I've never been persuaded by the argument that Democrats are mostly electoral victims of their relative lack of expertise at politics--that they would win every election if it weren't for the fact that Republicans are just badass, nasty, down and dirty campaigners.
But boy, Obama and Hillary do seem determined to prove that Democrats do so shoot themselves in the foot!
I look at that debate and it seems to me that Democrats think they can't lose in November--that the only important battle is the one for the nomination. Yet if this goes on much longer, the chances rise that the nominee will hobble, crippled, into the November elections. Obama's supporters probably won't vote for McCain if Hillary is the nominee, but they might well stay home if they think that she slimed her way into the nomination. And all the sniping is just upping everyone's negatives and providing the Republicans ammunition for November. My original prediction of a 95% chance that Democrats take the White House in November is being revised downward, fast.
I look at that debate and it seems to me that Democrats think they can't lose in November--that the only important battle is the one for the nomination. Yet if this goes on much longer, the chances rise that the nominee will hobble, crippled, into the November elections.
That seems reasonable deductively, but I read an article somewhere recently (can't find the link, sorry) that shows that it isn't really historically accurate. For instance, the fight between McCain and Bush in 2000 was incredibly nasty, but that didn't seem to hurt Bush. Also it's interesting, your college Matt is arguing the opposite: that it's better to have nasty primaries in order to hone your message and develop responses to the inevitable mud slinging.
Also it's interesting, your college Matt is arguing the opposite: that it's better to have nasty primaries in order to hone your message and develop responses to the inevitable mud slinging.
While I think that there is actually some evidence that the 2000 fight did hurt Bush, I also think that it's pretty clear that he would have done better to have the old Australian DUI from the 70s come out in the primary season rather than a week before the election, so there is definitely a point to be made there.
Assuming that one is able to develop a response, of course. Al Gore brought up the furlough program against Dukakis first and Dukakis won the nomination anyway despite never really developing a response other than "I've run a criminal justice system and you haven't."
This is just a period of bringing expectations back into line with reality. A 95% confidence level just isn't realistic, especially when you look back at all the 51/49 elections we've been having.
Still, the fundamentals are incredibly strong for the Democrats; the fundamentals are stronger than the candidates, you might say.
I placed a bet with a friend at 75% Dem odds a few days back, and I think that's about a reasonable spot for the line. That said, McCain is up on both Clinton and Obama in the head-to-head polls, and given that he's the most likely candidate, I should probably theoretically be assuming the Republicans are the ones with better-than-even odds.
It's so hard to determine what the effect of the Clinton/Obama fight is. The Clintons are unique in American political history, and Obama has attracted a lot of highly enthusiastic supporters from independent voters. It's hard to see Hillary energizing these independents the way Obama has. Once he's out of the race, everything changes. It's going to be a referendum on a Clinton restoration. Probably a very close race that depends on a couple of swing states, just like the last two.
I don't know if there's any universal rule here, but it seems clear that neither the Democratic Party or John Kerry was well-served by the hands-off primaries of 04. Kerry's whole argument was that he was electable and some negative attacks in the primaries might have shown that argument to be hollow.
I think Republicans are a bit better at picking someone who has a good chance to win, and are less enamored with putting forward someone who makes them feel good. The GOP is not good at this, mind you, just better, or less terrible, I should say, than the Democrats. This is probably because the GOP machinery has a large component of people who provide (only) lip-service to the Christian right, whereas the true believer, teachers' union types are more firmly in control of the Democratic Party. Hillary is an awful candidate and could lose the election for the Dems, but dammit, she's a Clinton, and the halcyon days of driving conservatives crazy with all those wacky things Bill did bring such broad smiles to the faces of so many liberals that they can't help but hope she's the one to win the nomination.
Kerry was electable. Maybe not the world's most awesome candidate, but who is? The guy came within spitting distance of unseating an incumbent.
Looking around the field in 2004, you had as alternatives Edwards, Dean, Clark, Sharpton, Kucinich, Gephardt, Lieberman, and Braun. I can't look at that list and say that any of those candidates would have been more electable.
I think Republicans are a bit better at picking someone who has a good chance to win, and are less enamored with putting forward someone who makes them feel good.
The Republicans tend to nominate the person whose "turn" it is, which has tended to mean a sitting VP or the guy who finished second in the primaries last time there was an open primary, with a boost for family legacy as well. Reagan, Bush, and Dole all ran for the nomination and finished second before getting it later.
The Democrats, by contrast, while they have nominated sitting and former VPs, have almost never nominated someone who ran for the nomination but didn't get it before. Whither Bradley? Jerry Brown or Tsongas? Jackson? Gary Hart? Ted Kennedy? Scoop Jackson? Gene McCarthy? Look at Edwards this year.
I agree with the 75% chance of a Donk win quoted above. There are a lot of conservatives who won't vote for McCain. Or at least who will hold their noses to do so.
I've seen a lot of talk on Sullivan's blog about Donk voters who say they won't vote for Hillary, but I think that changes when she and Bill start attacking a GOP opponent.
I don't think it's smart to underestimate how much that 50% of Donk voters want to win this one, and how much the independents will want to see a change from W., especially as the recession, even if mild, deepens through the summer.
Hoy hoy. Gore's eye-rolling and smirks at the debates, Kerry's absolute refusal to fight the Swift Boaters, Hillary's anointment - all symptoms of belief in their "inevitability". I agree - the dems better pull their heads out of their inevitable arses quick.
So what I'm saying then, is if Hillary wins the nomination, it would be an interesting reversal of recent Democratic Party history if Obama were to get the nomination 8 or 4 years down the road. Obama arguably has been appealing to the same independent-minded higher income part of the Democratic Party that Bradley, Tsongas, and Hart, among others, used as their base, but now getting his share of the black vote. (All the others, I believe, ran somewhat better among men than the eventual nominee, but ran worse against Democratic Party stalwarts like union voters, the lower middle class, women, and black voters.) Perhaps adding the votes of black Democrats in the primary will make him succeed where the others failed.
Helter,
2004 is kind of an anomaly. I remember it only as "If You Know, Like We Do, That Bush Is Really Just Hitler But Stupider, Vote Dem. If You're Too Much of An Evil Moron To Know That, Vote Rep."
There was vague mention of some guy named Carry? Kerry maybe? Something about a ketchup wife? But mostly it was just a giant referendum on the giant political divide of the time, Iraq, and how extremely much people hated Dubya.
If you really bothered to focus on the candidate personally (and almost no one did) Kerry came across as stiff, un-charismatic, and meaninglessly vague. Not just flip-flopping on specific policy, but in general conversation. The quintessential moment of this for me was a clip shown on the Daily Show - it was Dr. Phil interviewing Kerry, asking him a question about which daughter was most like him. He named one, then rambled on for nearly a minute about how, no, actually, it's the other one, but not really, so actually it's neither, or both... um, right, neither. I mean both.
So if we're looking for lessons about candidate selection and party primary policy, lets not spend too much time on 2004.
Or at least who will hold their noses to do so.
Holding one's nose is a lot different from not voting, when it comes to the tallying. And McCain does do well in the head-to-head polling, however much certain portions of the base dislike them. In large part, I'd say that he is disliked not so much for his positions, which are on the whole fairly conservative, as for his willingness to turn his "straight talk" on people to his right as well as to his left, and to enjoy doing both.
I think that attacks by the other side will strengthen each eventual candidate. Post-1994 Clinton really governed quite conservatively-- many of his most liberal initiatives were either issued or timed to take effect after he left office, including a good chunk of environmental executive orders. Another example is how he didn't push for immediate funding of fetal stem cell research, instead appointing a commission to study the ethical issues but not to report until he was a lame duck, nicely pushing the question off to the next president. (The fact that federal fetal stem cell research money was zero under Clinton and increased under Bush is probably one of the lesser-known political facts.) However, Democrats liked him because the Republicans hated him so much. In this primary, some of them are learning part of why some Republicans hated Clinton, since policy couldn't have explained all the hatred.
It is remarkable, as Megan said before, that the elite party leadership in both parties seem so hellbent on nominating the person whom all the polls say is the only one who could lose it. It's even more remarkable that people continue to push this "McCain would be weaker because the base won't vote for him" despite the polls-- the sorts of issues that will prevent the base from voting for him are already well-known, and they aren't affecting the polls. The only McCain issue that could really cause enough people to sit out is, sadly, immigration, where he, like Bush, is more pro-immigration than the average voter. Similarly, I've seen Hillary supporters insist that *she* is more electable despite all the polls disagreeing with that, regardless of challenger. (Another interesting sight from the Democratic debate was Edwards trying to argue that he was most electable because he was a white guy without explicitly saying that.)
However, the historical trends in both parties do predict a McCain v. Clinton match-up, which should I think decrease the chance of a Democratic win from 95 or even 75%.
"So if we're looking for lessons about candidate selection and party primary policy, lets not spend too much time on 2004."
We can make that argument about any election in recent memory. Bush could barely get out a coherent sentence in 2000, but there was enough Clinton fatigue for people to take his carefully rehearsed bullet points seriously. Every candidate has weaknesses and strengths. But if a guy gets 48% of the vote in an election with huge turnout on both sides, it doesn't seem fair to call him unelectable. If he had gotten 35-40%, it would be a different story.
If Hillary wins the nomination, this will be one of those elections that comes down to a few counties in Ohio, or maybe Florida; and no one can say for sure how that will turn out.
If Obama wins, and goes against McCain (and provided that McCain doesn't reveal that he was actually born in Guatemala with the name Juan Chavez-Garcia), then it will certainly be a route.
I have to think it will be close either way, if McCain is the Republican nominee. Conservative yet independent white male war hero versus either (i) black man with little experience and exceedingly liberal record or (ii) woman with little experience, grating schoolmarmish personality and shady financial history. Hard to call. Probably it depends on how the economy and the war are going by summertime, which is also hard to call.
My original prediction of a 95% chance that Democrats take the White House in November is being revised downward, fast.
To what? 75%, 65%, 55% .... Predictions are just guesses. A lot might change by Nov, and then maybe nothing will. The basic fundamentals look bad for the GOP. But I think whoever the nominee, Hillary or Obama, this (like the last few) will still be a close election. No one is winning by 20 points.
As far as Democrats wounding themselves by infighting, why so? What would you have them do? Talk like University academics about the “issues”? Do that and they'd loose 90% of the audience. There aren’t major differences in the issues anyway. It is mostly a personality fight. Change verses experience… whatever. For what its’ worth, the Republicans nomination race is a lot slimier as of now. And more interesting.
"And McCain does do well in the head-to-head polling, however much certain portions of the base dislike them. In large part, I'd say that he is disliked not so much for his positions, which are on the whole fairly conservative, as for his willingness to turn his "straight talk" on people to his right as well as to his left, and to enjoy doing both."
This is wrong. McCain is disliked by conservatives precisely for his positions, most recently and prominently his support for the McCain-Kennedy 'comprehensive' immigration bill. McCain has also eschewed his famed "straight talk" when this subject has come up in debates, repeatedly denying that allowing illegals to get immediate legal residency isn't an amnesty. He serves up the tired dodge that they'd have to get to the "back of the line" for citizenship, when of course legal immigrant applicants have to wait years in line just for legal residency. And of course he ignores the obvious point that this sort of amnesty would encourage a new surge in illegal immigration.
John: I dislike McCain for his positions (e.g., McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy), but I'm much more of an ideological voter. FWIW, McCain-Feingold is a bigger turnoff for me than McCain-Kennedy.
I think what's going on here is the typical move of holding Democrats to a different standard than the Republicans. So the Democrats, I'm told, are taking the gloves off, and it will hurt them; but the ruthless battles between Romney and McCain have no impact?
If Obama wins, and goes against McCain (and provided that McCain doesn't reveal that he was actually born in Guatemala with the name Juan Chavez-G.arcia), then it will certainly be a route
This is just ignorant. The media's immense crush on John McCain. obscures a large point: he is a terrible politician, when it comes to the actual job of winning an election. He's an incredibly poor front runner. He's cranky. He often seems bothered by having to run at all. And he's really old. You really think McCain is gonna light the world on fire? Against someone with the intangible appeal of Obama?
I think the Dems have grossly overestimated (misoverestimated?) their chances. Either Obama's babbling about invading Pakistan (!) or Hillary's nictitating membrane will be tough obstacles to overcome in the general election. The concern is that if the Dems lose again (which I make at least even money) they'll be convinced that the election was fraudulent.
For some reason, many on the left place more credence in a guy with a clipboard than in a vote count, and presume that any discrepancy reflects poorly on the latter, rather than the former.
it seems clear that neither the Democratic Party or John Kerry was well-served by the hands-off primaries of 04. Kerry's whole argument was that he was electable and some negative attacks in the primaries might have shown that argument to be hollow.
Assuming that one is able to develop a response, of course. Al Gore brought up the furlough program against Dukakis first and Dukakis won the nomination anyway despite never really developing a response other than "I've run a criminal justice system and you haven't."
And assuming the primary electorate is able to recognize and cull the flawed candidates. Instead, they seemed to react to damaging criticisms of Dukakis and Kerry with a fingers-in-the-ears "La la la la, I can't hear you." Many of them appear to be doing the same with regards to Obama's Rizko and Jeremiah Wright problems.
The media's immense crush on John McCain. obscures a large point: he is a terrible politician,
Plus, the media's immense crush on John McCain will evaporate the instant he's running against a Democrat. Plus their crush on Obama is even bigger.
I think that Senator McCain’s point was not whether allowing illegal aliens to get “immediate legal residency” qualified as “amnesty” but rather that the immigration reform legislation he sponsored which required them to first pay any applicable fines and back taxes, return to their country of origin and then go through the process to reenter legally did not in fact grant them “immediate legal residency.”
Considering that one of the most sought after and likely to vote demographics in the American electorate is senior citizens (and we’ve got about 60 million baby boomers who will soon be joining their ranks), I think it quite likely that voters could decide to that Obama’s youth and inexperience outweighs his ability to give a pretty (and utterly devoid of content) speech.
More importantly for all of the talk about Obama’s supposed appeal amongst “independents,” I suppose if your definition of “independent” is “someone who almost always votes for the Democrat but hasn’t officially registered a party affiliation,” then yes he has an appeal in that narrow definition of “independent.” But if we’re talking about the plurality of voters who really don’t identify with either party and are likely to switch or split their votes, I think McCain has a better shot. He has a well-deserved reputation for being willing to challenge elected officials in both parties and ability to reach across the aisle get bipartisan support for the things he wants to accomplish – the very qualities which may infuriate some ideologues in both parties but are for better or worse seen as being very presidential.
The biggest problem the Democrats have is that their policy proposals have little appeal for most Americans. They basically want to move in the direction of the modern European welfare state. That, with its intrusive government and low growth, just doesn't hold much allure for Americans, who generally believe in self-reliance.
And the Democrats have no coherent foreign policy ideas at all.
John McCain will be able to say clearly:
That message holds much more appeal than anything Hillary will offer as an alternative. Moynahan and Obama were right. The Republicans have been, for at least 30 years, "the party of ideas."
Obama's supporters probably won't vote for McCain if Hillary is the nominee
Hmm. As a data point, I'm an Obama supporter who might well vote for McCain if Clinton is the nominee. Among other things, I dislike her divisive, pessimistic, Rovian style.
"The biggest problem the Democrats have is that their policy proposals have little appeal for most Americans."
Really? I've seen dozens of polls like this one:
http://tinyurl.com/397pdq
Stan, there's no doubt that the public was disgusted with the corruption of the Republican Congress and the incompetence of the Bush administration in New Orleans and Iraq, and that Democrats benefited from that.
But now the Democrats are foundering--because they have no ideas. Look here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls/archive/?poll_id=18
70% of the American people disapprove of the job the Democratic Congress is doing. Higher taxes, more spending, more regulation, retreat from Iraq, softer treatment of terrorists and the countries that support them--these are just not winning positions in a general election.
They sell well in Marin County and the Upper West Side, but not so well in the middle of the country. Hell, they didn't even sell well in Connecticut, when Ned Lamont tried and failed to defeat the moderate Joe Lieberman.
I think a lot of pocketbook issues will put the Democratic candidate in office, coupled with an overall sense of corruption and incompetence in the financial sector.
And stories like this: CEO William McGuire gets caught backdating stock options, ripping off his company, UnitedHealth (the Halliburton of healthcare), returns $600 million (!) and keeps $800 million (!).
Same country sentences a shoplifter, Lawrence Speck, to four months in jail - he stole $20 worth of merchandise. McGuire doesn't do a day in jail, and still is a member in good standing at the prestigious Woodhill Country Club.
It doesn't matter who the DEM's run, they'll win...especially against a layoff-artist like Romney.
rwe, what you're doing is disproving Megan's thesis. The public approves of the positions the Democrats take on both domestic and foreign policy, but they don't approve of the Democrats. I don't blame them. At some point (1980? 1994?) the Democrats lost their backbones. They're weak, and the public knows it. I think Bush is the worst president in American history, but at least he has guts.
"I think that Senator McCain’s point was not whether allowing illegal aliens to get “immediate legal residency” qualified as “amnesty” but rather that the immigration reform legislation he sponsored which required them to first pay any applicable fines and back taxes, return to their country of origin and then go through the process to reenter legally did not in fact grant them “immediate legal residency.”"
The proposed Z-visa, which would grant immediate legal residency, was to be awarded after a mere 24 hour review process. I don't believe the final legislative proposal included a "touchback" provision requiring applicants to return to their home countries, but if it did, it certainly didn't require them to go through the same process and get in the back of the line behind legal applicants who have been waiting for years to immigrate here. Getting to the front of the line for legal residency, when you came here illegally is amnesty, and rewards illegal entry. When you reward a behavior, you get more of it.
Um, I'm an Obama backer and will likely vote for McCain if Hillary is the nominee. Don't know how many like me there are, but I'm right here.
I chuckle at folks who think they know what Obama supporters will do if he loses.
First, they will live. It's a dream, not blind optimism.
Second, if McCain is the Rep, they will vote for him...mainly because he's not totally wild eyed and partially because he'll be easist to oust after 4 years.
Third, if the Reps go wilder and nominate Huckabee, Bloomberg will run and they'll vote for him.
Fourth, they won't vote.
The one thing I do know about Obama voters is they will not vote for HRC. She (they) epitomizes all they hate about politics which is what draws them to Obama to begin with.
I'm an Obama supporter and Hillary's behavior has absolutely guaranteed that I won't vote for her in the general. In fact, if it is Hillary vs. McCain I will vote against her with great satisfaction.
I'm an Obama supporter, and I would absolutely vote for McCain if Hillary is the nominee.
Let me add my voice to the chorus: I support Obama, and used to be a great admirer of Bill Clinton before this campaign. I have since lost all respect for him. The funny thing about leadership is, you don't necessarily have to agree with a leader's positions; if you trust that person and they inspire you, you may follow them to the very gates of hell. That's Obama's appeal for me; despite the fact that I disagree with him on many issues, I believe he has the will and the ability to unite this country and to move us forward. Hillary would give us 4 more years of polarizing politics, not what this country needs. If it comes down to Clinton v. McCain, I'm climbing aboard the Straight Talk Express.
Yes I'm sure the swing voters in Ohio and Florida who will decide the election in November really will determine their vote based on a feud between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama over Ronald Reagan in January. Likely story.
Ron - the background impression swing voters will retain is that both Democrats consider Reagan extremely icky, the only difference being whether he is so icky as to be unmentionable, like Voldemort.
This will help neither candidate if they hope to win back the "Reagan Democrats."