How McCain Could Win the White House

[Pure]

http://www.thestar.com/article/424410

Why McCain could win the White House

May 12, 2008 04:30 AM Tim Harper
Washington Bureau
[Toronto Star]

WASHINGTON–Howard Dean surveyed the Indianapolis ballroom, a crowd of almost 2,500 Democratic faithful including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and offered a warning.
"The only thing that can stop us from winning the presidency is ourselves," said the chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Maybe.

Conventional wisdom still tells us Obama, the young, silver-tongued agent of change, will easily dispatch Republican John McCain, the geriatric extension of the Bush administration, a man on the wrong side of the Iraq debate in a war-weary country.
[...]

[But] here are 10 reasons McCain could become the next president of the United States:

REAGAN DEMOCRATS

This is the term coined for white, working-class voters who migrated to Ronald Reagan, putting him in office in 1980 and 1984.
Will they become McCain Democrats?

They have consistently put their faith in Clinton during this primary season and Obama has offered no proof so far that he can win them back in the general election.
Obama outpolled Clinton among white voters without a college degree in only three states for which exit polling is available: Vermont, Wisconsin and Utah.

[...]
Obama is supported by less than 30 per cent of these voters in two states key to Democratic hopes: Pennsylvania and Ohio.
A Pew Research poll found almost one in four voters who consider themselves conservative or moderate Democrats would vote for McCain over Obama.

They were much more likely to stay with Clinton against McCain.

WOMEN

Much has been written about the danger of African-Americans and young voters fleeing the party if Clinton was seen to have somehow stolen the nomination from Obama.
Time, space and a unified convention will radically bring down the increasing number of Democrats who angrily say they would not vote for the winner if their candidate loses the nomination.
But there are millions of women, mainly middle-aged and older, who believed this was the year a woman was going to win the White House [...] Many are angry. How many of them will stay home in November or move to McCain?

SCORCHED EARTH

The race so far has been bruising, but not debilitating for Obama.
Clinton has done much of the Republican work in defining her opponent as elitist, inexperienced, a man of words instead of action.
[further actions might tarnish Obama to his great detriment]

RACE

There is still a hesitancy among some in the U.S. heartland to vote for an African-American as president and it is not always reflected in polling.
"You can't be called a racist in this country," said Edward Frantz, a history professor at the University of Indianapolis.
"It is worse to be a racial bigot than a gender bigot in this country at this time." Voters often cite other reasons for not backing Obama.
Clinton wasn't as restrained when she told USA Today last week, "Senator Obama's support among working, hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again ... and whites in (Indiana and North Carolina) who had not completed college were supporting me."

DISTRACTIONS

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former urban terrorist William Ayers, flag lapel pins, questions about whether he placed his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem – they will all resurface for Obama in the general election.
[...]

MCCAIN'S LIFE STORY

It is compelling and it will be exploited.
A man seen as a genuine war hero who overcame more than five years in captivity will play to a patriotic strain in this country which will be hard to counter for Obama, a 46-year-old first-term senator who came of age in the post-Vietnam era.
[...]


OCTOBER SURPRISE

Even if the country heads into the home stretch of this campaign with Obama well ahead, there will always be a sense right until election day that there is a well-timed grenade from the Democrat's past waiting to explode.
The Republicans have already started crafting a story line that the Democrats are nominating a candidate about whom less is known than any other candidate in history.

HOMELAND SECURITY

This has always been the Republican trump card and they will use it again. Polling indicates voters have much more confidence in McCain (63 per cent) than Obama (26 per cent) to defend the country against future attacks.
That far outstrips any margin Bush ever held over the 2004 Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry, on the issue.
[...]

CALIFORNIA

[Can Arnie deliver it on a silver platter? If so, McC wins.]

 

[sr71plt]

copyright infringement

 

[voluptuary_manque]

That's pretty much the way I've been judging the race all along. How many Vietnam vets will actually vote for McCain, no matter what party they officially belong to? How many would vote against a comrade and for a civilian?

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think that angry Democratic women would still rather vote for a black man than for McCain. McCain is the kind of guy who makes these women so angry in the first place.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

You'd think so but that's not what some of the ones that were interviewed in this morning's LA Times said. Some would rather vote for McCain that "a person of color" (can you imagine?) and some said they would just stay home. I'm so going to be glad when November is over . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

You'd think so but that's not what some of the ones that were interviewed in this morning's LA Times said. Some would rather vote for McCain that "a person of color" (can you imagine?) and some said they would just stay home. I'm so going to be glad when November is over . . .

Yeah, Southern California Dems tend to be rather...Republican, by and large.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

These were in W. VA. They were the 'middle-aged, white working class women' that seem to have made up a large part of Hillary's Hoard. The overall impression I got was sort of "dog in the manger". Like, if one of them can't be the Dem candidate, then let the Reps have the White House. That'll larn 'em.

 

[Pure]

how much might racism hurt obama?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051203014_pf.html

Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause
By Kevin Merida

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 13, 2008; A01


Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

[article continues]

===
see also article on white racism and obama:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/12/134251/930

 

[R. Richard]

The Republicans don't need to use racism. All they need to do is observe Hillary's scortched earth campaign and use what works and not use what doesn't work.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

McCain will win because he's a centrist and Obama is of the far, far left of the US political spectrum - it will be Nixon/McGovern, Bush/Dukakis redux. The MSM will pull out all the stops to demonize McCain, but their power has waned and it won't be enough. The current "narrative" (slur) being promoted by the MSM is that McCain will win because Americans are racist (that's the message MSM took out of PA and IN).

 

[Boxlicker101]

McCain will win because he's a centrist and Obama is of the far, far left of the US political spectrum - it will be Nixon/McGovern, Bush/Dukakis redux. The MSM will pull out all the stops to demonize McCain, but their power has waned and it won't be enough. The current "narrative" (slur) being promoted by the MSM is that McCain will win because Americans are racist (that's the message MSM took out of PA and IN).

I agree with you about McCain winning, and why. I also agree that, without question, there are racists in the US and they vote on that basis. However, this cuts both ways. It is my understanding that Obama is winning about 90% of the African-American vote. If Clinton were winning that high a percentage of the white vote, there would be cries of "Racism!" all over. This is not a complaint, just an observation. People can vote on whatever basis they want.

In a state such as NC, there is a very high percentage of black voters, enough that they are close to a majority of the registered Dems. They vote for Obama and he wins those states but, in a general election, African Americans will be a minority, and enough white voters might vote against him, in addition to those who will vote for McCain.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Some other analyst has totaled up the electoral votes and those show McCain possibly winning. If the very popular Governator can swing California behind his good friend McCain (Arnie didn't even campaign for Bush) our enormous number of electoral votes will seal the deal. And even in a state with lots of Democrats, as Stella implied, it's far from an impossibility.

 

[S-Des]

McCain will have trouble luring Moderate women voters (not to mention Democratic ones) because he has a very strong pro-life record over his career. I tend to view it as less hysterical than many of the Conservatives in the party, but he won't be able to run away from it. He will have problems with many because of his stance on Iraq, which has been consistently strong and unwavering (despite at times it looking like it would finish him before the race even started). Even though there are improvements in many areas, I can't believe that Iraq could have a fast enough turn around to actually be a positive for him by November (and there's every chance that things could get worse by then, which could really hurt him).

On the Right, he has problems over Global Warming, drilling in Anwar, Immigration, and McCain-Feingold. I don't know if I agree that it's Obama's race to lose, but every serious analyst I've seen discuss it thinks that the Democratic nominee had about a 50 meter head start in a 100 meter race this time around. McCain could appeal to enough Moderates and Independents that he could win, but it'll be a tough trick to pull off. The racism thing is a complete straw man argument. There are plenty who say they won't vote for McCain because he's too old, too much of a Conservative, too little of a Conservative, or because he's white (the number Box was looking for was 92% of blacks have voted for Obama over Clinton....a number which will probably be even higher in a general election). It's just an effort to paint people who disagree politically as "the bad guys". In a year that's supposed to be about Hope and Change, it's really just the same old crap with a different wrapper.

 

[Belegon]

Time will tell.

I am, for the moment, tired of discussing such things with those whose minds are already made up.

I'm tired of certain peoples disdainful talk about "intellectuals". Right, it is so very horrible to have our best minds and most educated making noise about how to run the country. We sure don't want to listen to them!

I'm tired of people that can't figure out how silly it is to take money out of the governments pockets with a "gas tax holiday" at a time when the govt. needs the revenue. And at least when W tries to bribe me, he does it with $600, not $38. (That said, the truckers would benefit tremendously as long as the "holiday" is extended to diesel)

I'm tired of the idea that a president should be chosen on whether or not he can bowl, or whether she can do a shot, or on whether or not we've seen his wife's tax returns.

I'm tired of people who can't decide if Obama is really a Christian until his preacher says something objectionable. Then, all of a sudden, it's "He's been going to this man's church for twenty years!"

I'm tired of the ends justifying the means.

I'm tired of people claiming that a two trillion dollar expenditure has done nothing to hurt our economy and that we would be just as poorly off without the war.

I'm tired of people who claim to support our troops while wanting to keep them in the path of bullets. Putting someone in deadly danger is NOT supporting them.

I'm tired of billions in war appropriations somehow mismanaged enough that our young men are still in vehicles whose weaknesses are well known to the enemy when there is a proven alternative.

I'm tired of knowing that a Blackwater private contractor can make in a month or less what our brave young men and women make in a year.

I'm tired of the fact that we've known for thirty-five years or more that our dependence on foreign oil is the weakest link in our economic chain, and yet we, both people and government, don't force the industries to change by voting with our purchasing power or by electing lawmakers who will do something about it.

I'm tired of patriotic jargon being thrown at me by people that wear a flag pin but have never read Thomas Paine, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.

 

[rgraham666]

Good one, Will. http://bestsmileys.com/clapping/2.gif

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

McCain will win.

It's a no-win situation for the Deomocrats. Their women feel cheated with Hillary's loss.

But Obama is seen as weak and weird by much of America. He's a prep-school prince who's never had his ass kicked on the school yard, or kicked any ass. He's Mister Candyass.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

To be fair, between The Declaration of Independance and The Constitution--were we to actually agree on those being the measures of our actions--we'd have to tell most of the Democrats to fuck off, too (on the warm and fuzzy issues as well).

Neither party's statism is much in line with the founding fathers or their work.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

I'm tired of the fact that we've known for thirty-five years or more that our dependence on foreign oil is the weakest link in our economic chain, and yet we, both people and government, don't force the industries to change by voting with our purchasing power or by electing lawmakers who will do something about it.

This is an evasion of reality.

"Force the industries to change?" Who do you think buys the oil to run their cars and heat their homes with? Who buys those cars?

You want people to use less oil? Fine. Adopt an honest, transparent policy to make it in their interest to do so: Put a $10, $15 or $20 per gallon tax on it. If you make it revenue neutral by reducing the income tax (and perhaps some payroll tax too) I won't even oppose it. You'll want to phase it in over a number of years to give people and the economy a chance to adjust. You'll want to offer means-tested income tax credits that are refundable at the low end (people actually get a check) so as not to disadvantage those who pay little or no income tax.

I said an honest policy - that means you have to allow the construction of a lot of nuke and coal plants, powerlines, etc., because electricity use will increase - a lot. Honest means you don't pretend that an industrial economy can suddenly (or even over a long time) use half as much energy as now (or even less), or that funky windmills and solar cells can provide more than a small fraction of the needs.

I said honest - no phony "cap-and-trade" nonsense that's nothing but a hidden tax hike that makes rent-seekers rich and politicians more powerful at the expense of real people.

I said honest - no more pretending that the enterprises that provide the goods and services we demand because they make our lives comfortable, convenient and broad-horizoned are some alien entity that exists on a separate plane from the rest of the population, and which you can thus boss around or manipulate with no deleterious effect on the rest of us - they are us: Our 401ks own their shares, we manage and work in their shops and offices, we buy and use the products they produce.

"I am, for the moment, tired of discussing such things with those whose minds are already made up."

Yeah, well I'm tired of hearing nonsense on this particular issue spouted by people who refuse to use their minds at all in the first place - and then are surprised when the phony "solutions" promoted by pandering pols ("Don't make people change or sacrifice - make 'the industries' do it!") not only don't do what they said they would do, but predictably screw everything else up besides. You wanna talk about reducing oil use? Fine, let's do. Just let's quit lying and pretending - to ourselves and the population - about what that really means.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Hmmm... were I Hillary Clinton, I would be telling Howard Dean to prepare for another Republican president because Obama cannot win against McCain without the Clinton's support. Will he get it? Hell no.

Look at the history of this situation. Hillary Clinton said she was running for president eighteen months ago. Joe Biden and a few other non-serious candidates popped up afterwards and made a half-hearted run. Then along came Obama, weilding the "Race Card" like a weapon, screaming and yelling about change and his fabulous (but non-existant) record. Obama split the party along ethnic and racial lines. It was done purposly and with intent. Now he'll get to reap what he's sewn.

Clinton found herself, her husband and her staff hogtied by phony accusations of racism time so often it became clear she could say NOTHING at all.

Next Obama insulted the 80% of the hard working middle class blue-collar workers, men and women, in America and still expected them to follow along behind him. Let's not even mention the stentch of Rev Wright who's intention was to alienate the entire white race, but still expcted them to vote for his buddy, Obama.

You cannot win without women and blue-collar Americans. Clinton has those locked up. The best thing she can do is say, "fuck you, Obama," and allow him to ruin his political career by running against a 70 year old man who stands with everything unpopular in this country and losing. Adios, Obama.

Let McCain have the presidency in 2008. He's too old to run again in 2012. That's the year Hillary will be elected president while Obama is still sitting in the front row of Trinity Baptist Church in Chicago listening to the hate and trying to figure out why he's a loser.

 

[rgraham666]

The question is, Jenny, "Can America take another four years of Republican policy?" My answer would be 'no'.

Plus, I'm sorry, your attitude and the attitude of many Clinton supporters shows why McCain is almost certain to win now. When you hate someone on the same side as you even more than you hate the person you're fighting against it pretty much guarantees that your opponent will win.

Not that I'm surprised. In America elections are much more about who gets the power that what's best for the country. The Democrats are fighting over the loot before they've won the battle.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The Republicans want Hillary to be the nominee. If she is she loses all the blacks and 42% of the people who normally hate her.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

The question is, Jenny, "Can America take another four years of Republican policy?" My answer would be 'no'.

Plus, I'm sorry, your attitude and the attitude of many Clinton supporters shows why McCain is almost certain to win now. When you hate someone on the same side as you even more than you hate the person you're fighting against it pretty much guarantees that your opponent will win.

Not that I'm surprised. In America elections are much more about who gets the power that what's best for the country. The Democrats are fighting over the loot before they've won the battle.

I'm not too worried about another four years of a Republican president. He can't really do much with a Democratic Congress out for Republican blood.

Besides, I'm going back to Ireland long before McCain takes office.

While Americans are shitting their pant over what Obama has done, I'll be sitting with a glass of Tullamore Dew in The Crown Liquor Bar laughing my ass off.

And by the way JameB...

The Republicans want Hillary to be the nominee. If she is she loses all the blacks and 42% of the people who normally hate her.

The Republicans want to run against Obama because they can win. So Hillary loses the 11% black vote and the support of Big Business. So what?

 

[colddiesel]

The only good thing about an Obama candidacy is that the turnout of voters will increase sharply.

Black people will turn out in unprecedented numbers to support him.

White and Hispanic voters will turn out in record numbers to stop him.

If Hillary was the candidate black voters will stay at home.

Either way McCain wins.

How did the Democrats get themselves in a position of having to chose between two 'B' grade celebrities without an ounce of substance, quality, experience or merit between them?

 

[Pure]

i tend to think the repubs prefer hillary. certainly rush l does. all the ammunition is prepared, e.g. "travelgate."

all the anti clinton stuff simply has to be repackaged: instead of "Bill had Vince Foster murdered" its "Hillary insisted Bill have Vince foster murdered.". Instead of "Bill lied under oath," "Hillary forced Bill not to embarrass her, by lying about M."

And lastly "Bill exploits women and got a bj" becomes "Hillary always knew about and totally approves of Bill's exploits, and even procures women for him, whom SHE fucks afterwards. She sent him Monica, had the hots for her, and only the explosion of scandal kept Hillary from muffdiving M."

while the lines of attack against obama are emerging-- he's a secret muslim; he's unpatriotic, he's 'elitist' --it's unknown how effective these slurs will be. as the recent mississippi election shows, linkage with obama is NOT fatal to a democrat. the mud MAY not stick.

PS: "Bill left the country open to terrorist attack, after WTC #1" it will be "Hillary, because of her past communist connections, made Bill leave the country open to attacks by her friends in al qaeda and others. She actually cheered when WTC #2 occurred."

I love the Repubs! Ann and Rush, all the way!!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

COLD-DIESEL

The President is now the talking head for his constituency. The Presidency is Kabuki Theatre.