Sure, it shows that the Republican voters, especially the delegates, are out to lunch, especially the last one. No one, no one, in their right mind with all the information available, can think that going into Iraq was a good idea, regardless of what we need to do now to dislodge ourself from it. There is a reason the Republicans sold the war by claiming it would be easy and quick.
However the really revealing thing about the graph is that in each question the "Democratic voters" figures are closer to the "All voters" figure than is the "Republican voters" figure. This suggests there are more Democratic voters, or that the independents agree more with the Democrats. Either way McCain is screwed. If we assume the proportion of independents is zero, and estimate the D/R percentages from the polling data, we get somewhere between 54.0% and 60.6% Democrat.
There is not a shred of evidence so far that McCain will win this election. Every piece of polling data I have seen that didn't use grotesquely flawed techniques (like Gallup polling equal numbers of both parties) shows Obama clearly ahead in electoral votes (countrywide polls are meaningless), and prior to the GOP convention bounce, the gap was widening. If none of that changes, and that's a big if, and we get a McCain surprise victory in November, we'll for the first time in my political life have iron-clad evidence of voter fraud. The Gore-really-won crowd has some interesting circumstantial evidence, but nothing like this would be. Gore wasn't consistently beating Bush in the polls while everyone but Bush's base laughed at the GOP as they are now.
3 comments:
I wish that I could agree with you, but the sad fact that many voters are still saying to themselves "McCain isn't really like Bush; he isn't THAT bad".
Here is an example.
This guy voted for Clinton twice, is an agnostic and really doesn't care for Bush. And while he will never win a Nobel Prize in science, he is your basic "degree from a "directional" state school" type; somewhat above average intelligence.
I agree that Obama has a lead at the moment, but it is hardly a safe one.
His approach of keep tying McCain to Bush is a sound one.
I agree that the best way for Obama to win this is to keep tying McCain as closely to Bush as possible. McCain is going to spend the next several weeks trying to convince America that he didn't vote for and publicly support basically every bad idea that has the average voter frustrated. Obama needs to make sure that he doesn't get away with it.
When I heard a McCain ad that essentially did the, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" thing, I was initially stunned. "No, we aren't, and it's because of YOUR POLICIES, dumbass!" Then I realized that as long as enough people use the word "maverick" he might actually be able to divorce himself from his own policy positions. Amazing.
The polls showing that Gore was significantly ahead were accurate, but now the same polls from the same polling groups showing McCain even or slightly ahead are suspect. Puhlease!
Gore's popular vote margin - a half-million votes - was a razor thin one. In fact, the narrowness of the 2000 and 2004 elections proves nothing more than that the country's electorate is almost evenly divided along partisan lines. McCain only needs the base and a sliver of independents to clear 51%.
Regarding Iraq, it is no longer a winning issue for the Dems. Many people, abetted by the media's complicity, have accepted the Republican meme that we're "winning" thanks to the surge.
Post a Comment