Author: Dan Kennedy

McCain’s speech

Warm but stilted. John McCain is far better interacting with a crowd or giving interviews than he is delivering a speech. He always sounds like he’s reading it, and he never sounds like he’s totally into it. He gave a perfectly fine speech tonight, but he didn’t take advantage of the moment quite to the degree he could have.

I thought Mitt Romney’s speech was better than usual. Is he finished? It’s hard to believe otherwise. Back in October, Ryan Lizza wrote in the New Yorker:

[Romney] must win the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, states where he has been leading in the polls, and create enough momentum and media attention to carry him through to February 5th, when some twenty states will vote — including New York and California, where Romney is barely known.

He held a huge lead in both states for months, then blew it at the end. He is, as the pundits are pointing out, the only Massachusetts governor or senator ever to lose the New Hampshire primary.

I’m sure Romney will continue at least until Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. But I’ve got to believe that it’s over.

The Obama effect

Is it possible that Barack Obama is falling victim to the Bradley effect? The Bradley effect takes its name from Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles who was comfortably ahead in the polls in the 1982 California governor’s race.

Bradley ended up losing to a white Republican, George Deukmejian. It turned out that a small but decisive proportion of white voters had told pollsters they were planning to vote for Bradley but in fact ended up voting for Deukmejian. Some speculated that those white voters had lied to pollsters because they didn’t want to be perceived as racists.

Obviously you can vote for Hillary Clinton without being a racist. But the results so far certainly don’t jibe with the polls.

Obama could still win, especially since the college towns’ votes haven’t been counted yet.

On second thought: O-Fish-L, in his inimitable way, argues that it’s not likely Obama suffered from the Bradley effect in a Democratic primary — especially in New Hampshire, whose Democrats are overwhelmingly liberal.

Outrageous

Jim Rice is passed over for the Hall of Fame again. Goose Gossage, who did make it, says:

Just from what I know and facing these guys, I think Jim Rice does belong in the Hall of Fame and I’ve said that all along. No hitter scared me, but Jim Rice came the closest. What a tremendous hitter he was. He made that whole Boston lineup a better lineup.

No kidding. I understand that Rice is a marginal candidate. But he had a fine career, and in the late 1970s he was the most devastating hitter in baseball.

McCain widens lead (or not)

For what it’s worth — and it’s probably not worth much, given the volatility of such things — Zogby is reporting that John McCain is now leading Mitt Romney in New Hampshire by a margin of 36 percent to 27 percent, up from 34 percent to 29 percent in the previous tracking poll. This could mean that McCain has managed to stop Romney’s mini-comeback. More likely it means nothing at all.

Enough for Obama and McCain?

If the turnout predictions reported by Boston.com’s James Pindell turn out to be accurate — or, as he thinks, prove to be on the low side — then there should be enough independent votes out there to float Barack Obama and John McCain. Pundits have been looking at the independent vote as a zero-sum game, and as Obama has risen, McCain has dropped back a bit closer to Mitt Romney. But that may not be the way things work out.

Channeling no one but himself

New York Times reporter Michael Powell asserts that John McCain is borrowing rhetoric from Barack Obama. Yet in his only example, he shows that McCain is borrowing from himself:

Mr. McCain admits to admiring Mr. Obama’s appeal as a “wonderful thing” and has taken to borrowing a line or three. He has been channeling Mr. Obama, calling on Americans to “serve a cause greater than their self-interest,” a theme from his campaign in 2000.

Indeed it is a theme from McCain’s 2000 campaign. So why does Powell say that McCain is “channeling Mr. Obama”?

What do I know, anyway?

I watched the Fox News Republican debate earlier this evening, and was surprised to see that Frank Luntz’s focus group thought Mitt Romney was the big winner. I thought Romney came off as petulant and twerpy for the first hour-plus, though he did warm up a bit toward the end.

Update: This might explain the Luntz crowd’s reaction. Or maybe they’re just professional undecideds. (Via Mickey Kaus.)