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[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If you like the war in Iraq and the economy, you're voting for John McCain.

That was the same choice voters were faced with McGovern and Nixon. However, the war was more unpopular, and the economy was in worse shape, and Nixon was running for reelection so there was no question of the incumbant being responsible for the current situatiaon. McCain can distance himself from Bush. Nixon could not distance himself from Nixon.

When you put up a candidate that is too far from the mainstream the election stops being about issues and focuses on the extremism of the candidate.

Obama and the Dems will try and focus on the war and the economy, but the focus will be how far out of the mainstream Obama is.

No one has explained to me how a Senator from Illinois with the most liberal voting record in the Senate is going to win, when the Democrats have not been able to get anything other than a conservative southern white male into the presidency IN THE PAST FIFTY YEARS.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
That was the same choice voters were faced with McGovern and Nixon. However, the war was more unpopular, and the economy was in worse shape, and Nixon was running for reelection so there was no question of the incumbant being responsible for the current situatiaon.

I believe you are mistaken on both counts here -- that the Vietnam War was less popular in 1972 and that the economy was in worse shape. But perhaps I'm wrong -- why do you think this?

No one has explained to me how a Senator from Illinois with the most liberal voting record in the Senate is going to win, when the Democrats have not been able to get anything other than a conservative southern white male into the presidency IN THE PAST FIFTY YEARS.

There's a realignment going on. As the South has flipped to the GOP, now other parts of the country are flipping the other way. The Southerners who run your part turn off the rest of the country. Democrats can win without the South.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Spanky
No one has explained to me how a Senator from Illinois with the most liberal voting record in the Senate is going to win, when the Democrats have not been able to get anything other than a conservative southern white male into the presidency IN THE PAST FIFTY YEARS.

Past results are not necessarily indicative of future performance.

The results from PA will be interesting.

I'd be quite surprised if BO won, but if he can come close to HC in that state, it shows a helluva lot of ability to reach across lines to differing constituencies -- at least within the party.

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
There's a realignment going on. As the South has flipped to the GOP, now other parts of the country are flipping the other way. The Southerners who run your part turn off the rest of the country. Democrats can win without the South.

Yes -- but we still can't win without winning most of the industrial "MidWest" -- Ohio, PA, Mich, Illinois.

Race, economic policy issues, etc, make that tough territory for Obama.

Although if you track the progress of things in Ohio as they developed, the Obama campaign found reasons to be encouraged. He closed a polling gap by about 15% in two weeks, and (I think) won every county in which he had a campaign office except for one. If he had another week or two to focus on Ohio, who knows?

Clinton won OH by following the advice of Gov. Strickland and pulling her campaign back to focus her efforts on the rural counties -- heavily white and older. Those dynamics will continue to be a huge obstacle for Obama in the general as well.

S_A_M

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Spanky
That was the same choice voters were faced with McGovern and Nixon. However, the war was more unpopular, and the economy was in worse shape, and Nixon was running for reelection so there was no question of the incumbant being responsible for the current situatiaon. McCain can distance himself from Bush. Nixon could not distance himself from Nixon.

Again, you are wrong on your 1972 history lesson. Nixon was winding down the war in Vietnam -- by then, there were virtually no US ground troops involved. And Kissinger manipulated the Paris Peace Talks so well (with the aquiesance of Le Duc Tho, because the North Vietnamese knew that only the Republicans could force Theiu and the South to accept a deal -- see e.g. Nixon using Madame Chiang and Anna Chennault* to disrupt the deal that LBJ had worked out in October 1968) that he was able to announce "peace is at hand!" in October 1972. Plus, let's not forget his visit to China in 1972, which took the prospect of a wider war in the region off of the table. So, the war was not a major issue for Middle America in 1972 as it was in 1968, or the midterms of 1970.

As for the economy, thanks to a pliable Fed, Nixon was able to create the illusion of prosperity throughout 1972, such that he was able to argue that Nixonomics was a wonderful thing, and blue collar types like my father and uncles and George Meany believed him and voted for him.

From those liberals at the National Review:

• The classic case of the Fed subordinating good policy to politics was in 1972. Richard Nixon was acutely aware that Fed tightening in late 1959 brought on a recession that began in April 1960. As the nominee of the incumbent party, Nixon took the blame for slow growth. In his book Six Crises, he complained bitterly that the Fed had, in effect, thrown the election to John F. Kennedy, whose most potent campaign pledge was that he would get the economy moving again.
  
  When Nixon became president in 1968, he vowed that he would not let the Fed do it to him again. At his earliest opportunity, he appointed a trusted aide, Arthur Burns, to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. His job was to make sure that money and credit stayed easy through the 1972 election.
  
  However, Nixon did not want to take any chances. He ordered White House staffers to keep an eye on Burns and push him to err on the side of monetary ease. According to William Safire, a White House aide at the time (in his book Before the Fall), when Burns resisted pressure to guarantee full employment in time for the election, negative press stories about Burns were planted in newspapers. A plan to dilute the Federal Reserve Board’s power was also floated. In his book Secrets of the Temple, William Greider says the tactics were crude, but successful.
  
  The problem was inflation. It jumped to 6.2 percent in 1969 after having been in the 1 to 2 percent range for many years. In essence, the inflation rate had tripled in a very short period of time. The recession, which began in December 1969 and ended in November 1970, brought it down only very little — to 5.6 percent in 1970.
  
  Under normal circumstances, the Fed would have tightened monetary policy to bring down inflation. But Nixon wanted to keep monetary policy loose in order to make sure the economy was robust going into the election. This led to the imposition of wage and price controls in August 1971. While everyone knew they would not work for long, the controls reduced inflation enough to keep monetary policy expansive through November 1972, which was all that mattered.
  
  In his book Nixon's Economy, historian Allen Matusow wrote, “Burns had offered Nixon an implicit bargain. In 1971 Nixon controlled prices, and in 1972 Burns supplied money by the bushel. The policy helped reelect the president but also assured the next cycle of boom and bust.”
  
  Once past the election, the price controls began to break down. Inflation jumped to 8.7 percent in 1973 and 12.3 percent in 1974. Another recession began in November 1973 and didn’t end until March 1975. These poor economic conditions created fertile soil for Nixon’s enemies when the Watergate scandal broke. Had the economy been stronger, Nixon probably would have survived it, just as a strong economy unquestionably helped Bill Clinton weather the Monica Lewinski scandal.

http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_b...0404280812.asp

eta: I said Claire Chennault, when I meant Anna (his wife). Claire Chennault was, of course, the orginal "Flying Tiger" -- the Army Air Corps officer who created the American Volunteer Group in the Chinese Air Force to fight the Japanese before Pearl Harbor. Also, I misspelled Madame Chiang's last name. Whoops on both counts.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
There's a realignment going on. As the South has flipped to the GOP, now other parts of the country are flipping the other way. The Southerners who run your part turn off the rest of the country. Democrats can win without the South.

How's that a realignment? That's a description of the last forty years of the geo-political landscape in this country.

"Turn off" is also the wrong word. The people who are "turned off" by the GOP are effete issues voters like me or you or the rest of everybody running around this country making a decent buck with a decent education behind him.

"Scared" is the word you're looking for. Middle class voters who are getting crushed in the Midwest and Northeast under ever rising living costs and stagnating wages are not "turned off" by the GOP but scared by it, and somehow brought to the belief the Dems will make things better for them. Maybe. But I think they're in a for huge disappointment on that hope.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Yes -- but we still can't win without winning most of the industrial "MidWest" -- Ohio, PA, Mich, Illinois.

Race, economic policy issues, etc, make that tough territory for Obama.

Although if you track the progress of things in Ohio as they developed, the Obama campaign found reasons to be encouraged. He closed a polling gap by about 15% in two weeks, and (I think) won every county in which he had a campaign office except for one. If he had another week or two to focus on Ohio, who knows?

Clinton won OH by following the advice of Gov. Strickland and pulling her campaign back to focus her efforts on the rural counties -- heavily white and older. Those dynamics will continue to be a huge obstacle for Obama in the general as well.

S_A_M

I think in a general election Obama squeaks by in PA. Not Ohio.

His BEST plank is the $50k tax holiday for retiring baby boomers. That is a home run issue Obama should push with a vengeance. Soooo many of those people are facing retirment with inadequate savings. He could grab so many votes with that and I don't know why he isn't pushing it harder.

[Not Bob]

Kerry did not lead Bush after the Democratic Convention in 2004 -- in fact, news stories at the time talked about the fact that he gained no bounce from securing the nomination (the first time that had happened since, well, 1972). That is, if the liberal rag USA Today can be trusted.

Nixon's Gallup approval rating never dropped below 50% in 1972, and was in the high 50s and low 60s from May to November 1972. This number is somewhat higher than President Bush's approval ratings in 2008. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/popularity.php

My personal favorite is the Time article amusingly titled "The Chasm Narrows":

• The course of George McGovern's presidential campaign apparently has turned a corner of sorts—at least in the public-opinion polls. He is beginning to narrow the huge lead held by Richard Nixon. Both the Gallup poll and Harris survey now place McGovern 28 percentage points behind Nixon, a gain for the Democrat of six points since the previous surveys by both polling firms.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Yes -- but we still can't win without winning most of the industrial "MidWest" -- Ohio, PA, Mich, Illinois.

Race, economic policy issues, etc, make that tough territory for Obama.

Perhaps. But he likely will win Illinois, and I am not sure that his task in Ohio, PA and Michigan is all that much harder than Hillary's. Obviously, the primaries thus far suggest that she starts with a few points advantage, but I think there are more potential votes on the table for Obama in the general than Hillary can put in play.

Also, I think Obama brings Virginia and maybe the Carolinas into play in a way that I don't think Hillary can.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Adder
Also, I think Obama brings ...........the Carolinas into play

wow.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
How's that a realignment? That's a description of the last forty years of the geo-political landscape in this country.

But for Mondale and Dukakis, every Democratic candidate since McGovern lost has been a Southerner. Won't happen this year. And while I agree that the shift outside the South has been happening, it's relatively recent. Republicans in the House and Senate were somewhat insulated by the benefits of incumbency.

"Turn off" is also the wrong word. The people who are "turned off" by the GOP are effete issues voters like me or you or the rest of everybody running around this country making a decent buck with a decent education behind him.

The Terry Schiavo thing did not play well with most of the country.

"Scared" is the word you're looking for. Middle class voters who are getting crushed in the Midwest and Northeast under ever rising living costs and stagnating wages are not "turned off" by the GOP but scared by it, and somehow brought to the belief the Dems will make things better for them. Maybe. But I think they're in a for huge disappointment on that hope.

I won't disagree with you that the GOP has no answer for the economic concerns of most voters.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
But for Mondale and Dukakis, every Democratic candidate since McGovern lost has been a Southerner. Won't happen this year. And while I agree that the shift outside the South has been happening, it's relatively recent. Republicans in the House and Senate were somewhat insulated by the benefits of incumbency.

Uh, John Kerry was a lot of things, but he was no Southerner...

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I won't disagree with you that the GOP has no answer for the economic concerns of most voters.

obama is going to give everyone $50,000 and health care, and it'll all be FREE!!!!!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
Uh, John Kerry was a lot of things, but he was no Southerner...

OK, I'll give you that.

Obviously I've been trying hard to forget him.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The Terry Schiavo thing did not play well with most of the country.

I won't disagree with you that the GOP has no answer for the economic concerns of most voters.

Schiavo's long forgotten. And McCain is easily distanced from that wing of his party. In fact, they still hate him. I think Dobson's crew of crazies are still threatening to boycott the election.

The GOP doesn't have an answer for the economic concerns of most voters because there isn't one. I agree more has to be done to broaden tax cuts to give more relief to the middle class. But which party is going to bring back jobs while the cost of our labor is multiples of the cost of foreign labor? The best the Dems can do is shift the tax burden a bit, but that's not going to be enough. What will the Dems' offer for Act II? Hire Lou Dobbs as Treasury Secretary?

Neither party can address the concerns of the middle class because there's nothing they can offer but band aids. The problem isn't our tax structure or "wealth disparity." The problem is our relation to the rest of the global marketplace. We buy everything the world is selling and create little outside a few innovative industries. That equals less jobs, which means a fucked middle class.

Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe things are naturally supposed to look a lot more like they did before the New Deal than after? That although it's nicer now, basically we have enjoyed a long holiday that wasn't sustainable for hundreds of years and that the cycle is naturally bringing us back to normalcy, rather than any policies of a political party? Many liberals seem to think that greater social equality is a natural stasis to strive for. I think it's worth striving for, but I'm not sure it's natural or practical or a sustainable struggle.