Short of skinny legs, what's left to factor in?

by Lisa Van Dusen | Sunday, 2 November 2008

CHICAGO -- In this last weekend before the U.S. election day, which will leave many of us who've been mainlining campaign news for the past year with a void that may have to be filled by online poker and Cheetos, you would think that all the questions that were going to be asked and answered had been asked and answered.

But the last three days are when, after 245 months of campaigning, many undecided voters decide and many decided voters decide whether to actuallyvote. So what happens now, in many ways, is the most important bit.

It is 72 hours before election day and Illinois, where Barack Obama is up by 24 points, is relatively quiet on the campaign front -- except for the dust from the carloads of volunteers zooming into neighbouring Indiana, which remains in a dead heat.

While the most hard-fought presidential election in anyone's memory is about to become the most hard-won presidential election in anyone's memory, Chicago, where Barack Obama got his political start and where his campaign is based, seems to be quietly bracing itself for the possibility that it could be the site of the next weekend White House, only without so much brush clearing.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, the Obama campaign is buying up ad time in John McCain's own yard partly because the state has slipped into margin-of-error range for McCain and partly because they can afford to remind him that they can afford to remind him.

In the past week, the national polls tightened up as they tend to near Election Day, though with the American electoral system, the state polls are more significant. It takes 270 Electoral College votes to be elected president and as of midday Saturday, RealClearPolitics was estimating Obama at 311 to McCain's 132, with 95 toss-up.

On the McCain/Palin tour, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is being touted more and more as something -- anything -- in 2012, even as Republicans outside the two-person maverick wing of the party keep raising alarms about her qualifications.

Joe the Plumber, who would be getting his own campaign plane if the election were another week away, was holding foreign policy briefings and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually is an elected politician, was mocking, as only a former Mr. World can, Barack Obama's "skinny legs" in an apparent effort to sway undecideds on an Obama disqualifier they hadn't heard.

(Obama should finally draw the line at this. "Terrorist pal," "socialist," "redistributionist-in-chief" were pretty low, but "skinny legs" is fightin' words. Maybe not to Arnie's face, but it's a point worth making.)

Because American presidential elections haven't always necessarily panned out as predicted ("Dewey Defeats Truman!", "Al Gore wins the State of Florida"), especially in recent memory, it would be crazy for the Republicans not to maintain a stance of "all bets are off" until the last minute and equally crazy for Democrats to argue.

After record early voting turnout in many states, this is now all about getting out the vote on election day, motivating the undecideds to decide and making sure all the votes are counted.

Which pits the mythology from the last two elections of the famously motivated Republican base that Sarah Palin has been shaking up against the newer but already established mythology of the primary-tested, web-driven, virally motivational and well-financed Obama ground game.

In those past two elections, the Republicans were so focused on the importance of the final three days that they actually broke it out strategically as a 72-hour push. This time, the focus will be on, among other thing, those undecided voters.

After so much time, so many debates, so many speeches and so many interviews, it's hard to fathom what deciding factor would be compelling enough to make up an unmade-up mind, unless leg-skinniness really is the sleeper issue nobody saw coming.