Let me repeat what I have often said: if the Democrat Party cannot win this November, it will implode. They should win, and still have to be considered the heavy favorites, but if they fight all summer (no nominee until the Convention), they just might lose.
Polling is bad right now for Democrats when it should be at its nadir for the incumbent party, the Republicans.
At the moment, the Democrats have bad economic news, a War with mixed support at best, and an eager base. McCain should be Ford, getting clobbered early and hoping to come back against the unknown Carter. Instead he has a small but steady lead in most polls. Of course, the Democrats will get a bounce when they unite, but they have blown a chance to finish McCain off and win an easy race.
If they cannot win now, the Democrat Party will need more than superficial fixes. It may have to start over.
Brief Thoughts on the Democrat Base: McCain’s Big Chance
That might be a good thing, leading to a more diverse Party.
The Democrat Party at the top is culturally uniform. That is bad as they spent the entire primary cycle pandering to the left and are still doing so.
The Republicans presented a less diverse image (all white male candidates), but actually argued about ideas. See Thompson versus Huckabee . . . Rudy versus the field on abortion . . . or Ron Paul against everyone on everything. The Democrats agreed about almost everything.
The Republican Party had a serious pro-choice candidate this year. The Democrats had no serious pro-life candidate. The Republicans have national leaders (the governor of California, senior senators) who are not in lock step with the rest of the party on family or culture of life issues. The Democrats have no pro-family leaders as powerful as Senator Olympia Snowe or my governor, the Terminator, are in the Republican Party.
At the moment, the Democrat Party is controlled by three groups insulated from the rest of American life: educational/academic culture (teachers, professors, and a plurality of the students who intend to remain in academia), mass media, and secular voters. These are not growing groups or if they are growing they are growing very slowly.
The only thing propping up this culturally monochromatic minority up are African-American voters and the Democratic Party is in the process of reminding this key part of the base what it means when you can be taken for granted. If Obama gets the nomination, which he surely has earned, and loses, it will be the Democrat Party of the Clinton’s that will have taken the shots that finished off his campaign.
If the Senator from Illinois does not get the nomination, the Democrat Party will face massive voter apathy in their key demographic group and will lose.
Already John McCain has treated Senator Obama more decently than the Clinton campaign and the Democrat establishment that runs it.
The best thing about a McCain run (which has down sides too) is that it prevents the Republican Party from committing the destructive error of Pete Wilson of California. Wilson alienated Latino voters for at least a generation in California in order to win a last gasp race for governor. McCain will staunch bleeding nationally and should be able to keep the Latino vote from becoming lock step Democrat.
In any case, like most immigrant groups there is little chance that “Latino” voters will remain an identifiable voting block for generations. Reading about Teddy Roosevelt’s political career, as I have been of late, reminds me of all the “ethnic” voting blocks that used to exist. TRex had Irish, German, and other outreach groups. Much of this (though of course not all!) seems quaint today. Most of these groups have taken up voting patterns better explained by something other than their country of origin.
Sadly, the problems of race, though thankfully much improved from Teddy’s time, remain relevant.
It is present racism and the abiding impact of the original American sin of slavery that causes the African-American community to resist these trends.
John McCain is a candidate who can keep the Republican coalition diverse, but dominantly conservative. McCain’s party can be center-right. He can appeal to voters outside the base, which is good for any Party. If he takes a risk and picks a social conservative from the Hispanic or African-American community, even reaching into the business community to do so, then he can make the Party of Lincoln a winner for the next generation.
This suggest three reasons McCain is winning.
Three Reasons McCain Is Winning
The most important reason is the electoral college. If McCain wins the popular vote, and he is leading in the polls at the moment, he will surely win the electoral college. It is easy to imagine (given the 2000 election) his winning the electoral votes needed without the popular vote. The Democrats have more “safe states,” but rolling up huge margins in these does no good.
McCain has more target states. If the Democrats keep fighting with each other, they will end up with more turf to defend.
Remember McCain need only defend the Bush states to win. He has gone from having many targets to defend (Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa) to having some states that are now open to attack (New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Washington).
The race was fluid only in places he needed, but now is up in the air in places the Democrats must have . . . just to lose in a close election. The fluid states will all tend to “break” one way and at the moment one suspects they would break for McCain.
The second reason is that Senator Obama has now been painted as an out-of-teach effete liberal . . . by Democrats. Obama was going to be very hard to attack, now not so much. I like Senator Obama, but I am now in a minority in the nation. Clinton has slaughtered his favorable ratings so that they match hers. McCain is the best liked candidate in the field and is a known quantity.
Senator Obama is coming across as a typical Washington liberal. Nancy Pelosi will never be President, because she is ideologically out of step with the majority of Americans. (This would be equally true if the Republicans had nominated Tom Coburn.) If Obama becomes a Pelosi Democrat, then he is finished.
The “I hate America” stuff from his pastor is fatal in states like West Virginia, even if (as I have argued) it is not fair. I am not sure John McCain would have used this material in the same way the Clinton machine did, but given its existence it is not obvious to me that such a young candidate (with so little record of service to contradict those nuclear rants from the pastor) could ever have survived it.
Can someone tell me how Obama will win without Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia? Can he still win them after Clinton finishes with him?
The Democrats talk of “swift boating” McCain, but forget that the Republican habit of nominating established figures (Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Dole, McCain) makes them hard to re-label. People know what they think about them, at least the sixty-percent likely to vote in November. McCain might lose, but it will be hard to make him into something new. The Republicans found that out with Dole. Dole was who he was and neither party could change that . . . which in Dole’s case was too bad.
George W. Bush was swift-boated by the Democrats with the late revelation of DUI convictions. This may have cost him the popular vote. W was “swift boat-able” as a national newbie, but McCain is not. Clinton cannot be swift-boated, but Obama will be, if he has not already.
As a result of his previous national exposure, McCain probably cannot lose in a landslide. It is easy to forget that Bill CLinton did not get half the vote as a “popular” incumbent. Why would either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton?
Obama has not shown any ability to appeal outside of the base of the Democrat Party . . . the Republicans for Obama are all part of that base. McCain is showing a great ability to appeal to voters outside the Republican base. McCain voters don’t like Bush, but they will vote for McCain.
Of course a “dream ticket,” only makes the situation worse for the Democrats. They would get all the Clinton baggage with the Obama baggage and gain nothing.
Finally, McCain will get the money he needs. There was a real risk that the election would be perceived as Democrat blow out and that McCain would be starved for cash. The base will vote for him, but is not so eager to send McCain money. In a “sure loser” election (see Bob Dole), McCain would have kept running on empty.
If McCain looks like he can win, big money will follow as nobody wants to be the last on the band wagon.
The failure of the Democrat Party to end the race before June (certainly) and perhaps not until August (possibly) means that McCain will not hammered hard until then. He can hoard his resources and the time frame of the election will be the more traditional Labor Day to November time frame. Money is huge in politics, but it can only go so far in a limited window. The Democrat money advantage would have been biggest if a quick nominee (Clinton) could have used it to outspend McCain over time. She could have kept him broke all summer.
Now he can wait for his convention and turn on the taps. He will have enough to keep it even. There are only so many commercials the Democrats can run in two months . . . and this mitigates their money woes.
All that being said, it still the Democrat Party’s race to lose. They can get their act together. If they do, they will win, but they are running out of time to put McCain away. As Mitt Romney could tell them, you really want to put McCain away when you can.