Dick Morris Explains It All Again

Dick Morris: still America's Worst Pundit(tm).

If current survey trends continue, Obama will finish with less than 50 percent in the polls. Even discounting the Nader vote (some people never learn), the undecided voters could tip the race either way. How will they break?

Since there is no incumbent, they cannot automatically be assigned to the challenger; and since turnout is likely to be huge, the current undecided voters will probably make their way to the polls and cast their ballots.

But for whom?

At the beginning of this contest, Obama effectively made the case that the election was a referendum on Bush's performance in office. Painting a vote for McCain as a desire for "four more years of the same failed policies," he made the most of Bush's dismal approval rating. Had he been able to keep the focus on Bush, he would likely have inherited most of the undecided vote.

But as Obama surged into a more or less permanent lead in October, animated by the financial crisis, he has assumed many of the characteristics of an incumbent. Every voter asks himself one question before he or she casts a ballot: Do I want to vote for Obama? His uniqueness, charisma and assertive program have so dominated the dialogue that the election is now a referendum on Obama.

As Obama has oscillated, moving somewhat above or somewhat below 50 percent in all the October polls, his election likely hangs in the balance. If he falls short of 50 percent in these circumstances, a majority of the voters can be said to have rejected him. Likely a disproportionate number of the undecideds will vote for McCain.

Got that? Obama is now the incumbent before he has even been elected, therefore his aura of "inevitable" means the public is tired of him, they are "rejecting" him, and that McSame is the scrappy, energetic challenger that undecided voters will flock to in the last week.

You know, even though all the polls show Obama leading. All of them.

I have doubts about the "inevitability" of Obama, myself. But this theory is not the explanation for what a McSame win would consist of. That little nightmare scenario has a much different tune.

Oh, and Dick Morris is still an idiot.