Polls & the politics betting markets suggest that Obama is the candidate most likely to be elected president. I think a McCain victory is more likely so, to get my 2 cents in before the post-McCain victory deluge, I’ll explain in advance why I think the Dems will lose, & what they can do about it.
First, where are we now? The polls I’ve seen indicate that Americans want the next president to be a Democrat rather than Republican by a margin of 16 to 18 percentage points. Asked to choose between Clinton & McCain, however, potential voters consistently choose McCain by a small margin. Obama beats McCain in hypothetical head-to-head contests, by somewhere between a (statistically insignificant) few points and about 10 points. So, right off the bat we can see that either the Dems have picked candidates that are liked less than their party, or the Repubs have picked a candidate who is more popular than his party — or both.
Election futures markets have the best prediction track records — better than pundits or polls. The Intrade market currently gives Clinton a 17% chance of winning the presidency, McCain a 34% chance, & Obama 49%. The odds of the Dems, as a party, winning are 66% to 34%. Strong stuff, but I believe that the Democratic candidates’ demographic profiles are likely to lead to a Republican upset.
What type of president does the country want? A Southern, male, Protestant, Democrat, of northern European descent, who was moderately opposed to the Iraq war.
The demographics are straightforward. Since the Democrats led in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending their support from the South, there have been ten presidential elections, in which the Democrats have nominated 8 candidates. Five candidates were from somewhere other than Dixie, and all 5 lost. The 3 remaining candidates are white male Southern Protestants. Two of them won outright at least once, & the third (who was hurt by running with a Jewish Yankee and against a Southerner) won the popular vote.
It’s very unlikely that a candidate will lose the entire South this year yet still win the national election. Since neither of the Democratic candidates fits the demographic profile of a winner in the South, an obvious question is: have Southerners’ preferences changed? And the answer, judging by the past 2 elections, is: no. The Bush/Cheney ticket was more Southern than both the Gore/Lieberman and the Kerry/Edwards tickets, and every Southern state went to the former, while Bush lost both elections outside of Dixie. (Gore/Edwards would have won either election.)
It’s hard to put odds on this year’s election. McCain isn’t a Southerner; Clinton is sorta half-Southern; the mood in the country is pessimistic; the Repubs are discredited… In a normal year, & just going by demographics, & not knowing the VPs yet (Gore would be perfect), I’d say Obama would have a 1 in 5 chance of winning the election; Clinton would have maybe a 1 in 4 chance. This year? Obama or Clinton will have about a 1 in 3 chance of winning, I’d guess.
The Dems need a Southern strategy.
Actually it much simpler than that and boils down to Ohio, which was stolen twice. That will be harder to do this year.
Clinton and Obama are pro-corporate, pro-AIPAC and pro-WAR candidates, Kucinich, Gravel and Dr. Paul were the ONLY anti-WAR and pro-America candidates.
Obama in my opinion is a question mark. Definitely against Iraq from the beginning–which is a sign of some intelligence–but very careful in what he delivers, and in what waves he is willing to make.
He also already has a built-in Southern Strategy, as both the Republicans and their bellicose and born-again Southrons know very well.
Thus the fantasy and distraction of the above mapping and prediction as any longer pertient.
Ohio remains key.
Kucinich apparently sent an early feeler to Paul about an independent run. Paul rejected it.
Kucinich is now more important out of the race than in.
corr: “pertinent”.
McCain will win. In spite of what we Americans like to believe about ourselves, we love war. While we exported manufacturing jobs overseas, were any arms industries lost? How many Americans are directly or indirectly dependent upon our arms industry? Our attitude towards the world is belligerent. We are afraid of the Muslims, but we keep Egypt and Jordan on a short lesh. We hold Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as our personal oil stations. We occupy Iraq with over 130,000 soldiers. We goad Syria and Iran with the hope of starting another war. We our building permanent bases in Iraq. Our policy vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians is a joke. We have people in this country passing emails railing against Senator Obama as a “secret” Muslim maybe with sympathies with al-Qaeda. We Americans love war. And McCain will give us want we want.
I completely agree.
Do note, however, that the love of war is unfortunately a trait all humanity seems to share.
I’m Russian and I hate war. USSR collapsed in 12 years from the moment unjust Afgan war started. And nobody was sorry.
On the other hand – peace loving nations are very good on defense… and offense had already happened – lands East of Germany….
For years politicians and political strategist have done anything they can to turn off the electorate.
Mr. Obama has excited the electorate like no candidate in the last 30 years, but the party-faithful still don’t get it. The pundits and party-faithful keep trying to claim Obama has no chance to win.
I disagree!
I have seen and talked with those who support Obama. They will be there in force when it is time to vote if Obama is the candidate, but will not be if Clinton is the candidate.
The party-faithful will vote because that is what they do. Those of us who support Obama because we dislike Clinton will vote for him but will stay away, or even worse, vote for McCain if Hillary is the other choice.
Polls or not, I’m telling you what the people on the street are feeling, not the party-faithful, but keep pushing Hillary if Democrats want to lose again.
Why vote for someone who is a good talker? Listening to a lawyer making a good closing argument in court to sway a jury(voters) is something all lying lawyers learn how to do…they can argue either side depending on who hires them. They are professionally trained in the best law schools to win in court, and this court is the court of public opinion.
Bottom line is, all that is left in this race on the Democratic side is a couple of lawyers and which one would you trust?
I trust Hillary more because for one thing, she doesn’t plagiarize other famous persons lines without first mentioning their names and she doesn’t send her goon squads to heckle at her her opponents rallies.
Obama preaches hope but practices the politics of divisiveness. He is a divider and not a uniter.
Go Hillary!
Egads. This is not a sexist thing, but any man who would vote for Hillary really needs to go find where he dropped his testicles.
dmaak112, Paul Jasinevicius,
dmaak112, You are right on the money, Americans, as well as the rest of mankind, loves and craves a never ending state of war. Paul, you could not be more wrong. Hillary will not win for the same reason that Barack Obama will not win, and that is they are far to cosmopolitan in scope to be acceptable to the
“Red State Voters” Electoral maps do not lie. And what the electoral maps of 2000 and 2004 tell us is that even if Barack or Hillary win the same states that Al Gore and John Kerry won in 2000 and 2004 respectively, the final analysis is THAT THEY BOTH STILL LOSE IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. Brace for John Kill em All McCain and a completely out of control war machine……
When voting machines lie, electoral maps lie.
Ohio was stolen twice. It will be hard to do again.
Indiana, strangely enough, is also a toss-up in my opinion.
What other state do you see large billboards reading, “End the war!” upon entering?
In 2002 oil was $29 per barrel. In 2007/8 oil is $90-100 per barrel.
The price rise affects not only gasoline, but food, which in the United States is insecticide, fertilizer, and fuel for agricultural machinery.
The recession that some economists are just now recognizing has been going on for at least three years, but figures were doctored or misunderstood, and the effects covered over with loose credit and loans against high-priced real estate.
The collapse of subprime was a direct consequence of high oil prices and the war in Iraq.
That is a simple fact few economists want to recognize.
The rest of the credit market is following suit. This wends its way worldwide through bundled paper.
There is no way in hell the red and blue will look like this in 2008, whoever runs, unless it is again the result of grand theft by voting machine.
dmaak112:
I agree with you completely in that I also think McCain will win the general election. I vote in Illinois and Illinois has voted Democrat for the past umpteenth years. My vote only counts in Illinois. I supported Ron Paul in the primaries.
The Neo-Cons will start the racist propaganda soon, as above, if they think it is Obama.
If the price is a victory by McCain, it will be very expensive racism indeed.
One will note that the Neo-cons are also holding their breath on Clinton–nary a word about Vince Foster or Waco, just for two examples.
Of course Mc/Cain will win: for he is the most ignorant, even if only slightly ahead of mrs. Hilarious Kleenex. They always win, proving (one more time) that God/Allah/Jahve etc. would have to be evil, if he existed. If nominated, of course Obama will be killed, of course probably and most conveniently “by islamist terr’ists”. We no longer live in a democracy, but in a global democrazy dictatorship of the dumbest and maddest.
As the polar ice already now consists almost entirely of sea-ice only two to three months old (so-called winter ice), it is rather clear that the summer ice in almost the entire polar basin will vanish completely this summer, and not first in 2030 to 2050 as predicted by the scientists in 2007, and surely not first in around 2090 as predicted by the same scientist only five years ago. The global warming is accelerating at an alarming speed, almost reported nowhere. None of the presidential candidates has even mentioned the issue once. They are, as usual, concerned with money (as if we could eat that), national illusions and war, as every president has been since the founding fathers.
When these things happen, I can assure you, the weather conditions over the entire globe will change drastically. Drought will be even much more common than it is already in the Great Plains, in Ukraine, in China, in India, in Canada, in Australia, where the biggest part of the world’s corn products stem from. The rain forests will dry away. West Antartica will possibly collapse in ten to thirty years, creating an imidiate rise in global sea level of 4-6 meters. Already now, the corn price is fast rising, and stocks of corn have never been so low since the end of the second world war, when humanity counted only half of the population now.
There’s not one single politician anywhere on earth now taking these problems just one percent as serious as they ought to be taken. Gore is ridiculously optimistic. Unfortunately the only explanation for that is biological. What does this mean? It means that homo sapiens has derailed itself and become a global catastrophe on two legs. It means war, fascism, barbarism and probably the end of mankind as a somewhat civilized animal. The wars now are just the beginning, and Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Truman, Nixon, Bush I-II and all the other barbarians were just the beginning. The richest 50 people on earth own as much as the poorest half of mankind. In ten years it’ll be just 5-10 owning the same amount, and so on, and so forth. 80000 millionaires and billionaires now want to go to the moon as tourists, I’ve learned from our beautiful press. I would let them do that, but never allow them back.
Just think on what anonymouse wrote above, and the last sentence sounds good.
Aye. What we have here is an accurate, though rather one dimensional, prognosis- and it doesn’t look pretty. Humanity slaughtered hundreds of millions of its own in the twentieth century. This century, it will be billions. Me, I’m considering investing in a bomb shelter- when I can afford it. Being eighteen rather limits one’s financial resources, but I imagine the system still has a few decades of life in it left. If not, I’ll get popcorn and watch the fireworks from a safe location.
I would tend to agree except that there are a lot of people coming out to vote than ever did in the past. The only way Clinton or Obama can win is to keep the youth vote focused. If they don’t come out strong, it’s President McCain.
I have been debating weather to go to this,
and after reading the articles I am sure that I will be there.
There is a global antiwar protest to be happening in the middle of March of 2008. You can find more infomation here
http://worldagainstwar.org
Also I dont trust republicans anyway and the democrats seem to be just oportunists trying to use the antiwar as a tool for their election supporter base. When a candidate uses anti as a tool people stand back and relaize that they are fake.
Yes, everyone loves war. Does that include the 70%+ of Americans that are antiwar? The National Interests love war, the people don’t, they are just mesmerized, brainwashed, and afraid. That doesn’t mean that they “love war”.
It’s not “loving war” it is “divide and conquer”, a technique that is as old as time and has been effectively applied to those that disagree with the agenda of the machine, again, and as usual.
I think James Webb would be an outstanding choice for Vice President. He’s anti Iraq war and could help get votes from Republicans who have had it with GOP excesses.
Since I’m looking at this from Russia – I don’t have to be politically correct…
The choice of candidates is nothing short of amazing – insane old man, feminist-pinkish-woman and black.
Speaking of the latter – let’s be honest – whites in the US don’t like blacks and blacks don’t like whites. That is the way things are. So – my conclusion =>
McCain will be the next president
That’s a rather pugnacious thing to say. Yes, we have our racists, but to assert that all American whites and blacks equally despise each other is pretty ignorant.
The question I have then is how come we let the South pick our presidents? I am so entirely f**king sick of cowboy/rancher presidents who are ignorant buffoons and do nothing but embroil us in war and enact idiotic policies. It seems like the last umpteen presidents were chosen basically by ignorant, bigoted, southern white folk. Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter (I like Carter), Johnson…who am I missing?
God Damn the South.
the dems have a southern strategy: get out the massive black vote that sits at home on election night. get it out by fielding a black candidate as #1 or #2 on the ticket.
Wello thought out analysis by Koritz. We shall see, soon enough!
But, re Vassili above, some black and whites do like (and love) each other, or Barack Obama would never have been born. My Uncle Dan, WWII veteran, ND grad, majoring in chemistry, with no ands or buts taught me that biracial people needed to be the future in USA if there was ever to be racial harmony, and that the best second language for us to learn was, Spanish. Time will tell!