The rush to count chickens before votes

Marsha Mercer
Published: October 12, 2008

WASHINGTON

The first line I read of Joe Biden’s latest e-mail reminded me of my grandmother.

“The McCain campaign is on the ropes,” Biden wrote Wednesday.

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” my grandmother used to say.

Since Aesop wrote fables, people have known that it’s dangerous to assume they’ll have something before it’s in their hands. That’s especially true for presidential campaigns with three weeks to go until
Election Day.

And yet, it’s hard to fault Barack Obama and running mate Biden for a burst of confidence this close to the finish line. John McCain’s campaign legs do look shaky.

Many pundits are rushing to declare the presidential election over.  That’s because polls show Obama with a widening lead over John McCain nationally and Obama gaining ground in key states. Other
polls show that people trust Obama more than McCain to fix the devastated economy. The stars seem to be aligning in Obama’s favor.

Political scientist Larry Sabato said Thursday that for the first time it appears that Obama has the necessary 270 electoral votes to win, with more on the way.

Sabato left little room for a turnabout. “It is always theoretically possible that the final presidential debate or another intervening ‘big event’ domestically or in foreign affairs could give McCain an electoral
shot in the arm, so that he can make up some or all of the lost ground,” he wrote in his “Crystal Ball” newsletter.

“Yet,” Sabato concluded, “time is growing short for major upheavals.”

But if the 2000 election taught us anything, it’s that it’s not over until the Supreme Court says it’s over.

Besides, this isn’t the first time McCain had been declared dead. One year before he accepted the Republican presidential nomination, he was written off.

It’s always risky to assume pollsters know the voters’ minds, especially this year.

After all, an October surprise could still alter the presidential race. So far, what’s got everybody’s attention is the stock market’s shocking plunge, despite the many emergency measures aimed at
quieting investor fears.

The current economic anxiety redounds to Obama’s benefit, because people think he’s better able to deal with the crisis, pollsters say. Plus, Obama’s storied cool demeanor is serving him well, while
McCain can’t get his economic footing.

At the second debate, McCain tried to put himself on the side of ordinary Americans by saying he would have the federal government buy bad home mortgages to help people stay in their homes.

The McCain campaign initially indicated that the government would buy the mortgages at a discount, which would save the taxpayers money. The next day, though, the campaign said that was a
mistake, and that the government would actually pay the existing face value of the loans. This is a boon for the banking industry and it means higher costs for taxpayers, who are already footing the
bailout bills.

Obama seized on the issue and said that McCain wanted to “massively overpay” for the mortgages. He put up a campaign ad, arguing that the country can’t afford “more of the same” on the economy.

In a page from Republican presidential campaigns gone by, McCain’s chief strategy seems to be to try to scare people off Obama.

“Who is the real Senator Obama?” McCain asks at rallies. He and Sarah Palin have tied Obama to Vietnam Era-radical William Ayers and other unsavory characters. They impugn Obama’s honesty and
his policies.

The problem with the personal attacks, Michelle Obama told Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show,” is that Obama has been on the campaign trail for 20 months. He survived a bitter primary campaign in which
his competitors threw out many of the same questions, and he won anyway.

Besides, does McCain really want to remind voters about his friendship with political donor Charles Keating Jr?

That led to McCain’s being one of the senators implicated in the Keating Five scandal during the collapse of the savings and loan   industry.

So, yes, Biden shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatch. And McCain should remember something else my grandmother said, “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

What do you think? Comment at mgwashington.com or e-mail .