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The Lone Ranger

The Democrat's Dilemma

Sure, Obama is ahead in the polls. Sure, history says McCain can't catch up. But history has made a fool of more than one Democrat. SPIEGEL ONLINE blogger Peter Ross Range wonders how comfortable he should be.

This campaign is making me nervous. I can't handle all the good news. Barack is up 9 points, says the Los Angeles Times! No, he’s up 14 points, says the New York Times! Will it never stop? What’s a Democrat to do, after so many years of losing presidential elections?

Tread softly and carry a lot of caution, for starters. Don’t gloat. Don’t even smile too much. The deep abiding knowledge that Democrats have often snatched defeat from the jaws of victory keeps me fretting. I'm more comfortable as the underdog.

Part of my fear is rational. Al Gore was highly favored at the outset of the 2000 election campaign, but he managed to blow it in ways that went beyond the Florida recount debacle. In 2004 we seemed to have a Dream Team in the Massachusetts patrician (John Kerry) and the folksy glad-hander from North Carolina (John Edwards). But they blew it too, with their own mistakes (remember Kerry’s windsurfing photos?) and a lot of help from the egregious Swift Boat attack ads.

So here we are -- three weeks before Election Day, sitting on a fat lead. History says it's too short a time for McCain to turn things around. But you can’t always trust history. There are too many imponderables in this election -- the volatile economic crisis, the Iraq war, the ever-present terrorism threat, Barack’s race. And, of course, John McCain’s unpredictable and "erratic" streak, which has so far worked against him. But -- who knows? -- he could pull some October rabbit out of his hat and upset the trend toward an Obama landslide. Let’s see what he does in tonight’s final debate.

What gives me comfort, of course, is the way the Obama campaign has altered some of the fundamentals. With its superb organization and groundbreaking use of the Internet -- not to mention YouTube and FaceBook -- Obama’s team has managed to rock the youth vote, raise voter registration rates and even get Obama's ads onto an Xbox video game (called Burnout Paradise).

Obama supporters have also ways to reach tough nuts like, say, older Jewish voters in south Florida. With an estimated 650,000 Jews living in the state, their turnout and choice of candidate could be crucial to Obama’s effort to break the longstanding Republican hold on the state, with its 27 electoral votes. Jews can historically be counted on to vote mostly Democratic. But in 2008, they’ve been bombarded with scurrilous Internet campaigns -- e-mails by the dozen -- suggesting that Obama is secretly a Muslim and cannot be counted on to defend Israel, no matter how many times he has proclaimed his support for the Jewish state.

Some Jews admit there is also a reluctance on the part of some members of their community to vote for a black man. "Our colors are different," said Selma Furst, 87, of Tamarac, a town near Fort Lauderdale north of Miami.

To counter such misgivings, an Obama-leaning group called Jews Vote came up with a brilliant riposte: Send the grandkids to talk to the grandparents. And thus began "The Great Schlep," a campaign to get young Jews from places like New York and Los Angeles to visit or call their retired grandparents in Florida. "Schlep over to Florida and convince your grandparents to vote for Obama!" exorts Jewish comedienne Sarah Silverman in a widely viewed video.

Grandparents love visits from their grandkids, reasoned Jews Vote director Ari Wallach. And who better than their grandchildren to try to convince them that Obama is not a Muslim, not opposed to Israel, not the embodiment of their fears about his race? CNN ran a piece this week showing how one young Jew from California was so successful at convincing his grandparents (including Selma Furst, above) to support Obama that he carried his efforts into his grandmother’s beauty salon and a senior community center used mostly by older Jews. By the end of his presentation, the oldsters were shouting the Obama slogan, "Yes we can!"

The Great Schlep may influence only a few hundred votes directly. But its ripple effect could be much greater, since it is now all over the Internet and television.

And there are other fundamental shifts in the American electorate that calm my nerves. A new study by the Brookings Institution shows that as the electorate becomes more educated, more urban, and less working-class, it is trending more Democratic. About 80 percent of Americans -- and 94 percent in Florida -- now live in cities or their adjacent sprawl, known demographically as "metros." One example is Loudon County, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., which grew by 64 percent since the 2000 election. In 2004, 97 of the 100 fastest-growing counties in America voted for George W. Bush. In 2008, the demographers estimate, the fast-growing areas -- which include many Hispanic immigrants -- are more likely to vote for Obama. It is, they claim, a baked-in Democratic year, no matter what the candidates do.

There: I feel better already.