Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Liberators
If a tree falls in the forest but the only ones there to hear it are the major national news organizations, does it make a sound? Apparently not. The national media announced that John Kerry didn't get a bounce following the Democratic Convention. Well maybe not, if all you check are the gross national numbers that make for compact headlines and uncomplicated stories, but he's clearly gained support since Boston, and he continues to gain it. Josh Marshall posted two bits of poll analysis yesterday worth reading: One, that the number of too-close-to-call states is down to 10: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin--but Kerry might be just as strong in Florida and Pennsylvania as he is in Michigan, which is currently leaning his way. (Marshall presumes that to win Florida indisputably, Kerry will have to roll up a large margin, given the dubiously legal advantages the Republicans possess there.) And two, that Kerry leads in many different demographic groups: among Catholics, Jews, and Muslims (although Bush has three percent of the Muslim vote locked up), and among Hispanics by a 60-30 margin. Bush dominates only among Protestants and born-agains. In addition, Kerry leads in all age groups except those aged 30-49, which is a tossup. (I am open to your speculations as to why 30-49ers, a demographic group encompassing most of the readers of this bilge, I'd wager, would be so closely divided when other age groups are not. Click "Comments" and have at it.)
Over at Daily Kos, one of the contributors passes along this optimistic factoid: Of the 17 states that were considered battleground states at the start of the campaign, only Tennessee is leaning Bush's way at the moment. And Kerry has made battlegrounds out of states thought to be solidly red before: Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina. (Should Kerry manage to win either Virginia or North Carolina, I would be forced to dine on my hat, having said repeatedly that I didn't think it was possible for him to win in the South.)
The Kos post has sparked lots of comments from readers analyzing the race. Most would be happy with Kerry getting 270 electoral votes, but some are dreaming of a resounding Electoral College margin that represents not just a Kerry win but a Bush repudiation. "Dreaming" is probably the most appropriate way to describe it, though, because everybody not dreaming knows how close it's going to be. A poster with a fine grasp on practical reality says, "I settle for 297. That's the number of [electoral votes] we can 'win,' have Florida stolen, and still win."
In the end, nearly everybody who tries to analyze these numbers is well aware of the fluid nature of this race, and how everything we've noted here could look pretty quaint later on. (Like my post a year ago about this time handicapping the general election race between Bush and Howard Dean.) The Republican Convention is coming up in less than two weeks, and if you're a bettor, you'd be wise to bank on the fact that some of the movement to Kerry over the last three weeks is going to move back to Bush.
If this were a normal political year, two things would be true: We would have had the Republican Convention by now, and it would never have been in New York City. New York has been a Democratic stronghold for as long as there have been Democrats. Ted Rall notes that the city is every bit as liberal as San Francisco, a den of iniquity to which the upstanding citizens of the GOP would never go, and 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want the Republicans to convene in their city at all. (The last time was 1868.) Rall says:
If a tree falls in the forest but the only ones there to hear it are the major national news organizations, does it make a sound? Apparently not. The national media announced that John Kerry didn't get a bounce following the Democratic Convention. Well maybe not, if all you check are the gross national numbers that make for compact headlines and uncomplicated stories, but he's clearly gained support since Boston, and he continues to gain it. Josh Marshall posted two bits of poll analysis yesterday worth reading: One, that the number of too-close-to-call states is down to 10: Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin--but Kerry might be just as strong in Florida and Pennsylvania as he is in Michigan, which is currently leaning his way. (Marshall presumes that to win Florida indisputably, Kerry will have to roll up a large margin, given the dubiously legal advantages the Republicans possess there.) And two, that Kerry leads in many different demographic groups: among Catholics, Jews, and Muslims (although Bush has three percent of the Muslim vote locked up), and among Hispanics by a 60-30 margin. Bush dominates only among Protestants and born-agains. In addition, Kerry leads in all age groups except those aged 30-49, which is a tossup. (I am open to your speculations as to why 30-49ers, a demographic group encompassing most of the readers of this bilge, I'd wager, would be so closely divided when other age groups are not. Click "Comments" and have at it.)
Over at Daily Kos, one of the contributors passes along this optimistic factoid: Of the 17 states that were considered battleground states at the start of the campaign, only Tennessee is leaning Bush's way at the moment. And Kerry has made battlegrounds out of states thought to be solidly red before: Arizona, Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina. (Should Kerry manage to win either Virginia or North Carolina, I would be forced to dine on my hat, having said repeatedly that I didn't think it was possible for him to win in the South.)
The Kos post has sparked lots of comments from readers analyzing the race. Most would be happy with Kerry getting 270 electoral votes, but some are dreaming of a resounding Electoral College margin that represents not just a Kerry win but a Bush repudiation. "Dreaming" is probably the most appropriate way to describe it, though, because everybody not dreaming knows how close it's going to be. A poster with a fine grasp on practical reality says, "I settle for 297. That's the number of [electoral votes] we can 'win,' have Florida stolen, and still win."
In the end, nearly everybody who tries to analyze these numbers is well aware of the fluid nature of this race, and how everything we've noted here could look pretty quaint later on. (Like my post a year ago about this time handicapping the general election race between Bush and Howard Dean.) The Republican Convention is coming up in less than two weeks, and if you're a bettor, you'd be wise to bank on the fact that some of the movement to Kerry over the last three weeks is going to move back to Bush.
If this were a normal political year, two things would be true: We would have had the Republican Convention by now, and it would never have been in New York City. New York has been a Democratic stronghold for as long as there have been Democrats. Ted Rall notes that the city is every bit as liberal as San Francisco, a den of iniquity to which the upstanding citizens of the GOP would never go, and 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want the Republicans to convene in their city at all. (The last time was 1868.) Rall says:
The Republican delegates here to coronate George W. Bush are unwelcome members of a hostile invading army. Like the hapless saps whose blood they sent to be spilled into Middle Eastern sands, they will be given intentionally incorrect directions to nonexistent places. Objects will be thrown in their direction. Children will call them obscene names.Rall ends his screed by saying that if the Repugs were truly the heirs of Lincoln, they would have dumped a candidate more interested in defending his wealthy constituents than in defending regular Americans. William Rivers Pitt also invokes Lincoln in his column this week, quoting a letter Abe wrote in 1848, as he wound down his single term in Congress during the Mexican War--another optional war fought by the United States:
They will not be greeted as liberators.
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure . . . if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I can see it, if you don't.'Recommended Reading: If Kerry's militaristic campaign so far is making you twitchy, it's making Peter Preston of The Guardian vibrate like a tuning fork. If you think Kerry's position on Iraq is so nuanced that it's indefensible, Fareed Zakaria says wait a second--this is one of those issues that really is nuanced, and Kerry's dealing with it sensibly.
