Is Obama doomed?

Marc McKinnon

Πηγή: Marketwatch
By Brett Arends

Oct 14 2011

To get the inside scoop I got in touch with one of the sharpest political operatives around: Former Republican spin doctor Mark McKinnon, the communications mastermind who helped Bush roll John Kerry in 2004.

He’s teaching a semester at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government this summer, in the heart of blue America, so I crossed the Charles River and took him out to lunch at the Legal Seafoods near Harvard Square to get his take on the race.

It was early, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves.

I brought along the latest prices offered by InTrade, the Dublin-based betting exchange, which runs futures markets on the race.

It’s giving President Barack Obama a 48% chance of getting re-elected. That’s incredibly low for a sitting president — it’s been falling all year, since briefly touching 70% after the bin Laden kill.

But McKinnon says he thinks 48% is still way too high.

“I’d bet against that,” he says. “It may not even matter what kind of campaign (Obama) runs — if the economic fundamentals don’t change, the Republicans could nominate Ron Paul and win.”

“All right!” said our waiter as he served the drinks. “I’m in the military, and I’m a huge Paul fan!”

McKinnon argues political anger and disaffection run much deeper than most people in Washington realize. The strength of the Occupy Wall Street protests don’t surprise him at all.

He’s gone back and looked at what opinion polls and surveys revealed about the public mood during previous elections. His finding: It has not been anywhere near this bad. Compared to 2011, even 1992 — a year of high unemployment that saw the emergence of Ross Perot’s anti-establishment candidacy — looks benign.

McKinnon has looked back over previous election years. Presidents have typically been re-elected when consumer confidence numbers have been high, and have lost when they’ve been low.

WSJ's Neil King has details of the latest WSJ/NBC poll that asked likely Republican primary voters who they currently support. The poll also reveals Americans' feelings about President Obama and the economy. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Today? The figures are so low that Obama has to improve the number “by about 20 (percentage) points” just to get it to the average levels for a presidential defeat, he says

Eyebrow-raising stuff. While McKinnon worked for Republicans, he’s really more of an independent. He started out his career as a Democrat. And he was quite positive about Obama when we talked about the race four years ago.

McKinnon sees Republican nominee Romney as insipid, and believes that the independent “Americans Elect” campaign, backed by hedge-fund tycoon Peter Ackerman, is more than a flash in the pan. It plans to get on every ballot in the country. Next spring, McKinnon said, it could very well nominate a viable third-party candidate.

This is going to be interesting. Popular disgust with both parties is very high. Neither Romney nor Obama inspire enthusiasm among their supporters. And the Internet is changing everything — for good or bad. We live in an American Idol culture. Why not an American Idol election process?

McKinnon, meanwhile, is shocked by the way corporate money is now flooding the system — thanks, in part, to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which opened the door to unlimited campaign contributions. There are now 150 Super-PACs, he says, “they’re going to raise at least a billion dollars, most of it from undisclosed sources. It’s absolutely pornographic.”

If you really want to make money betting on the race, McKinnon says, don’t look at the top of the ticket. Look at the number two spot.

“I want to put down money, and I mean a lot of money, on Marc Rubio being the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee,” he says.

Rubio is the conservative junior senator from Florida. He’s the son of Cuban immigrants.

Why would he get the veep slot? The GOP needs him.

“I’ve worked on several presidential campaigns on the Republican side,” McKinnon went on. “The one thing I know absolutely is that the Republicans don’t get a significant percentage of the Hispanic vote, they can’t win.”

In 2000, they calculated Bush needed 40% of the Hispanic vote, McKinnon said. He got 41%. In 2004, thanks to the rising number of Hispanic voters, they worked out Bush needed 43% to get re-elected. He got 44%.

In 2008, McCain got 29%. Game over.

McKinnon holds up his hands and starts ticking off Rubio’s other strengths. “Big state. Young. Popular with the Tea Party. He checks every single box.”

It’s a more than plausible analysis. The most likely Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, inspires absolutely no enthusiasm among grassroots conservatives. Rubio does. He could help fire up the base, and bring out the vote.

Rubio, predictably, is denying he will be the VP pick. Make of that what you will.

The other problem with this bet is that we cannot make it here in the U.S. You can’t bet legally on politics with any bookmaker I can find in the country. Nevada doesn’t allow political bets — I checked (after schlepping fruitlessly around the casinos with sportsbooks). Other states don’t either. Nor do any Indian casinos I could find. (There is a small, limited betting market offered by the University of Iowa).

The crazy explanation? I was told that political betting is banned so that people don’t have an incentive to try to rig (or throw) elections.

You couldn’t make it up. According to the people writing these laws, Democrats, say, know exactly how to rig elections so they could win every time, but right now they don’t bother because they can’t bet on it.

The real explanation, of course, is the nanny state. We claim America is a “free” country, but we have the ring of freedom in our noses rather than in our ears.

The good news is that if McKinnon can make it over to Europe — or, more easily, has a friend there he can trust — he can place a bet quite easily.

Ladbrokes, the gigantic British bookmaker, is offering Rubio for the VP slot at odds of 4/1. Put down $1,000, and if he wins you get back your stake plus a $4,000 profit.

It equates to a 20% probability. If McKinnon is right, those are great odds.