Fergus Finlay: No room for panic as election finish line comes into focus
Of The The Wisdom, Or Maybe Are It Has Now Appears, December In It Conventional Won Be Even End The All First Week The Signs That Will November Day
Two elections coming up now, one here, the other across the Atlantic. At first glance it seems unlikely that our own will change much, if anything. The other might change the history of the world.
For the last couple of weeks I’ve argued here that if you want to win an election, you need to ignore conventional wisdom. It’s often said the only weapon a Taoiseach has is the opportunity to take everyone by surprise. Actually there’s another, the ability to control the necessary preparations, and to frame the election, as much as possible, on your own terms.
A fortnight ago I argued that it would be possible for the government to construct an election appeal around the completion of a full term, and to use the budget to pave the way for good news in the new year. Last week I argued that it was now clear the budget had no real surprises in it. I quoted Ged Nash of Labour comparing it to one of those meals where you’re hungry again in an hour or so. On that basis, I said, you’re much better to go quickly, before the hunger pangs set in.
Conventional wisdom, it appears, has won the day. All the signs now are that it will be the end of November or maybe even the first week in December. They’ve been such a slave to conventional wisdom that every opposition candidate and party ought to be able to hit the ground running. While at the same time it’s far from clear that Fine Gael have a full slate of recognisable candidates. I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of FG printers burning midnight oil and producing posters and leaflets whose costs will be doubled by overtime rates.
Scroll for results in your area
In one respect, conventional wisdom has served the governing parties well. In the last election Sinn Féin beat them all into a cocked hat. Two or three weeks ago it looked as if Sinn Féin had a battle on its hand to hold onto the astonishing vote it got in 2020. Now, only a fortnight later, it’s in full blown crisis.
And it looks like a crisis that has no ending because there is a complete vacuum of transparency around it. The vacuum has, of course, been filled by endless rumour-mongering and gossip, a lot of it salacious. It’s hard to imagine that the truth could be worse than the gossip, but there you are. Nobody, it seems, is willing to let the truth be seen or heard.
Among other departures, two of its TDs are gone from the party. One of them, Brian Stanley, is well-known. The other I’ve only ever heard of once before. Patricia Ryan made the news a couple of weeks ago when she resigned. The only other time she ever featured in news bulletins was when she went away on holidays during the 2020 election. And still topped the poll.
Her election then was an example of an occasional political phenomenon. The Sinn Féin brand was so strong it was able to elect a slew of previously (highly) unsuccessful candidates. None of them, I think it’s fair to say, have set the Dáil or the public alight since then. If you don’t believe me, put your hands up and tell me what the following people look like and what constituency they represent (because they’re all Sinn Féin poll toppers): Johnny Guirke, Sorca Clarke, Darren O’Rourke, Claire Kerrane, Johnny Mythen, or Ruairí Ó Murchú.
I’ll write a lot more about our election as it goes on. The other one, though, is coming up like a train. And my goodness does it matter.
I’ve been involved in elections and referendums all my life, sometimes professionally, sometimes as a spear carrier. They all follow an identical pattern. Flat out, ticking over, blind panic.
Yes, three phases. In the beginning there aren’t enough hours in the day. You work the round of the clock making sure that core policy is in place, that all the material your leader and your candidates need is ready, your candidates are primed and your messages are understood, your posters are up, your intelligence is as good as it can be, your messages are solid, and your lines of communication with all relevant media are sound. Getting all that right is a source of stress.
Then there’s the ticking over phase. Everything you’ve tried to put in place seems to be working as well as it can. You know the targets you’re aiming at and you seem to be hitting them. Your best laid plans are working out as well as possible.
Then there’s the last phase. Pure, unadulterated, panic. The media that was favourable has suddenly turned. What’s going on? You decide you’re not cutting through, or what was working suddenly isn’t, or you’re going to fall just a tiny bit short. That’s the moment political campaigns do stupid things. They make a hysterical speech, offer a promise they didn’t need to make that will haunt them for years, launch an attack that blows up in their faces.
The most stupid thing they do is make the panic visible.
That’s what’s happening to the Democrats now. They’re in that moment where (without any evidence at all) they feel they’ve done something wrong. They’re believing their opponents’ spin. The Republicans are pretending supreme confidence. The Democrats are smelling of fear. Boy do they need to get a grip.
After the Trump/Harris debate I wrote here that Kamala Harris had nailed Trump to his electoral ceiling — I said it was 47% (he got 46.8% the last time). Every “poll of polls” I’ve seen since, right up to now, reveals that nothing has changed. Kamala Harris will win the popular vote in the US by at least 5 million votes, and probably more.
But will she win the electoral college? The Democrats know exactly what they have to do. They have to win Pennsylvania and one more of the so-called swing states — two for comfort. And I absolutely believe they will do that.
It may be that they believe they have to project an air of panic to galvanise their voters in those swing states. That’s stupid. Panic demoralises supporters and voters. It doesn’t motivate one last big push, it gets in the way. All the American newspapers are suggesting a stalled Harris campaign, although not one of them has offered a shred of evidence. Even if the campaign itself has any evidence of a stall, the last thing they should be doing is projecting a loss of confidence.
If a campaign requires 1,000 units of energy, the last two weeks is when you need 900 of them. When you see the line, you run faster and harder. They’re running against a dangerous fool who’s getting worse by the day, whose actions and language get more and more vile. That’s why only one message is acceptable to Democrats. We have this. We’re going to do this. We will not, under any circumstances, let an evil man take the Presidency of the free world.