California Conservative

This Gallup poll suggests that Sen. Obama’s choice of Sen. Biden won’t give him much of a bounce going into his convention. That polling begs the question of why the Obamessiah would pick Biden. First, here’s some of the poll’s findings:

Q: Does having Joe Biden as his running mate make you more likely to vote for BArack Obama this November, less likely or will it not have much effect on your vote?

A: 14 percent say they’re more likely, 7 percent said less likely and 72 percent said it wouldn’t have any effect. Seven percent didn’t have an opinion.

The first question I had was how this stacked up historically. Here’s Gallup’s answer:

This results in Biden potentially having a net positive impact on voter support for the Democratic ticket of +7 percentage points, small by comparison with other recent vice presidential selections.

• A net 17% of nationwide registered voters said they were more likely to vote for John Kerry in 2004 on the basis of his selection of John Edwards as his running mate (24% more likely and 7% less likely).
• A net 12% of voters reported being more likely to vote for Al Gore in 2000 on account of his choosing Joe Lieberman (16% more likely and 4% less likely).
• A net 18% of voters indicated they were more likely to vote for Bob Dole in 1996 on the basis of his choice of Jack Kemp to complete the ticket (26% more likely and 8% less likely).
• A net 25% of voters were more likely to vote for Bill Clinton in 1992 on account of Al Gore (33% more likely and 8% less likely).

In historical terms, this indicates that the pick is pretty underwhelming. This confirms for me the notion that this was a desperation pick, that Sen. Obama’s bungling of the Russian invasion of Georgia forced him into picking Sen. Biden. (Personally, I would’ve picked Sam Nunn but that’s another story.)

There’s an old saying that the two happiest days that a boat owner has are the day he buys it and the day he sells it. The point is that buyer’s remorse exists. How long will it take before Sen. Obama regrets picking Sen. Biden? How long will it take Democrats to regret picking Sen. Obama over Sen. Clinton?

Picking Sen. Biden was a mistake. Had Sen. Hopeandchange wanted foreign policy credentials without Biden’s history of gaffes, then he should’ve picked former Sen. Sam Nunn.

I pity the poor political handlers for Obama-Biden. Pre-Biden, they only had to worry about Obama speaking off the cuff. Now they have to worry about both candidates speaking off the cuff because they’re gaffe machines.

Finally, I’d suggest that the +7 rating for Sen. Obama is the high water mark, that that figure will drop before the votes are tallied. That isn’t how it’s designed to work.

Technorati Tags: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Polling, Gallup Poll, Sam Nunn, Gaffes, Foreign Policy, Hillary, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 8:33 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Election 2008, Foreign Policy, McCain, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.