"At least 46 per cent of respondents would support the Illinois senator in head-to-head contests against four prospective Republican nominees.Obama scores better because he has attracted a Republican following -- a following which will surely grow if Colin Powell explicitly endorses him, as some believe he will. Deborah White's analysis:
"Obama holds a three-point edge over Arizona senator John McCain, a six-point lead over former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and a 17-point advantage over both former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson.
"In other contests, both New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former North Carolina senator John Edwards lead Romney and Thompson, but trail Giuliani and McCain."
None of this surprises me. I see it in my own family. My daughter and her husband, both independent-thinking moderate Republicans, admire Obama above all other 2008 candidates.There's one jarring note in this statement: How the hell could anyone scry "animosity and regality" in the Clinton administration? One of Clinton's great failings is that he eschewed anything that smacked of partisan belligerence. Had he directed his Justice Department to pursue the failings of previous administrations, including what was once called "Iraq-Gate" (the clandestine arming of Iraq in the 1980s), we would have been spared the present disaster. I do not see anything particularly "regal" or pompous about his administration. Compared to Reagan, Clinton was down-home.
Last December, one of their friends spied the senator, sitting alone, lunching in a sub sandwich shop in Honolulu. They gingerly approached him, and said he was quite nice, a low-key "normal" guy.
In particular, that's what generations X and Y want: normal, accessible, common sense. All without the baby-boomer-style animosity and regality of the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations.
They, and many of their friends in the 25-to-35-year-old age bracket, are attracted to Obama's fresh thinking, and his cool civility and unwillingness to indulge in attack-dog political warfare as usual.
That said, I think much of White's statement makes sense, even though my readers won't like it. A large segment of the citizenry -- not me, not you, but a large segment -- has tired of attack politics. Has tired of politics. 9/11 and the war have forced many an average ninny to think and talk every day about politics, and the ninnies would rather think and talk about other things. Since these folks doubt their ability to understand policy, they make judgments on the basis of personality. Obama is the proverbial guy folks would like to have a beer with.
But will the beer factor trump the fear factor? Folks see Obama as a pal, not as a Daddy, and I think many voters still want Daddy. Romney, the Silly Putty candidate, will feed red meat to the conservative base until he wins the nomination, and then he will morph into Mitt the moderate. And he can project Daddyness more readily than Obama can.
The fact that Democrats stand so little chance of prevailing in 2008 in the face of such spectacular Republican failure is maddening.
8 comments:
Regality in the Clinton administration? Well, maybe in the inaugural ball categories, not entirely sure about the '93 festivities, but the re-elect year was quite the production. Now, was it more than the 'wretched excess' of the same events in the Reagan years, as even Barry Goldwater complained of a bit at the time? Probably not, but very lavish and expensive, nonetheless.
sofla
While I buy the concept that many Americans are tired of "attack politics", most are Ms. White, do not understand why we have "attack politics" and who is responsible. The standard media narrative is that both sides are guilty and that it's just the way things are. Of course, that's a fallacy but it's a very popular one.
Part of the problem is that there is no magic person who can assume the Presidency and make all things right. Those who tire easily of politics cannot absolve themselves of their responsibilities as citizens even if they elected the perfect Presidential candidate. The Democrats must somehow appeal strongly to their traditional base and get out their vote to win. It is hard to envision any of the current contenders doing that.
ok now. with regard to my earlier point about how weird the latest polls are, at the very best in frequent and bizarre contradiction with one another, here comes the latest to show just how much trouble the repugs are REALLY in:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB118177312675434460.html
this poll shows americans prefer a dem over a repug for prez by a margin of 52% to 31%!!
anyone who has ever worked a campaign recognizes those numbers as damn near insurmountable.
especially when every single day - weekends included - yet another scandal of gargantuan proportions exposes the corruption and depravity of this administration and the party that supports it.
those who would interpret the low approval ratings for congress are focusing on the dems leadership. however, there is also the real possibility that americans are more thinking about the blatant and flagrant obstruction of legislative responsibility and oversight and just plain decency are being exhibited by the repugs!
polling a question like that - 'what do you think of this large body of individuals' - is like asking what someone thinks of vegetables when the last one the person ate was a rancid brussels sprout.
polls get the same 'black box' non-info when they ask internationals how they feel about americans. if that is the only question they ask, then the general response is wildly negative.
however, split the question up and ask what folks think of the american GOVERNMENT vs. the american PEOPLE, you get highly significant distinctions.
(yes, people the world over - even in radically islamist populations like egypt - can distinguish between the american people and our government. and yes, they LOVE the former and DESPISE the latter.)
all of this is feeding into my developing thesis that there is a general intention out there to produce polls that misinform intentionally, specifically in order to make it look more like the repugs are more in play than they really are, thereby increasing the ability to steal the election in 08.
conspiratorial, i know, but NOT paranoid. to be paranoid, one must have an UNFOUNDED fear. i think we would all agree this fear is NOT without grounds! abundant grounds.
I am not supportive of the Senator, primarily because I think he's too new and I don't know if what he says today will be what he says tomorrow.
As for this business of republicans hating the partisan aggresiveness of the last administration, and all democrats, as here, you say,
"...How the hell could anyone cry "animosity and regality" in the Clinton administration? One of Clinton's great failings is that he eschewed anything that smacked of partisan belligerence."
I suspect there's a large number of republicans who would like to see Obama win the democratic nomination because, as this concern suggests, they think he is not the kind to stand for anything, or at least fight for it. This would seem to be the best kind of democrat for a republican.
But then, I don't know the senator very well. Has he fought the republicans over any issue, like the war, health care, taxes, whatever?
It may be that Congress's low approval rating doesn't translate into a mirror image of dis-approval for the Democratic candidates for presidency. But can we really assume that the dis-appointement the public feels toward the Dems in Cogress have no effect on their view of Democratic presedential candidtes?
That would show a dis-connect in the mind of the public. Having said that, the public seems to have a dis-connect when it comes to Bush and the rest of the Repubs and their insane pronouncements.
So, here we are.....what happens in 08 is up in the air, and what the public will decide will depend on a whole lot between now and then.
Obama has a talent for walking into ready made situations, but that talent is his down fall as well. He will walk into the belly of the big fish, only to imerge giving us the story of his big adventure.
Almost all of the candidates on both sides seek to become the wearer of the thrown, and as such, they are variations of evil.
The ones who are willing to jump into the waves will never raise enough money to be heard.
Democracy Lover, I...love you.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's Joe's readers and few other blog consumers I've encountered who dare to voice the truth almost too horrid to be acknowledged on the Internets: none of the current Dem contenders are getting it done.
Ah, Jen. Women are indeed fickle.
Re: Obama, I worry of the fairly well known effect of persons harboring racist attitudes telling pollsters things in a more politically correct fashion, but reverting to type in the poll booth.
That is, and I think this is relatively well known, it is common for black candidates to poll rather better than they perform on election day. Many have proposed the explanation in the above paragraph as the reason.
Many white people know it is considered bad form to take a racial view of candidates, and therefore hide their true position in polling answers, but take advantage of the privacy of the vote to engage in behavior they deny even in anonymous poll answers.
One way to see if it may apply to Obama is to see the polling prior to his last election, and see if he met or fell short of that polled margin in the actual vote. (And then you have to ask about possible vote fraud diminishing his vote share, if it did go down).
sofla
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