Archive for June, 2008

by Chris of The Outside Report

Note: As promised, here is the post Chris wrote on why Obama will win.

Come January 2009, America will usher in a new era and break some very old barriers by electing its first African-American President. Barack H. Obama will be sworn in as our 44th President of the United States and will become an international symbol for decades to come.

So why will Obama win? First and most obviously is the political environment we live in. As I pointed out, no candidate or party similiarly situated to McCain and the Republicans has ever won. Back in 2006, I had predicted (from looking at history) that it would be virtually impossible for McCain and the Republicans to keep the White House or make any gains in Congress.

Every time in American history there has been an unpopular President in the middle (or end) of an unpopular war, his party has lost more Congressional seats and lost the White House. It happened to Wilson and the Democrats in 1920, it happened to Truman and the Democrats in 1952, Johnson and the Democrats in 1968, it happened to Ford and the Republicans in 1976, and inevitably it will happen to Bush and the Republicans in 2008. McCain would have to defy every rule of politics and American history to secure a victory.

Second, Obama’s ability to raise money will also have a major impact. Not only will he have $200 million from labor unions, but he’ll have the ability to raise a quarter of a billion dollars himself. While right now, the prospect of McCain getting $85 million should give him a huge cash advantage, as the election comes closer, more and more of Obama’s supporters will reach deeper and deeper in their pockets with Obama having the potential to organize and run ads in every state. He’ll sweep McCain off the news as he already has.

But what about him outspending Hillary 3 to 1 after March but still losing Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania? True, but you have to remember that Obama started down 20-30 plus points in all three states. His money helped him close the gap in all the states where he competed. Those states were as favorable to Hillary demographically as Alabama and Louisiana should be to McCain in 2008. Now imagine Obama having to run and spend millions to lose Oklahoma to McCain by only 10% instead of the 30% that doomed Kerry and Gore?

Another worrisome sign for McCain is his polling. On average, McCain rarely in his year and a half running for President topped or come near 50% of the vote. Whereas Obama has reached 50% of the vote in many polls during the primary and now after the primary, McCain almost never got there. McCain also experienced almost no bounce after locking up his nomination for President despite the Democratic bickering. That’s a sign that there is a ceiling for how much support McCain can get in a national election.

Ultimately, if Obama can change the political demographics in a state favorable to his opponent by 10-20% then defeating McCain in “swing” areas such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, and Virginia shouldn’t be too hard since McCain is already behind in all these places. Obama’s money means organizational muscle and in close races that can make the difference.

And on that note, the electoral college right now favors Obama more than it even favored Kerry or Gore at this point in the campaign. Not only is McCain already behind in the “swing” midwestern states, but he’s losing neighboring states such as New Mexico, Colorado, and is in a tight race with Obama in Nevada. While Obama has virtually locked up much needed Democratic states from 2004 (with the notable exceptions of Michigan and Pennsylvania), it appears McCain is going to have to fight for North Dakota, Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada, Alaska, and even Georgia.

Obama was able to move the goal chain in virtually impossible states due to his enormous money advantage but how is McCain suppose to move the goal chains in the states he’ll need to win? How does McCain go on offense when he lacks a coherent message and the media in the tank for Barack? How does he turn around his 10-15% deficit in Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and 5-10% deficits in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Iowa?

But what about Dukakis who was 10% ahead of Bush in 1988? Well first Bush had a popular President he could hitch his star to and second Bush was able to outspend Dukakis and flood the airwaves with Willy Horton etc. McCain and the RNC (despite all that money) won’t be able to flood the airwaves in a similiar fashion. If anyone will be flooding the airwaves, it’ll be the Labor Unions and Obama.

But what about working class whites? Obama doesn’t have to “win” working class whites to win the White House. In fact, no Democrat ever wins whites in general (not even Clinton or Carter or Kennedy in 1960). Obama only has to do as well with the white working class Americans as Kerry did and make up the rest among White independents (which he already has) and minorities (which he already has).

Further, once the Labor Unions (who will likely serve as the negative wing of the Party) start running ads highlighting McCain’s 30 year opposition to the minimum wage, his support of the Bush tax cuts, and his record of supporting “big business” those working class whites will pause and think hard. They may never bring themselves to voting for an African-American, but this type of ad campaign can depress them into not voting for McCain either.

But about Reverend Wright and William Ayers etc? Those things have already been dealt with and have already come out. If Obama has to thank Hillary for one thing its bringing all the bad out now rather than later. But even during the height of the Wright stuff, Obama’s polling was strong and he was tied with McCain. To me this shows a man with great political durability.

Obama has taken a serious punch but would McCain be able to take such a political punch? He certainly didn’t in 2000. Rev. Wright/William Ayers were played over and over again and in some ways it was worse than the Swiftboat vets on Kerry. Kerry couldn’t recover from the Swiftboat vets but Obama has recovered from his own Swiftboating.

No one has laid a hand on McCain but Obama has had to fight off Bush, the Clintons, the Republican establishment, and old time Dem polls and he still has the highest approvals of any politician in the country right now. That’s a durability that has not broken and in fact Obama is more popular now than he was prior to Rev. Wright-gate.

But what about Hispanics and women? Obama’s support among Hispanics (because of his support of driver’s licenses for illegals) has been stronger than even Kerry’s was in 2004 and Obama has opened up a massive gender gap against McCain.

On the issues, McCain has not separated with Bush on the core issues of the campaign and that’s Iraq and the economy. McCain hasn’t demonstrated how he plans on being all that different than Bush on the economy. The war is getting better? Yeup, but the war has been better for over a year now, but that’s only solidified people’s desires to leave Iraq.

What about the debates though? McCain will wipe the floor with Obama! Likely not. All the expectations will be on McCain but when Obama does better than expected (a la John F. Kennedy in 1960) momentum will shift even stronger to Obama. People will expect McCain to beat Obama just as they expected Bush to beat the waffling Kerry and Gore to beat Bush in 2000. Those debates closed Kerry’s gap with Bush and that is what made it a close election in the first place. Further, the debate impact will be mitigated because both sides will likely meet several times over the course of the next few months so any gaffes or stature gap won’t exist come October.

But shouldn’t Obama be doing even better now than he is? Absolutely not. Look at this way, how in the world can a man with only 2 years federal experience with a funny sounding Muslim name be beating a decorated war veteran who was a reformer? The question isn’t “but why isn’t Obama beating McCain by more” but rather “how in the world can McCain be losing to this guy?” John McCain has been a rockstar for the past 15 years and he’s losing to someone with virtually no “experience.” Literally, Democrats could’ve selected 5 or 10 other guys who’d be far more “electable” but instead sent out the junior league rockstar rookie. That says a lot about bad the Republican brand is and also how strong Democrats are right now. McCain is running against too many headwinds to win.

John McCain is, if nothing else, one smarmy SOB:

Senator Obama is obviously confused about what the United States Supreme Court decided and what he is calling for. After enthusiastically embracing the Supreme Court decision granting habeas in US civilian courts to dangerous terrorist detainees, he is now running away from the consequences of that decision and what it would mean if Osama bin Laden were captured. Senator Obama refuses to clarify whether he believes habeas should be granted to Osama bin Laden, and instead cites the precedent of the Nuremburg war trials. Unfortunately, it is clear Senator Obama does not understand what happened at the Nuremburg trials and what procedures were followed. There was no habeas at Nuremburg and there should be no habeas for Osama bin Laden. Senator Obama cannot have it both ways. In one breath he endorses habeas for terrorists like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and in the next he denies its logical conclusion of habeas for Osama bin Laden.

Whaaa? Obviously if Osama bin Laden were tried in an international tribunal like Nuremberg, the United States would have no jurisdiction over him whatsoever and he would be provided a different set of protections under international law. Alternatively, if he were afforded habeas corpus in an American court, it would be one of the easiest habeas hearings in the history of habeas hearings, given that there is ample evidence that Osama bin Laden (and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and all the other well-known terrorists that McCain is trying to use to scare people into voting for him) has declared war on the United States and is, in fact, an enemy combatant. The reason President Bush has used Guantanamo as a weird little sanctuary in which no protections are necessary at all is so that he can detain a bunch of people for whom there is not evidence establishing enemy combatant status. But if that’s the case, we shouldn’t be detaining them!

The problem here is that McCain seems very unwilling to articulate any limiting principles on the exercise of the government’s authority to detain suspected terrorists nor on what we do with them once they are detained. Instead, he seems quite willing to paint a picture for the American people of well-known terrorists running free to wreak havoc if the rule of law is applied to them, despite the fact that affording these people the protections of any body of law at all would still allow for their detention in some form or another.

Of course, it’s well-established that McCain is an independent-minded, straight-talking maverick, so while these scare tactics may look awfully similar to those employed by President Bush and Karl Rove, they’re clearly very different.

David Brooks has done it again. As I have mentioned, he consistently writes eloquently about ideas that only swirl the unrefined periphery of my mind.

Brooks claims that Obama is a brilliant politician. I thought going into this election that the national mood was ripe for a genuine reformer, a pistoling maverick. Obama sensed that too. The problem is that Obama isn’t a genuine reformer, he’s only incredibly good at acting the part. Brooks will show you why.

Suppose we admit that Obama is shady underneath his stage makeup. Does it matter? In some sense, as Brooks says, we need a sly and ruthless President to combat fellow Machiavellian world leaders. The point Brooks doesn’t make is that there will (hopefully) be enormous pressure from his legion of drooling drone followers (followers, not supporters), such that the people will compel him to do what he currently does not intend to do: make genuine reforms. Perhaps a candidate’s followers mold the candidate’s accomplishments more than the candidate himself.

I do not have a peculiarly high level of innate intelligence, but I am confident in my innate ability to divine who a person really is. I have a bad visceral feeling about Obama. That feeling is gradually reinforced by the rational observations that have been streaming in about him over the past few months. I expect that we will hear more about this mysterious man in the coming months and I expect for my buddy David and I to be correct.