There has been a flare up of campaign insiders concerned about Obama's chances which has spread to some of the big pro-Obama blogs. The proximate cause is what Obama supporter Nate Silver describes as weakening electoral college strength:
Although Barack Obama remains a slight favorite in this election, his position is more vulnerable than at any point since the primaries concluded, and he no longer appears to have a built-in strength in the electoral college that we had attributed to him before.
Various insiders expressed unease to the NY Times:
As Senator Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democratic presidential nomination next week, party leaders in battleground states say the fight ahead against Senator John McCain looks tougher than they imagined, with Mr. Obama vulnerable on multiple fronts despite weeks of cross-country and overseas campaigning.
Which rapidly spread to long-time Obama boosters like Josh Marshall of TPM (quoting a reader):
I find it disconcerting that Obama, after all this time, is still playing with kid gloves with McCain on issues of security and national defense. If Obama thinks he can win with McCain cornering the market on security issues, he and Kerry will have lots to talk about next year in the Senate Cloakroom.
and John Avarosis of Americablog:
Joe and I know a lot of people in politics. A lot of them are very smart. They're not the people you hate, the Cokie Roberts' and the Mrs. Greenspan's of the world. They're the kind of people you like and you trust. And those people are now telling us that they fear we're going to lose the election.
My guess is that all of these people are in for a long campaign. Given the candidates, Obama and McCain, this election was bound to be close. Obama is not the kind of candidate who can take advantage of all of the structural advantages Democrats have right now, and McCain is the right candidate to compensate for the Republican's structural weaknesses. An electoral college blowout, or a big map change were never in the cards for Obama, as became painfully clear during the primaries. Obama's moderate to conservative policies do not excite the Democratic base, cheering crowds notwithstanding, and McCain has a much deeper appeal to independents.
I saw signs toward the end of the primaries that the progressive groups were not high on Obama's chances and were turning their attention to down-ballot and post-election advocacy. The Obama campaign's signals that he didn't want their help exacerbated the trend. And I was surprised when a stats friend, and Obama supporter, was freaking out in early July over internal polls. Since then Obama has not made any moves to shore up his position with the base, and the Republicans are just gearing up their attacks.
Given a close race Obama may be able to win on the strength of his field operation, but a lot of the press on it is overblown, and the Republican's have kept their own field plans under wraps. What Obama is actually doing on the ground is significant, but it is only incrementally different from what the party and the 527s did in 2004.
I was convinced at the end of the primaries that the race was Obama's to lose. But since then the Republicans have closed the gap on money, and McCain has avoided many of Obama's traps. McCain has been more nimble than I expected at laying out popular policy goals and defining Obama negatively, though I always knew that McCain can mimic populism while Obama cannot. Now I've begun to wonder if we are seeing the triumph of the Daschle approach, i.e. a loss.
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