[Fishtalk]

I’m not sure I follow your logic.

If you look at post 19 and the breakout for Bush in 2004, HE only made 48% one time. All the other times he only got up to 47%. So why must Obama reach 48% to win? Which is not to say I don’t hope you’re right. This is a rather odd year in terms of the unlikely and very different candidates. I mean come on, Kerry and Bush? How unexciting is that duo? Compared to this year I mean.

My mother-in-law, a lib from Massachusetts, just called and asked me if I heard about all those Wall Street firms who are saving their bailout money to pay year end bonuses to their executives.

I hadn’t heard this although just now I heard The Messiash speaking at a rally about this. I told MIL that Wall Street didn’t cause this economy problems, that the Dems did.

Well she launched into a rant at me that it was the greed on Wall Street that caused this mess and I should stop being so partisan.

I sigh.

It doesn’t matter what she believes. She’s no different than yay near on 45%+ of the American public likely to vote for The Messiah Most Merciful. This is a guy who, if the pubs were doing their job, shouldn’t oughta be getting only a 13% black loyalty vote and the kook fringe.

For it is up to the opposition party to wage an aggressive campaign against their opposing competition. It is up to the opposition party to get the truth out, to defend themselves, to coalesce behind a core group of principles.

I don’t see the pubs out and pointing fingers at Dodd/Frank. McCain did, oncit. But the pubs hey, they gotta get out of the tanning booths, they gotta risk mussed up head hairs, they gotta stop reaching across the damn aisle. They gotta fight like the Dems.

THIS is why the pubs are dead meat this year. In due course, and under the soon-to-be horrific guidance of Obama the Most Merciful, a brand new generation of pubs will rise up who don’t care about their tans, who will risk head hairs that move from their appointed places, who do not think being polite means going down in flames with a smile.

I don’t want to sound negative. Goodness knows I desperately do NOT want The Messiah to win. But the pubs....they are not real men....they are LORDS living blissfully in America’s House of Lords.

It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

[mnehring]

One thing we also need to account is that, in 2004, there was only one real active 3rd party option- Nader, which hurt Kerry. Nader, while active this year, isn't filling a leftward gap for Obama like he was for Kerry. Our side, however, has both Baldwin and Barr trying to fill a gap to the right. While I don't expect either to do more than a percent or two, in key States, 1% or 2% off McCain could make a difference in those States.

[kesg]

If you look at post 19 and the breakout for Bush in 2004, HE only made 48% one time. All the other times he only got up to 47%. So why must Obama reach 48% to win?

That's what political history tells you. It is very difficult for a Democratic candidate to get to 50% in a Presidential elections. Since 1964, it has happened only once, in 1976, and that just barely. But they get to 48% quite regularly. Kerry got to 48, Gore got to 48, Clinton got to 49.2 in 1996. But never higher than that. So, that 48% number is a floor -- if Obama isn't polling even that high in the TIPP poll (which doesn't push undecided voters to "lean" to a candidate), he's in trouble. That's not to say that he is out of the woods even if he does reach 48% -- I'm getting to that later.

Now, compare GOP history. Since 1972, Republican candidates have often exceeded 50% (even in 1992-1996 if you count Perot as a right of center candidate, which he was), and they never did worse than 48 (Ford in 1976, Bush in 2000 -- again counting Perot as a right of center candidate).

This is why I said Obama wasn't out of the woods even if he gets to 48. Because McCain is also going to get to 48, and the history (including the most recent history we have, the 2004 election, a high turnout election) tells you that the remaining voters will break more Republican than Democratic. Even BIll Clinton, arguably the most popular Democratic President since JFK, never got past the 49.2 point barrier. Dole and Perot combined for 49.1 points -- a virtual tie. This in an election year like this one, where the media treated the Democratic candidate's victory as a foregone conclusion. If Bill Clinton couldn't get much past 49% even with an approval rating much higher than that, well, by now you should see the problem. And he was an incumbent President running for re-election, with the same adoring media that Obama has now, running against a much weaker Republican ticket that was down double-digits in virtually every published poll.

One additional reason why even 48 may not be enough: Obama is going to win by huge margins in places like California, New York, and Illinois. These wins are going to inflate his national numbers, but not help him win remaining states he needs to get to 270 EVs.

Just for fun, I figured out what the 2004 result would have been if you had excluded these states from the national totals. Here is what I came up with:

Bush: 53.2

Kerry: 46.8

And it gets worse. Most of the remaining big states are non-competitive blue states such as Michigan, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Not only that, but he should win Illinois by about 6 points more than Kerry did (based on recent polling). By contrast, the only big non-competitive red state is Texas, and even Texas won't vote for McCain by the same 23 point margin of four years ago. A much more likely number is about 10 points, which is the margin that most statewide GOP candidates typically win by here in Texas.

Those who do not know their history are likely to be surprised and shocked by it. Or something like that. Speaking for myself, I'm bracing for the coming riots and screams of "racism, racism!" :)