Such as can be found in this excellent post by Sam Stone in one of the other Hillary/Obama threads. It is perhaps the best written and most informative run-through of a candidate’s positions and the consequences thereof that I’ve ever read. I think even Obama supporters would find it an interesting (and perhaps surprising) read. I know some of it came as a surprise to me.
Yeah, I read that post. And I see nothing in it that won’t appeal to the majority of the voters in November. The U.S. is long overdue for some kind – any kind – of “industrial policy,” and don’t think the people don’t know it.
I attribute the Democratic turnout to be the result of a combination of anti-Hillaryism combined with Obama optimism. There is passion, excitement and a fair amount of Hillary-hate driving Democrats to the polls in these primaries. Once the air has cleared though, and the question becomes whose policies and governing philosophy are going to govern our lives, a different set of dynamics will come into play, and people are going to vote for the candidate that most closely represents their idea of how the country should be run.
I happen to like Obama quite a lot. I think he is exciting and inspirational and honest, and a lot of other good things, too. Further, I don’t care for McCain much at all. But guess who I’ll be voting for anyway? The guy who hews most closely to my political philosophy…and unfortunately this time that’s McCain. I think most other conservatives will feel the same way, especially once Obama’s record becomes more widely known.
I could be wrong, of course. It all depends on whether the voting public wants change for its own sake or whether it will come down on the side of pragmatic self-interest. We’ll see.
Well, like I said…we’ll see.
I think you’re in for a big surprise come November.
I might be…and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be all that bothered by it (if Obama wins, that is; not Hillary) if I am. I feel at least that Obama is an honest and scrupulous man and one who would take seriously his role as president of all the people, not just the Democrats.
I suspect also that Congress and public sentiment would do a fair job of keeping things from getting too far out of hand…and I must admit a certain part of me is kind of curious as to just what kind of job he might do.
So, even though IMO he isn’t likely to win in the fall, I won’t be crushed if he does.
I skimmed Sam Stone’s post referenced above. I think he badly misread the American electorate. Citing things like net neutrality and subsidies for renewable energy will not persuade people that Obama is a leftist on the economy.
By most polls, a vast majority of Americans prefer net neutrality. No sane Republican would raise such an issue in the general.
I think the same goes for subsidies for renewable energy. Most people know that we heavily subsidize the oil industry, and are fine with us switching that to clean energy. Obama’s plan, which involves a privately-managed government-funded venture capital fund, might even be too conservative for many Democrats.
On trade, Obama signed the Peru agreement, which I think finds common ground on trade. He can point to that as sensible trade policy
The list goes on… no one but a small fringe thinks that investing in rural wi-fi or cracking down on predatory lenders is tantamount to socialism. My guess is that if you poll any of these issues you get 60%+ support for every one. Far from being liabilities, I think they are clearly assets.
It’s not just a matter of how badly W has screwed things up or how uninspiring is McCain. Your political philosophy is now that of a minority of Americans – a large, vocal, well-organized, well-funded minority, but a minority nonetheless, and doomed to decline slowly but steadily in every election cycle henceforth.
I don’t know about the every, BG. “Cycle” has more than one meaning, you know, and I think it would be rash to make any pronouncements to the effect that the age of the political cycle is ended.
Maybe, maybe not. I’m not as willing as you are to accept the accuracy of the cite you posted. People don’t always tell the truth when their side is on the ropes for fear of guilt by association, and besides, people who are currently undecided or inclined to go with Obama may well change their minds in the run-up to the election.
On the other hand, McCain is an uninspiring candidate and perhaps too few conservatives will be motivated to get out and vote for him.
Again, I can only say that we’ll just have to wait and see.
But they’re impuuuuuuuuuuure! Surely the voters will see that before it’s too late!
The cite isn’t just about one particular candidate or election, it’s about core values, as trending over the past 20 years.
A bunch of fancy scientific-looking polls suggest otherwise.
I’m not sure that that’s indicative of anything. Hillary and Obama were virtually tied, while McCain had more or less secured the GOP nomination. Given that Virginia’s is an open primary and Republicans had less motivation to come to the polls, I think that it would have to be expected that the Democratic primary had more activity. There very well may be more support for the Democrats this time around, but the number of people who participated today is not a good way to measure that.
I can just see Al Gore snickering over that.
But my two cents , , this election cycle reminds me of two boxers in a ring that expect to take a dive, without knowing the other is planning the same thing. Neither side looks like they are fielding their A-teams.
Declan
So the current trend will continue indefinitely? As a liberal, I’d be happy if that were true, but I don’t see the evidence. Looking at the link you posted, in a lot of those indicators the Democrats seem to have done little more than regained the ground they lost in the early '90s.
In terms of “party identification”, it looks like the Democrats have made some sizable gains in recent years, but how much of that is just due to the extreme unpopularity of the current president? The summary even comments that it’s not so much a case of increasing support for the Democrats as it is dwindling support for the Republicans.
I am not sticking a fork in Hillary, but am certainly sharpening it or whatever action you take to prime a fork for sticking.
Obama put the pedal to the floor right as she started really stumbling. Hillary’s campaign is falling apart at the absolute worst moment for her, and after today she can no longer attribute Obama’s success to black voters or caucuses. Unless she gets Obama to throw a punch at her in a debate or something, there’s very little she can do to claim the sweeping victories she’ll need in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania to keep afloat.
Sure, as gravitycrash so aptly put it, Obama has to avoid stepping on his dick, but my theory is that if he doesn’t (and if he continues to campaign as he has been doing), Clinton will find it impossible to win Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.
The key thing is that Obama has cracked Clinton’s aura of inevitability, and as important, put to rest any doubts that people would vote for a young, mixed-race guy with a funny name who had only served four years in the Senate. Clinton’s campaign has run on the strength of her connection with the Democratic establishment, and she has pushed that as far as it can go. Were she winning, she could argue (quietly) that the party (specifically, the superdelegates) needs to get behind her now to avoid a bitter and decisive internecine fight up to and into the convention. Now she can’t, and the uncommitted superdelegates won’t.
I only caught a snippet of Obama’s speech after the results came in (I was watching the much more important American Idol primaries), but in the chunk I caught, he was stumping against McCain, and essentially ignoring Clinton (except, perhaps, to the extent that his criticism of McCain’s support of the war – which he pointed out that he was unwaveringly against from the beginning – could be considered a criticism of Clinton). If he positions himself as the guy to beat McCain, and refuses to get down and dirty with Clinton, he’ll do very well, particularly if she starts to get into shrill attack mode.
CNN has analyzed that even if Obama wins the remaining states by healthy margins (or Clinton does, for that matter), he won’t have enough pledged delegates to guaranty a win. However, I think that well before that happens, the superdelegates will do what they were supposed to do, act together to avoid an ugly floor fight. I think that we’ll start to see a few of the Clinton-supporting superdelegates crack this week (and note that the media’s superdelegate counts are based on polling them on their preferences, not who they’ve emphatically committed to). Unless Clinton pulls off some convincing wins in her last stand states (which she won’t), the remaining superdelegates will overwhelmingly break for Obama, which should put him over the top, or preferably convince her to drop out.
Still, in the end, the most important thing from tonight’s results was that Obama appears to have broken into all of the demographic categories Clinton was relying on. If she can’t count on the votes of strong majorities of women, older voters and Hispanics (which she didn’t get here), she has no chance.
She could try crying again. How many people would be surprised if she pulled that one?