The Shape Of Things To Come
Posted on February 19th, 2008 by Daniel Larison
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Now that the remarkable size of Obama’s Wisconsin victory is clear (a 17-point margin), it seems right to say that it’s really all over on the Democratic side except for the crying. The Democrats have marched themselves over the cliff. They have nominated the one candidate who can lose them an election they should never have lost. They are responsible for the coming McCain Administration. I hope they’re happy.
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12 Responses to “The Shape Of Things To Come”
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That’s crazy talk. Edwards was probably the strongest candidate of the big three in a national race, but he’s long gone. Between Hilary and Obama it’s no contest – McCain has a much better chance against Hilary than against Obama and he knows it. What are you basing this judgement on?
[...] Larison has a plethora of interesting posts up today on the way the Obama campaign is going. His conclusion: Now that the remarkable size of Obama’s Wisconsin victory is clear (a 17-point margin), it seems right to say that it’s really all over on the Democratic side except for the crying. The Democrats have marched themselves over the cliff. They have nominated the one candidate who can lose them an election they should never have lost. They are responsible for the coming McCain Administration. I hope they’re happy. [...]
Okay, they could have nominated Kucinich, who would have lost, too.
I know the polls say that Obama cleans up in certain states where Clinton loses to McCain, but the cause of this (massive numbers of Republicans crossing over) is ridiculous and unsustainable. Once he becomes better known to the broader electorate, his numbers will start tanking. I’m basing this on my estimate that a majority isn’t going to back a one-term Senator who frequently talks about nothing and has one of the most left-wing voting records in Congress and the Illinois legislature.
I don’t know. When you look at what an awful job Clinton has done running this campaign, it’s hard to underestimate her chances. Don’t blame the Democratic electorate, Clinton gave them every reason to reject her.
I agree with you that Obama’s aura is going to wear thin by November, but Clinton’s already managed to make herself look shabby. As for McCain, he is not going to inspire a large turnout, he is hated by the far-right . And the more independents and centrist voters become familiar with his invade the world/invite the world politics, his temper tantrums and, most importantly, the fact that he may honestly be showing signs of senile dementia, I don’t like his chances either. My impression is that he was given the nomination practically by default, a la Dole, because the establishment didn’t want to back a real candidate they were sure would lose. Now with Obama the joke’s on them because a strong Republican candidate probably can beat Obama, but McCain is not that candidate.
Maybe Bloomberg isn’t as crazy as we all thought.
You may end up being right, Daniel, but I don’t see it yet. The GOP race is basically down to two but McCain is still struggling to bust the 50% mark in many primaries. If — well, let’s be honest, when — he is the nominee, a lot of GOPers will, I think, either vote for Obama (if he gets the Dem nod) or just not vote, period.
I think theres still a lot of “Obama-mania” potential out there as well. Most people won’t start paying any serious attention to the race until after the conventions.
Dan, you need not love or even like Obama, but I think your reaction is a tad hyperbolic.
“The Democrats have marched themselves over a cliff.”
As opposed to doing what? As opposed to raising FDR or JFK from the dead and handing one of them the nomination?
As much as I loathe to say this, I’m inclined to side with Andrew Sullivan on this. Let’s assume, for discussion’s sake, that Mrs. Clinton really is more “electable” than Obama. Then what happens? Of the three people most likely to succeed Bush, she would probably be in the most uniquely terrible position to extricate us from Iraq. (This assumes that she actually wants to extricate us from Iraq, which I still doubt. She’s as much of a hegemonist as McCain.)
Let’s look at this from a purely partisan Democrat standpoint, again assuming HRC is more electable. When she’s in office, the mainstream media (egged on by the Republican Noise Machine) will force every Democrat in Congress to answer for every real, perceived or concocted “Clinton scandal.” It would be 1993-94 all over again — and we’d still be bled dry in Iraq. Then say hi to House Speaker-elect John Boehner in November 2010. When that happens, we really can start calling Iraq the new Hundred Years War. If that’s not “marching over a cliff,” I don’t know what is.
Between perpetual war, rampant immigration and endless outsourcing, American political economy is dysfunctional beyond belief. On that point, I think almost everyone here will agree. Dan, you may very well be right about Obama’s (and McCain’s) shortcomings. I’m not saying you’re wrong.
But again I pose the question: As opposed to what? As recently as early December, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton looked like “inevitable” nominees. What a goddamned circus a Rudy/Hillary general election would have been. No matter who would have won, the country would have lost.
If an Obama or McCain presidency is the tribute the bipartisan “centrist” Establishment extracts for keeping their darlings Rudy or Hillary out of the Oval Office … well, so be it.
Buck up, Dan. This could have been worse. This could have been so much worse.
Daniel,
Hate to disagree with you, by I’m in agreement with Vanya, DavdA and MuteNostrilAgony on this one. True, Obama cannot coast through the election simply on “Yes We Can.” But I think we may be underestimating the downside of a few months of “letting McCain be McCain.” Let’s compare notes at the next BSANA conference.
Considering McCain gets trounced by Obama in every single poll I’ve seen – and McCain beats Clinton in the same polls – I don’t see how this post makes a lick of sense….
[...] Will Race-Baiting Work Against Obama? Friday, February 22, 2008 — John Savage Many of the blogs I read are coming out with predictions — perhaps too soon — about whether the probable nomination of Barack Obama means the Democrats have handed the election to John McCain, or not. Daniel Larison, who had been predicting a major victory for the Democrats in ‘08 until recently, has now suggested that the Democrats are about to do the only thing that could have made McCain a winner. I thought when Larison was initially projecting a definite and decisive Democrat victory, he was putting too little weight on the factors that could make this cycle unique — especially having a candidate who wasn’t a white male on the ballot. Now I have to wonder if he’s putting too much weight on the deficiencies of Obama by saying Obama definitely won’t win. The MSM often claims that America has changed in such a way that things like Reagan’s Southern Strategy don’t work. Many paleos think the MSM is indulging in wishful thinking, and subtle appeals to white identity do work, but usually I think this is a case where they tend to overcompensate for a leftish bias. [...]
[...] If this argument is right, Obama needs to be leading by a much wider margin now to endure the next eight months and the Rezko-Ayers-Khalidi attacks that will be coming his way. As Mike Pridmore noted at MyDD the other day, Obama’s polling lead over McCain also bears some eerie resemblances to Dukakis leading Bush the Elder in mid-May 1988 (Dukakis was ahead 49-39), including evidence of Republican cross-over support for Dukakis.  The final 1988 result, of course, was Bush 53-45 in what was otherwise a reasonably good Democratic year. So I’m sticking with my earlier claims.       [...]
[...] This may be the beginning of a hemorrhaging of support for Obama, which is pretty much in line with what I said a month ago: Once he becomes better known to the broader electorate, his numbers will start tanking. [...]
[...] Then again, I am probably more easily persuaded than most that Obama has suffered irreparable damage, since I already assumed him to be a weak general election candidate. Back at the height of the enthusiasm for Obama, I brazenly declared that the Democrats had marched themselves off a cliff, but at the time I was thinking of Obama’s problems mostly in terms of the more conventional baggage of being inexperienced and far to the left. A week before that, I had already made what was probably one of the first Obama-as-McGovern ‘72 arguments, and I was assuming this to be the case well before Wright exploded onto the national scene, to say nothing of the San Francisco “cling” remarks. [...]