|
I hear a lot of Hillary supporters predicting that Obama cannot win in November but I've never been able to understand the arguments they use I'm opening this discussion in the hope that someone on that side might be able to shed some light on something I might be missing.
These are the arguments I tend to hear:
1. The states Hillary won in the primary carry more electoral votes.
As I understand it, the states Hillary won carry like 373 electoral votes or something so that makes Hillary the bigger electoral vote getter. That's beautiful, but a very huge chunk of that 373 is states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Texas. I honestly don't believe that Clinton's winning the TX primary means she can turn TX from the solidly republican state it is to a blue state. Likewise, I think it's absurd to suggest that CA, NY, NJ, and MA are suddenly going to turn red because their first choice for nominee didn' t get the nomination.You also have to remember that Especially in New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts, Hillary won by some very slim margins. Obama actually picked up a lot of votes in those states, so to argue that Obama doesn't have much support in those states is also quite perplexing.
It seems to me that a better way of judging a candidate's electability would be to look at their performance in the swing states. I will look at that next.
2. Hillary won the states that matter in the campaign.
This argument is based on the 270 electoral vote strategy for winning elections where basically you look at the states Kerry won in 2004, and then figure out which additional states need to be won in order for a democrat to win in 2008. By this logic, since Clinton won the primaries in Ohio and Florida be decent margins, she is the best candidate to carry these states in 2008 and win the election.
This argument makes 3 major assumptions that I disagree with:
a. That just about every state that voted solidly for Bush in 2004 will vote for McCain in 2008
b. That every state that voted solidly for Kerry in 2008 will automatically support the democratic nominee.
c. That Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania will once again be the decider states.
But what about these states:
Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri, Nevada, Virginia, and Wisconsin?
Together these states carry more than 60 Electoral votes. That's more than Ohio and Florida put together, and all of these states are states that went for Bush in 2004, and all of them are states that are now newly competitive, or are actually leaning democratic ahead of these elections. And these are the ones I came up with just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others I am forgetting. We win these states, and even without Ohio and Florida, we win the election. Forget the old political map. We are drawing a new one. I'm not saying Florida and Ohio aren't important, I'm just saying that they aren't the ONLY important states. And Obama's wins in Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, and Colorado, and his huge margin win in Virginia means that he stands a pretty good chance in these states.
I hate arguments based on the 270 strategy because they follow the same political methodology that I've grown to hate which is: "Do what you did in 2004, and 2000, and 1996" but tweak it a little bit and you should win. This is 2008 different year different election. For one thing, a sizeable chunk of voters in this election are first time voters, so trying to predict the winner based on voting trends from past elections doens't make much sense to me.
The 270 strategy is also a little too reminiscent of Hillary's Super Tuesday strategy which was: Win the big states on Super Tuesday, and you will get enough delegates to crush all your opposition because that's what past nominees did to win. Based on this strategy, Clinton abandoned South Carolina to go campaign in New York and California ahead of Super Tuesday. Based on this strategy, she didn't plan for running the campaign beyond Super Tuesday. We all see how well sticking to the assumptions of the past served Hillary.
3. Hillary will better be able to deal with the republican attack machine.
Hillary supporters actually have a point here. I do think that Hillary is better equipped than Obama to deal with the petty bickering that can become part of running for office.At the same time, this argument depresses me because I that like the other arguments is rooted in the politics of the past and the assumptions of the past. It's based on the "Let's try to do what worked for the republicans in 2000 and 2004" strategy.
In this election we have seen so many campaigning myths broken that I find it hard to see why people still point to past elections when defining what it takes to suceed. They said you couldn't raise enough money to run a campaign without pandering to lobbyists and PACs Obama and Ron Paul did it, and after seeing their sucess and with her campaign coffers drained, Hillary learned the wisdom of reaching out to small donors. They said that a candidate couldn't raise a lot of money for an election without relying on big money donors, apparently not so. They said no democrat could outraise a republican. They said a successful candidate needed to be an attack dog to succeed.
They also said that a sucessful candidate needed to be able to stand the heat to stay in the kitchen. Not so, Obama went up against someone who you have to admit is probably the toughest fighter in politics today, and he has survived. Apparently you don't have to stand the heat if you are planning to demolish the kitchen and turn it into a second den. I'm sure when Obama is the nominee, there will be attacks from the republican machine. McCain will not initiate the attacks, but he will look on as his surrogates do it. I expect that democratic party surrogates like MoveOn.org will respond with attacks of their own. But I'm also confident that the scores of new voters that this primary has attracted will show politicians rooted in the old-style attack dog tactics of the past that this is a different election. Karl Rove's place is in the past. Anyone who picked their presidential candidate based on fear of republican attacks is thinking in the past. The American voters have spoken and it looks like they are rejecting the politics of fear. Hell they already did it in 2006. I'm sure attack tactics will play a role in this election, but I have a hard time believing that they will decide the election; So much so that our candidate choice should be based on who is the best attack dog more than anything else.
A lot of people ask me why I believe Obama can bring change. I always respond by saying that he has already brought change by running a different campaign. His break with the campaigning tactics of the past give us a sign of what an Obama administration will be like. We've changed the way money is raised. We've changed the way you win a nomination, it's not all about a Super Tuesday blowout anymore. We are going to change the way elections are won.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(262 posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
