What are McCain's chances

Great Debates
21

McCain has one serious advantage, and he ought to be ashamed of it. A large proportion of Obama voters live in disadvantaged districts, polling wise. They’re going to have to put in some serious time in line in order to vote, a problem their more advantaged fellow citizens do not have to face. Our voting “system” favors the comfortable, and that favors McCain.

That, and the much vaunted “youth vote” could flake out again, as it has before.

Arrayed against this are intangibles such as enthusiasm, which is Obama’s strong suit but impossible to measure. My gut is that this enthusiasm is huge, and we’re looking at a full-scale massacree, a prospect I face with calm aplomb.

22

If anything I think the 538 numbers overestimate McCain’s chances. To the best of my knowledge, his numbers are not taking into account the demographics of early voting where they are known, and while they may not be an accurate predictor of how people will vote on Nov 4, the inflated black turnout in particular certainly seems to indicate that McCain will at least need to perform better on Nov 4 than polls alone would indicate in order to win states like Georgia, because there’s already an imbalance in Obama’s favor locked into the voting.

If you applied the same critical examination to your own side, you’d find that rhetoric that doesn’t quite match reality is a common refrain. Exhibit A from McCain is his insistence that he’ll eliminate the federal deficit by eliminating earmarks while cutting taxes, which is simply not credible. The fact is that most people don’t have the time or will to do a lot of deep thinking about the presidential campaign, and so the way each side presents itself is a huge part of how voters make their decisions. To be selectively offended that the other side caters to that reality is intellectually dishonest.

23

I don’t worry too much about the die hard right wingers here. Since they’ll follow the goosestep of the party line no matter how silly it is, why would I want to bother? Dishonesty is the currency they use. They sold Iraq to us on it.

24

Shit, I completely forgot about all the Marxism! I can’t even count the number of times Obama has referenced “the dictatorship of the proletariat” on the stump! Good catch, Clothahump!

25

Drudge is now screaming McCain is in the lead. I don’t want it to be true but I have a terrible feeling “fruit fly” Palin is going to be the next VP. I just have this vision of Limbaugh and Hannity, “see I told you so all the elite and moderates were wrong, the real Americans prevailed”. People supporting Obama have been too confident, I hope I’m wrong but I think when it comes down to the wire the majority are not going to vote form a liberal black man for president.

26

As mentioned in a different thread, Drudge is most likely pulling that lead out of his ass.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/latestpolls/index.html

27

Right now it is 4th down with 20 to go. McCain is down by two on his own 40 yard line with 3 seconds to go and has no time outs. He needs to get 30 yards to get his kicker in range, he needs the Obama team to commit a foul to stop the clock, and then he needs a really good kick from his kicker who evidently just broke her leg in a wardrobe malfunction. In short barring a miracle that will be discussed for decades to come… it aint happening.

Thank you, Bartman. Shouldn’t be rocket science, but I’m having an awfully hard time here wrapping my head around his chances. This analogy helped me a lot.
:slight_smile:

28

:rolleyes: He doesn’t. If anything, he is too much of an economic libertarian; see here. Even Bill Kristol, on The Daily Show Thursday, admitted he expects Obama to be an ordinary centrist-liberal president.

29

Don’t forget the “empty suit” business. If all we had to base our opinions on were the speeches, the interviews, the debates, and the interactions with ordinary citizens, we might think that Obama is the candidate with greater intelligence and deeper understanding of the issues. Thank goodness we have Clothahump’s parrotlike repetition of talking points to keep us straight.

30

It’s funny that Republicans whine (and whine and whine) that liberals are “elitists” for making such statements, and when the election isn’t going their way, they suddenly “discover” that the American voting populace is stupid.

The fact is that Republicans are just as “elitist” and “snobbish” towards their political opponents and the American voting populace in general, but
a) they haven’t had the chance/desire to express their disdain for the average voter in recent years, because they were winning elections
b) the “elitist” label has successfully stuck onto liberals, because, in fact the average voter is indeed too stupid to see that both sides are equal offenders.

31

By my calculations, based on state poll results from electoral-vote.com, Obama has, at least a 97% chance of winning.

FYI, below are my calculations for all previous dates, going back to the beginning of September. I use a simpler method than the one on fivethiryeight.com, but I have found over the past several weeks that our estimates are close to each other.

You can see that things looked pretty bad for Obama after the Republican National Convention and the selection of Sarah Palin (with the worst date being around mid-September), and then started picking up again in late September (after the Katie Couric interviews)


Probability of an Obama win:

    Date  | Conservative |   Moderate  |  Aggressive 
          |   Estimate   |   Estimate  |   Estimate 
   ----------------------------------------------------
    Nov01 |     97.1%    |    99.2%    |    100.0%
    Oct30 |     97.1%    |    99.2%    |    100.0%
    Oct28 |     98.1%    |    99.3%    |    100.0%
    Oct26 |     96.8%    |    99.2%    |    100.0%
    Oct24 |     97.0%    |    99.2%    |    100.0%
    Oct22 |     95.1%    |    98.8%    |    99.9%
    Oct20 |     93.7%    |    99.1%    |    100.0%
    Oct18 |     92.6%    |    98.3%    |    99.8%
    Oct16 |     82.9%    |    96.9%    |    99.8%
    Oct14 |     77.6%    |    94.9%    |    99.7%
    Oct12 |     74.6%    |    92.6%    |    99.6%
    Oct10 |     74.1%    |    91.9%    |    99.4%
    Oct08 |     78.0%    |    91.7%    |    98.4%
    Oct06 |     71.1%    |    85.5%    |    95.9%
    Oct04 |     69.9%    |    83.0%    |    92.2%
    Oct02 |     67.6%    |    82.1%    |    93.0%
    Sep30 |     50.5%    |    63.2%    |    84.2%
    Sep28 |     49.1%    |    63.6%    |    82.1%
    Sep26 |     49.9%    |    66.9%    |    84.9%
    Sep24 |     41.2%    |    57.1%    |    73.1%
    Sep22 |     35.0%    |    50.7%    |    65.5%
    Sep20 |     33.3%    |    47.1%    |    64.2%
    Sep18 |     29.4%    |    37.2%    |    43.6%
    Sep16 |     32.7%    |    36.9%    |    30.4%
    Sep14 |     33.9%    |    40.7%    |    45.3%
    Sep12 |     36.9%    |    46.6%    |    55.5%
    Sep10 |     43.2%    |    54.6%    |    65.0%
    Sep08 |     50.2%    |    65.5%    |    84.9%
    Sep06 |     50.2%    |    65.5%    |    84.9%
    Sep04 |     51.1%    |    66.3%    |    84.7%
    Sep02 |     48.3%    |    61.0%    |    79.1%
32

It’s really hard to live my daily life with my fingers crossed. Thank heaven it’s only a couple more days!!!

33

I can’t imagine what it must be like for non-Americans. I almost can’t bear the tension of waiting to find out, but at least I got a vote!

34

Not even that.

Really, calling Obama a Marxist is staggeringly feeble. I’m trying to restrain my language since this isn’t the Pit, but …

Really. Clothahump, get a grip. If you have a real argument, let’s hear it.

Others mentioned a great point: how can anyone who has organized such a fantastic campaign and faced such relentless criticism in the press with equanimity be an “empty suit.”

35

Oh, come on. There is not a shred on evidence in that entire article that Obama is an “economic libertarian.” And that’s coming from a columnist who makes you look like Ayn Rand.

36

Do you know what Marxim means?

37

I would guess he doesn’t. Just a guess, but I suspect I’m right.

I think some people think thusly: it’s not Marxism when the government gives Rich Capitalists almost a trillion dollars but it’s Marxism when a presidential candidate talks about making things better for, you know, poor people.

But then, a discouraging thought pops into my poor old grey head: Obama voted for the bailout, too.

So now, with my head going wugga wugga, I withdraw.
(But I’m still an Obama fangirl.)

38

His leading economic advisors as Chicago-School, Friedrich von Hayek’s and Milton Friedman’s school of thought in economics. That’s what the article is about.

39

It’s a Communist men’s magazine.

40

It’s a meme propagating virally throughout cyberspace nevertheless.