Barack Obama Alexander
A lot of people are pointing to Obama's 41% approval and saying he's in trouble. I don't think it means much except that polls are volatile at present and it's best to ignore them until after Labor Day. There are no guarantees, but the basic strengths of Obama and the weaknesses of his opponents make me stand by my prediction that he'll be reelected.
Nevertheless, something just hit me. If he loses, he'd still be fairly young, by Presidential standards, and still be the biggest name in his party. Who would compare? Biden? Hillary? Edwards? Gore? Reid? Schumer? Pelosi? Kerry? Brown?
So what's to stop him from running again? As long as the 2012 election is close, so he's not seen as a total loser, if President Romney is in trouble, I expect Obama would want to give Americans a chance to correct their mistake.
It's not like it's never happened before.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
9 Comments:
Perhaps with Santorum getting some more wins and being more high profile, Obama's numbers will go up.
They tend to go down when the talk is about the economy and gas prices and up when the social issues take the foreground- think anyone in the TP will figure that out or have they been completely taken over by the movement folks?
I agree with Anon. Obama's polling goes down when it seems the Republicans are settling on one candidate. Of course, gas prices, and the mess in Syria and Afghanistan hert Obama's numbers too.
I think it is impossible to predict what will happen in November, because it really will depend on the economy and events as they stand in August. McCain was running well against Obama into August at least, as I recall. It was when the financial crisis hit, and Wall Street Banks started declaring bankruptcy and AIG looked on the road to default, that Obama surged. An old war hero just didn't fit the bill to address massive economic uncertainty.
Obama has the edge as the incumbent. All other things being equal, he'll win, but it is unlikely that all other things will be equal, so who knows.
I think McCain's problems came in when he attached himself to Palin and tried to rally the base ceding all of the independents to Obama. Though his ridiculous behavior when the financial crisis hit hard (suspending the campaign and then doing nothing) did nothing to help his chances but added to questions about his judgment
DG and Anon2: I think that if you polled 1,000 Americans and asked them to list the top three reasons that McCain picked Palin, you might not get a single person who mentioned gas prices. And yet if you go back and watch the speeches and coverage at the time, that was the big issue: Soaring gas prices. And so McCain picked the governor of the state with the most oil, and one with a record for developing it.
LAGuy: Cleveland is of course the only example of a former president who was re-elected, or even re-nominated. But I think it's more instructive to see Cleveland as a member of a larger set: nominees who had previously been nominated and lost the presidency.
This wasn't very uncommon in the old days. Since the Civil War, Democrats have re-nominated losers in 1892, 1900, 1908, and 1956, while Republicans re-nominated losers in 1948 and 1968. Every one of these candidates lost except Cleveland in 1892 and Nixon in 1968 who won with only a plurality of the vote in a three-way race. By 2016 it will be almost half a century since anyone dared to make this move.
I think that in today's media and instant-analysis environment, such a move would be doomed. Didn't someone once say that the most hated team in football is whoever loses the Superbowl?
McCain never had a chance. It's rather remarkable he was even close a month out, and he had no chance when the economy tanked and everyone panicked.
Palin was pure gain. He'd not have been close without her. (Not that the media didn't kill themselves taking her out.)
What people forget is that Obama was a horrible candidate, too radical and too inexperienced. It was the anti-Republican moment where almost anyone not completely crazy could win, and McCain was the sacrificial lamb.
Last Anon has a bit of a point. However, McCain was the nominee precisely because he was a "Maverick" who had been a slight thorn in the side of the Bush White House. I have wondered what would have happened if McCain had chosen Lieberman as his running mate. There would have been a gnashing of teeth on the right, but might it have ushered in a less partisan era of politics?
Could have happened, DG, if McCain hadn't been a nitwit himself.
But then we'd have gotten Obamacare under another name, and they'd be calling it a conservative law. I prefer it this way. If we're going to burn, let's use the real wood.
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