In 2004, President Bush captured the Midwestern swing state of Iowa by a single percentage point. This year, well, to quote Yoda, matters are worse:
Iowans have Iowa back to themselves now. In the 24 hours that remain before New Hampshire steals the headlines, Iowa voters look ahead to the general election for President of the United States.
…
Today, 01/07/08 …
* Obama defeats McCain by 17 points.
* Obama defeats Huckabee by 23 points.
* Obama defeats Romney by 26 points.
* Obama defeats Giuliani by 40 points.
That’s right, in a swing state where the campaigns have pretty much engaged, Barack Obama beats all comers by double-digits. I guess you could argue that Rudy’s absence during primary season means that his 40 point loss would end up being more of a 20 or 30 point loss, but to argue that point is to concede that all is basically lost for Republicans next year. And this poll only includes likely voters. Just imagine the extent to which Obama will Barack-the-vote once all of his first-time voters who came out to caucus for him show up at the polls this November.
But don’t worry! The GOP establishment has the perfect solution! Folks like Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin will spend eight months calling Obama a liberal and beating Americans who can’t pay their mortgages over the head with economic statistics. That’ll learn ‘em!
As I’ve said before, if the conservative establishment tries to fight a 2004-style base-driven campaign in 2008, Republicans will lose, and they will lose big. This is especially true with Obama, who exudes crossover appeal and who has the proven ability to turn out new voters. Traditional Republican attacks on Obama as a liberal in centrist’s clothing won’t work on Barack. Why? Because the senator isn’t running as a centrist. He’s running as a liberal. By embracing a new style of liberalism — one that isn’t angry, or lacking in patriotism, or mired in the battles of the ’60s — Obama hopes to apply broad liberal principles to current economic, social, and international problems in an optimistic and pragmatic way. His charisma, communication skills, and post-Boomer status make him the first liberal in a generation who can potentially market liberalism to a majority of Americans again. This is similar to the way Reagan transformed dour, grumpy Goldwater conservatism from a philosophy that won six states in 1964 to one that won over 40 states in 1980.
Moreover, the conservative establishment apparently never learned the lessons of 1992. In politics, perception is reality. As long as most Americans view Iraq as a failure and think that the economy is headed towards (or is currently in) recession, all the statistics in the world aren’t going to change people’s minds. In situations like these, Americans vote for politicians who feel their pain — those who agree that there is a problem and who propose ways to solve the problem. Unless the Republican nominee can tap into the broad economic and international angst that exists among the American middle class, we should all start practicing saying, “President Obama.” And Hewitt and Malkin and friends can shut the lights off on the way out.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Meaningless, it is January, at the height of Obama mania.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:06 am
I remember when Dukakis lead Bush by 17% nationally, the summer before the election of ‘88.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Side note, McCain and Obama just won the tiny town midnight vote in NH, says Fox.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:11 am
FYI First votes cast in NH
McCain 4 votes
Mitt 2 votes
Rudy 1 Vote
Obama 7
Edwards 2
Richardson 1
Hillary got the goose egg!
Here is more: http://mydryfly.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/first-votes-of-new-hampshire-counted/
January 8th, 2008 at 12:17 am
Huck also shut out.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Its all good!
January 8th, 2008 at 12:25 am
And remember, since 1968, the winner of the Republican Presidential Primary in Dixville Notch has went on to become the Republican Nominee for president, so if that trend continues then John McCain will be our nominee……Here’s to hoping that it will continue.
Go MCCAIN!!!!
January 8th, 2008 at 12:26 am
I guess it’s decided then! No sense in waiting until tomorrow night.
McCain – 57%
Romney – 28%
Rudy – 14%
I don’t think this means anything at all…Just a silly way for the news media to try and stretch the news out as long as possible.
However, similar to Iowa, at least among the first 17 votes, there are more voters choosing democrats than republicans.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:29 am
“But don’t worry! The GOP establishment has the perfect solution! Folks like Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin will spend eight months calling Obama a liberal and beating Americans who can’t pay their mortgages over the head with economic statistics. That’ll learn ‘em!”
Best. Paragraph. Ever.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Actually responding to the post, I would agree with Swint, in that this is meaningless. The length of the campaign is killing each front runner. America will tire of Obama this and Obama that after several months, and we’ll see the numbers stabilize between the two parties. He’s just the hype of the month.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Dave G,
New survey USA poll of swing state of Ohio has Obama down 7 points to McCain and tied with Huck.
In border state of Kentucky, McCain and Huck beat Obama by 18-20 points!!Even Rudy beats him !
It’s a long way to November and too soon to be coronating Pres Obama.
So, no reason to panic yet.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Obama’s probably our next President.
We need a Republican who can make people THINK about the issues, by addressing them in a way that doesn’t sound like the same ole Republican partisan speak.
Like Rudy educated liberal New Yorker’s about how he, a Republican, could fix their problems. He got elected in a city that votes 85% Democratic for President.
In retrospect, given the anti-partisan atmosphere, I think Rudy made a mistake in being an attack dog on Hillary. Not because she’s probably going to lose the nomination. Because the electorate doesn’t want to hear that kind of thing anymore.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:34 am
7,
Where did you get the statistic that the winner in Dixville Notch was the nominee? I had heard that they weren’t very accurate.
But I’m hoping you’re right and the other guy I heard that from is wrong.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:34 am
All these national polls are simply name recognition surveys. Had they asked to name one single idea or plan any of the candidates have proposed I’d bet my life less than 5% of respondants could. It’s way too early to even be considering the demise of the Republican party. Perception means nothing this early. Obama is the flavor of the month because he is nothing like anyone we’ve seen before: young, minority, undented by any controversy. But beneath the surface there is nothing there, a staggering difference between him and Reagan. Obama’s undented because he’s untested, in anything. All five of out “frontrunners” have more experience and more real-life knowledge than Obama, and that will be significant later in the ‘08 campaign. His Senate record (which is quite empty since he began running) will be a huge factor brought up by the GOP nominee, and his record as a state rep leaves a lot to be desired. At the risk of being sued for theft, let me say that I remember Ronald Reagan, I even met Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was a great president with years of pre-presidential experience and success. Obama is no Ronald Reagan.
I realize it’s popular and attention-grabbing to make earth-shattering proclamations about the death of the Republican party, and no one does it better than DaveG, and he may end up being correct when this is all over (which I’m sure he’ll proclaim just as loudly!). But right now, January ‘08, with just 17 votes cast in NH, it’s all about as meaningful as the Dixville Notch election results at this stage of the game.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am
these polls reallyd omean nothing right now. just think if another 9/11 happened. those would flip pon their head.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Hey John Galt, in the predictions thread you’ll need to predict on all 6 top GOP candidates if you want me to include you in the results.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:37 am
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/politics&id=5872028
Vote in NH
Voters in two small New Hampshire villages, Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, cast the initial ballots just after midnight Tuesday.
In Hart’s Location, Democrat Obama received nine votes, Hillary Rodham Clinton received three and John Edwards received one. On the Republican side, McCain received six, Mike Huckabee received five, Ron Paul received four and Mitt Romney one.
In Dixville Notch, on the Republican side, McCain received four votes, Mitt Romney two and Rudy Giuliani one. On the Democratic side, Obama received seven votes, John Edwards two votes and Bill Richardson one vote.
Long-shot GOP hopeful Rep. Duncan Hunter attended the vote in Dixville Notch, where results were announced before 12:06 a.m.
“It epitomizes people-to-people politicking,” Hunter said minutes before the votes were cast.
Hunter received no votes in either town.
State law allows towns with fewer than 100 people to open at midnight and to close as soon as all registered voters have cast ballots.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:38 am
I realize it’s popular and attention-grabbing to make earth-shattering proclamations about the death of the Republican party, and no one does it better than DaveG, and he may end up being correct when this is all over (which I’m sure he’ll proclaim just as loudly!).
LOL. We’re talking multiple Drudge sirens here.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:38 am
Mccain ‘08 because we didn’t get thumped badly enough with Dole ‘96
January 8th, 2008 at 12:38 am
#13 – Carl Cameron said tonight that Dixville Notch is “never” right. Note, too, that 67% of the 12 independents went for Obama, only 33% for McCain…that’s a trend I’d like to see surge!
January 8th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Patrick,
Well you can go to Wikipedia and type in Dixville Notch and that will tell you, or you can just Google it, but it is a fact. Whoever wins the Primary for Republicans in Dixville Notch has become our nominee since 1968, i just hope that it continues.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:43 am
Cricket,
As long as 30% of Indy’s vote for McCain, i think that will put him over the top, i think if its more than that, then he will win more easily, but if its lower, then it will be a very close race, but i’m confident that at least McCain will get 40% of the Indy vote and will win by at least 15 points. So many voters decide at the last minute and i think that Straight Talk will win over Flip Flop any day of the week.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:44 am
Cricket,
I do expect Obama to get roughly twice as many independents as McCain tomorrow. In fact, it seems almost certain to occur. More people will vote in the Democratic primary in general (and therefore more independents), and Obama actually performs better among independents then McCain does, even relatively speaking. I’ll call it now: Obama gets 43k independents, McCain gets 20k.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Interesting.
They are accurate from 1968 with the nominee, but not the winner of the primary (they went for Bush in 2000). In 1964 they went with Nixon over Goldwater even though Nixon wasn’t a declared candidate.
They’ve got numbers and everything. They aren’t too accurate on the Dem side, though.
I guess the claims about them being inaccurate is more Romney propaganda. Go McCain!
January 8th, 2008 at 12:50 am
Matt-
If those numbers are accurate then that isnt enough for Jmac to get over the top.
Are you using the 100,000 Indie figure or what figure are you basing the numbers off?
January 8th, 2008 at 12:52 am
How many does Paul get? Almost all of his votes will come from the indies. Romney does not do terribly among the independents either. If McCain gets 20,000 in your example, Mitt would get 10,000 atleast.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:52 am
The had 12 indepdent voter and only three republican voters – that’s not at all representative of the state.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:00 am
DaveG,
Obama has a ton of money, had paid staff in every county in Iowa, and saturated the airwaves. If the GOP were to get behind Huckabee instead of fighting him at every turn he would beat Obama in Iowa and nationally. IMO, with JC Watts as his running mate, he’d easily beat Obama nationally. Huckabee is a winsome guy that wins over most audiences, which he just proved again on Letterman (even though Dave dissed Huck by giving him ten minutes at the end of the show.)
As a side note, on a Late Show commercial break here in FL, Rudy ran a commercial of the burned out skeleton of the WTC. I like Rudy’s personality, but if ads with smoking ruins and jihadists with AK’s is all he has to offer to America, his candidacy is toast.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:01 am
cj,
The secretary of state expects about 150k independents to vote. That seems reasonable to me, but I expect the breakdown to be 95k in the Democratic primary and 55k in the Republican primary. I expect McCain to get around 36% of the independents that vote Republican. I expect Obama to get around 45% of the indies that vote Dem.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Matt,
one other question. What number of GOP voters do you think will vote?
January 8th, 2008 at 1:08 am
How could Romney be down by 26 points to Obama? Romney spent 1/200th of his life fortune on winning Iowa. I wonder what the numbers are in New Hampshire.
One good thing for McCain is that he didn’t spend any money in Iowa like Obama and Romney. Maybe if he had spent as much as Romney he would be even closer than Obama.
Republicans have one clear choice to make in NH: pick the used carsalesman (Romney) or the true American hero/patriot (John McCain).
http://www.politicalpressure.wordpress.com
January 8th, 2008 at 1:10 am
By the way, using those projections, by my calculations, if Mitt beats McCain by 3.5 points among Republicans, he almost certainly wins. Remember, in 2000 Bush beat McCain among Republicans by 3 points, and Romney’s a far better fit for the state, and McCain is far less well-loved among base voters.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:12 am
cj,
Just a guess, by I’m thinking around 170k. Could be as low as 150k though.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Obama is getting a whispering campaign against him that suggests he is anything but patriotic. The photo of him standing with his arms at his sides while all of his political opponents have their hands over their hearts is an interesting one. Does anyone have any more to say on this subject? A talk radio guy this morning in my area was commenting on Obama’s apparent lack of patriotism and I thought I’d bring it up.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:19 am
thanks Matt. was just trying to do the %s in my head.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:26 am
One reason an Obama candidacy may actually signify good things for the GOP is what he represents as a candidate with respect to the rest of the Democratic Party. Look at the other candidates, current and former: Clinton, the very symbol of her husband’s years in office; Edwards, the left-wing populist pushing class warfare; Richardson, long-time Democratic politician with the most varied resume; Biden, Senator for decades and possibly the most pragmatic of the bunch; Dodd, maybe and the most left-wing with decades of experience. All are true representatives of the party, with years of service, collectively responsible for the party’s current message. And all are being rejected by the voters for a brand new face with no party baggage or history, who has the ability to craft his own message seperate from the rest of his party.
To me, this is encouraging as a Republican, for it shows that while they don’t like Bush at all, they don’t like their own leaders and message as well. It means that running against them, with the right message, be it for Congress or for President, may not be the gargantuan task we all think it may be. Don’t get me wrong, Republicans are wizzards at losing elections we should have easily won – look at 2004. But if done right, meaning if we succeed in portraying Obama as a fresh face on an old body (in other words, as my dad used to say, in his not so suddle way, in similar situations, “it’s like lipstick on an a-hole. . .it’s still an a-hole”), I think an Obama candidacy would be easy to overcome.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Interesting article in LA Times.
Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-chamber8jan08,0,4301350.story?coll=la-home-center
WASHINGON — Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.
“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said.
If they spend the$60 million as indicated, they may want to spend it quickly in support of Romney. What happens if Huckabee wins the Rep Nomination. Then who do they spend the money on in Generals?
January 8th, 2008 at 1:29 am
#34. . . I don’t think that type of campaigning would work. Five years ago, maybe questioning a candidate’s patriotism was a successful tactic. But I think we’re far enough from 9/11 to try that. My guess is it would backfire on us big time.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Fox News was talking about Obama’s rise also benefiting Romney from another perspective. They said that the excitiement of the novelty surrounding Obama has made many republicans jealous enough to want to to have their own outsider to rally around. Mitt has been playing this up in the last debate and also in his commercial tonight.
January 8th, 2008 at 2:06 am
Hillary’s really run a poor campaign. I wouldn’t get too worried about Obama’s popularity right now. Hillary should have been using Bill a lot more from the very beginning. Sure she would have had to deal with his baggage, but Democrats want Bill, and he can talk his way through anything (in a room of Democrats).
January 8th, 2008 at 2:11 am
Imagine a Mitt-Obama race. Obama talking about change, then Mitt asking, “what have you ever changed?”. Then explaining that he’s been a change agent for over 30 years, turning around failing companies, instituting health care reform in Massachusetts, something the Democrats have never been able to accomplish.
Seriously, if you were to list Obama’s accomplishments in government, would you even need a pen?
January 8th, 2008 at 2:43 am
Okay, I just read this, I posted above about 30 minutes ago so I wasn’t just rephrasing what I read.
“Barack, name something you’ve changed. Name a business you’ve changed. Name an Olympics or a volunteer effort you’ve changed. Name something in Washington you’ve changed. Name something you’ve changed. You think we are going to change, but you’ve never done it. I’ve done it. That’s how I’ve spent my life.â€
January 8th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Bjalder
I love it, I think Mitt could do quite well against Barack.
January 8th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Dave,
I thought you’d like these quotes by McCain in today’s WaPo:
The impolitic politico [McCain] also confesses his addiction to polls.
In need of a fix, he peruses the New Hampshire surveys on the Real Clear Politics Web site on a reporter’s computer. They all show him leading, except for one. “What the hell is wrong with Suffolk?” he asks. Later, he again returns to “those jerks at Suffolk. . . . Monkeys with phones.”
and this:
As the bus rolls on, Time magazine’s Jay Carney reads out a headline from the Drudge Report: “TALK OF HILLARY EXIT.”
“I don’t believe that,” McCain retorts immediately. “My favorite Drudge was when I had the walk-on role in ‘Wedding Crashers.’ . . . I log on to Drudge: ‘MCCAIN STARS IN RAUNCHY BOOBS MOVIE.’ So Leno called me up and said, ‘I got a great response for you: In Washington, I get to work with boobs every single day.’ ”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/07/AR2008010703139_pf.html
January 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
““Barack, name something you’ve changed.”
Bad idea.
Kinda like the advice that all lawyers get – never ask a question whose answer you dont already know.
An open question like that gives your opponent a free shot at defining his answer on his terms.
He would need to make it more assertive – I did this, I did that. Now, top that.