"electability"

[pbrower2a]

I don't know how you can characterize Kerry's performance as a strong one.  Bush looked strong in the early part of 2003 but his approval ratings fell dramatically in that year and in 2004.

The climate wasn't particularly favorable or unfavorable to either Bush or Kerry.  Kerry could have plausibly spun Iraq as a failure and the economy as sputtering.  There was an opportunity for Kerry to win and potentially win big.

Unfortunately for us Republicans, there is a ceiling on the number of electoral college votes we can get these days and Bush's 280 + isn't that far off (perhaps he could have plausibly won Pennsylvania) considering that Washington/Minnesota are not serious possibilities without third-party help.

Dirty tricks may have sunk Kerry. Do you remember the photo montage that showed him with Jane Fonda? It was a Soviet-style fake, as shown by the shadows showing the sunlight hitting them from different directions.  Figure that if that photo didn't appear, Kerry might have won  somewhere between 1.05% (which would have flipped Iowa, New Mexico, and Ohio to Kerry) and  2.51% of the vote (which would have also flipped Nevada, Colorado, and Florida).

You are right about the ceiling. With an electorate like that of 2010, the GOP will win the Presidency, take over the Senate, and consolidate its gains in the House.

 

[pbrower2a]

This is about what 280 electoral votes looks like for a Republican in 2012:

Shades indicate closeness.

Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico are probably lost to the GOP in all but landslides, but Iowa and New Hampshire are shakier than those three states. 

300: The Republican wins Pennsylvania or the combination of Minnesota and Wisconsin as well. 

[pbrower2a]

A less electable candidate can win within reason.  Obama, head-to-head, polled weaker than Hillary and Edwards.  I'm not sure why Palin is pointing to Reagan as a relevant precedent instead of Bush Sr. though when defending her electability.  Bush Sr. trailed Dukakis by double digits 6 months before Election Day.  He made up the ground by successfully attacking Dukakis's record, famously on Willie Horton.  She could at least try to argue that Obama's record will be similarly vulnerable enough for an underdog Republican to close the gap.  And the side benefit to Palin bringing this up is that she throws the subject out there as a deterrent to Huckabee.  And she'd set Pawlenty up for trouble in case he gets a foothold.  I'm not saying she'd put the electability question to bed obviously, but she could mitigate it to win over some primary voters who do prefer her in other ways.

Most of the questions about the electability of Barack Obama revolved around one thing -- ethnicity. America has had an overwhelming tendency to elect WASPs and near-WASPs. (German, Dutch, or French Huguenot ancestry has not been a problem -- FDR was all of those). The one non-WASP, JFK, was barely elected. But that has been smashed as an electoral reality. If in 2016 the Democratic nominee is Senator Amy Klobuchar, then her non-WASP origin won't be a problem, and neither will gender.  

If there are to be any comparisons to Ronald Reagan  in 2012, then they will be to Barack Obama.  The current President's political skills are more like those of Ronald Reagan. He is in a "heads I win, tails you lose" position with Congress. If Congress compromises at all with him he gets credit; if it goes intransigent and doctrinaire he gets to run against Congress. The Republican nominee will have no record of military heroism as John McCain had. Charisma? Who but he?  

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Superficial attractiveness or virtue isn't enough.

[pbrower2a]

Obama was the weakest candidate in 2008, look how that turned out for him.

Weak? He is a personable, slick campaigner.  He consistently got his message across. He learned from his mistakes (like his "guns and religion" gaffe).

[pbrower2a]

You guys blew a chance to really change the map with either Clinton and in the bizarro world where Edwards doesn't screw someone other than the sociopath/psychopath he had for a wife who was a bigger balloon than even Michelle Obama.

I admit to voting for John Edwards in the 2008 primary in Michigan. I expected to see the fiery populist who impressed me at times in 2004 -- only to find later why he seemed to have so little zest for running. After a bad technocrat, what better solution could there be than a fiery populist?

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Neither Hillary nor a scandal-free Edwards would have won Indiana, and I doubt that either would have won Virginia. Barack Obama seemed to take chances in states that the Democrats had long written off as hopeless -- like Indiana and Virginia. But that said, Hillary Clinton would have won against John McCain, if with a different set of states.  Democrats would have dropped John Edwards much as they dumped Elliot Spitzer and Rod Blagojevich.

(Liberals seem to have less personal loyalty to moral failures than do conservatives.  Conservatives seem to have more tolerance for sinners -- maybe it is because they have a less optimistic view of humanity?)

[pbrower2a]

I don't know how you can characterize Kerry's performance as a strong one.  Bush looked strong in the early part of 2003 but his approval ratings fell dramatically in that year and in 2004.

The climate wasn't particularly favorable or unfavorable to either Bush or Kerry.  Kerry could have plausibly spun Iraq as a failure and the economy as sputtering.  There was an opportunity for Kerry to win and potentially win big.

Unfortunately for us Republicans, there is a ceiling on the number of electoral college votes we can get these days and Bush's 280 + isn't that far off (perhaps he could have plausibly won Pennsylvania) considering that Washington/Minnesota are not serious possibilities without third-party help.

Dirty tricks may have sunk Kerry. Do you remember the photo montage that showed him with Jane Fonda? It was a Soviet-style fake, as shown by the shadows showing the sunlight hitting them from different directions.  Figure that if that photo didn't appear, Kerry might have won  somewhere between 1.05% (which would have flipped Iowa, New Mexico, and Ohio to Kerry) and  2.51% of the vote (which would have also flipped Nevada, Colorado, and Florida).

You are right about the ceiling. With an electorate like that of 2010, the GOP will win the Presidency, take over the Senate, and consolidate its gains in the House.

 

Wrong on 4 out of 6.  Bush won Ohio 50.8 to 48.7 = 2.1% margin, Nevada 50.5 to 47.9 = 2.6% margin, Colorado 51.7 to 47.0 = 4.7% margin, and Florida 52.1 to 47.1 = 5% margin. 

Iowa and NM were both under 1% margins for Bush. 

You're wrong. Shifting 2.51% of Florida's voters from Republican to Democrat would leave us with 49.61 Kerry to only 49.59 for George W. Bush. And of course, that means the others would all flip as well.

No, that assumes that all the voters completely flip from Bush to Kerry.  That's a faulty assumption.  This only makes sense from a one-sided view.  Perhaps Kerry voters stayed home b/c of the photo thus only adding to his vote total if the picture doesn't exist.  to suggest that that % of Bush voters would change their mind based on a picture is really reaching. 

It's the same theory as the DUI in 2000.  While, there may have been some flips from Bush to Gore, it hurt most with Conservatives staying home and not voting. 

Sure, I ignored the likelihood that right-leaning voters might have voted for a third-party candidate.  But the propaganda showing John Kerry with Jane Fonda, a forgery, sank him badly. It didn't have to convince 5% of Americans that John Kerry was an unelectable leftist and that George W. Bush was a genuine patriot -- and that voting for Bush/Cheney was the "patriotic" thing to do even if Dubya had put American troops into harm's way for the profit of his cronies.

I continue to believe that the Religious Right, organized as it as to vote for any right-winger, was the key to Republican control of both Houses of Congress from 1994 to 2006 and the Presidency from 2000 to 2008.