(Aug. 14) Thirty-six years ago today, Republican presidential campaign manager Lee Atwater was in a ragingly foul mood as he awaited the next day’s start of the Republican National Convention. Therein lies a lesson for those who prematurely insist a particular election result is inevitable.
Already this year, we are on the third different iteration of supposedly “sure things” in this presidential race. First, my inbox was full of people insisting there was no way Democrats could replace President Joe Biden on their ticket. Second, the same inbox was full of people saying there was just no way former President Donald Trump could lose this fall after he survived an assassination attempt with a supposedly indomitable spirit. And now I see some know-it-alls saying Vice President Kamala Harris is in an almost no-lose position.
Harumph.
If Atwater were still alive, he could tell them a thing or two. The reason he was in such a bad mood in the days leading up to the 1988 convention — I witnessed this mood in person, behind the scenes — was because his candidate, former President George H.W. Bush, was trailing behind former Gov. Michael Dukakis (D-MA) in the polls by a stunning 17 points. And things didn’t get much better two days later when Bush’s choice of former Sen. Dan Quayle (R-IN) as his running mate was widely (albeit rather unfairly) criticized as a political folly.
Just 12 weeks after the Quayle choice was announced, Bush beat Dukakis in the popular vote by 8 points in an Electoral College landslide, 426 to 111.
So much for elections being “sure things” as early as August.
The 1988 race was far from an anomaly, even in the past 50 years. In July of 1976, former President Gerald Ford trailed former President Jimmy Carter, who was then the Democratic governor of Georgia, by an astonishing 35 points. Ford ended up losing by only 2% (and would have won the Electoral College with just 18,381 more votes combined in two states) and quite arguably would have won if he hadn’t spent a week ludicrously insisting that “there is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe.”…. [The full column is at this link.]
