So far he has proven to be far better than McCain at setting up events. He has also seen better news coverage than McCain, in part because of McCain’s fumbles, and his lack of enthusiastic supporters.
Obama’s two greatest weakness are his lack of experience and his lack of support from white men. The first problem is surmountable because people see him as more knowledgeable on the economy, which is a more important issue this year than the war.
The second problem is rough, but it won’t be enough to defeat him. No one hates black people enough to let it hurt their pockets, which is why I think Obama will win.
Though I’m hoping for Obama (granted, I’ve become less and less happy with some things that he’s done in the last month or so).
In reality, I think the Republican political machine (oh, the Democrats have one too, just not as effective) will kick in and I think McCain will end up the next president. Not what I want, but what I think.
I think there’s too many racists and idiots who believe emails about Obama being a Muslim anti-Christ for him to win. But, I would have said (and likely did say) the same thing about him winning the nomination. I’m for Obama, so I hope I’m wrong again, but my pessimism has a better track record than my optimism in general.
McCain. Because of the same people that elected GWB twice. I believe there’s a conservative core of US voters that are not into polling or public debates. They will just go and pull the lever for the Republican regardless of what any of the media tries to steer them towards.
Because I only live in L.A. and not all over the U.S., I can’t read the pulse of the nation. But in SoCal, for every McCain bumper sticker there are… 20… no, 50, Obama stickers (not all on the same car).
So it’s hard not to sense blowout, but who the hell knows. That said, with the multitude of religious right-based propositions soon to be popping up on the ballots, that might be a strategy that gets far right conservatives to vote en masse (good strategy, BTW!).
From the movements in the national polls, I think that it is going to be a very close thing. And we all know, when it’s a close thing, the Republicans always manage to pull something out of a hat somehow!
On a more serious note, the large current bloc of undecided votes will, I think, harden into the “safe” choice, which for most people will not be the until-recently-unknown semi-black guy who is good at meaningless sloganeering.
Roddy
No, they’ll opt for the doddering, flip-flopper who never met a war he didn’t like.
I think Obama is the one to beat right now. McCain just seems to have very little going on right now. Obama goes to Germany and wows hundreds of thousands. McCain goes to a German restaurant and complains about the media. His big foreign trip in this campaign was to go to Canada and Mexico to extol NAFTA. Are you kidding me? Has this man no political instinct? His campaign seems to be about nothing to this point. His supporters don’t extol his virtues, but rather relay on attacking Obama and his Kool-Aid drinking supporters. McCain has to pull his shit together. Look at today’s headlines. Two McCain stories made the news; 1) he had a growth removed from his face and 2) Ben Stein says McCain needs Karl Rove in his campaign. It’s like a parody of a campaign. The electoral map does not bode well for McCain at this point so he needs to really get on track if he wants to pull this out, but it seems more like he will need Obama to screw up or get a huge wave of racists at the polls in November to win.
You haven’t said anything that persuades me that McCain will not appear to be a safer choice than a great big unknown, to that 15% of undecideds, come November. Leaving aside unacknowledged racism and those who believe all the right-wing spam about Obama being Muslim and all that; I think there are a lot of middle Americans who are still afraid of an unrepentant liberal being in the white house. We haven’t had one since Carter - Clinton certainly wasn’t one - and look how that turned out.
It is, in a sense, Obama’s race to lose, but I think McCain is being more canny than people give him credit for by laying low. Let Obama’s campaign make all the noise, it makes it that much more likely that they will make bigger and noisier mistakes.
Roddy
Where do you get the idea all the undecideds are looking to make the safer choice? And is going with what we have now the safer choice when over 70% of the people think the country is on the wrong track?
I think the bigger key to the undecideds will be if they think America is moving in the right direction in November. If not, McCain is in trouble.
And if you’re waiting for Obama to make big mistakes, well he hasn’t yet. Hillary was waiting for that to happen too.
My best prediction is that Obama will gradually pull away from McCain until the RNC which will give McCain a bump and then he will fade away. He will win the solid red states, but nothing more. But you never know.
