GOP Insiders Worry About McCain's Chances

[tekisui]

Source: The Huffington Post
By: Thomas B. Edsall

For four months John McCain had a clear field while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at each other's throats. Given the opportunity, the Arizona Senator failed to define the debate in favorable terms, spending much of the valuable primary months defending himself on charges that his campaign staff was top heavy with lobbyists.

Conversely, McCain has so far eluded the anti-Republican tidal wave that threatens to sweep away the party's candidates at every level, from county councils to the U.S. Senate. Amid the early wreckage -- GOP partisan identification in the tank, three defeats in rock-solid GOP House districts, and the National Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committees scratching for cash -- McCain stands competitive with Obama in national polls, running just 2.5 points behind.

The McCain campaign to date lends itself to contradictory assessments. The odds makers are leaning decisively in Obama's favor but McCain is not out of the running.

Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, has posted a PowerPoint study asserting that McCain currently hold slight leads in Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri and Nevada, and that Ohio is "a dead heat" and that Pennsylvania could go Republican. "This is a very good position for our campaign to be in," Davis contends

In fact, the survey data is not as favorable as Davis claims - Obama leads in all five of the most recent Pennsylvania polls by an average of 5.8 points, and he leads in Wisconsin by 2 points. Polling in the 19 states identified by RealClearPolitics as battlegrounds shows Obama in a better position than McCain, ahead in such Bush '04 states as Colorado and Iowa, and running very close in Virginia, New Mexico and Nevada.

In addition, the data on RealClearPolitics dispute another of Davis' claims --- that McCain has stronger favorable/unfavorable ratings than Obama. Instead, the recent average for McCain is 47.3 favorable to 40.8 unfavorable, or a +6.5; for Obama, it's 50.3 to 38.5, or +11.8 .

In not-for-attribution interviews, a number of Republicans were neither optimistic about his chances nor positive in their assessment of his campaign so far.

"I think we've got a world of problems," said one Republican strategist with extensive experience in presidential campaigns. He said this came home to him with a thud when he watched Obama and McCain give speeches last Tuesday, with the Democrat speaking before "20,000 screaming fans, while John McCain looked every bit of his 72 years" in a speech televised from New Orleans. This Republican cited the liberal blogger Atrios' description of McCain's speech with a green backdrop that made McCain "look like the cottage cheese in a lime Jell-O salad."

(snip)

Arch-conservative Bay Buchanan suggested that it may not matter what McCain does. Writing in Human Events on June 4, she declared:

"In reality there is only one candidate. Barack Obama. In November he will win or he will lose. John McCain is relevant only in so far as he is not Barack Obama. The Senator from Arizona is incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls, and has a personality that is best kept under wraps."

more at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/08/gop-insiders-worry-about_n_105946.html

[Hekate]

1. I wish McSame all the worst of luck, but this is still going to be a nail-biter of a race...

Obama is phenomenal, but I will be praying for both his victory and his safety every step of the way because our vote-counting system is currently is such bad shape I fear for our very democracy.

Still, it's very heartening to read these dire prediction for the Publicans.

Hekate

[Vogon_Glory]

2. Agreed.

I was a Hillary supporter, and I've seen little video of Obama to date (I don't have a working TV, so what I see is sporadic). However, from what I've seen Senator Obama looks much more attentive than the incumbent does. He looks like a guy who can not only learn on the job, but also like a guy who is already learning.

He'll do.

I, too, worry about the vote-counting system, although I think that the 'Puds are using voter suppression tactics like photo IDs and voter roll tampering than electronic voting machines.

[Hekate]

3. A lot of his crowd-appeal is in his soaring oratory, so you're missing that if you don't have a tv

He is the best orator this country has produced in well over a generation -- it's a gift I thought we had lost forever through lack of use and lack of appreciation (plus we have Bush, who murders the English language along with everything else). I gravitate toward the printed word, so this took me by surprise -- I mean the impact he has on me, personally. Reading his speeches and policy papers gives you content (liberal, intelligent), and his books give you the flavor of the man (intelligent, thoughtful, great bio, cerebral), but actually hearing him speak is like nothing I've experienced before. That's where this brainy man connects at the heart and the gut.

I think you can find just about everything on YouTube these days, from snippets to whole speeches (the latter being important for the way everything starts quiet and builds to a crescendo). That doesn't work unless you have good equipment, though. My own computer gets absolute crap for reception, and everything comes out herky-jerky. If I hadn't listened to whole speeches on tv I would have little idea of why he gets the crowds he does, and I'd have to go solely on his good record and the (D) after his name.

As for our electoral process -- I agree. The Pubs are using every tactic in the book, from modern electronics to voter roll tampering straight out of Tammany Hall. We are up against ratlike cunning on a massive scale and they will go down fighting like cornered animals.

Hekate