One of the underappreciated factors in Obama’s success is that his campaign was not based in the Washington area. This meant there were fewer journalists around, fewer bits of gossip were picked up in bars and restaurants and those who moved to Chicago to work for the campaign were focused on getting Obama elected and not worried about protecting their own reputations among the political and journalistic elite. It all aided the ‘No drama with Obama’ mantra and meant that when he hit a rocky patch the effect wasn’t amplified by a string of stories filled with blind quotes from staffers about worries within the campaign. By contrast, when the Clinton and McCain campaigns ran into trouble there were a slew of stories about who was to blame. In both cases, the campaign post-mortems began look before either candidate had actually lost.
The Westminster Village has the same feedback effect. If the past week since I’ve been back is anything to go by, there will be lots of jittery Tory MPs fretting to journalists about the new MORI poll that shows the Tory lead down to three percent. This in turn will produce stories about Tory nervousness and dissatisfaction with the party’s economic positioning and Osborne’s performance. This will make it harder for the party to gets its message across and make the Tories look divided; and so the cycle continues.
It is crucial for the Tories that the parliamentary party holds its nerve, this is only one poll and, as Pete points out, the polls that come a week or so after the PBR will give us a far better sense of the state of play. But the leadership could allay a lot of the nervousness among backbenchers by doing a better job of explaining to them what their strategy is.
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