I’m flashing on a scene in Head of State, when the early returns from the East Coast show Gilliam (the black candidate) in the lead, and all the white people on the West Coast run to the polls screaming! 
By rights, Obama should win. Americans are sick of a war with no end in sight, sick of high gas prices, sick of the erosion of civil liberties – sick of everything Republican, in short.
And yet… is it ever wise in a presidential race to bet against the old white Protestant guy?
Giuliani beat himself. Romney and Huckabee split the conservative vote, giving McCain the win. The fact that Huckabee, a dead man walking, is still racking up a lot of votes doesn’t bode well for the far right’s love of McCain.
As an anecdote, I read the comments on an ABC report about how many Republicans are not happy with their candidates. Though they are not a fair sample (Paul supporters over-represented) the general consensus seemed to be that McCain is somewhat to the left of Stalin.
I’m not sure that pro-life is going to override McCain’s support of immigration rights and his vote against the tax cut.
Remember Bob Dole, Sal? Bit of bad timing, perhaps, but it proves that the old white guy cannot always just sit back and coast.
Anyway, nearly everyone’s had good points, and I honestly can’t even find anything to debate about them (except for Martin Hyde, but I’m NOT going to hijack this). I’d just like to point out a couple of factors that haven’t been mentioned yet which are going to be big obstacles for McCain: the media and the increasing irrelevance of 9/11.
There was a time when the right owned the media. And I don’t just mean partisan shills like Fox News, I mean across the board, lock, stock, and barrel. Where was the condemnation for the PATRIOT Act? Warrentless wiretapping? Signing statements? It took a bunch of naked men before we heard a word about the Guantanamo abuses, for crying out loud. But the thing is, this isn’t blind loyalty. The media was soft on the right because it was good for them; good for ratings, good for publicity, and, oh yeah, good money. Now that the abuses are piling up (and with absolutely no end in sight), supporting the right wing isn’t so good anymore. Remember when no news magazine dared being even the slightest bit critical of the Iraq campaign? Now barely two weeks go by without a new indictment.
Sure, they’ll go to bat for McCain for a while, explain how he totally deserves the Republican nomination, but he can forget about the slavish, uncritical devotion and truly demented criteria (The candidate you’d most like to have a beer with! The candidate who doesn’t make you look dumb! The candidate who throws the best parties!) Dubya got all the time. In fact, Obama may actually have the advantage here; we hear all the time about his charisma, speaking ability, and ability to cross dividing lines (and jumping-jack squat on his Iraq voting record and lack of clear policy objectives. Can McCain win this fight? Anything’s possible, but it looks like a big no to me.
Then there’s 9/11…and make no mistake about it, Dubya would’ve had a much harder time of it without the unbelievable amount of free passes he got from that. And even though things were starting to go south in '04 in Iraq, it hadn’t reached bottom-completely-fallen-out territory yet. Well, the bottom’s fallen out, Afghanistan isn’t exact a beacon of freedom either, oil prices have shot through the roof, our international credibility is in ruins, Osama Bin Laden (remember him?) has not faced any punishment, and everyone who boycotted French’s mustard or ran a truck over Dixie Chicks CDs have been exposed as the the brainless pathetic slobbering yahoos they were. And (Martin Hyde’s diehard reassurances notwithstanding) a great many Americans have a serious problem with using a real tragey to get mired in an endless money-gobbling life-destroying quagmire with at most marginal benefits. The quick fix is over, the magic wand has run out of charges, and it’s just not possible to ride 9/11 to victory anymore. Look at how quickly Rudy Giuliani flamed out.
Y’know what, though? I don’t want McCain to go quietly. I want him to claw, scratch, bite, kick, and stomp every step of the way. I want to see a Republican who’s willing to FIGHT his opponent and EARN his victories rather than sitting on his butt and letting the sycophanthic media and handlers and radio talk show hosts and Swiftboat veterans do all the work for him. If it becomes clear that he doesn’t have a chance, I want him to go down swinging; if he has a chance, I want him to fight to the last drop of blood. I want this because I know Obama is an unproven quantity, and if he’s allowed to coast, he’ll end up just another Bill Clinton. Competition is what keeps the parties honest and makes them earn their keep. Republicans were hopelessly corrupted by having a free ride for years, and Democrats getting the same isn’t a positive development.
We’ll see…
It’s been said but I will also jump in …
An Obama blow-out.
He will have the highly energized Democratic base coming out, a larger than usual number of those who may often vote Democratic but don’t come out well in most elections, a large percentage of independent voters, and even some Obamacans.
Meanwhile McCain while be trying to tread between getting his base to come out for him and attracting independents. The result will be he’ll get neither in large numbers. Both will feel that he, of all people, is pandering and not authentic. Obama will win by over 10% of the popular vote and maybe even approach Reagan’s 1984 18% margin. I suspect that even the electoral college will be a landslide, although Reagan’s record will stand there.
My only insecurity is that I may be underestimating the magnitude of the win.
Just because the evangelicals and hard-core conservatives don’t like McCain, that does not mean they’ll vote for Obama, or even stay home on voting day. They’ll hold their noses and vote McCain.
And you know that’s not true. We already know McCain (1) is pro-war; (2) conservative; (3) way too old; (4) hotheaded and ill-tempered; (5) cheated on his first wife with his second; (6) might have had an affair with a lobbyist but probably not – and that’s it. That’s all the mud that sticks. Anything else would have come out by now. Otherwise, even his opponents respect him. Nothing that happens between now and November is going to bring him down to Bush’s level in our eyes.
This could get interesting.
Not all of them. Some of them, maybe even most of them, but not all. And those people (the base) don’t just provide votes–they staff the phone banks, knock on doors, drive the GOTV vans, cajole their friends to vote, etc.
If your “base” is 25% of voters, and 10% of them don’t bother to come out to vote, that 2.5% is almost GWB’s whole margin of victory in 2004. It makes a difference.
Perhaps you would care to withdraw the statement.
Regards,
Shodan
I think the Democrats do not understand the depth of disgust the voters are feeling for the war and the lack of action by them. They did not understand why they were put in 2 years ago. However the warmongering,budget busters did not figure out how to temper anger. Therefore the repubs will get slapped again.
of course since Brain Glutton was responding to your prediction of the future (if McCain does this, then Obama/supporters will do that), don’t know that shouldn’t be seen as a “I don’t agree” vs. ‘you know that’s not true’. BG should have used that, or perhaps “how can you possibly claim that you know the future?”
Much of political “debate” comes down to the “oh yea” version at some point. In the course of human events it’d be a very unlikely occurance that two different politicians would have exactly the same set of events happen so we could actually tell what ‘the other side’ would do if their guy (generic version of the word, inclusive of all genders) did the same thing.
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Moderator’s Note: Of course you don’t know he knows that’s not true. (Unless you’re psychic.) So why the need to speculate on what’s inside his head?
Democrats don’t want Iraq to fail. Democrats, and probably many Republicans, view Iraq as a dismal failure. The war was justified with inaccurate intelligence and a flawed, reckless belief in U.S. military supremacy as a means to accomplish Bush’s foreign policy. The invasion of Iraq represents a fundamental failure in the process of American government and casts doubt on the competence of our elected officials. The war has been used as a means for the president to gain unprecedented executive power, slash government spending on social programs, and downsize government to a skeleton.
I think Obama will win easily if he stays on message about ending the occupation, healthcare, and the numerous social needs of the country.