So it came to pass that the guardedly exultant Democrats folded up their Boston tents sounding like winners, having delivered themselves of several impressive speeches (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Teresa Heinz Kerry, John Kerry) and not having made any big mistakes. A revived, reviving John Kerry rocketed or at least bussed out onto the American road to spread the tidings that help is on the way. And the Republicans beat their usual drums (we kick terrorist ass, were more optimistic than thou) with the usual echo-chamber effect.
One of the background drums (call it a snare) is a much bruited-about claim that the Democrats failed to get the normal approval uptick a. k. a. bounce expected of presidential challengers. Tough luck, Democrats.
This whole micro-episode is an exemplary case study in how on-the-ground American politics works now, in particular how the great, perverse game of expectation-setting goes. Herewith, a tidbit revealing the compound of cynicism and gullibility that rules this democracys mental-political life.
The Republicans got their expectations game going three weeks before the convention with a memo from their chief strategist, Matthew Dowd, conveniently posted on the RNC website and therefore guaranteed to whiz around the political sphere at the speed of clicking keys.
(I owe much of the following analysis to Joe Cutbirth, formerly a Texas newspaper reporter and communication director of the Texas Democratic Party, and a longtime close student of the modus operandi of one Karl Rove.)
Not in the form of a run-of-the-mill press release but in the form of an ostensibly limited-circulation memo from a party insider, a sort of backstage whisper to the Republican leadership who might otherwise go glum, Dowd declared: an examination of Gallup polls in presidential elections since 1976 reveals that a challengers vice presidential selection and nominating convention can have a dramatic (if often short-lived) effect on the head-to-head poll numbers. In fact, historical analysis suggests John Kerry should have a lead of more than 15 points coming out of his convention.
Inside story! Hot stuff! More than 15 points! So if the John Edwards announcement and the Boston convention didnt push Kerry to the brink of the 15 point standard, the clear implication would be that the Democrats had stalled.
And sure enough, post-Boston polls variously showed a smaller Kerry bounce or no bounce at all. Newsweek wrote of its poll, the first to be published early enough to garner attention on the Sunday morning political shows: Kerrys four-point bounce is the smallest in the history of the NEWSWEEK poll. If you read the Newsweek article carefully, you discovered that half the poll was taken before Kerrys acceptance speech, and that respondents who were queried after Kerrys Thursday night speech gave the Democrat a ten-point lead over Bush. Three weeks ago, Kerrys lead was three points. In other words, net gain: 7 points.
Baby bounce was the Newsweek frame that rocketed around the media. Baby bounce became 3 or 4 days worth of conventional wisdom. Not the 7 points in their own numbers, but baby bounce. Tactical victory to Matthew Dowd.
A few days later came an ABC News/Washington Post poll that showed a bounce from pre-convention to post-convention results of 8 points in Kerrys favor. As the Democratic poll analyst Ruy Teixeira points out, this was actually the poll that comes closest to narrowing the before and after results to just before and just after the convention.
So 7-point and 8-point bounces (granted, with different starting points) are the facts, at least if poll numbers (with their sizable standard errors) are facts. But the conventional wisdom kept rolling to this day: the bounce for Kerry was a baby bounce.
Now, inspect the dynamic of this Dowd memo and its fallout.
First, its release was treated as if it were some sort of leak. Leak, shmeak. This was Republican impression management at its shrewdest, and the press fell for it with the dumb guilelessness that has become an occupational calling card for the Washington press corps.
Second, Dowds comparisons come from years when the Democratic challenger was chosen after primary seasons that lasted much longer and much more contentiously. The challengers of 1976-2000 didnt, in general, land their nominations until much closer to their conventions. This years primaries were front-loaded to give the winner a much longer hiatus before the convention so long, in fact, that Kerry decided to name his vice-presidential running mate three weeks before the conventions opening gavel, the better to generate some news.
Kerry, in other words, started consolidating party support much earlier than usual. Not surprisingly, then, his rise in the polls started in the spring. Ergo, less bounce in July.
But even there, Dowds figures are disingenuous. Look at Bill Clintons 13-point bounce after the Democrats 1992 convention. That year, the convention took place during a two-week period when Clinton named Al Gore his running mate and Ross Perot, the mystery on-again off-again candidate, dropped out of the race.
The game of setting low expectations is, of course, one of the staples of political maneuver. Before Dan Quayle debated Lloyd Bentsen in the vice-presidential campaign of 1988, the Republicans let it be known that if the grammatically challenged Quayle succeeded in emitting an entire intelligible sentence without stumbling, he would have done better than expected and thus be heralded as the come-from-behind victor.
In truth, once you allow for the standard errors of 3-4% in each candidates number (thus a standard error of 6-8% for the difference), the race is a tie. It has been a tie for months. Assertions by anyone to any other effect are smoke, spin, and bandwagon-thumping hype.
Do I repeat myself? I was only trying to tell you about the expected non-bouncing non-bump you shouldnt expect.
