There’s little doubt that this is looking like a Democratic year. Obama has a number of impressive things going for him:
1) Advantage in Democratic registration. Rasmussen currently has it at 41.4 D, 31.7 R, 26.9 I…the largest gap since they began tracking party I.D. six years ago. [Nov. 04: 38.8D, 37.1 R, 24.1 I; Nov. 06 37.5 D, 31.4 R, 31.2 D. ]
2) The right track/wrong track number is 17/79. [Rasmussen]
3) Bush’s approval rating is at a new low, 31 percent. [Rasmussen]
4) The contrast between Obama’s energy & youth vs. McCain’s doddering & age is spectacular.
5) Obama’s staggering fundraising, along with Democratic fundraising in general, is killing McCain’s.
6) For all that the liberal/Left blogosphere is consumed by the question of Hillary supporters voting for Obama, there is a lot of lack of enthusiasm for McCain in many parts of the Republican party. Note: I’ll wager right now that evangelical vote for McCain is significantly lower than for Bush.
7) Democratic control of Congress will let Democrats set the agenda for votes that are ugly for McCain.
8.) Bob Barr on the Libertarian ticket is probably going to siphon off some of the Club for Growth economic voters away from McCain in protest. I figure 2-3 percent by election day. In contrast, while Nader is on the ballot, I have a hard time constructing a picture of a Democratic voter who won’t vote for Obama but would vote for Nader.
9) McCain has proven to be a lousy debater.
10) Obama is going to have a far more robust field organization than any Democrat in history.
11) The GOP brand is badly damaged. People want change and it’s difficult for McCain to position himself as a advocate for change, especially since his voting record for the past two sessions of Congress are 100 support for Bush one year, 95 percent the other.
12) Due to a combination of several of the preceding factors, the GOP campaign to date has ranged from tepid to desultory.
13) Hillary didn’t make enough of an inroad with her “experience & security” arguments through the Democratic primaries; it’s an open question as to whether McCain will have any better luck with the same pitch in the general.
In aggregate, all that suggests an Obama landslide in November.
However, there are some cautionary signs for Obama.
1) John McCain has a reputation as a maverick, a moderate, and a straight talker. All three propositions are demonstrably false. Yet all three propositions are deeply embedded in the public narrative about John McCain. If McCain manages to sustain that narrative, his appeal to moderate swing voters will be significant. Elections are often won and lost in the middle.
2) The last Democratic candidate whose base was youth, college-educated voters, and black voters was: George McGovern.
3) The last Democratic candidate who campaigned as an outsider and promised to transform Washington was: Jimmy Carter, who only narrowly edged Jerry Ford in the post-Watergate election.
4) I don’t know what’s more impressive, the fact that Obama could outspend Hillary 3-1 in Pennysylvania or that, with the spending and the momentum, he could still lose by 10 points. This suggests that having a financial advantage may not be sufficient in a close election, that there’s a certain inelastic quality to his support, a threshhold that may be difficult to push past in several key states.
5) Polling continues to indicate softness for Obama support among both white men (20 point lead McCain) and white working class women. [Note: While I don't know that it would be the best thing for Hillary or the best thing for the country, she adds a quality as VP that no other candidate does. All the others are political pygmies in comparison. ]
6) McCain leads Obama on polling on national security issues 49-41, as a better leader 43-38, and is essentially tied with Obama on values 43-42. The broad outline of McCain’s campaign is clear: in one sentence, it will boil down to, “You may not like me on all the issues but you can’t trust him.” Fear, uncertainty, and doubt are going to be the staples of the GOP campaign and their 527 allies.
7) The state-by-state electoral map isn’t as comforting as the general picture. My own analysis, based on current polls but tweaked by experience & gut feel is:
Bush to Obama states:
Virginia (13) Northern Virginia D.C. suburban vote & black voter turnout carries the day for Obama; Warner winning in a landslide helps.
Colorado (9) Obama has consistently polled well here and the bluing continues
Iowa (7) Obama’s primary field organization pays off
New Mexico (5) Obama locks up state that was narrow Kerry loss.
Kerry to McCain:
New Hampshire (4) Obama lost in New Hampshire, McCain won. McCain has a strong appeal to independents. May be a lot of ticket splitting as Shaheen handily beats Sununu in the Senate race.
Michigan (17) Today’s poll notwithstanding, tough sledding for Obama. He took his name off the primary ballot for a very good reason: he wasn’t going to do well vs. Hillary. Michigan goes against the grain in that the state is fairly soured on Gov. Granholm and here the Democratic brand is damaged goods.
Republican toss-ups held:
Florida (27) Hillary had a good chance; with Obama, it’s out of reach.
Ohio (20) A bluing state but Obama got whipped by Clinton. Hillary would have taken it. It’s going to be a contest between elevated black turnout in Cleveland and white working class defections across the state. Right now, I think it winds up going for McCain. Ohio is the most conservative of the Rust Belt states, the victories of Strickland et al notwithstanding.
Nevada (5) Not as liberal as New Mexico. I think McCain plays better here than many other places and polling currently bears that out.
Democratic held toss-ups:
Pennsylvania (21) Damn, I can’t tell you how annoyed I am that Democrats are going to have to expend resources to keep this in the Democratic column. We should prevail but this one shouldn’t even be on the boards.
Wisconsin (10) A swing state, I think Obama will do better here than Kerry did.
Minnesota (10) See Wisconsin.
Notes on some others: I think there’s some serious use of recreational pharmaceuticals by folks who think Obama can take North Carolina or Mississippi. What Obama and elevated black turnout will do is turn a lot of 20 point losses from previous years into 10 point losses this year.
So there’s my take. A lot of issues raised: philosophical, demographic, strategic, tactical. Have at it.
–Inigo Montoya
June 12, 2008 at 4:00 am
Money is the mother’s milk of politics, but it doesn’t always buy victory. Obama outspent Hillary by colossal amounts in places like Texas, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky, and it didn’t get him anywhere near the prize, at least in those latter three states. That said, I do like the fact that he plans to open offices in all 50 states. An anomalous poll or two in an unlikely state, and the Republicans will be rushing money to places where they may not really need to spend it. It’s a good strategy on Obama’s part, and I don’t think Hillary would have done it.
Given how heavily Obama outspent Hillary to fight her virtually to a draw, he is going to need the money in the fall he will get. Frankly, if Obama needs to outspend McCain 4-1 to get to 270 and not one electoral vote beyond that, my disposition will be sunny. As George W. Bush after his loss in 2000 proved, winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.
NPR observed something yesterday morning that I also have observed. Obama ran up the scoreboard in February, and then he seemed content to skate till the end. That might work in the Democratic nominating process, but it would be a disaster in the General Election. In October, the numbers sometimes have a way of crystallizing. You damn well can bet that the Republicans have a number of moves they are planning for that period that they hope will be fatal. I don’t think our nominee has the taste for blood. I am not sanguine that he will return fire. I do believe he will respond quickly, but can he deliver a fatal blow to McCain? Maybe he doesn’t need to.
Another strategy of Obama’s that I like is his emphasis on the youth vote. I believe there are young white and black voters who would never have bothered to register if Hillary had been the nominee who actually will show up at the polls in November. In fact, I am pretty sure there are some adult voters who would not have registered if Hillary had won but who will show up to vote in the fall. This might offset some of our demographic weaknesses you mentioned.
Like I say, I’ll be happy with 270.
The thing I like about what you’re doing is that the Democratic blogosphere was utterly delusional in 2004. There were many signs that we were going to lose, but we spun them into meaninglessness. I promised myself I would never fall victim again to wishful thinking in politics. This site is a step in the right direction.
June 12, 2008 at 12:30 pm
DCD, I’ve been through too many Democratic campaigns to indulge in wishful thinking. I thought Kerry had it in 2004 but when I blocked out the Electoral College it always came down to Ohio and Ohio was always very thin…I thought we were going to get it. And if the predominantly black communities had had the requisite number of working voting machines and trained staff we might have. Or maybe not. I’m not a conspiracy theory buff by nature.
I read later that one of Kerry’s operatives said that Kerry outperformed their goals in Ohio; the GOP turnout was just more extraordinary.
The danger I see to Obama is among the vast majority of voters who don’t read blogs and who may not even know the difference between Olberman and O’Reilly…but they vote in high numbers with great regularity.
I might start a poll about one thing over at MyDD: what was your defining political experience? For me, it was my first election, 1972, and the 49-state ass-kicking that Nixon gave McGovern.
McGovern…Mondale…Dukakis…I’d like to be on the giving end instead of the receiving end and there’s no better time than now. Clinton/Dole in ‘96 would have been pretty good.
June 12, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I turned 14 on November 23, 1972. I was a 13-year-old working to make George McGovern president. I would say, though, that Humphrey’s loss in 1968, when I was eight and devoted to him, was my defining moment. If I count correctly, we have lost seven of the 12 elections of my lifetime. Two of them I was too young to understand, so in a sense, we have lost seven of the 10 elections of my lifetime. I am so tired of this. I hope Barack Obama turns out to be the sharpie politician he sometimes (not always) seems to me to be.