The oldest trick in the book

American voters will make history in November. For the first time, we will elect an African-American president, a woman president, or a man older than 70 to begin his first term in the White House. Perhaps this year more than any other, people are voting not necessarily on policy but on identity – which candidate they can personally identify with since now there will be more demographic representations scattering the ballot.

Democrats like me this year can only hope that now that the primaries have narrowed the party’s field to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the race so far has been a representation of what the general election will look like. Voters’ battle cry in the Democratic primaries has been out with the old, in with the new. Gone from the race are all the white males representing the demographic that has dominated American leadership since the birth of the country. And with the novel candidates Clinton and Obama on the ballot, more people are coming to the polls, the media is paying more attention and voter enthusiasm has peaked.

Poor John Edwards. As Paul Krugman pointed out in a New York Times column that brought tears to the eyes of my friend who worked on his campaign, Edwards spawned many of the dominant ideas of this Democratic campaign, ideas that both Clinton and Obama have adopted. “Mr. Edwards, far more than is usual in modern politics, ran a campaign based on ideas,” Krugman wrote. “And even as his personal quest for the White House faltered, his ideas triumphed: both candidates left standing are, to a large extent, running on the platform Mr. Edwards built.” Alas, Edwards, part of the old, never caught fire in the way of the two remaining candidates.

With the face-off in November coming down to a choice between two candidates who present something the American people have never before had in a president, much of the decision will come down to how well voters can adapt to the newness (or oldness, in the case of the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain), and which change they have an easier time choosing.

On the surface it may look like McCain could in the general election go the way of the white male rivals who challenged Clinton and Obama in the primaries. And, unlike those challengers, McCain isn’t just more of the old – he is old, too old. In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, more than 25 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for McCain because of his age. That’s double the number of people who said they would not vote for Obama because of his race or Clinton because of her gender. And when a Pew poll asked people to describe each of the three candidates in one word, the one that came out on top for McCain was “old.” Add to that an attack ad repeating the line “maybe 100 years” of troops in Iraq, and it appears McCain is toast.

But in a campaign that, so far, has often been unpredictable, we must realize other possibilities abound. One scenario is the manifestation a new version of the so-called Bradley effect, morphed this year to adjust to the unprecedented situation. The traditional Bradley effect refers to when pre-election poll respondents are too embarrassed to admit they would not vote for a minority candidate, so they say they will, which inflates the results. And then, when they are in the privacy of poll booths, they vote for the white candidate, who wins by seemingly astonishing numbers. The term originated when longtime Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American, in 1982 ran against, and lost to, a white man for governor after polling indicated Bradley would win by a significant margin.

This year, polls so far predict McCain is at a disadvantage because of his age. But then again, it is less taboo to say you won’t vote for a candidate because he is too old than to say you won’t vote for someone because they are African-American or female. So, someone who tells a pollster he or she is readily adapting to the increasing diversity of American rulers may just end up voting for McCain or staying home on election day, when they would otherwise be out voting for a Democratic candidate.

My friend Mark Eisen, who for almost a year now has been a volunteer for the McCain campaign, liked how this could help his candidate with pre-election strategy.
“Everyone who would or would not vote for him is out there,” he told me over Starbucks recently, adding that he thinks many Clinton and Obama defectors will be hidden.

Of course this confirmation from one student to another doesn’t amount to much more than relatively inexperienced speculation, but it presents a scary possible reality for our country. The Bradley effect is not that something only lurks in the dark history of our country – it is still alive today. If we see McCain in November with Clinton-in-New-Hampshire-like before and after percentages, we must consider what kind of progress we are making as a nation.