If you want the US to turn blue, Obama is your primary choice
Feb 10th, 2008 by heatkernel
As much as the Democrats may “deserve” to win this next Presidential election on the merits, given the personal nature of US politics, they still are going to lose to McCain unless they select a more popular nominee. Here are the head-to-head match ups of the two leading Dem candidates against McCain, via The Votemaster:
Finally, Cook/RT Strategies just released some head-to-head polls for the general election. Here they are.
Democrat Pct Republican Pct Clinton 41 McCain 45 Obama 45 McCain 43 Clinton 48 Romney 42 Obama 50 Romney 41
 If McCain is the GOP nominee, he beats Clinton but loses narrowly to Obama.
Not only that, but in the electoral college vote, which is the only thing that counts anyway, all indications are that Obama’s advantage, vis-a-vis Clinton, would be magnified. Why?  A glance at the new color-coded maps at Electoral-Vote.com shows that Hillary’s big victories have been in safe Democratic states like NY and California, while Obama has been triumphing all over the place in battleground states like Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota. This would allow Obama to convert his popular vote advantage more easily into an electoral-vote advantage, and head-off a repeat of the disastrous 2000 Bush-Gore situation. Further, Obama, not Clinton, has been winning in all the traditionally Republican bastions such as the Deep South. This would also help because McCain would be forced to devote resources to shoring up his support in those states, thereby diverting those resources from swing states.
And note that all these numbers are before the Republican attack machine gears up. So if you want any chance of defeating the GOP in Nov. and you’re a dem primary voter, it’s pretty clear who to vote for. Just for the record, I think Obama is no saint or savior, I’m just saying for informational purposes…
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I agree with you generally, but I don’t agree with all your points. First, Obama has been in states that lean towards the GOP, it’s true, but he’s been winning among democrats. It’s less clear if he can win the independents and conservatives in those states. Much more promising, on the other hand, is that he’s been turning out record numbers of voters to the nominating contests. If he can get young people to vote in a primary election, he stands a good chance of bringing them out in large numbers to a general election, which definitely bodes well for him. On the other hand, he hasn’t shown the ability to win among latinos, which could be a real problem for him in the general. I’m not sure how sympathetic a figure McCain will be to latinos, but he will probably do better than any of the other republicans.
Also, on the GOP attack machine. I was initially very anti-Hillary because I thought the Republicans would tear her apart in the campagin. Lately I’ve been thinking more that she’s stood up to everything they’ve thrown at her, and that we don’t know what they’re going to dig up on Obama. I still think he’s better in this column, but I certainly understand the position of people who see it the other way.
Yesterday I read some interesting analysis of these polls. A recent CNN poll (see link) shows that the reason Obama is leading McCain is that he only loses among men by 3% (46 to 49), while Hillary loses by 18% (39 to 57). The MoE was 5% for that group. Both Obama or Hillary win most other groups (women, white ethnics, etc.)
I think that one shouldn’t read too much into general election polls (especially national ones) before the campaign has even started, but I think that shows pretty clearly that sexism (conscious or unconscious) is still an important factor in American politics.
I concede that Hillary may withstand the attacks of McCain in the general election and hold on to her -4 point lead.
Another point–which probably deserves expansion into its own post–is that Obama has run the first 21st Century campaign, in which everything is form and virtually nothing is substance. Whereas Hillary and Edwards run two types of 20th Century campaigns, Hillary’s focused on coalition-building and “evidence” of experience, and Edward’s on “facts” and policy proposals. Obama has “discovered” (in the same way that natural selection discovers evolutionary solutions) that none of this logical stuff is necessary and can even be a hindrance. This, more than the media blackout against Edwards and the sexism against Hillary, explains his current momentum and especial appeal to younger voters.
I’m tempted to discourse on the inconstancy of national polls (the party convention alone is worth several points), but I know you already know that.
I’ve heard a lot about Obama’s campaign being free of substance. I don’t necessarily disagree, but I’m curious what you mean when you say it. Are you talking about his stump speeches, tv appearances, etc? His success is definitely due to his tremendous charisma, but I think that’s been the clear way to win the white house since Reagan (or even JFK?). As far as I can tell, though, he has basically the same positions as all the other Democractic candidates, and they are all spelled out on his web site. If I recall correctly, he was among the first to call for a stimulus package like the one currently before congress. So although he has the reputation of being all style, I’m not sure his campaign is totally content-free.
I should add what I meant to say, which is that I’m not sure it’s any freer of content than anyone else’s.
No one actually reads the position papers and actual stated positions on websites except real, real die-hards like us. So they don’t count. Anyway, nothing resembling those proposals ever gets enacted, and everyone knows it. It is just putting signaling in place to various lobbying/interest groups. That is not the sense in which I mean “substance”.
The sense in which Hillary and Edwards do have substance and Obama does not is in the image they project through their appearances and speeches. Although most people cannot name any differences in their health care proposals or other policy stances, Edwards was definitely projecting a very strong image of a disaffected working-class class white man (not his reality, of course!), and Hillary is projecting an image of a steely technocrat who knows how to work the levers of power. Those aren’t specific policy positions, but they are substantive in a sense. I don’t get any sense of definite character from Obama besides that he’s trying to inspire us with vague hopes and positive feelings.
Obama is perhaps not the first to run a substance-free campaign, but the first to really use the lack of substance as his key selling-point. That is what he is getting at IMO with the references to “bi-partisanship and bringing American together.”
To some extent he is re-discovering Reagan’s truly avant-guard campaigning techniques. But the Reagan ticket was clearly standing for some very out-there ideas at the time–namely, supply-side economics, substitution of arms race for detente with USSR, and an effective end to the Civil Rights movement. Those broad ideas were basically implemented, and defined the 80s.
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