As the folks at FiveThirtyEight.com (538) set forth in detail, the Sunshine State has become a problem area for Team Obama (TO). There are 4 legitimate post-Palin polls, and 3 of them put McCain up 5-8 points. Rasmussen shows a tie, but it's the clear outlier, and there is also a Zogby Interactive showing McCain up 10. 538 currently has Obama down 6 here, and it gives him a 15% chance of prevailing.
These struggles have not gone unnoticed in local media outlets. Adam Smith of the St. Pete Times, for example, has summarized the current situation pretty well. Despite spending $8mm on advertising and mounting an unprecedented field operation, Obama is clearly slipping here. Even worse, according to the latest Q-Poll, Obama is losing >55 voters by a 55-39 margin.
There is one obvious means of improving these problematic numbers--hit McCain hard on SS privatization. As the AFL-CIO notes, McCain has a consistent record of support for SS privatization. When he ran for prez in 2000, he openly supported the concept:
Trust Fund is a ticking time bomb, set to go off in 2014
We’ve got a ticking time bomb out there. And it’s called the Social Security Trust Fund. And starting in 2014 there’ll be more money going out than in. There’s a $5 trillion unfunded liability out there in the form of the Social Security Trust Fund. If we can put the money in quick, then we will be able to allow people to invest their payroll taxes into investments of their choosing and make a huge amount of difference in the solvency of their retirement fund.
Source: GOP Debate in Manchester NH Jan 26, 2000
In a GOP debate last fall, he said the following:
Q: What about Social Security?
A: Look, what Americans need is some straight talk. Every man, woman and child in America needs to know it's going broke, and we've got to do the hard things. We've got to fix it for the future generations of Americans. Don't we owe that to young Americans today? I say we do. It's got to be bipartisan. And you have to go to the American people and say we won't raise your taxes. We need personal savings accounts, but we got to fix this system.
Source: 2007 GOP primary debate in Orlando, Florida Oct 21, 2007
Most recently, when he and Obama addressed the AARP, McCain retained this position:
Sen. McCain, the Republican nominee, said he remains open to personal accounts, also called private accounts, for younger people. Under this system, pushed hard by President Bush in 2005, workers could divert some of the taxes that normally would go to pay Social Security benefits into personal accounts invested in stocks and/or bonds. In trade, their guaranteed checks from the government would go down, increasing both the possibility of risk and reward for participants, depending on how the investments fare.
"There may be a role for private investment accounts for younger workers as long as they are not a substitute for insuring the solvency of the system and does not affect the system,'' Sen. McCain said.
SS has long been known as a third rail in American politics. Given the size and importance of our retiree population, it's the 4th and the 5th rail here as well. Under ordinary circumstances, SS privatization is an anathema to a constituency that it currently going for McCain 55-39. It's absolutely unthinkable to that consituency given the ongoing meltdown on Wall Street.
While I have seen many Obama ads on TV, I have yet to see a single ad addressing SS privatization, nor have I seen any reports of any such ad being run. Millions have been spent, but nothing has been spent on your best issue for a key voting bloc? Forget about the pledge to bring a gun to a knife fight--on this issue, TO is not bringing any weapon at all.
A candidate doesn't publicly tell Nevadans he/she supports storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. He/she doesn't publicly tell Iowans he/she opposes subsidies for ethanol. He/she doesn't publicly tell Floridians he/she supports SS privatization. If he/she does, his/her opponent makes sure that every voter in the state is aware of that position. It's not that complicated. The fact that McCain is trying to temper his position a little bit this time around shows that he understands the political risks involved.
If TO is serious about contesting FL, it's way past time to start hitting McCain hard on this obvious vulnerability. It doesn't require any embellishment, exaggeration, or other ugliness. It merely requires quoting some "straight talk" directly from the candidate's own mouth.
TO needs to grab this lifeline its opponent has given it and start putting a state where it has made a considerable investment back into the vigorously contested column.