I live in a swing state and it’s not just the independants who are going Democratic, it’s the Republicans themselves. Bush has so poisoned the well that it is highly likely he’s drowned the party, at least in Colorado. If these Republican candidates keep running for the war, their support continues to dwindle. The only issue that can swing Republicans and independants here is illegal immigration, and Tom Tancredo ain’t getting the nomination. Or maybe if Clinton gets the Dem nomination, but I’m not even sure about that anymore.
All the Dems have to do is run against Bush, whoever the Pubs nominate. The question should be, ‘Do you want four more years of Republican administration in the White House like what we’ve had under Bush? Then vote for _____?’
The answer from the American people will be “NO! For God’s sake NOOOOOOOOOO!!!”
Of course, the simplicity and obviousness of this attack, and it’s near certainty of success, does not mean the Dems will have the smarts to use it.
Definitely true. I’m not entirely sold on Hillary being unelectable though. In fact aside from Ron Paul and Kucinich I’m not sold on any of them being unelectable. History shows it’s dangerous (well, foolish) to act as though anything is set in stone, or even really of predictive value over six months before the first primary and well over a YEAR before election day.
I’m betting it is going to be pretty close, 51-49% in favor of the Dems. If you want to back your odds up with cash, I’d like a piece of that 20 to 3 action.
Anything’s possible, the nominee’s gay lover might get talky the day after the convention, or their motorcade might crash into a puppy orphanage or something, but it seems to me that the Democrats are in a position of relative strength.
Everyone hates Bush, and most people don’t like the war, so that’s two strokes against the Republicans right there. Add to that that two of their strongest candidates at the moment have no conservative credentials at all, and you’ve got a recipe for a possible Democratic landslide. It seems to me that everyone left of center, and a few more besides, is gonna make damn sure that they’ll get out and vote for the Democrat (and donate and volunteer in the meantime), those to the right… Perhaps not so much. And if Bloomberg runs as an independent, lower that GOP’s chances to 25%. They are much more vulnerable to a spoiler from the center (or the right) than the Democrats are.
The only polls that matter insofar as the general election is concerned would be state-by-state polls. Our elections are decided by electoral vote, not popular vote (a fact of which Al Gore is painfully aware).
All Republicans have to do is eke out narrow victories in a few swing states, and then it doesn’t matter if Hillary has 80% support in California and New York.
The guy who was elected to two terms as President and for six of his eight years in office enjoyed general popularity?
I think you confuse your general vitriol (and the general vitriol here) for Bush with what the American people really feel. The vox populi exist in the here and now, once Bush is out of office most people won’t vote based on how they feel about Bush.
Everything I’ve seen about Presidential elections suggests to me it is individuals that win and lose them, not parties. It was a lot different in the 19th century with party machines and national blame for the Civil War attached to the Democrats, but this isn’t the 19th century.
Several people have been elected to the Presidency despite their party not being especially popular at the time. When Truman was elected the Democratic party was at its lowest point since Wilson left office in 1920. Not only did he win against all expectations, Democrats across the country won against all expectations.
Except for the fact that an incumbent was running in '48, there’s some similarities to the situation we’ll have in '08. Everyone is expecting one party to win, which currently controls both houses of congress. Polling is already showing Democratic primary candidates ahead of Republicans and et cetera.
Truman was able to successfully sell Americans on the “do-nothing 80th” congress to such a degree that Americans pushed the GOP right out of both houses and reelected Truman to the White House.
No matter how invincible one side looks, or how tarnished the other, it’s folly to proclaim with authority any certainty in American politics.
Not true at all. You get new votes from two places–that thin swatch of truly undecided voters, and that vast 50% of registered voters that doesn’t vote. Most of those people have a clear preference for one candidate or the other, they’re just not motivated enough to get to the voting booth. The Republican successes of recent years have come because their rank and file has been much more organized and motivated.
The opposite is true. If a candidate doesn’t have much to offer the base, or he falls short in key areas, some of those clear and decisive voters will stay home instead.
If a Republican candidate gets lackluster support in Oklahoma, it matters because it also means he’s going to have lackluster support among the conservatives in Ohio and Pennsylvania. With margins as tight as they are, you can’t take any of that base for granted.
That, in a nutshell, is why Rudy Giuliani will not be President in our lifetime. Those “values voters” who go to Republican Party meetings in church basements and vote for any anti-gay measure you can throw at them are not going to get motivated for him, and only a few have to stay home to make the difference.
As for the OP: 20% sounds about right. Hillary Clinton is our most beatable (serious) candidate, because no one really likes her that much. Obama or Edwards could beat the current crop. Fred Thompson could come along and complicate things, but I have a feeling he’ll be the GOP’s Wesley Clark–an apparent savior, until you realize that there isn’t much under the hood.
Romney is dying with the Republicans, remember. Lots of money, not so much popularity. I’m not sure an anti-Liberal bias (if such a thing survived the Bush administration) is going to help Giuliani much.
My comments were pretty much all about the Republican primaries and nomination campaign, and I certainly agree that how Cambridge votes is not going to matter. But there seem to be people here who think that Ron Paul has any more chance than Kucinich does, so who knows.
Why is Obama considered that great? I admit he’s given a few good speeches, but when was the last time someone was elected to the Presidency with such scarce experience?
He became a Senator in 2005, with Senate power being directly related to how long you’ve served in the chamber, two years in the Senate is virtually meaningless.
A big part of the reason Edwards failed to get the nomination last time is he was perceived to be inexperienced, how is Obama’s record stronger than Edwards’ was in '04?
If you look at our prior Presidents, Bush had been Governor of one of the biggest states in the country for 8 years. Clinton had been governor for what, 10 years? Bush I had been Vice President for 8 years and had brief experience in the House as well as a long history of government service going back to the mid-60s.
Reagan had been governor of California. Carter had been governor of Georgia (FTR I consider 4 years as governor of any state to be more meaningful experience for the Presidency than 6 years as a U.S. Senator.)
Ford had been in the House for 24 years. Nixon had been Vice President under Eisenhower and had been in the Senate and House prior to that.
Johnson had been a legislator for decades as well as VP for almost all of Kennedy’s first term. Kennedy had been in Congress for 14 years (46-52 in the House and 52-election in the Senate.)
Eisenhower is the first President we get to who had no experience as an elected politician. But he had tons of experience leading millions of men during World War II and had been in the military for decades. The only real substitute I’ve found for political experience in American Presidential history is strong military experience, Obama doesn’t have that.
Well, judging by how they treat his name like it was Satan, the Republican candidates don’t share your opinion of how much Bush is loved.
Most times you are right - but Bush will still be in office, and he is too stubborn to change course to let someone who won’t say he is wonderful win. Richard Nixon lost Ford the 1976 election - Carter was not all that strong a candidate.
Plus, there is the message of how the Republican Congress let all the Bush scandals fester, and, no doubt, how they are keeping the war going as the casualty count continues to climb. If Bush and cronies suddenly got competent between now and then they might have a chance, but there is more chance of Paul being elected.
I don’t really think Bush has the power you think he does in the RNC. He doesn’t get to decide who runs or on what platform. He’s at the end of his second term as President, his political career is at an end.
Meh, many of the current Dem candidates supported a lot of Bush’s policies, too. They’ve successfully distanced themselves from their actual voting record. McCain is still pro-war, which is why I think he’s unelectable, but I also think he’s successfully distanced his stance on the war from Bush’s (the general theme with McCain is, “Bush mishandled the war, and I can manage it properly.”)
The surge works. The insurgents surrender all their arms, as well as stacking the heads of all known AlQ in a pyramid in front of the US Embassy. The Sunni, Shia, and Kurds fling themselves, blubbering, into each others arms and swear eternal brotherhood. As a gesture of obeisance to The Leader, they reveal the locations of Saddams secret stashes of nuclear anthrax bombs. They are found to be inscribed with Arabic graffiti, lewdly describing an American city for each…except San Francisco!
Our heroes disembark demanding Republican registration forms, and then to see their families. Rumors surface about Bush healing a leper, which the White House sorta denies. Kinda. The Fiengold-Reid Bill urges the repeal of Presidential term limits, the Constitutional Amendment is passed and ratified by the states in 27 days…
At this distance in time, any predictions are reading tea leaves in a toilet bowl, we have to be at least a couple parsec closer before anything makes any sense. If then.
I good rule of thumb is that no sensible person would suggest that a major party candidate has any less chance than about 20%, so I rate Republican chances at about 15%. And that’s Obama, Hillary, and Pretty Johnny all all caught in bed simultaneously with three live Congressional pages and two dead hamsters.
If Fred Thompson runs for President as the Republican nominee, he will win against any Democrat that is currently in the running by a 4% margin of the popular vote.
( I think his chances of running are very good. If he runs, I give him a 68% chance of winning the nomination.)
He’s not just a television actor or just a conservative.
If nothing else, he’s one of the few mainstream candidates who got Iraq right from the start, even back in 2002 as jingoism swept the country. That’s a big deal to a lot of people.
I do agree with the rest of your post, though. And he’s black. And Mrs. Clinton is, well, a woman. And, even worse, she’s Mrs. Clinton. I probably shouldn’t have said in the previous post that their chances of winning are 0%…like 'luci said, crazy things can happen. I’m also assuming the GOP is interested in fielding a decent candidate, which has yet been demonstrated.
I don’t doubt that you’re right about that meaning a lot to people. History suggests woeful inexperience tends to hurt a Presidential candidate, no matter how popular they are (William Jennings Bryan was widely popular–long before he became a crazy fundamentalist during the Scopes Monkey Trial fiasco, and he lost his first election in large part because of a complete lack of relevant political experience.)
Anyway, I’ve been saying that this is the first election cycle where I have absolutely no idea who’s going to be the next prez. However, I find it easier to predict what will go down with the GOP than with the Democrats:
I’m predicting that the GOP nomination will default to McCain in the end. Giuliani’s extramarital adventures, waffling stance on abortion, gay rights support, and general un-niceness during most of his tenure as NYC mayor are going to come out, and will overwhelm his 9/11 mojo. Mitt Romney will lose the evangelical Christian vote - who pulled Bush through in 2004 - on grounds of his Mormonism and the fact that the Mass. gay marriage bill passed on his watch, whether he wanted it to or not. Add in the fact that many people in New England hate his guts, as apparently he wasn’t a real swell governor after all. Dark-horses like Brownback or Thompson will be interesting to watch, but it’s too early to tell what sort of impact they will have on the big picture. For now, it looks like a McCain nom unless his campaign suffers a big meltdown.
But McCain will most certainly get battered in the primaries for his ever-changing stance on any of a number of issues dear to the Republican base. This will only serve as fuel for the Dems once the main elections come around, and will make for a VERY interesting presidential run.
As for the deal old Dems…out of the three leaders at the moment, I’m leaning preferentially towards Edwards, but I’m thinking ultimately the nom will default to Hillary, unless a Democrat dark horse comes on strong in the primaries (I don’t think it will be Kucinich, as much as a number of people on the left like him). And Hillary vs. McCain is quite a tough nut to crack, as McCain is all over the radar in terms of popular support, and Hillary seems to have a love-her-or-hate-her vibe going. Like I said, it will be interesting to watch. BUsh is none too popular on either sides right now, so Democrats might not be the only ones running on the “I’m not Bush” ticket. We shall see.
