[Vision2020] The fat lady’s not even in the dressing room

[No Weatherman]

A Done Deal?
Pundits prematurely declare victory for Obama.
by Matthew Continetti
10/20/2008 12:00:00 AM

Is there something about chilly weather that makes the media jump to
conclusions? Does the changing of seasons make pundits eager to
pronounce Barack Obama a sure thing? Because fall has finally arrived
in Washington, and suddenly it seems like we're back in January.

You remember January. That's when Obama trounced Hillary Clinton in
the Iowa caucuses, and more or less every commentator on the planet
pronounced the Democratic primary a done deal. After Iowa, polls
showed Obama in the lead in New Hampshire. And when Obama won New
Hampshire, we were told, the primary would be over. Except the primary
wasn't over. It wasn't over at all. Clinton won New Hampshire, and the
primary lasted until early June. Clinton won every big state except
Obama's home state of Illinois. She positively trounced Obama in
states like Pennsylvania and Kentucky and West Virginia. She won Ohio
by nine percentage points.

Obama won the nomination in the end, of course. And now he is leading
John McCain in the polls. And now, once again, the media have decided
that the race is over. Newsweek's cover asks how "President Obama"
will be able to govern our center-right nation, even though Election
Day isn't for two weeks. Politico's Mike Allen wonders how the
networks will cope if it becomes clear Obama is the winner "before
most Americans have finished dinner." The Obama campaign has so much
money that it's buying advertising space in — I'm not sure how this
works either — video games.

If you watched Meet the Press on Sunday, you came away feeling as
though Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama was more important than the
actual election. Andrea Mitchell said Powell would make a huge
difference in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, "even South
Carolina." The editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham, was talking about
Powell in such reverent tones that for a second I thought it was
Douglas MacArthur who had somehow risen from the dead and endorsed
Obama. NBC's political director, Chuck Todd, observed that the
electoral map is shifting in Obama's favor, including in places like
West Virginia, where, and this is not an exaggeration, McCain's lead
is only in the high single digits. A Republican wag told Politico
after the show that the Powell endorsement was "the nail in the
coffin."

It's true that Obama is, at least for the moment, winning the
presidential campaign. But I can't shake the feeling that the growing
sense of inevitability among our political class is oversold.
According to Saturday's New York Times, Obama is "outadvertising"
McCain by a ratio of "at least 4 to 1." Yet the national tracking
polls show a tightening race. Typically the polls in swing states end
up in about the same place as the national polls. This should give
pause to Obama and his supporters.

After all, we've been here before. Last year, every political analyst
on the scene, including me, said John McCain didn't have a chance of
winning the Republican nomination. Boy were we wrong. Throughout this
year, folks thought Obama would win the big states and the Democratic
primary would be over. Wrong again. We thought the general election
would be about the war in Iraq. As it turns out, not so much.

This is a close race and McCain is a wily underdog. More important,
perhaps, he's an underdog who is often helped by outside events. The
success of the surge strategy in Iraq helped McCain win the GOP nod.
Over the last month, the financial crisis and McCain's haphazard
response to it all but torpedoed his chances to win the presidency.
But now, thanks to a global effort, the immediate crisis seems to have
passed, and the worst seems to have been avoided. Yes, we are probably
in a recession, and there are tough economic times ahead. But the
sense of impending economic collapse has faded. And that helps McCain.

Obama won the debates, but the debates are finished. Obama has a lot
more money, but money does not determine elections. President Bush is
still incredibly unpopular, but McCain is finally telling audiences
that he's not President Bush. Obama has almost every advantage — but
it ain't over yet.
Matthew Continetti is the associate editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/731sgrpx.asp