The new face of the Democrats
Posted on 09/10/2008 11:57:30 PM PDT by Publius804
September 11, 2008
Palin Doesn't Matter, Numbers Do
By Bob Beckel
The Sarah Palin “boom” that has so traumatized Democrats and intimidated the press will have little if any impact on the presidential election. People don’t vote for vice presidents, they vote for presidents. This race is about John McCain and Barack Obama not Annie Oakley from Wasilla, Alaska. It is also about turnout numbers and the electoral demographics in 2008 which overwhelm any impact Sarah Palin might have on the election outcome.
First the Palin “boom”. It is the product of surprise (a short lived but powerful force in politics), an emotional outlet for the GOP Right, and post convention polls. In the intense coverage of politics by the ever expanding number of outlets for political information, what is new and surprising quickly becomes over exposed resulting in a short shelf life. The freshness goes away quickly. So it will be shortly for Ms. Palin. She has had the best week in this campaign she will have and the only direction now is down.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
No doubt we'll have several more columns of this type leading into October 2nd, when, if zer0 hasn't exercised his Eagleton option, we'll be told either that VP debates are also meaningless, or, if by some genuine miracle Joe Biden actually manages to sound half-sober for a full 90 minutes how vital it is to have a capable veep in the event something awful should happen to the Big Cheese.
Of course, McCain has a mother whose DNA is apparently good enough to have lasted her for what -- 120 years now -- so Matt Damon's actuarial prognostications are probably as worthless as his -- or Bob's -- opinion on anything. And zer0 will simply succeed himself after rising from the grave.
Whatever betide, Bob will be right here, for chuckles. Like Dickens and Dostoevsky, I suspect he's paid by the word.
Actually, It’s unclear what “stinky fish” was referencing. In order to put this episode behind us, Obama should explain exactly what he meant in a town hall style meeting on live prime time TV.
If Obama takes the black vote, and McCain- Palin takes the white female vote, that’ll work!
Aren't you forgetting the styrofoam columns?
lipstick on a pig is pretty common but that fish remark...how come nobody talks about that?
Monkeys throwing *BLEEP*.
And your point is...?
Oh shutup Bob
People don’t vote for vps? Then why is the press going after her so hard?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I like your tag line, but his wife, Michelle-ma-belle, beat her to it!
In battleground states, voter registration, newly eligible young voters, eligible nonvoting blacks, and even death rates all favor Obama.
These are some of the statistics which I have been warning about all year.
Much if not all of these numbers except eligible nonvoting blacks and eligible young voters should already be accounted for in the polls we are looking at. In other words, if older McCain voters have died leaving fewer of them, those numbers should already be accounted for when the pollsters analyze the field. The same is true in the opposite direction for voter registration which Beckel presumes has run in Obama's favor. I am assuming that if the pollster does not have the entire field mapped and fenced the rest of his work is nonsense.
The pollsters however have a hard time measuring intensity which is the real danger coming from nonvoting blacks who are already registered or who will be, along with eligible young voters, registered before the election.
But for the other elements which measures things as they are, much of the damage has already been baked into the cake and recorded by the pollsters.
The second general observation is that with respect to the youth vote, no campaign has succeeded in winning an election on it. Democrats are always threatening to do so. They're always disappointed. Even if many youths are registered now, history tells us that not so great a percentage will vote for Obama and that might be all the more true in today's climate given his deteriorating image.
The big danger, of course, is that registered blacks will actually come out in this election for the first time. And it is unrealistic to deny that this is a serious challenge for McCain. There is however the backlash which might or might not occur among white voters who will be energized to vote against an African-American. And there is also the factor of whites who lie about their intentions. By the time November 4 rolls around, Obama's Messiah reputation might well be in tatters by election Day and the African-American community might not be nearly so energized as Beckel thinks. On the other hand, the white "community" might well have awakened to the radical threat represented by Barak Hussein Obama.
/ To counter Beckel's arguments, one might observe that we have no way to accurately measure the intensity of the movement for Governor Palin and that is probably why Beckel attempts to dismiss it early in his piece as being by nature destined to burn out quickly.
Beckel's analysis does not weigh the relative merits of the ground games. The Republican operatives in Ohio have been quoted on these threads as saying that the Democrat ground effort there is still amateurish. We shall see.
In my judgment, if McCain can hold Ohio the pivotal battleground state becomes Colorado where the ground game becomes decisive and the black vote relatively marginalized.
There is one other potentially game altering factor: USA/Gallup has just reported that voter identification for Republicans has just pulled to within one point of voter identification for Democrats. That could very well mean that pollsters, especially Rasmussen who is assuming a 7.6% advantage to the Democrats, is greatly under reporting McCain's position. Another report simply observed that the Republicans had improved their party identification by five percentage points without identifying the baselines. This is consistent with the USA/Gallup findings. This is undoubtedly the Palin effect and it could utterly overwhelm the rest of our statistics.
As I have been saying endlessly on these threads: Tip O'Neill had it wrong, all politics is not local, in America, all politics is racial.
This is exactly what's going on. Right now, I think Ras uses a 39% - 32% D/R mix. He's not seeing the shift so his numbers are understimating McCain right now.
Hey Bob old boy...if Palin doesn’t matter, why do you Democrat operatives keep talking about her? :)
Hey Bob - bounced any checks to prostitutes lately?
Once again the conventional wisdom gets it wrong. If Beckel doesn’t understand the importance of the Palin nomination, he’s either lying (most possible explanation) or he’s the dumbest political analyst out there. I’m close to sixty, and I’ve NEVER!!! seen a phenomenon like Palin. Has anyone else ever seen an election year where the veep choice is as discussed and celebrated than Palin? Beckel is lying through his teeth if doesn’t know that the Pubbie base had been energized like nothing since Reagan.
I think Alf Landon's trouncing in 1936 by FDR is the biggest raw vote landslide. Maybe Mondull won more electoral votes.
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