June is Busting Out All over……
Memorial Day is the last Monday in May. It’s the day the US remembers its Veterans and families often go to military graveyards with their serried ranks of crosses and little American flags fluttering over each grave.
The USA is good a public memorials – much better than we in the UK allow. It‘s hard not to get a lump in your throat when you see the National Cemetery at Arlington or perhaps the Korean Memorial in the Mall in Washington DC.
Memorial Day also traditionally marks the beginning of the summer and the season lasts through to Labour Day in September.
These balmy months traditionally saw the rich and famous on the East Coast leave the sultry steam of the great cities take to ease on their Yachts in Newport or their holiday houses in the Hamptons or Provincetown.
The less affluent had to make do with the beaches on Long Island or Rehoboth – and for the bohemian there were the pleasures of Fire Island….the Pines and Cherry Grove which after the 1950s became increasingly colonies of the nascent Gay Community.
In the glory days of Cabot, Lodge, Rockefeller and Roosevelt these months of rest and relaxation were also months of political wheeler-dealing. State Conventions and National conventions were arranged over this period and the bosses of the parties and their backers mulled over the choice of candidates for high office over the port whilst the ladies withdrew to the safety of the verandas to mbroker marriages and making small talk to great effect sipping sweet cocktails.
After the summer ended the political campaigns got underway.
The ancient rhythms established by the idle rich who inhabited the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald and owned America still hold true and inform to today’s political forms.
From June onwards minds in both parties turn to the National Conventions and the plans and stratagems for the respective campaigns are laid out. From this time too we start to get state polling on a wider basis.
Most state polling tends to focus on the ‘swing states’. These polls give a better picture than the National polls of where the balance of advantage lies at any one time.
That said, it’s also true that this far out from an election rarely shows the final outcome. In 1976 at this stage it seemed Carter would defeat ford by a landslide. Carter won in a darn close run thing; Dukakis was well ahead of Bush; Ross Perot was way ahead both of bush and Clinton who trailed on 25% in 1992; Gore was ahead of G.W Bush in 2000; Kerry marginally in front to G.W Bush in 2004 and even McCain managed a brief moment in the June sun in 2008 and all went on the lose the General election.
Even in landslide years – Regan & Carter in 1980 was close until the last 3 days; Mondale was well behind Regan in 1984 at this stage; Johnson was well ahead of Goldwater in 1964 and Clinton clear of Bob Dole – if not quite in landslide territory in 1996.
Like the entrails read by Sibyls in ancient Rome…..polls ought to be handled with care.
Most elections tend to be a bit of a carousel or merry-go-round. The candidates and the issues spin around and around. Sometimes the pace set by the campaign and its commentariat in the Media is so dizzying it induces a faint nausea as the electorate staggers from one ride to another.
In this circus the smallest things get blown up into major incidents and the trend of one rogue poll can give a false impression.
And the Media also speaks to its own prejudices and none more so than Fox News that other sinister arm of the dextrous Murdoch Media Empire – that over here in the UK is caught like a fly in the amber of the Leveson enquiry.
For the purposes of this composing these reviews I’ve endured many hours of Fox over the last months.
The over made-up women smiling relentlessly as they read from the autocue elaborately made-up stories masquerading as fact would wears the patience of a saint. And I’m not saint and mostly what Fox broadcasrs ain’t news. thank goodness the BSKYB bid falied.
So , where is the election really poised?
As here in Europe the election is poised over the bubbling cauldron of the economy. The recovery in the US is real but it is also fragile. Its fragility has been increased by the jitters over Europe, the Euro and the banking crisis that threaten to pull the world into s second financial meltdown.
Americans are also fed up of the old parties and inclined to listen to sirens singing new songs.
This mood music has particularly taken grip of the GOP but not of its candidate for the Presidency.
Mitt Romney has appeal – despite the fact he stumbles over his words and his campaign at times looks as if its cobbled together. For all the monney it has the look and feel of something on the improvised end of amateur.
Most recently they released a Romney ad went viral on twitter…. in it America misspelt as Amercia…an eye for detail isn’t the Romney camapign’s strong suit. And Obama’s cmapaign is taking Mitt’s suit as Masachusetts governor to the cleaners.
Obama has his troubles too and recently in a string of primaries – admittedly in the GOP heartlands states like Oklahoma and Kentucky – he managed to pick up only 60% of votes cas in the Democratic Primary.
Obama’s appeal has always been less strong to his Democrat base – the old blue collar democrats who loved Bill Clinton and voted for Hilary in the Primaries in 2008.
In that Obama resembles Tony Blair – whose early landslide elections victories in 1997 & 2001 hid the distrust of traditional Labour voters behind exceptionally low turnouts in their old Northern and inner city heartlands.
Nevertheless, Obama has entered this fallow period in the summer still holding on to a narrow lead.
It has fluctuated….some polls do show Romney leading nationally by up to 3%.
Last week a series of polls tipped Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida into the Romney column with only Missouri moving in the other direction.
Even so, Obama holds a lead in the Electoral College of 289 to 243 with six votes tied in a neck and neck poll in Iowa. But since these polls were taken, the national polls once more moved back in Obama’s favour.
In the Senate Race the polls show the Democrats holding 50…the Republicans 48 with 2 too close to call either way.
This is remarkably better than the Democrats might have hoped for. Equally, in Massachusetts that most Democrat of states, polls still show the Republican incumbent Brown narrowly ahead of Warren.
So as the Supreme Court Judges make their judgments over the Health Care Act there’s still a lot to play for – though for the moment Obama holds the advantage, his advantage has weakened with the economic data.
Will he buck the trend of and become a wining incumbent in what beyond Vladimir Putin in Russia is looking like a run of bad lucks for those holding political office in these difficult times?
It’s hard to say; harder still to say anything that isn’t simply partisan. Better perhaps to speak no evil and wisely wait upon the Justices of the Supreme Court and the Super PACS to first speak….knowing they will not have the last word.
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