"electability"

[anvi]

Electability will always be an issue.  The Republican nominee will have to be someone with strong appeal to voters from Indiana to Pennsylvania and down the coast to North Carolina, as well as voters in the southwest.   

[anvi]

There wasn't one Obama voter from 2008 who wouldn't have also voted for those two.  There's no reason why West Virginia, Missouri, or Arkansas (and perhaps Montana) shouldn't have gone to the Democrats.  These states tend to vote for the Democrat Party nominee with the conditions at play in 2008 and Obama somehow managed to lose these states by 20 (with the exception of Montana) when Clinton and a faithful Edwards would have won everywhere else that Obama won.

I would never have voted for Edwards; had he been nominated in either '04 or '08, I would have stayed home.  Even when he was getting play in the 2004 primaries, the only reason I could fathom that he ever seemed to be running was his own narcissism ("This is a great country, where a man whose daddy worked in a mill has a chance to become president.").  Plus, the way he conducted himself in the VP debate against Cheney in 2004 was, I thought, disgraceful.  Obama lost Montana (which has voted for a Democrat only once since '64 and twice since '48, largely because of Perot in '92) very narrowly and Missouri by a hair.  And there is a very distinct reason why he lost West Virginia and Arkansas in a year when an alternative white Democrat may not have. 

[anvi]

Clinton didn't even get 38% of the Montana vote in '92; he edged out Bush by 2.5% with Perot getting over 26%.  If you think Clinton would have won Montana in '92 without Perot, if you think 13% of Montana's vote would have gone for Clinton had Perot not been in the race, you're dreaming.  And Arkansas and Missouri have only cast their electoral votes for white southern Democrats since '64 ('64. '76, '92 and '96).  None of those states are Democratic gimmes, especially not anymore, not even in a year when the GOP is performing poorly.

But, whatever.

[anvi]

Ok, last post on this topic for me.  I could invoke experience by saying I grew up less than 100 miles from the Montana border and spent lots of time in the state in the late '80's and early '90's visiting my niece and nephew, so I know how Montanans felt at the time.  But, forget that.

Compare the Clinton vs. Perot margins in the six most populous counties (by far) in Montana.

                                         1992                      1996
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cascade                            40-25                   44-13
Flathead                            31-29                   32-14
Gallatin                             42-29                   37-10
Lewis and Clark                 42-21                   43-11
Missoula                            49-22                   49-12
Yellowstone                       35-23                   41-11

Notice that, between these two years, though Perot's support falls in each county by practically half and by 66% in one, Clinton breaks even in three counties, while gaining between 4-6% in two and losing 5% in the county where the Perot vote diminished by 2/3.  Guess what?  Perot did not take many prospective Clinton votes in Montana; he took lots more prospective Bush votes in '92.  And there is just no way that Clinton could have pulled half of Perot's votes out of any of those counties had Perot not been in the race.  

The only point I ever wanted to make in this thread was that beating Obama won't be a cakewalk unless circumstances make it so, and that to beat him in '12, the GOP had best pick a good, appealing candidate.  That's all.

Hey, Pounding; big kisses from the Caribbean!