Obama currently beats McCain in the polls by nearly seven points.
In July of 1988, Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis led George Bush Snr by 8.2 points but ended up losing the election by 7.8 points; a swing of 16 points between July and November. If that swing happens in the same direction this year, McCain will win by a landslide.
The Repubicans achieved that turnaround in 1988 by portraying Dukakis as a dangerous liberal who was out-of-touch with heartland American values. They used the same strategy to defeat John Kerry in 2004, and it's likely to be their main line of attack against Senator Obama. But will it work this time? The data-fiends at 538 think not, as they explain in a fascinating post.
They argue that the problem for this tried-and-trusted strategy isn't that Obama cannot be portrayed as a liberal. It's the opposite: voters already think he is a liberal, and they don't care...
It may be that the primary fault line in this election is not liberal versus conservative, but change versus experience. Voters might think that Barack Obama is slightly further from them ideologically than is John McCain -- but they might also think that the country has been governed for eight years by a conservative, and that this governance has failed.
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