May 17th, 2008
Here’s some evidence of what I’ve been thinking about may be possible with Sen. Obama as the Democratic nominee; and that’s that his candidacy represents such a game changer that all bets will be off come the general election, thus forcing republicans to play defense in areas of the country that they haven’t had to defend in a long time.
Here, let me let the NYTimes be more specific:
NEW ORLEANS — The sharp surge in black turnout that Senator Barack Obama has helped to generate in recent primaries and Congressional races could signal a threat this fall to the longtime Republican dominance of the South, according to politicians and voting experts.
Should Mr. Obama become the Democratic nominee, he would still have to struggle for white swing voters in the South and in border states like West Virginia, where he lost decisively to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential primary. In West Virginia, where more than three-fourths of white voters chose Mrs. Clinton, 20 percent of the white voters said the race of the candidate mattered in their choice.
But in Southern states with large black populations, like Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia, an energized black electorate could create a countervailing force, particularly if conservative white voters choose not to flock to Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, predicts “the largest black turnout in the history of the United States” this fall if Mr. Obama is the nominee.
To hold these states, Republicans may have to work harder than ever. Already, turnout in Democratic primaries this year has substantially exceeded Republican turnout in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
Sure, Sen. Obama may not win the South, but that’s not the goal; rather, the goal is merely to force republicans to spend time and energy where they don’t need to, and for Sen. Obama to help candidates down ticket in the South and elsewhere.
May 9th, 2008
There’s been a lot of talk recently about “working class whites” not supporting Sen. Obama come the general election; however, as Gallup Poll reminds us, in recent years, the default position for white Americans has tended to be to support the republican party, over the Democratic party, and this trend may not be different this election cycle.
However, it is worth noting, as Gallup does, that at this point, Sen. Obama is doing as well among white Americas as Sen. Kerry did back in 2004:
PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama’s current level of support among white voters in a head-to-head matchup against John McCain is no worse than John Kerry’s margin of support among whites against George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.
[…]
But it appears that the way Obama stacks up against McCain at this point is similar to the way in which Kerry performed against Bush in 2004 within several key racial, educational, religious, and gender subgroups. That is, the basic underlying structure of the general-election campaign this year does not appear to be markedly different from that of the 2004 election. This conclusion is based on an analysis of exit-poll data from 2004 compared to the Obama-McCain matchup in 4,000 Gallup Poll Daily tracking interviews conducted during the first five days of May.
April 27th, 2008
Elizabeth Edwards laments about how the traditional, er, mainstream, media continues to fail the American public by merely providing us “Cliffs Notes of the news,” where “the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.”
Mrs. Edwards writes:
[T]he news media cut candidates like Joe Biden out of the process even before they got started. … Few people even had the chance to find out about Joe Biden’s health care plan before he was literally forced from the race by the news blackout that depressed his poll numbers, which in turn depressed his fund-raising.
And it’s not as if people didn’t want this information. In focus groups that I attended or followed after debates, Joe Biden would regularly be the object of praise and interest: “I want to know more about Senator Biden,” participants would say.
Who is responsible for the veil of silence over Senator Biden? Or Senator Dodd? Or Gov. Tom Vilsack? Or Senator Sam Brownback on the Republican side?
The decision was probably made by the same people who decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate. Articles purporting to be news spent thousands upon thousands of words contemplating whether he would enter the race, to the point that before he even entered, he was running second in the national polls for the Republican nomination. Second place! And he had not done or said anything that would allow anyone to conclude he was a serious candidate. A major weekly news magazine put Mr. Thompson on its cover, asking — honestly! — whether the absence of a serious campaign and commitment to raising money or getting his policies out was itself a strategy.
[…]
Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.
[…]
All of this leaves voters uncertain about what approach makes the most sense for them. Worse still, it gives us permission to ignore issues and concentrate on things that don’t matter.
[…]
If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it. … Do your job, so we can — as voters — do ours.
April 27th, 2008
Josh Marshall, over at TalkingPointsMemo.com, asks about something I’ve observed and wondered about, too. That is, even though Sen. Obama leads in the Democratic primary, he has clearly lost the initiative when it comes to setting the national agenda; thus making it harder for his surrogates to go on the offensive on his behalf.
Here’s how Josh Marshall frames it:
His voice seems silent and has for a few weeks. Of course, he’s out in the field campaigning, not focusing on national media and catering to political junkies around the country. But what I really think this is that he’s not controlling the agenda. Hillary’s controlling the agenda, defining the race at the moment. And that’s made him recede into the background, even as he’s a constant topic of conversation.
Clearly it’s easier said than done, however, Sen. Obama needs to flood the national airwaves with a nuts & bolts summery of his agenda, and get away from another mere bio-intro (as candidates often do at this point in the campaign).
September 23rd, 2007
This has received little no coverage in the traditional media, so it’s no wonder that I had not heard of it; however, I can’t help but think, Wow, if a liberal group had done anything like this, the traditional and rightwing media would’ve been all over it.
For those who didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Values Voter Debate last evening, you missed quite a display of political pandering, ridiculous rhetoric and all-around right-wing lunacy. You also missed this lovely rendition of “God Bless America” performed by the Church of God Choir, from Springfield, Ohio – reworded to better reflect the Right’s agenda:
Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land
The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray
Why should God bless America?
Shes’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land
In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right
But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land
Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is
Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land
