There’s a lot of Hillary bashing on this board. But the real question is Who has a better chance to beat McCain ? I’m a democrat and I want the dems to win. I think Clinton is the one to beat McCain. Obama will meet more opposition IMHO.
There is one thing guaranteed to get out the Republican vote like nothing anyone’s seen since Reagan, and that is Hillary Clinton. Evangelicals and other Republican subgroups who are waffling because of McCain and who most likely just wouldn’t vote if Obama were his opponent will be lining up at the polls hours before they open to vote against her.
Have you looked at the national polls? They’ve consistently shown Hillary losing to McCain and Obama beating him. Granted, things can change during the campaign, but this has held true for a considerable amount of time.
I really don’t understand this sentiment. Why would Republicans do this? Is Hillary going to kill their children?
Because they like her even less than independents do, which is to say, not much.
I think either of them will beat McCain…but I think Obama is the stronger candidate. Most polls show him beating any of the Republicans (including McCain) by pretty large margins. Hillary on the other hand is shown either barely beating him or in pretty much a dead heat.
One must take polls with a very large grain of salt (I seem to recall polls showing Kerry would trounce Bush, for instance)…but it looks to me as if Obama should be your guy.
(As I said however I don’t think it’s really an issue. IMHO McCain is not going to get the fervent support of the right wing. Oh, they won’t vote for Obama/Hillary…but they won’t be full of energy and fervor, getting out there and pumping up the troops to get out the vote. I think many of them will hold their nose and vote for McCain or simply stay home and beat the servants…but they won’t be as energized as they have been in the past. Hillary/Obama WILL pretty much get, for the first time in a LONG time, a unified Democrat party voting for them en mass, with IMHO the full support of the left).
-XT
A lot of people hate her. HATE. It borders on the pathological.
If someone they’re unenthusiastic about (McCain) is running against someone they don’t find any more offensive than most Democrats (Obama), then I can see a certain percentage of the GOP staying home.
But put McCain up against Hillary, and it will galvanize that same percentage in a way that could prove troublesome in some key states.
I’m interested to hear why the OP thinks Hillary can beat McCain, since polling, past performance, and (IMHO) simply common sense suggests the exact opposite. Obama is less polarizing, more charismatic, attracts more independents, and has fewer skeletons in the closet. Other than the “experience thing”, what exactly does “more opposition” constitute?
I understand that they dislike her with a passion. Why? Did she raise their taxes? Is she going to outlaw violent video games? Her husband not take this country into debt enough?
I don’t understand it, but I know it exists. Walk into a blue collar bar in Texas. Bring up the subject of Hillary Clinton. You’ll still hear people spewing hatred towards her like she was Satan herself.
Not meaning to be insulting, but did you live through the 90s? Right-wing talk radio and Fox News spent most of that decade (or the last half, for Fox News)telling lies and spinning half-truths about her and her husband, lies that are beyond ridiculous. The fact that there are still people who believe either Clinton is a liberal shows just how much of the talk radio pablum people will believe and cling to. The Republican Noise Machine was more than happy to pitch slime at any Clinton or Clinton ally and the folks who listen to Rush, Fox News, Hannity, O’Reilly or any of them were more than happy to lap it up.
It’s entirely possible that there’s been more absolute crap talked and reported about the Clintons than any other American politician in the last 50 years.
Apparently, they have changed:
Looks pretty close. Of course you have to look at state-by-state results and do the EC calculation, but this is different from the numbers I saw just a few weeks ago. If you can’t get that link to work for you (SJ Mercury News), just go to the LA Times site and look up that headline.
Rather than hijack the thread, check out this and this and this , just the first few I found.
It’s been covered over and over, yet some people still seem to think it’s just because she’s a woman. Put Condoleezza Rice up and see if the horrible, racist, sexist, right wingers rally against her. It’s not about the chromosomes, it’s about the person.
Your link isn’t working for me, but this meta-poll site is. It examines polls from the last week (ending 2/25/08) and finds Obama with a 3.5% edge over McCain, whereas McCain has a 1.5% edge over Clinton.
(I just looked the article up at this link, and you’re right about this one poll; it appears to be something of an outlyer.)
Daniel
Yeah, the link doesn’t work directly. That’s surprising…I remember the polls a couple weeks ago saying that Obama beat McCain pretty easily and Hillary was either even or a touch less (but within the level of error). Wonder why it changed?
(Not that I believe polls like this…I take them with a mountain of salt. I just don’t see the right wing getting behind McCain fully…while they pretty much split the middle and the left wing REALLY gets behind Obama or even Hillary).
-XT
What’s interesting is the wild variation in polling results on the head-to-head matchup between Obama and McCain. Over the past few days, one poll has Obama up by 12%, one has him up by 10%, one has McCain up by 2%, one has McCain up by 1%. That’s some pretty broad variance.
Are pollsters using new methods to reach cell phone users? Or are some pollsters missing those voters?
I note that Obama has out-performed his polling in many of the primaries.
It might also be that people, this early in the process, are responding to the news of the moment. McCain had a big “rally 'round the NYT victim” moment last week.
Going by this map, , I see 236 EVs for Obama and 189 EVs for McCain that may not be in play. I can’t imagine MA and its 12 votes going McCain’s way. That makes 248. I think his chances are good in NM and OR for 12 votes, making 260. That would mean McCain would need to run the table in WI, MO, OH, PA, and FL to win.
If it was Hillary, I don’t see any of the swing states going to her (except MA) and she might lose some states now leaning to Obama (VA, IA, CO) I just can’t see her holding on to the blue states as well as Obama or flipping any red states at all.
The way Obama runs his ENTIRE campaign is being brought up in college and university political science classrooms across the country. Why you ask? Because he is achieving something thus far unseen in a democratic primary and general election. His ground organization, and ability to start-up grass-roots campaign offices across the country is second to non. He is someone who can inspire, and then get other people using his name to inspire others. He’s sort of like a happy virus[sup]tm[/sup] of political candidates.
I have a good friend who is a professor at Brown University in Providence and he has been talking about Obama’s political campaign and is actually considering co-writing a book about the man and his political chronicles. I’m toying with getting in on the action and co-authoring a chapter myself.
The point is, the man is organized beyond a margin usually seen in campaigns, he has an uncanny knack for picking the right people to get on his team, and as an extra added bonus is easy on the ears when listening to him.
I see Obama beating McCain by a large margin - it won’t be a nailbiter.
There’s more than one Hillary Clinton out there. There’s the actual person. There’s the image her supporters have. And there’s the image her opponents have. Heck, there’s probably more than just that - the image that Obama supporters have of Clinton is different than the one McCain supporters have of her.
But the point is that there are people who will vote based more on their views of who the candidates are than their actual identities. And there are certainly people who hate and fear their imagined version of Hillary Clinton and will vote against her because of it.
It’s like first love. Young people assume that because it’s the first time they’ve felt emotions like this it must mean it’s the first time in history that emotions like this have been felt. No way could something this amazing be just another example of something common place.
But the reality is that there’s nothing new about Obama’s campaign. I’ve seen similar movements over politicians like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Robert Kennedy, Howard Dean, John Anderson, Mo Udall, Colin Powell, Jesse Ventura, Ross Perot, Jack Ryan, Matt Santos - the idea that this guy is different; that there’s never been anybody like him running for office before and he’s going to fix everything when we put the crown upon his head.