Dukakis campaign senses a `surge' -- Nov 6, 1988

[davepc]

Chicago Sun-Times
Nov 6, 1988

Michael S. Dukakis and his staff, jetting coast-to-coast in the campaign windup before Tuesday's presidential election, are not behaving like losers.

The Democratic candidate's entourage appears chipper, sometimes even jovial, with senior adviser Paul Brountas puffing happily on a cigar while joking with reporters.

Dukakis cheerfully talks again and again of a Trumanesque upset.

Do they know something the pollsters and pundits don't?

Or have they resigned themselves to losing with grace and good humor? In punching harder at Vice President George Bush, did Dukakis decide to go down swinging?

In the Dukakis campaign's final week, the official watchword is "surge."

...

[camera obscura]

1. aww....

I know your point... but it's kind of sad.

If only he had won, Lee Atwater could have crawled into a hole somewhere, and Poppy Bush could go back to New England.

[regnaD kciN]

8. True...

Just think -- if Dukakis had won, that would have been the end of the Bush family in national politics. :-(

[LeftishBrit]

9. Agree

I was sad when I heard he lost (even though it seemed obvious he would by that stage) and I still wish he'd won.

[scheming daemons]

2. I worked on that campaign and remember it well....

McCain's campaign has a very Dukakis-esque feel to it in this final week.


Whenever a candidate mentions "Dewey Defeats Truman" from 1948, you can turn out the lights... they're done.

[davepc]

3. going through some of the old stories its as if you just change the names and the story is the same

I was still in elementary school then, I don't have a good perspective on how it all played out at the time going off memory.

[Drunken Irishman]

4. I posted something similar last week.

Where Bush Senior kept saying, "we're gonna win!". What do people expect losing campaigns to do, say the internals are painting a bad picture? Of course not!

[David__77]

5. I know, but sometimes it sounds so ridiculous.

Here in CA, Dan Lungren got blown out of the water by 20 points for governor in 1998. It was "supposed to be" a close race, so the media kept hyping it as such, despite the polls. Lungren's people kept speaking of "surge" and "inaccurate polls," and "rapidly closing internals..." So sad...

[bushisanidiot]

7. Yep, it's a definite sign of desperate hope beyond hope.

the second are ticking down in the 4th quarter and the scoreboard doesn't show any possible way to make up the point gap.. yet the repukes keep trying to calculate a way to win. It's not there.

4 MORE DAYS!!!

[SoxFan]

6. Dukakis actually did get a small surge at the end

A fair amount of blue collar Democrats "came home" during the last week, but nowhere near enough to put the race in play.

I think McCain is probably benefitting slightly from something similar. Some lifelong Republicans who aren't wild about McCain or Gidget can't bring themselves to vote for Obama. They're heading home, but there just aren't enough of them to make a real difference at this point.