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Is Drudge Priming a McCain "Reboot" Narrative?
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Something is a little bit funny when Matt Drudge is treating 1-2 point gains
for McCain in the Rasmussen and Zogby tracking polls as "BREAKING" news.
Naturally, Drudge ignores other results like the just-released ABC/WaPo poll
that show Obama continuing to gain ground.
Drudge has a nose for news, and he knows that a one-point gain in a tracking
poll is not news -- unless someone desperately wants it to be.
So here's what I think is going on.
The McCain campaign is planning on a major "reboot" of its campaign in some
point in advance of Wednesday night's debate. This will take on something of
the form that Bill Kristol advocates in his must-read Monday AM piece in the
Times, including some combination of (i) pledging to run a positive campaign;
(ii) firing/demoting Steve Schmidt and or/Rick Davis; (iii) apologizing for his
campaign's tone. In fact, Kristol's column may be something of a trial balloon
for this strategy.
What the McCain campaign really, really doesn't want is for this move to be
portrayed as desperate stunt. McCain has already developed a reputation for
being a bit erratic under pressure -- the ABC/Post poll now shows that a 48-45
plurality of voters trust Obama to handle an "unexpected major crisis" -- and
Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs must be foaming at the mouth waiting to spin
something like this.
The only way for McCain to do that is for him to convince the media that he
already had the momentum. The campaign will probably try and claim the moral
highground, perhaps contrasting McCain's repudiation of the woman who called
Obama an "Arab" on Friday against John Lewis's comments from Saturday. They
will suggest that McCain found his voice, and made the "maverick" move of
telling off the Beltway Republicans who were urging him to go for blood. They
will suggest that the reboot is a continuation of this strategy, and that -- as
the Zogby poll so obviously attests to! -- voters were already responding
favorably to McCain's new tone.
It won't be an easy spin war for them to win. But they'd seem to have little
left to lose, and if the media is reminded of the "old" McCain, they may tend
to give his narrative the benefit of the doubt.
There's More...
Contract Post
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-- Nate Silver at 1:50 AM 225 Comments...
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
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