McCain polls well amid war, economic worries
usatoday.com, Mar 31 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — He robustly backs the unpopular Iraq war. The U.S. economy is in a tailspin under the stewardship of President Bush, a fellow Republican whose favorable ratings with Americans stands at 30% or lower. His stance on some hot-button American issues like immigration rankle his party's conservative base.
So how has Republican presidential nominee in waiting John McCain — according to the latest polls — managed to stay so close in the race against Democratic opponents, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Conventional wisdom has held the race for the White House is the Democrat's to lose.
One explanation, of course, flows from McCain's background — a Vietnam war hero who withstood years of captivity and torture. Also, even some Democratic detractors say he is a likable, charming figure. And beyond that, he's been able to act presidential in a relatively low-key campaign, benefiting greatly from the protracted and increasingly bitter nomination battle between Obama and Clinton.
Recent polling shows large numbers of Democrats who back either Clinton or Obama would vote for McCain if their candidate does not win the nomination. One survey, for example, shows 28% of Clinton supporters would cast their ballot for McCain ahead of Obama. Among Obama supporters, 19% would back McCain over Clinton.
Those figures are particularly distressing inside the Democratic party because the crossover effect in McCain's favor intensifies as the Illinois and New York senators focus on one another over McCain with five months remaining before the August party convention.
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While there is no certainty the animosity between Clinton and Obama voters would hold steady after one of them wins the nomination, it points to the potential for a noticeable Democratic turnout for McCain, who already has significant support from independents — U.S. voters without allegiance to either party.
"The country remains very evenly divided. The demographics have not changed that much since 2000 and 2004, which were close presidential races" won by Bush, said Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant.
Brian Gaines, at the University of Illinois Institute for Government and Public Affairs, likewise cautions against expecting significant state by state shifts away from patterns seen in those years, which put Bush in the White House and kept him there for a second term.
Gaines points to the small number of states that swung between parties in those years.
New Mexico and Iowa, for example, threw their support behind former Vice President Al Gore against Bush in 2000. Those states switched allegiance and voted for Bush over Sen. John Kerry four years later. The small New England state of New Hampshire swung the opposite direction.
Former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd says McCain's strong standing so far is the result of some very good fortune on two fronts.
First, "he wrapped up the (Republican) nomination early with the least polarization." Second, he says, is the continuing and "disturbing Democratic battle" that could leave whomever wins the nomination as a "polarizing and damaged" candidate.
Dowd also says McCain has emerged as the presumptive nominee unbruised from the relatively short Republican nomination battle.
"McCain didn't really win. Instead the others (Republican rivals) lost. Interestingly, nearly every factor that created this opening for McCain has not been attributable to him, except that he was the candidate who remained standing."
So that's, briefly, how McCain got where he is today. And it now would appear a certainty that his future will be defined by his own insistence on linking his candidacy to American success in Iraq.
And with violence surging again in the oil-rich nation, McCain's argument that the U.S. troop "surge" has worked could be turned against him. Extreme violence again grips the country as Shiites fight for control of the southern city of Basra, the country's second largest and its major oil port with access to the Persian Gulf.
And one of the prime reasons the American troop increase has worked, especially in Baghdad, was the cease-fire ordered by Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who heads the Mahdi Army militia. That deal could unravel because of renewed conflict with the Iraqi military, backed by American forces.
Rocket and mortar fire blamed on Mahdi Army militants again rains down on Baghdad's Green Zone, the American nerve center in the war, which just entered it's sixth year.
McCain's strong backing for a continued and robust American presence and claims of success in Iraq are now colliding with an Iraqi reality that's beginning to mimic the extreme violence of late 2006 and early 2007, before all the 30,000 additional U.S. "surge" forces reached the battle zone.
In fact, Dowd, the former Bush strategist, sees the Iraq linkage as a key weak spot for McCain.
Recalling his recent trip to Baghdad, McCain's eighth, Dowd said the Republican nominee-in-waiting should instead have been "putting a stake in the ground on some forward-looking issue."
He said voter opinions on Iraq are not much subject to change. "Iraq is a rearview mirror issue. The winner will do it by looking forward."
And the week just passed suggests the prescience of that argument.
McCain, in what was termed a major speech on the economy, offered only vague ideas about reversing what increasingly looks to be a significant recession in American. Both Obama and Clinton hammered their Republican opponent for his lack of expertise and experience with the economy and linked him to Bush, who many say began paying attention to the mounting crisis too late and then doing too little.
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