Why republicans including McCain will lose in early November.

[P562045]

McCain also has a pastor problem as well.

I would not even put here some of the things Texas televangelist John Hagee has said.

Hence no story because of course the media wants to talk about the most sensationalist part of the story of course and part of the reason of course is for monetary purposes.

[-mmm-]

Originally Posted by P562045

McCain also has a pastor problem as well.

I would not even put here some of the things Texas televangelist John Hagee has said.

Hence no story because of course the media wants to talk about the most sensationalist part of the story of course and part of the reason of course is for monetary purposes.

Matt Taibbi (for my money, the best political writer/reporter today) of Rolling Stone infiltrated Hagee's church and wrote of it in his article Jesus Made Me Puke (the title isnt that blasphemous if you read the article).

[P562045]

This is a classic story of what democrats want the people to believe about McCain.

"And what McCain is offering is four more years of George Bush. He wants to extend the Bush tax cuts," Howard Dean said earlier this month. "Of course, he was opposed to that two years ago."

Another quote.

On issue after issue, John McCain is offering more of the same policies that have failed for the last eight years. That's the agenda that he and the president are raising money to support later today.

These two quotes do something very important.

We definitely don't have to worry about what kind of change the democrats really want because this is what we must focus on no matter what.

This is a very deliberate attempt to say that McCain is just an extension of that Bush is evil guy.

Story Here

How many times will we hear this same story just the words will changed every once in a while to make the story fresh?

I have heard this story at least once already this year.

[P562045]

The last story clearly states McCain is evil.

[hork]

why is any of that shocking? first off everyone knows that no matter who the GOP nominee was they'll tow their party's line they've all without exception done it for the past 6 yrs (almost enough to make one miss newt) and they're not going to change now. as long as they have the subversive immigrants and the hell bound fags to make people focus on they feel no need to address our nation's problems. if those two go away we'll just make new imaginary enemies tie them to terrorists like we do so frequently offer up a few more lies and call anyone who questions us anti-american. not an opinion, a statement of fact and i'll refer those who doubt such to their recent record.

now that said, it's naive for the democrats to think their nominees are the answer to salvation. for certain either one is a vast improvement over four more years of theocratic rule and blatant disregard for the Constitution and the ideology this nation was founded upon but they'll present their own problems.

is McCain evil? I somehow doubt that word is fitting. Is he a viable president who offers any substantive plans or any real possibility of returning our nation to one of stability and prosperity? well of course not and we all know that whether we want to admit it or not. hell all we have to do is look at his record and actions and see how well they mesh if there's any doubt.

[P562045]

Of course McCain is evil.

My last story clearly points out how McCain if elected would be exactly like Bush. Just read my two quotes, the first quote is about McCain offering four more years of Bush; and the other quote talks about McCain continuing on the same path as the last eight years, and that is clearly what the story is trying to say and there is no ambiguity about this at all.

How many countless number of Bush is evil stories have we had in the last seven plus years?

But my story did forget to mention one thing when it comes to McCain and Bush wanting the same thing.

Immigration reform.

I seem to remember that both sides of the political aisle actually agreed about something last year and that this was a bad idea. But it will be back if certain conditions are met next year which include a democrat president and 60 vote majority in the senate. This could be a lasting legacy to Senator Kennedy who one of the masterminds of this whole idea in the first place.

Now we have the story McCain only wanted immigration reform because of course he wants to court the Latino vote. But that story will have to wait another day because I need my beauty sleep.

Just another reason why McCain will not win this November. He has already pandered to certain minority groups.

[P562045]

Your news guru is back. I started this thread almost two months ago and several know it alls now say McCain is going to get creamed early this November.

Here are several quotes from this article.

“This should be an overwhelming Democratic victory,” said Allan Lichtman, an American University presidential historian who ran in a Maryland Democratic senatorial primary in 2006. Lichtman, whose forecasting model has correctly predicted the last six presidential popular vote winners, predicts that this year, “Republicans face what have always been insurmountable historical odds.” His system gives McCain a score on par with Jimmy Carter’s in 1980.

“It is one of the worst political environments for the party in power since World War II,” added Alan Abramowitz, a professor of public opinion and the presidency at Emory University. His forecasting model — which factors in gross domestic product, whether a party has completed two terms in the White House and net presidential approval rating — gives McCain about the same odds as Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and Carter in 1980 — both of whom were handily defeated in elections that returned the presidency to the previously out-of-power party. “It would be a pretty stunning upset if McCain won,” Abramowitz said.

But the biggest obstacle in McCain’s path may be running in the same party as the most unpopular president America has had since at least the advent of modern polling. Only Harry Truman and Nixon — both of whom were dogged by unpopular wars abroad and political scandals at home — have been nearly as unpopular in their last year in office, and both men’s parties lost the presidency in the following election.

Still, many historians remain extremely skeptical about McCain’s prospects. “I can’t think of an upset where the underdog faced quite the odds that McCain faces in this election,” said Sidney Milkis, a professor of presidential politics at the University of Virginia. Even "Truman didn’t face as difficult a political context as McCain.”

Article Here

Just as a little reminder I am also giving a 3/5 majority of democrat senators a 50-50 shot of actually happening.

There is one fly in the ointment to this though. And that is Mrs. Clinton. Will she want to run in 2012 and have Obama out of the way because he could not even beat McCain with all of these things in Obama's favor?

And my #1 factor in all of this comes down to $ and not how good or bad a president Obama would be or not be this to me will actually have very little to with Obama at all except for his ability to raise money that pales in comparison to the amount of money McCain will have to run his campaign.

[-mmm-]

If you havent seen it, I'd recommend Nate Silver/poblano's blog Fivethirtyeight, a reference to the electoral numbers.

Nate is probably better known for his work at Baseball Prospectus for developing the PECOTA system in baseball that try to forecast performance of a player. And now he's branched his work into politics.

Over the weekend here, he just inputted alot of new date from past years (previously it was just mostly polls, census data, and 04 results) and the numbers spit out to a huge Obama win at this point. My caveat with that is that its only June and polls this far out are still unreliable and we wont really see the campiagn narratives shaping up till the conventions (what we're seeing now is just teasers and stuff being thrown on the wall seeing what sticks).

He has a 29% chance of an Obama landslide victory (375+ EVs) compared to just a 9% chance for McCain. My favorite scenarios are the 0.35% chance of an electoral tie (could happen IF Obama wins all Kerry states except New Hampshire, and also wins Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico...well I think thats how it goes) and the 0.03% chance that the EV map this year will replicate the 2000 results between Bush/Gore.

Im not as optimistic as you about the 60 seats (Id say a 1 in 4 chance). This could be its own thread but here's the likely chance for Dems to get a filibuster-proof Senate:

First the win these 3 races which are the easiest picks up for them:
Tom Udall beats Steve Pearce in New Mexico
Mark Warner beats Jim Gilmore in Virginia
Jeane Sheehan beats John Sununu in New Hampshire

Than they have to win most or all of these "toss up" seats:
Mark Udall versus Bob Schaffer in Colorado
Al Franken versus Norm Coleman in Minnesota (which could get interesting if Jesse Ventura gets in the race)
Jeff Merkely versus Gordon Smith in Oregon
Mark Begich versus Ted Stevens in Alaska (assuming Stevens survives his primary challenge)
Ronnie Musgrave versus Roger Wicker in Mississippi (to fill Trent Lott's vacated seat)

There's also these races where Dems could scalp a seat or 2:
Liddy Dole versus Kay Hagen in North Carolina
Susan Collins versus Tom Allen in Maine
John Cornyn versus Rick Norriega in Texas
Mitch McConnell versus Bruce Lunsford in Kentucky (could be a Daschle moment as the head Republican Senator has VERY weak polling numbers, too bad his opponent is as corrupt as he is)

Winning 9 or 10 of them seems to be a very tall task even in what should be a very Democratic election cycle. That's also with assuming they dont lose a seat like Louisiana or New Jersey.

As for the money, I'll have to see if I can find the article on how Obama's fundraising came to be such a gravy train despite not having the typical fat cats you see with political campaign contributions.

[P562045]

There is the little factor of money in the senate races as well.

The democrats are just raising more money than republicans in every conceivable fashion.

I was reading somewhere that McCain is having to take federal dollars for the reason he may not even be able to raise that much money. And Obama has much more than that already and I am sure even though many people have already contributed it will be much easier for Obama to raise more money than McCain especially with the rules McCain made basically for himself in this particular case.

Now money does not always when a race but as we saw in democrat primary season Mrs. Clinton just ran out of steam at the end even though she won a few races by quite a big margin in some cases and just part of the reason it was a pretty moot point towards the end of the democrat contests was she had very little money to spend in the final contests.

I have already predicted McCain losing in November at least two months ago. I say at least two months ago because I may have predicted even earlier than that somewhere else besides this thread. So I am still going to predict that the democrats will pick up a filibuster proof senate even though the odds seem pretty unlikely that it will actually happen. One again the dems have a huge advantage in the senate races as well that is just one of the reasons I will predict it happening. I know my fifty percent prediction that it will happen is pretty high but I am just preparing democrats for their worst nightmare possible.

Carter loses to that Reagan fellow. Carter basically was president under the conditions I just described.

Watergate gave Carter pretty much what he wanted to do and that gave us President Reagan there is no doubt in my mind of that.

And as we know the republicans are terrible at picking presidential candidates for the country in the last twenty eight years for sure.

[P562045]

The McCain campaign is basically being run by a bunch of lobbyists.

[-mmm-]

Last night Utah had its congressional primaries. In house district 3, which covers Provo (home of BYU) and some of the Salt Lake City suburbs and is the most Republican district in the country based on PVI (Partisan Voting Index), incumbant Chris Cannon lost to challenger Jason Cheffertz. Cannon was very much in the pro-business part of the Republican wing, and had quite the campaign warchest. However his stance on immigration (to provide cheaper labor for his contributors one supposes) got him drummed off the GOP November ticket in a resounding fashion (about a 20 point margin with 80% of the precincts reporting in). Cheffertz ran on a very anti-immigrant platform. Cannon's stance wasnt that different from McCain, so from that perspective it makes one ponder how the Republican base will enthusiastically vote for McCain. Its been hinted at before, but this is one of the first empirical signs Ive seen about McCain having to watch his right flank.

[P562045]

Chefferetz also won on the idea that there needs to be change in Washington as well.

And I doubt very much that helps McCain out at all.

St Lake City Tribune Story

And there is another factor of why the incumbent lost. There was very little interest in coming out and voting I think it was less than ten percent of registered voters that came out and actually voted.

This is just another factor as well. I could see some republicans going out and voting for Obama and then some republicans just not coming out and voting just because of McCain and he better get as much of his party's base to vote for him or we may not have seen a lopsided victory in presidential race like this since the one in 1984 and that was one of the most lopsided presidential campaigns in quite some time.

Story from a newspaper right in or near Provo

[P562045]

Conservatives are not going to like this story.

McCain may feel the need to raise the payroll tax after McCain said that he would not raise taxes of any kind.

Sounds like another flip flop by Senator McCain.

Didn't something like this get the president's father in trouble as well.

Story Here

[-mmm-]

Link

A pretty good summary of the campaign of the past week. Of course it leaves out the best part which the Daily Show pointed out the other night, where John McCain used Paris Hilton in an ad which royally pissed off her grandpa who's donated some $15,000 to McCain's campaign.

Actually it all fits with the stuff Ive been reading up on lately. Ive been reading up on the American generational theory as laid out in the book Generations by Bill Howe and Neil Howe.

Basically we are at the end of an ideological era (the culture wars) which started up with the 1968 election of Richard Nixon, and are on the brink of a civic era (the last one was the Great Depression/WWII double crises on through the 50s and early 60s). The US has always alternated from civic to ideological eras much like the pumping of a piston in your cars engine, and it happens about every 30-40 years (thus the 2 combined adds up to about 80 years, or a long lifespan for most people).

McCain's campaign is doing all the stuff we usually see from an ideological era: the smearing, the lying, using wedge issues (though he's using offshore oil drilling over the traditional wedge issues of the culture war era like abortion or gay rights). Obama has been using the template that has been successful for those campaigns at the start of a civic era (the hope and change kind of stuff).

The article I linked to first had a Republican operative calling this a "change election". Another way to put it is a realigning election. Realigning elections almost always happen when you have a confluence of events merge together. The old political ways have lost their steam, a vast young dominant generation starts to come of age, and new technologies start to change the political process. In this election, its obvious the culture wars are (thankfully) on its last legs. For example, all the Republican candidates (well except Ron Paul) spent their entire primary campaign comparing themselves to Ronald Reagan. One other thing that usually marks the end of an ideological era is the scapegoating of immigrants or some other minority group on a large scale (the last such time, the 1920s, had some years where basically the legal immigrant population to the US was zero due to backlash against southern/eastern European immigrants). You have the vast civic-minded Millenial generation (those born between 1982 and 2002) coming of age, and if they're like previous civic generations like the GI/greatest generation they'll come to the polls in masses that you dont see from other generations like Baby Boomer or Gen-X'ers (as shown during the primaries). And as the Obama campaign has shown, the internet has greatly democratized the money element of running a campaign. During the last quarter, his average contributor donated an average of $68 a person, and he's blown away all the people who used the old method of fundraising where you get a bunch of big shots to a party where they give you the $2300 individual max (or the $12,500 max to a national committee like the RNC or DNC). Also his use of social networks like facebook, myspace, and his own mybarrackobama site which he uses as great grassroots organizing tools (something which most Republicans admit they are very much behind the curve on), as well as all the youtube videos his supporters make (something which I think the McCain camp has done a halfway decent job trying to keep up with).

What makes the first election of a realigning election so important if you're a partisan or an ideologue? It sets the stage for who's going to have the power and which way the country will go for the next 30-40 years. Nixon won the vote in 68, which set the stage for Republicans to win 7 of the next 10 Presidential elections (I could go into the explanations of the congress and why the GOP didnt win control of those till 94, but than it'd be alot of nuanced stuff that'll make this post extra long). And even the couple times Dems won, they were governing from Republican turf (for example, Bill Clinton couldnt get health care but he did balance the budget which was a big thing for 90s-era conservatives). Before that, in the previous civic era from 1932-67 Democrats won all but the 2 elections Ike won, and Eisenhower was very moderate compared to what we think of Republicans today, including such big government projects like the interstate highway system and starting up the space program (though a big part of that was also keeping the Rooskies at bay). And its worked that way going back to when Andrew Jackson became President.

One does get the sense though that even Boomers themselves are getting tired of their culture wars. Instead of choosing one of their many generational cohorts on the Republican side (Mitt, Rudy, Freddie), instead they chose McCain who's from the Silent Generation (those born in the 30s and early 40s...and interesting, at least to me, side note: if McCain doesnt win the Silents will be the first generation to not have one of their cohorts elected as President, though thats more to how dominant the GI generation was, from JFK through Bush I...and might have been different if RFK wasnt assisinated). Obama is a tail end Boomer (often called Generation Jones) who was too young participate in all the counterculter clashes of the late 60s or early 70s, but wasnt one of the many disillussioned youths (like yours truly) born a couple years later who grew up in a Gen-X angst-ridden environment.

Anyways, there's alot more nuance to this theory but I dont want to write a novel, and alot of it seems to jive, though a part of me is somewhat skeptical of at least some of it. But I started dwelving into it trying to get a sense of why so many younger people were so enamored with Obama. I just hope its not giving me the false sense to my biggest hope, the coming end of the culture wars and its conservative/liberal red state/blue state divisiveness and the masses electing politicians willing to tackle all the obstacle and crises that lay in its wake.

[P562045]

Originally Posted by -mmm-

I just hope its not giving me the false sense to my biggest hope, the coming end of the culture wars and its conservative/liberal red state/blue state divisiveness and the masses electing politicians willing to tackle all the obstacle and crises that lay in its wake.

What is mentioned here is not going to just go away so easily. There has been an extremely long period that dare I say it goes back to the new deal that does not make this possible. Just yesterday we had a little temper tantrum in the house because one side felt it was not being heard. What this congress has shown so clearly by its accomplishments so far is not a whole lot is getting done for the country as a whole and if it is something that gets done it is so obvious such as Minnesota needs a new bridge and that is just one example.

Obama is like opening a new toy and when the warm and fuzzy feeling wears off eventually and what will we be left with? A very divisive senate still and this will lead me to keep saying that not all of our obstacles and crisis will be handled properly because one side or the other does not want to say they lost and this type of thing will lead to by its very nature not all of our obstacles and crises being met as we are clearly seeing with this present congress demonstrates. Then comes January 2011 when the democrats have a white house and a congress that will give Obama whatever the congress wants. Just remember what I just said though the congress will be so focused on giving Obama whatever they want not what Obama wants and this will lead to the country having another period of not tackling all our problems yet again.

Then the country just like after four years of Carter will elect a very different type of president that is the exact opposite of Obama and this will lead to another set of problems being fixed but another set of problems not being fixed. The things that this congress and the other recent ones have done as well clearly show this. The congress has shown an inability to be able to tackle things that would help the country as a whole because it could be perceived as a victory by the other side of the political aisle. This needs to stop as I have said before sooner rather than latter.

So sorry for being a little long here but as I said before it is long past time we stop "sugarcoating" the obstacles and the many crises we will be facing in the next few years. That is just one of the reasons why this presidential race come this early November is much more important than people will even want to realize.