Writing for American Thinker, Kyle-Anne Shiver describes how McCain could win the election in a landslide victory. The three important factors are time, the anti-Obama vote, and Obama’s own arrogance.
I myself favor McCain, believing he will win a close election. I follow the Intrade prediction markets very closely and right now Obama is trading at 65.3 and McCain at 31.2, which seems very lop-sided to me. With over 100 days to go until election day, this spread has to narrow. People have very high expectations of Obama, and when he is unable to meet those high expectations whenever he makes a mistake or when he breaks another promise (e.g., recently voting for the FISA bill with immunity to the telecoms intact) his ratings will fall dramatically.
I think of Obama like I would a popular growth stock. When investors are irrationally exuberant with their expectations of companies and prescribe unreasonable growth expectations upon a company, when that company fails to meet those expectations, its stock price falls precipitously. The price of the stock will usually fall until it is in line with its fair value. Perhaps it will fall below fair value. I view Obama the same way. No doubt he’s got a great campaign and talks a good talk and he gets a lot of people fired up, but I will be really surprised if he can hold up this sort of popularity until election day.
I agree with your analysis. And he’s playing “not to lose” rather than “playing to win.”
The longer time goes by, the more apparent his inexperience will be. The debates will be a bit turning point, as will be additional misspeaking that will occur btw. now and then.
I think the two most important factors that will affect the ratings of both candidates will be (1) the debates and (2) the choosing of their running mates. Though Obama may ultimately win, it will be a small margin unlike what Intrade is suggesting at the moment.