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yes.

The nutjobs got rid of Max Cleland a while back...McCain was only a matter of time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some thoughts since my previous post:

I understand why Republicans venerate Reagan. It wasn't because he was truly a great president. Heck, he might have been more of a puppet than Dubya ever was. But he's the last GOP president/presidential candidate to be able to pull off an optimistic, uplifting message.

It's kind of remarkable when you think about it. There have been a lot of angry old men, but even the women like Palin and Bachmann have an angry air about them. The rest have mostly been charismatically challenged. Dubya in 2000 might have been the closest thing, but he came across as too dim to take seriously. Romney has the look and seems to smile enough, but doesn't have a full tank of charisma himself. Plus there's something kinda cardboard about him. The Romney-Kerry parallels are truly striking.

Anyway, I think the GOP just needs a leader who can do the optimistic thing. I really do think people would rather respond to that than negativity and infighting and searches for ideological purity. With the right leader, the whole tone of the party could change.

gorgon wrote:The nutjobs got rid of Max Cleland a while back...McCain was only a matter of time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some thoughts since my previous post:

I understand why Republicans venerate Reagan. It wasn't because he was truly a great president. Heck, he might have been more of a puppet than Dubya ever was. But he's the last GOP president/presidential candidate to be able to pull off an optimistic, uplifting message.

It's kind of remarkable when you think about it. There have been a lot of angry old men, but even the women like Palin and Bachmann have an angry air about them. The rest have mostly been charismatically challenged. Dubya in 2000 might have been the closest thing, but he came across as too dim to take seriously. Romney has the look and seems to smile enough, but doesn't have a full tank of charisma himself. Plus there's something kinda cardboard about him. The Romney-Kerry parallels are truly striking.

Anyway, I think the GOP just needs a leader who can do the optimistic thing. I really do think people would rather respond to that than negativity and infighting and searches for ideological purity. With the right leader, the whole tone of the party could change.

That's what the Conservatives tried here. The thing is that when one thing goes wrong with your new happy brand of republicans/conservatives the vicious negative side resurface and try to rip the whole thing apart. So you end up trying to juggle coming across as a nice person and pleasing the frothing right wing lunatics in your own party and fail at both.

I don't think the nutjobs are numerous, they're just loud. And absent other leadership, the masses just follow the voice they're hearing most clearly.

Negativity is kinda like the dark side of the Force. It's quicker and easier. But it isn't stronger than a positive message. People would rather be inspired than have someone plucking their strings in a negative way all the time. There's a certain weight that comes with that.

I think that's the one thing Obama needs to worry about. Clearly he can't run on a strong record, but if his message goes sharply negative during the campaign, that's not a bad thing for Romney. The negative campaigning will likely suppress turnout, while giving Romney cover to get ugly himself.

sebster wrote:
As I said before, those polling results were very misleading, because that 3-4 point lead was based around 2004 turnouts. The increase in likely voters among core Democrat voting blocs, particularly black people and the under 25s, was a major driver in Obama's win.

But if you look at Obama's actual margin of victory in the popular vote, 7 points, you see results consistent with polling based on historical metrics of likely voters.

Further, the role of the youth vote has been largely overstated. In 2004 roughly 17% of all voters were under 30, in 2008 it was roughly 18%. The major difference was that Obama was able to capture a much larger share of the under 30 vote (66%) than Kerry had been (54%). The point being that those people under 30 were not significantly more likely to vote than they had been in 2004, but they were significantly more likely to vote for Obama.

Similarly, voter participation among black people and Hispanics rose respectively, from 11% in 2004 to 12.1% in 2008, and 6% in 2004 to 7.4% in 2008. A notable increase, but not one which invalidated the historical methodology given that, speaking from actual results, this translates into ~1.7* additional points for Obama.

*95% of blacks and 67% of Hispanics voted for Obama.

sebster wrote:
That only really holds if 'more' funding means that's all the advantage you're going to get. If instead Obama hadn't just spent more than McCain, but 2 or 3 times as much he could have pushed his lead out in those key states - which is exactly what he would have done if the election was on the line. But instead he used his brand, which was incredibly strong at the time, to get other Democrats over the line.

Remember the number of stops he made in states that were safe in the presidential race, just to stand next to some Democrat facing a tough election?

See, but that's the thing, Obama was spending 2-3 times as much as McCain in the major battleground states. In PA Obama spent ~40 million, while McCain spent ~20 million. In Ohio Obama spent ~25 million, while McCain spent ~15 million. In Florida Obama spent ~36 million, while McCain spent ~10 million. In Virginia, which isn't even really a battleground in most elections, Obama spent ~25 million, and McCain spent ~7 million. In North Carolina, similar to Virginia, Obama spent ~15 million, and McCain spent ~4 million.