The Task Ahead
- 05.07.2008 - 12:36 PMBetween them, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have generated more than 30 million primary votes. To say there has never been anything like this is to understate the case. In 2000, when George W. Bush and John McCain were fighting it out for the Republican nomination, a total of 20 million votes was cast. The Democrats in 2008 have bested that by 50 percent. What this means is that, even if a third of Hillary’s voters absolutely refuse to vote for Obama in November, that will leave him with a probable 30 million votes in the bank. In May. Six months before the November election.
Now, surely those 30 million votes would have turned out for Obama in November anyway, even if Hillary had dropped out of the race in Iowa. But that is not the significance of this number. It means something because Obama will not have to spend a nickel to get their vote. Instead, he will only have to spend money to get another 30 million or so votes, and he will have more money than anyone else has ever had before to do so.
It is important for conservatives and Republicans, who have comforted themselves with the thought that Obama cannot possibly win because no one as far to the Left as he is can win the presidency in the United States, to understand the nature of the challenge he poses. Think of it this way. In 1972, George McGovern, on Election Day, received 29 million votes — fewer than Obama’s and Hillary’s combined vote totals in the Democratic primary in 2008.
Think of it this way as well, if you want to delude yourself that a left-liberal can’t win. In 2004, John Kerry, the most liberal member of the Senate and nobody’s idea of a good candidate, received 59 million votes. He bettered Al Gore’s 2000 vote total by 17 percent. He only lost because George Bush generated 62 million votes, the greatest number in American history. Who received the second greatest number of votes in American history? John Kerry.
A left-liberal can win, and will win, unless he is defeated by his rival. Barack Obama will not defeat himself. He’s already too strong a candidate for that to be a possibility.
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May 7th, 2008 at 12:43 PM
What if McCain challenged Obama to a series of debates, as Hillary did recently. If, as expected, Obama refuses, McCain can use his refusal to challenge assertions that he wants to talk about “the issues.”
May 7th, 2008 at 12:51 PM
We do indeed have much to worry about. A huge number of Americans believe in the welfare state. The doctrines of the New Deal are foolishly embraced by perhaps even the majority. On top of that, dishonest pacifism pervades the culture. The idea that the United States can take a vacation from history is a tempting delusion. It may be too late to save the country. If anything, this may be our last chance.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:55 PM
What was the population of US when McGovern was running? How many registered democrats were there then and how many are there now, as percentage of population?
Same can be said about Kerry’s vote total compared to Al Gore’s. It eventually comes down to which states the candidates win not the popular vote. Turnout in NY, NJ, and CA will be more and so perhaps in the other blue states. What matters will be the numbers in battleground states: Florida, Ohio, and perhaps Pennsylvania.
The choice of Veep might affect their particular state too.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:57 PM
Michigan will be a battleground, too, sharangpani.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:00 PM
The industrial midwest will definitely be in play this year, as those states are demographically bad for Obama. My question, though, is to what extent Obama can hope to win traditional red states like Colorado or North Dakota, where he’s currently polling strong. I’m inclined to dismiss the odds of Obama succeeding in the Republican mountain west, and the demographics there don’t favor him, but this does make me nervous.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
This is the message that non-Ivy League white Americans must hear: you will be shafted by the racist blacks surrounding “Barry” Obama and his guilt tripped white “elites.” They are going to royally stick it to you. They perceive you to be dirt and deserving of being filthed on. You must vote for the less than perfect John McCain purely for reasons of self preservation.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:43 PM
sharangpani and Bruce NV: Good points. This is a ‘high will the rubble bounce’ kind of question that JPod poses: yes, Obama will do very well and run up big totals in most blue states, far more perhaps than did Kerry. But which red states is he going to take from McCain? And I still say McCain can take a few blue states from Obama — the Magician’s magic has faded, and we see a mere mortal behind the curtain furiously pulling the levers. Obama is not that good.
Of course, McCain will have to run a smart, tough campaign. That goes without saying. But despite the punditocracy’s firm belief that this is the year of the Democrat, it’s really McCain’s race to lose.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:44 PM
Oops — first sentence should have been: This is a ‘how high will the rubble bounce…’
May 7th, 2008 at 1:50 PM
I agree with both of Mr. David Thomson’s posts.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:17 PM
Actually, Barack Obama could defeat himself. He may already have defeated himself, though none of us may know it yet. It’s just nothing to count on, and not a whole lot to win and govern on. McCain has already made it clear that he intends to run on the big issues, though it’s in the nature of campaigns that they will tend to focus on small events and statements that crystallize those differences.
Obama can’t jump over his own shadow: He continually produces revelatory statements of the “global test” variety. A good recent example was just last night, as pointed out by Gatewaypundit and noted by James Taranto this morning, when Obama described energy policy and the oil companies as “funding both sides of the war on terror.” This strange statement seems to have been copied from some extremist-conspiracist manifesto - something for a Ron Paul supporter or a Daily Kos diarist to expound upon. Uttered in the context of a debate, and seized upon by the McCain campaign, such a statement could be devastating to Obama - illustrating his out-of-the-mainstream naivete and ignorance and underlining doubts about his fitness for office.
Obama’s odd references in the same speech to Roosevelt talking to our enemies, or his campaign’s statements yesterday in support of activist judges, his bitter/cling comments from a few weeks ago, and many other stray statements that he’s made that went relatively unremarked upon since they were uttered in the context of the Democratic race, all point to the same pattern: He’s rather uninformed, shallow, and clumsy, and when he’s tired, distracted, or overconfident he falls back on bs and leftist-academic cant. I guess it’s possible that he’ll play a perfect game from late August to November, but his track record is that he comes up with stuff like this on a regular basis - because that’s really where he comes from and really who he is.