Posted on 07/24/2008 10:57:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The professional odds-makers favor Barack Obama two-to-one to win the election. It's no wonder. Americans overwhelmingly believe the country is on the wrong track. They can't stand the current Republican occupant of the White House. The economy is weak and shows little sign of getting significantly stronger before the election. The country is fighting an unpopular war. And Obama, as he reminds us every time he opens his mouth, is all about "change."
So why hasn't Obama closed the deal? Most national polls show Obama ahead -- but by margins so thin it can hardly give comfort to the putative front-runner. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll of registered voters puts Obama up only six points overall, while the more reliable polls of likely voters -- the Rasmussen tracking poll and the ABC/Washington Post poll -- put it at a statistical tie within the margin of error. And Obama is losing his advantage in key battleground states.
A new Quinnipiac poll of likely voters for the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal found Obama losing eight points over his previous poll numbers a month earlier in Minnesota, dropping five points in Colorado and two points in both Michigan and Wisconsin. McCain has pulled ahead of Obama in Colorado, is within the margin of error in Minnesota, and is in striking distance in Michigan. Of the four key states, only in Wisconsin, where Obama's numbers went down slightly but McCain's didn't go up, is Obama comfortably ahead of McCain by 11 points.
Perhaps most surprising is that Obama has been getting nonstop media attention over the past week with his high-profile visits to the Middle East and Europe. No presidential candidate of either party has been treated to such fawning coverage in the past, with network anchors accompanying them on their overseas trips and cameras everywhere to capture the candidate in formal and informal settings. An amnesiac tuning in might be forgiven for assuming the election had already taken place as he watched Obama sitting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who seemed to all but endorse Obama's plan for removing American troops within 16 months (before the Iraqi leader decided to hedge his bets a bit by denying he'd said any such thing).
And then there were the pictures of Obama addressing throngs of more than 100,000 adoring Germans -- who, judging from the applause differentials when he mentioned his parents' disparate backgrounds, were far more enthusiastic about Obama's African than his American heritage.
Yet despite the sycophantic media frenzy, average Americans aren't yet convinced Obama's "change" is what they need. When it comes to identifying with the candidates' values, far more likely voters in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 58 percent, say they could identify with John McCain's background and values than with Obama's, 47 percent. And when it comes to their assessment of his knowledge and experience or his ability to be commander in chief, Obama's deficits in voters' minds are so great it's hard to imagine he can ever reassure them. Only 19 percent said he was the more knowledgeable and experienced candidate, and only one in four said he would make a better commander in chief.
Obama's decision to leave American shores this week in order to burnish his credentials was supposed to fix these problems, but it could backfire. John Kerry tried to convince voters that since the Europeans liked him more than George W. Bush, America would be better off electing him, only to find that sentiment didn't resonate on Election Day. If Obama can't outscore his opponent on the home court, he's not likely to win any points overseas.
Americans have seen far more of Obama than McCain in the last year, but they still aren't sure they know or fully trust him. The nonpartisan Project for Excellence in Journalism found that Obama has led campaign coverage in 78 percent of stories since he clinched the nomination. The McCain campaign has even taken to mocking the obsequious attention the media have bestowed in an amusing web video featuring Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and clips of MSNBC's Chris Matthews telling viewers he fills "this thrill going up my leg" when Obama speaks.
Still, the election should be Obama's to lose. And he may yet convince voters to put aside any misgivings they have, but it's not clear how he is going to do it.
It might be premature, but I predict a 40-state GOP sweep in November.
Obomba could campaign in Antartica or Mars, doesn’t matter. I have lib friends who told me “WTF is he doing there anyway, MCCain is here, idiot!” I’m still counting on a Hillary backstab at the DNC.
What’s sad is that while the GOP needs to be “nationalizing” this election, they’re focused on running “locally tailored” congressional campaigns that avoid mentioning party affiliation because “the Republican brand isn’t selling”. Now they have a tremendous opportunity to make “Democrat” a dirty word over their “no domestic oil production” policies, but they aren’t exploiting it (I know, they’re employing their tried and true, nobody focuses on the election until after Labor Day paradigm, but that didn’t work so well for them in 2006, did it?).
Then again, we've all counted McCain out many times before, and he's still standing.
I have a feeling that Americans are more comfortable with McCain in the WH, but they're flirting with Obama, buying the Chris Matthews "Wouldn't it be COOL?!" line. It's fun to think about. But I don't think those who actually vote in elections are voting for fun.
If odds were a sure thing there would be no money in gambling.
This is a wonderful time to be here in America and witnessing this entertaining and amusing election. There is no limit to the shenanigans and stunts that await us.
Absolutely. The old candidate has already been given green lights from the recent polls about the dead heats and leads yet he still squanders missed opportunities.
The other candidate thinks he already won the election, yet is so dumb that he couldn;t even hammer the final nail in the coffin on the old candidate, by “campaigning” overseas. I am just shaking my head on this comedy.
Only if something dramatic happens between now and November. At least a dozen states aren't in play at all for McCain. Start in New England, then go to the Pacific coast.
I can only hope that voters push back against the fawning coverage delivered by a sycophantic press corps. They sure are laying it on thick.
The lefty media would, of course, claim F451 as one of their sacred texts, since it's a tale about book burning and freedom of thought, but Bradbury has written that the book is actually a cautionary tale about the rise of TV.
When I think of F451 in relation to the current media landscape, I think of Andrea Mitchel, Chris Matthews, Olberman, John Stewart, and the rest, telling us they know the REAL truth, and we shouldn't be spending so much time reading articles online, we should be listening to THEM...
Ray Bradbury was visionary when he wrote this book, but did not foresee the advent of the internet and the alternative universe of freedom it affords. It downright scares oppressive governments around the world and no doubt those in this country who seek to repress freedom of speech and thought.
I totally agree.
November of 2012.
With a true Conservative once again at the helm of a rebuilt Republican Party, earlier routed totally four years earlier by one-term liberal President Obama, after all his own Carter-like screwups, and never again with "The Stupid Party" (now called "The Smart Party") veering toward nominating RINOs and LIBs like McShamnesty who could'nt punch themselves out of a paper sack against the Dems.
Agree if all the hype were true then the point spread as you have stated many times here would be greater.......BTTT !
Stay safe !
The downside, of course, is that so many charlatans can post things on the net, but it's a very, very minor annoyance compared with intellectual freedom.
It always makes me laugh--really laugh--when I see/hear Cronkite, Koppel and that bunch pontificating about how awful it is nowadays when they don't control the message.
The bit of the future you are failing to realize is that, like with GW the medida will still be 98% liberal and with four years of “McCain is an idiot and old, out of touch one, at that” his approval rating will be down at 18%, too. We won’t really be able to make any conservative progress until we kill the MSM. The battle we really need to be waging is there. Who the next president is isn’t really all that important in the long haul. The actual battle is the “Dinosaur Death Watch” vs “The Fairness Doctrine.”
> Only if something dramatic happens between now and November. At least a dozen states aren’t in play at all for McCain. Start in New England, then go to the Pacific coast.
I don’t know about state-by-state analysis, but if Obama is ahead by less than 10 points at this time in the campaign and with the media completely behind him, I do not see him doing well Election Day.
Further more, United States has never elected a Socialist for a President, why would Obama be the first?
To make things even worse for the Democrats, you have to take into account how many responders are answering Obama because they do not want to appear racist. Will this still hold in the privacy of the voting booth?
The World Tour is backfiring and the Moron Media is blind. I tend to believe this election actually is McCain’s to lose and that is the real question...how much fight does McCain have....his opposition to the Housing Bailout indicates that he is capable of moving Right.
Obama jumped the shark in Berlin.
Considering the fact that McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat among folks who actually PAY ATTENTION and are more likely to vote, it doesn't seem McCain is squandering anything.
He's campaigning all over the place, we are just not hearing about it on the nightly news. He's taking his campaign directly to the voters, who will ultimately decide, and what he's saying must be resonating with the folks, or he WOULD be tanking against NoBama.
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