon to see if there is any way the incumbent can ratchet up his vote total with a fresh face.

If that is what it is, the conclusion usually is that changing the running mate won't make that much difference. Voters judge incumbent presidents on their records, and the voters' sense of fairness (to which Obama ceaselessly, relentlessly, seeks to appeal) tells them that, unless a vice president is guilty of some egregious offense — that if he has been doing his job (which, constitutionally, only requires him to preside over the Senate and break ties when they occur) — he does not deserve to be dropped.

So Reagan kept George H.W. Bush in 1984. Clinton kept Al Gore in 1996. George W. Bush kept Dick Cheney in 2004. Each was, at some point in those re–election campaigns, the focus of a drop ______ movement.

If Obama does drop Biden, my sense is that the voters, many of whom have become super sensitive to workplace fairness in recent years, would demand to know the reason — and, of course, there are few things that the administration could plausibly blow out of proportion to justify such a move.

The truth is that there is precious little that Obama can point to that will validate his claim that he needs and deserves a second term.

He can't run on his economic record. Unemployment was 6.5% nationally when Obama was elected in November 2008. It has been well above that level throughout his presidency.

His signature achievement, Obamacare, is likely to be overturned by the Supreme Court in the next few weeks.

Instead of bringing people together, Obama has polarized this nation to a greater extent than it was before he was elected.

None of those things can be blamed on Biden. Democrats knew when he was chosen to be Obama's running mate in 2008 that he was gaffe prone — but, for the most part, he's been a good soldier, doing the heavy lifting when he was asked to do it and generally keeping his tongue in check.

Gallup reports that Americans are divided on Biden. The latest survey is, as Jeffrey Jones observes, "the first time opinions of Biden have tilted negative since he became Obama's vice presidential pick," but the numbers are "not materially different" from the public's assessment of him from 2009 to 2011.

And this survey was conducted after both Biden's comments about same–sex marriage on Meet the Press and Obama's comments in an interview a few days later in which he said he supported the legalization of such marriages.

In the week that has passed, Biden has been criticized for forcing the president's hand. But I think it was done deliberately. Obama knows that the polls have shown a general softening in public opposition to gay marriage, and I believe this was an excuse for Obama to give lip service to an issue that he believes will energize groups who helped him win last time.

And, with the last president's experience fresh in his mind, Obama is doing the same thing — he's using gay marriage to distract attention from the real issues.

I knew several women who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. When John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, it was mostly a ploy to attract Hillary's supporters, many of whom were thought to be up for grabs in the early fall of 2008.

That ploy failed for several reasons. Polls were showing a pretty close race between Obama and McCain until the economic collapse in September 2008. That, combined with Bush fatigue, pretty much assured that Obama would win.

Ironically, though, Obama had chosen his running mate in large part to bolster his ticket's foreign policy credentials. Biden was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time he was chosen to run with Obama, and there had been some international tensions that summer.

But foreign policy is way down the list in 2012. And, even if it wasn't, Obama has been trumpeting his role in the killing of Osama bin Laden last year. He doesn't need Biden's help in that category anymore.

Of course, Hillary has been secretary of state under this president so her greatest selling point — other than her gender — is her expertise in foreign policy.

And foreign policy is not on most voters' minds this year.

All that Obama has left is class warfare, which is hardly the inclusive, hope and change banner under which he campaigned four years ago. It is the divide and conquer politics that people have been complaining about for years.

Changing running mates won't alter the fundamentals of this campaign. The voters will do what they always do when an incumbent is on the ballot — they will assess the incumbent's record and decide if they want four more years of it.

Georgia On My Mind

I have this friend who lives in Atlanta. I would describe him as a devoted supporter of Barack Obama.

He says he has been disappointed and frustrated with Obama at times, but it often seems to me that he finds ways to justify or excuse those policies that he says have been disappointing and frustrating. This also leads, at times, to overly optimistic electoral expectations.

At one time, we were living parallel lives. We were pursuing our master's degrees in journalism at the University of North Texas, we were working full time at the same newspaper, and we were working part time as graduate assistants in UNT's editing lab.

Frequently, we were enrolled in the same classes. I used to tease him that I saw more of him than his wife or children did.

We got to know each other pretty well, and we found that we had a lot in common. We both considered ourselves Democrats, and we shared much the same world view.

Anyway, that friend and I went our separate ways eventually. He got his degree, and I got mine. He went on to get his doctorate at another school. I got a job teaching journalism. We had our different life experiences, as friends do.

To an extent, we've moved in different directions. He still considers himself a Democrat; I consider myself an independent. I guess his philosophy hasn't changed much; perhaps mine has, although I don't think of it that way.

But even if it is true, I don't look at it as a bad thing — more like what Joni Mitchell described in "Both Sides Now."

---

"But now old friends are acting strange,
They shake their heads,
They say I've changed.
Something's lost
But something's gained
In living every day."

---

Life has taken my friend to Atlanta, as I say — where, I presumed, he would obtain unique insights into the voting behavior of people in Georgia.

Maybe he has, but I'm inclined to think they are colored by his personal political perceptions, not necessarily by reality.

In 2008, he told me that Obama would win Georgia for two reasons — the black population of Georgia (roughly 30% of the total) would vote heavily for him (which it did, I suppose) and the presence of Libertarian — and Georgia native — Bob Barr on the ballot.

Barr, he said, would siphon off enough votes from John McCain to hand the state to the Democrats. He didn't.

More than 3.9 million people voted in Georgia in November 2008. About 28,000 of them voted for Barr.

That didn't really surprise me. Georgia has never struck me as being unusually susceptible to quixotic third–party candidacies.

When such a third–party candidate has caught fire elsewhere, in the region or the country at large — i.e., Ross Perot in '92 or George Wallace in '68 — Georgia has jumped right in there.

But, otherwise, third–party candidates have been non–factors in Georgia. Maybe the concept of a two–party system is too deeply ingrained in Georgians.

---

---

As someone who has lived in the South all his life, that sort of seems to me to be true of the South in general, and the percentages from the last election in which a third–party candidate played a prominent role — 1992 — support that.

According to "The Almanac of American Politics 1994," states in the South Atlantic region of the country (Florida, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas) gave a much smaller share of their vote to Perot (16%) than almost any other region. The states in the Mississippi Valley — Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — gave the smallest (11%).

In other words, even in a year in which the third–party candidate was bringing millions of previously politically inactive voters into the process, the South resisted the temptation to abandon the two–party arrangement.

The authors of the 1994 "Almanac," Michael Barone and Grant Ujifusa, used the numbers from the 1992 election to make the case for their observation of the "phenomenon" of straight–ticket voting that year. And I suppose it was a compelling argument for those who sought to explain what had happened that year.

Their analysis always struck me as being somewhat short–sighted, focused as it was on a single election.

See, I never really bought the idea that it was an isolated phenomenon. I have long believed that straight–ticket voting is a reality of American politics, particularly Southern politics. It was true in 1992. I believe it will be true in 2012 — and that the numbers from 2010 and recent presidential elections clearly suggest that the Democrats will lose every Southern state next year.

I know it was always a reality in Arkansas — but that was due, in large part, to the fact that there was really only one political party in Arkansas when I was growing up. The Democrats had a near monopoly on political power in Arkansas — and most of the South — in those days.

But that was really a different Democratic Party. As I have noted before, the politicians who led the Democratic Party in those days probably had much more in common philosophically with today's Republicans.

Eventually, in fact, many of them switched their party affiliations, but it took some time. The Southern Democrats of a generation or two back were trained at their mother's knees to be wary of Republicans.

Republicans were damn yankees, and the transition was a long time coming and really achieved incrementally. Southerners were voting for Republicans for president long before they started voting for Republicans for state and local offices.

The GOP, they were told, had inflicted Reconstruction on the South after the Civil War — and had been responsible for the poverty and misery that afflicted most who lived there, white and black, ever since. It was an article of faith, and so, with the exceptions of a few isolated pockets, most places in the South were run by Democrats for decades.

Many people mistakenly believe the South began moving away from the Democrats to the Republicans in 1980, when Reagan conservatives joined forces with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, but, in hindsight, that was really more symbolic of the completion of the shift than its beginning. It was in 1980 that the Moral Majority served as the bridge for the last holdouts, the Christian evangelicals, who seemed, prior to that time, to exist outside politics — at least as an interest group or voting bloc.

The real breaking point came in the 1960s, in the midst of the civil rights conflict, campus unrest and general social upheaval. Even Lyndon Johnson, the architect of the Great Society, acknowledged that his greatest legislative triumphs, the ones that guaranteed voting rights and civil rights to all Americans, likely had handed the South to the opposition for a generation or more.

His words have truly been prophetic. Of the 11 elections that have been held since Johnson won by historic proportions in 1964, the Democratic nominee has lost every Southern state in six of them — and has only come close to sweeping the region once (in 1976) even though the party has nominated Southerners for president five times.

Most Southern states have voted for the Republican nominee for president even in years when Republicans were struggling elsewhere ... even in years when native Southerners were on the Democrats' national ticket.

I have always had mixed feelings about the fierce loyalty of Southerners. I have often felt it was more a point of pride, of not wanting to admit when one has been wrong, than a point of principle.

When Southerners give their hearts to someone, it is usually for life. Likewise, when the South gives its allegiance to a person or a political party, it is a long–term commitment — in spite of the behavior of some philandering politicians.

Giving up on a relationship — be it social or political — is a last resort for most Southerners. It is what you do when all else has failed.

(Regarding the dissolution of social/legal relationships, I have always suspected that attitude has more to do with the regional stigma about divorce that still persists, to an extent, today and the reluctance of many Southerners to legally admit a mistake was made than any theological concerns about promises made to a higher power.)

That's probably the main reason why it was so surprising when Obama won the states of Virginia and North Carolina in 2008. Virginia hadn't voted for a Democrat since LBJ's day. North Carolina voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 but had been in the Republican column ever since.

For those states to vote for a Democrat after regularly voting for Republicans for years was an admission that could not have been easy for many of the voters in those states to make.

Numerically, it seems to have come a little easier to Virginians, who supported the Obama–Biden ticket by nearly 250,00 votes out of more than 3.7 million cast. North Carolinians, on the other hand, barely voted for Obama, giving him a winning margin of less than 15,000 votes out of 4.3 million.

I'm not really sure what this means for 2012. I mean, the 2008 results can't be explained strictly in racial terms, can they? The white share of the population is about the same in both states (64.8% in Virginia, 65.3% in North Carolina), and the black populations are comparable as well (19.0% in Virginia, 21.2% in North Carolina).

If anything, one would expect that a higher black population (along with half a million more participants) would produce a higher margin for Obama in North Carolina than Virginia — but the opposite was true.

What can be said with certainty is that both states voted Republican — heavily — in the 2010 congressional midterms.

• North Carolina re–elected Republican Sen. Richard Burr with 55% of the vote. That's pretty high for North Carolina. Statewide races frequently are much closer.
  
  North Carolina Republicans also captured a House seat from the Democrats.


• Virginia elected Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell in the off–year election of 2009, providing perhaps the first glimpse of what was to come.
  
  Neither of the state's senators was on the ballot in 2010, but Democratic Sen. Jim Webb, who defeated George Allen in the 2006 midterm election, announced earlier this year that he would not seek a second term. Ostensibly, his reason is that he wants to return to the private sector, but I can't help wondering if he has concluded that he caught lightning in a bottle six years ago and cannot duplicate the feat in 2012.
  
  Virginia Republicans grabbed three House seats from Democrats in 2010.

It was less surprising that Florida voted for Obama in 2008.

That's understandable. For quite awhile, Florida has been a melting pot for retirees from all over the nation so its politics tends to be quite different from just about any other Southern state. Until the advent of air conditioning, Florida was mostly a backwater kind of place with a population to match, but in recent decades, the only thing that has truly been Southern about Florida is its geographic location.

In many ways, its diverse population bears watching as an election year unfolds. It may be the closest thing to a political barometer, a cross–section of the American public, that one is likely to find.

The scene of an excruciating recount in 2000, Florida has now been on the winning side in 11 of the previous 12 elections — and conditions in 2008 were probably more favorable for the out–of–power party than at any other time that I can remember.

More than perhaps any other state in the region, Florida's vote seems likely to be influenced by prevailing conditions in November 2012. Obama won the state with 51% of the vote in 2008, but, again, few solid conclusions can be reached based on the racial composition of the electorate. Whites represent a smaller share of the population in Florida (about 58%) than in in Virginia or North Carolina.

But the black vote in Florida is also smaller (around 15%).

In fact, half again as many Floridians are Hispanic (more than 22%), and, while those voters will be affected by economic conditions like anyone else, they may also be sensitive to immigration issues and particularly responsive to proposed solutions to those problems.

There may well be compelling reasons for Hispanic voters to feel overly encouraged or discouraged by U.S. immigration policy under Obama.

What can be said of voting behavior in Florida in 2010 is that Florida's voters made a right turn.

Republicans seized four House seats from Democrats, elected one of the original tea partiers to the U.S. Senate and replaced an outgoing Republican governor with another Republican governor.

There has been persistent talk, in fact, that the senator — Marco Rubio — will be the GOP running mate, no matter who the presidential nominee turns out to be.

And if that turns out to be true, the party really will be over in Florida ...

... and elsewhere in the South.

Coming Home?

In the late 1970s, movies about the experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath were abundant — on both TV ("Friendly Fire") and the big screen ("Heroes," "The Deer Hunter," "Apocalypse Now").

And there was a movie called "Coming Home" — which was nominated for eight Oscars and won three — that examined the trauma of the war on the home front.

To a degree, I suppose, you could say that about the others, too — although much of the trauma that was examined in the others (and the even more introspective films that followed in the 1980s) was the trauma of battle (a subject that has been examined in the context of every war in which America has been involved) and not so much the trauma that was experienced by those who didn't actually serve in Vietnam but, nevertheless, had to live with its consequences.

Anyway, there is no truly relevant link between that movie and what I want to write about today, except for the film's title, which popped into my mind as I read articles suggesting that the ever–volatile American electorate was experiencing a new seismic shift away from the Republicans, who heretofore had been regarded as heavy favorites in next month's midterms.

(Well, perhaps there is an analogy to be made between a film about a war and the state of modern political conflict in America — but I'll leave that to others.)

Now, personally, I am deeply skeptical of any suggestion by anyone that the momentum is shifting — at least permanently.

Voters may be having second thoughts. This is something I have heard about since taking political science courses in college, where I became acquainted with what is called the "left at the altar" syndrome.

But that has been more frequently observed in presidential politics. Most recently, I recall hearing distraught Republicans insisting, right up to Election Day, that the tide was turning in 2008 — which, of course, it was not.

Some voters may have hesitated in the final weeks and asked themselves if they really wanted to change parties in the presidency, but few, if any, appear to have changed their votes as a result. The political pendulum continued to lurch leftward.

There have been relatively few moments in the history of mankind — let alone the comparably brief history of this nation — that had the power to move great numbers of people to the opposite side on even a temporary basis. Permanent shifts are more uncommon.

Yet it seems that every man who has won a presidential election has believed that he has been given a mandate to govern in a certain way, that his election was transformational.

Seldom, if ever, has he been willing to entertain the notion that the voters simply rejected the other guy — or, in his absence, as was the case in 2008, his party.

I suppose those who seek the presidency and those who invest much of themselves in electing these individuals don't want to think that anything that demands that much personal sacrifice can be lost in a seemingly casual manner. Perhaps that undermines them and their motivations.

The true believers, it seems to me, want to believe the voters have made the same kind of commitment that they have, and they simply won't believe it is possible to lose their support until it happens.

At this stage of a losing campaign, self–doubt starts to creep in. And then those on the losing side will seek the reasons why the political equivalent of a "perfect storm" occurred. Sometimes they start wondering before the storm strikes.

Most of the time, the evidence was all around them all along. They didn't see it — or they didn't want to see it.

In recent months, I have heard bewildered Democrats asking themselves what could possibly have gone wrong. How could the once hugely popular Barack Obama and his party have fallen so far from grace?

I've heard some people suggest that Obama was guilty of overreaching, of trying to do too much at once. And there may be an element of that in the voters' criticism. I believe that perception has fueled — at least, in part — the resistance embodied in the Tea Party movement.

Others have said that, when they went to the polls two years ago, they simply wanted the next president, whoever that turned out to be, to right the economy and start bringing unemployment down. The Democrats' general avoidance of the issue has alarmed them, frightened them, angered them.

For these and other reasons, the American voters appear to be poised to hand one or both chambers of Congress over to the Republicans. That's pretty bewildering for some folks. I've heard Democrats ask, "How can they vote for the party that drove the economy into a ditch in the first place?"

That seems perplexing on the surface, but the answer really is simple and, in its own way, logical.

In a two–party system, when voters are angry or frustrated or scared, their only recourse is to vote against the party in power. In 2010, many voters are angry and/or frustrated and/or scared, and many may rationalize that the Republicans have learned from four years of being in the minority after a dozen years of being in the majority.

Lately, both parties have taken encouragement from Gallup's latest generic congressional ballot.

• Democrats eager to believe that the voters are "coming home" after considering their alternatives embrace Gallup's finding that, among registered voters, the race is neck and neck.


• But Republicans enjoy a large advantage among likely voters, the ones whose voting histories indicate that they are likely to participate in the midterm elections. Not everyone does. And it has been observed frequently that the very groups that propelled Obama to the presidency and Democrats to their congressional margins two years ago — minorities, the young — do not have voting histories that make them likely voters.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

The enthusiasm factor makes all the difference sometimes. In 1994, there were many House — and even Senate — races that were decided by narrow margins.

But, in a democracy, a one–vote margin is as good as a million. There may be recounts, but, eventually, a winner will be declared.

In 1992, the Democrats won nearly identical congressional majorities to the ones Democrats enjoyed after the 2008 election. And, when the dust settled in 1994, the Republicans had seized both houses of Congress.

Much of what contributed to the Democrats' decline stemmed from two things — their failure to adequately address the economic problems that lingered after Bill Clinton took office and their ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of health care reform.

I, for one, have always found it to be ironic that Obama chose to center his presidency around the issue of health care reform — as if he was defying history to repeat itself. And you should never do that.

(It reminds me of an old Bill Cosby line from an album I listened to when I was a kid.

("Never say that things can't get any worse," Cosby told his listeners. "Because that's when the gremlins say, 'Worse!' ")

Don't challenge history. History always wins that one.

Yes, Obama did mention health care on the 2008 campaign trail — but it wasn't the initial focus of his candidacy (ending the war in Iraq was) and it wasn't the focus of his campaign after the American economy imploded. I recall it mostly being mentioned in an afterthought kind of way.

But, for whatever reason, Obama spent his political capital in pursuit of the passage of a contentious health care reform bill instead of seeking a truly bipartisan effort to stop the bleeding of jobs from the national economy.

Perhaps it was the arrogance of power that made Obama believe he could follow his own path in the presidency — and, in spite of themselves, the voters would see the wisdom of his ways.

Are the voters "coming home" in 2010? I don't think so.

But, if the Republicans do capture Congress this year, that triumph should come with a disclaimer — Political power evaporates quickly.

And Obama needs to study up on Bill Clinton's strategy for dealing with a Republican Congress in 1995. He was re–elected two years later.

And I'm getting the feeling that both parties need to be concerned about this Tea Party movement. There may not be many of the so–called Tea Partiers who win this time — but this movement seems to stem mostly from the sense that the folks in office — Republicans and Democrats — just don't listen to the people anymore.

So I would advise the folks in the next Congress to be sensitive to the voters' wishes long after November.

If they aren't, they're apt to discover this Tea Party movement has legs.

The 'Left at the Altar' Syndrome

One of the most popular TV characters of the last quarter of a century was Dr. Frasier Crane, portrayed first as a supporting character on "Cheers!" and then as the lead character in his own series by Kelsey Grammer.

An element of Frasier's character was his ongoing difficulty with women — epitomized in part by his experience of having been "left at the altar" by the supposed woman of his dreams.

I've never been the groom in a wedding ceremony. I can only imagine how it must feel to be left at the altar. In an episode of his TV series, Frasier once described the experience as having left a "sucking chest wound."

But "left at the altar" is the phrase I've heard political analysts use to describe the final step in the transition that voters go through when they're making the decision whether to support the nominee of the party that is out of power.

Normally it happens in the closing days of a campaign. Call it a leap of faith, if you will.

If the voters decide not to take the alternative that is being offered to them, they will leave that nominee at the altar — even if that candidate was perceived to be ahead of the opposition earlier in the campaign.

And, then, presumably, that candidate experiences what Frasier experienced.

In a lifetime of watching presidential politics, I have never seen circumstances that seemed so favorable for the party that has been out of power to capture the White House. The president is very unpopular, the war he started is very unpopular, and the economy seems to be lurching toward a recession (if it isn't there already).

Some might say that the 1980 campaign was an example of a year in which the incumbent party faced impossible odds like the ones I've described. I would point out, however, that the United States was not involved in a war that year.

And another way in which 1980 differed from 2008 is that the incumbent president ran for re-election in 1980. In 2008, the incumbent president is barred by law from seeking a third term, and the vice president declined to run for the presidency.

So the Republican nominee is the proxy who must take the abuse that is really directed at the administration.

Nevertheless, I first heard the "left at the altar" analogy used in media discussions during the 1980 campaign, when Ronald Reagan was challenging incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

The consensus since that time is that Reagan reassured skeptical voters with his performance in his debate with Carter in the last week before the election — and went on to be elected in a landslide.

I heard the phrase used again 12 years later, when Bill Clinton was running against incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

In spite of Republican efforts to make Clinton's lack of military service during Vietnam, his experimentation with marijuana and rumors of his womanizing the issues, Clinton prevailed.

(I even heard a few pundits mention the "left at the altar" syndrome as an explanation for why Michael Dukakis wasn't able to follow through on his apparent leads over then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in the polls in the summer of 1988.

(But I never thought the voters left Dukakis at the altar as much as they were driven away by the image of him riding around in a tank and the viciousness of the Bush campaign's "Willie Horton," "Boston Harbor" and the prison "revolving door" TV commercials.)

I've been thinking about the "left at the altar" syndrome while reading an article that was co-written by Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, Alan Abramowitz of Emory University and Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, headlined "The Myth of a Toss-Up Election."

"While no election outcome is guaranteed ... virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed — historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months — point to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November," they write.

"[M]aybe conditions will change ... and if they do, they should also be accurately described by the media. But current data do not justify calling this election a toss-up."

The authors also reflect on the 1980 campaign in making their argument.

"[T]hese June and July polls may well understate Obama's eventual margin," they write. "Ronald Reagan did not capitalize on the huge structural advantage Republicans enjoyed in 1980 until after the party conventions and presidential debate. It took a while and a sufficient level of comfort with the challenger for anti-Carter votes to translate into support for Reagan."

That's really the point of the "left at the altar" syndrome. The voters need to reach that final "level of comfort" to justify leaving the party in power.

If they reach that comfort level, they proceed with the change. If they don't, they fall back on the familiar.

That's the challenge facing Obama — helping the voters reach that comfort level.

Earlier, I mentioned the combination of factors that makes it look like this should be the Democrats' year. Sabato, Abramowitz and Mann make a similar observation.

"You have to go all the way back to 1952 to find an election involving the combination of an unpopular president, an unpopular war, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession," they observe.

"1952 was also the last time the party in power wasn't represented by either the incumbent president or the incumbent vice president. But the fact that Democrat Harry Truman wasn't on the ballot didn't stop Republican Dwight Eisenhower from inflicting a crushing defeat on Truman's would-be successor, Adlai Stevenson.

"Barack Obama is not a national hero like Dwight Eisenhower, and George Bush is no Harry Truman. But if history is any guide, and absent a dramatic change in election fundamentals or an utter collapse of the Obama candidacy, John McCain is likely to suffer the same fate as Adlai Stevenson."

Perhaps. But I still feel race is the obstacle that the electorate must leap over before it reaches the point where it will proceed with voting for a black man for president.

Whether voters admit it or not, whether it's politically correct to acknowledge it or not, I believe race remains a barrier, albeit a psychological one, for many voters. They may want change, but they may not be ready for this particular change.

I mentioned yesterday that the Democrats already enjoy nearly unanimous support in the black community. What Obama needs to do is reassure members of groups that haven't been as supportive of Democrats in the past.

And he needs to close the deal with these groups.

In 2004, for example:

• John Kerry won the voters who were under 30 — but those voters represented only 17% of the participants in the election. George W. Bush, meanwhile, won a majority of the voters who were 30 or older. Obama needs to reassure older voters, who have proven to be more reliable election participants, while encouraging his energetic young supporters to show up at the polls.
• It has been suggested that Obama's presence on the ticket will energize blacks in the South and lead to a massive increase in black participation in that region. In 2004, whites were the only racial group that voted for the Republicans, but they represented 77% of the vote, and they gave 58% of their vote to Bush (a margin of about 16 million).
  
  There aren't many black votes left for Democrats to win, but there apparently are many white votes to be won.
• Meanwhile, the South produced 32% of the 2004 vote — and the Republicans cruised to victory in the South, 58% to 42%. That's a margin of more than 7 million.
  
  (I've heard it said that Bob Barr may be in a position to influence the outcome of the race — particularly in some Southern states, especially his home state of Georgia — by siphoning off votes from McCain. But Steve Kornacki says, in the New York Observer, that "it is highly, highly unlikely that Barr will be a consequential player" in the election.)
• Because of the animosity of the primary campaign, rumors persist that many of Hillary Clinton's female supporters (and possibly some of her male supporters) will either support McCain or choose not to vote at all.
  
  That would be bad news for Obama. Democrats won the female vote against Bush in 2004, 51% to 48%, but they haven't won the male vote since 1992.
  
  They need to follow a strategy that will retain their female supporters while gaining ground among male supporters.
• Remember Obama's remark about people who cling to guns and religion? It might be wise to avoid that kind of remark in the future.
  
  In 2004, 54% of voters who participated in the election were Protestants — nearly 60% of those voters supported Bush. And 27% of the voters were Catholic — but Kerry, who is also Catholic, lost that demographic to Bush, 52% to 47%.
  
  Gun owners were a minority in the 2004 electorate — 41% of participating voters said there was at least one gun owner in the house, and 63% of those voters supported Bush.

There are many demographic groups that are capable of swinging a close election to one side or the other.

It is not wise for a campaign to take victory — or defeat — in any group for granted.