Nate Silver’s data say that if the election were today, the electoral college vote would be something like 350 to 188 in favor of Obama. Still, Dems faint in terror at the least discouraging news; the wingnut faithful (although not the GOP party itself) are only now telling themselves that McCain might lose. Nah, he couldn’t.
Rush Limbaugh’s gut is telling him McCain can win (or is it gas?) and John H of Power Tools tells us,
From Drudge: Zogby’s polling yesterday had John McCain pulling into a one-point lead, 48-47, over Barack Obama. That result is an outlier, I suppose, but Obama has never been able to seal the deal with the voters and quite a few remain undecided, one in seven according to a recent AP poll. Throughout the campaign, McCain has made a series of runs where it looked as though he might catch up, only to fall back again. And the state by state polls continue, for some reason, to look worse for McCain than the national numbers.
Still, I have a feeling that once you get past his core constituencies, Obama’s support is very thin. The fact that he has had to try to cast himself as a tax-cutter is revealing. Does anyone really believe it? True, there’s a sucker born every minute, but still… If there really are voters who have contemplated voting for Obama on what are essentially conservative grounds, it would not be surprising if some of them shift their allegiance between now and Tuesday.
I’m not even going to comment on that.
Y’know what? If the poll numbers were exactly reversed, right now the GOP would be making open preparations for the inauguration — “measuring the drapes,” as it were — and the Dems would have written off the election and be debating how to re-organize for 2012.
If Obama wins narrowly, the Right will console itself in the belief that ACORN stole the election and the majority of the people are still behind the rightie agenda. IMO the deepest, darkest, most terrifying nightmare lurking under the bed for righties is that they aren’t the majority. That’s a reality too terrible for them to face, even if God rubbed their noses in it.
Wingnutism is built on the foundational belief that only righties are the real Americans, and all others are freakizoid elitist not-Americans with deranged ideas. If the wingnuts were to realize that most Americans do not, in fact, think as they do, I’m not sure how they would react. Truly, brains would explode. But I don’t think they would ever admit they aren’t the majority. I don’t think they are capable of it. Obama could win every state in the Union on Tuesday, and they still wouldn’t admit they had truly lost.
Center-Right?
In recent days I’ve heard, over and over again, that America is a “center-right” nation, and Obama had better not forget that, else he push liberalism too far. John Meacham of Newsweek writes,
Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal–a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril. A party founded by Andrew Jackson on the principle that ‘the majority is to govern’ has long found itself flummoxed by the failure of that majority to see the virtues of the Democrats and the vices of the Republicans.
Which “past Democratic presidents” are we talking about? Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy certainly were not politically imperiled. Harry Truman didn’t lose public support because of liberal policies, but because of Korea. Jimmy Carter was not, in fact, particularly liberal in his domestic policies (any righties reading this who now are choking and sputtering should do some research), and pushing liberalism too far was not what cost him re-election. Bill Clinton wasn’t notably liberal, either.
IMO only Lyndon Johnson fits Meacham’s mold. Lyndon Johnson pushed liberalism (in the form of his Great Society programs) further than the white majority was ready to go at the time. Of course, that little Vietnam War dustup cost him some support, too.
And isn’t it astonishing how well the right-wing narrative has been imprinted in our brains? Meacham warns that Obama had better not take the too-liberal path that has tripped up so many Democratic presidents, even though it didn’t?
Here’s my problem with the “center-right” claim: Wingnuts see themselves as being “center-right,” even though on any global politcal spectrum they’re hanging off the extreme right end by their fingernails, and Obama’s policy proposals as they are would be considered center-right just about everywhere but here. Those of us who really are liberals quickly acknowledge that Obama is less liberal than we are. So where is the center?
If Obama does win next Tuesday, there will be significant excitement and expectation within the Democratic base that a progressive agenda — universal health care, removing the troops from Iraq — will quickly be passed into law.
If that happens, expect Republicans to use such an agenda as fodder in 2010 for the need to have divided government in Washington.
I can see the Republican campaign now. We warned you people that if you elected Democrats you’d get affordable health care and we’d get out of a pointless war in Iraq. You didn’t listen. And how you’re sorry, huh?
If that happens, expect Republicans to use such an agenda as fodder in 2010 for the need to have divided government in Washington. … Governing and campaigning are not the same thing. And, in a country that — if the Post/ABC survey is to be believed — still tilts center-right, Obama must be careful not to drift too far to the left in the heady early days of his administration.
Yeah, he doesn’t dare actually accomplish anything he promised in order to win the election. Americans don’t really want any of that stuff, even though they elected him because of what he promised. Makes sense.
The Post poll Cillizza talks about said that just 22 percent of likely voters called themselves “liberals” while 38 percent called themselves “moderates” and 37 percent claimed to be “conservatives.” The problem with self-identifying polls like this is that hardly anyone know what “liberal” or “conservative” means any more. If you asked people to define liberal, you’d probably get some nonsense about liberals loving to raise taxes, put everyone on welfare and otherwise waste money. By that definition, I’m not a liberal, either. However, that’s not what liberalism is.
To get a real measure, it would be more accurate to give people some sort of typology test, something like the famous Myers-Briggs personality test, to test actual attitudes and opinions on issues. I bet the results would show the nation is a lot more liberal than it thinks it is.
Update: See Thers at Whskey Fire.
An interesting last paragraph, Maha. In my grandson’s sophmore class in suburban Denver they were given just such a test. He is one of a very few Democrats in class but his Republican friends got a more liberal score than he did. They are all liberals but don’t even know it.
I’d have to go looking for them, but there actually have been studies done that try to figure out what people believe not by asking them how they label themselves but, shockingly, asking them how they think about various questions. These studies don’t usually get a lot of coverage, because they usually confirm that, although they don’t realize it, most people are far more ‘liberal’ than John Meacham would have it.
Asking people how they label themselves is a truly silly way to measure anything besides labelling preferences. Particularly when the terms are so vague and deprived of meaning, and there has been a concerted effort to render certain terms like ‘liberal’ unfashionable.
One of my hopes for an Obama administration is that he can follow through on his idea of a new kind of politics, so that the political spectrum can be recalibrated and a center-left program gets defined as a new normal. Not that the wing-nuts will go gently…but still I hope.
Don’t think Republicans can’t steal the vote this year.
If you’ve got some time (over an hour) and want to see a great documentary from HBO on how Republicans steal elections, take a look at Hacking Democracy. It will keep you wary if you vote on Diebold and Es&S machines.
Under The LobsterScope
“To get a real measure, it would be more accurate to give people some sort of typology test, something like the famous Myers-Briggs personality test, to test actual attitudes and opinions on issues. I bet the results would show the nation is a lot more liberal than it thinks it is.”
This is a good one: http://politicalcompass.org/
Good post – it’s impossible to pen a top-10 list of issues with Y/N responses and define a persons position, especially if the responses tend to group to a moderate position. (You could define an extreme right or extreme left position with 10 questions.)
I disagree with one statement – that the “deepest, darkest, most terrifying nightmare .. is that they aren’t the majority”. My take is that what really frightens them is that a liberal agenda might succeed. That a sound economy built around the middle-class and jobs will emerge, that energy independence might be achieved causing a decline in oil profits. That fair tax policies would be implemented despite all the lobbyist money, that we address the global warming crisis in concert & cooperation with the world, that sane and sage international policy saps the terrorist movement of its rage. There’s a wingnuts nightmare. It won’t happen in 4 years for sure – all of it can’t happen in 8 years, but give us 12 or 16 years real leadership…
Wherever this country is – center – center-right – center-left is not graven in stone. Get things going the right direction – I mean left direction – show progress and the voters will support you. FDR proved that.
I second Doug Hughes #5. It’s less that righties are afraid of being a minority, it’s more that they cannot even conceive that they are wrong, and their policies are stupid. With the media they steep themselves in, with their preference for high-five tribalism + groupthink over actually using their own brains, their self delusion is total.
One of the more amazing images I saw recently came from a Fox News screenshot on DailyKos. It was a familiar red state/blue state map of the US, showing their projection for how the election would turn out, electoral vote wise. The map looked very evenly divided colorwise, giving McCain a slight edge in electoral votes. I don’t think I need to say it, but this is in sharp contrast to any serious poll or projection. They really believe this stuff, and will blame ACORN or somebody if it doesn’t come true.
I may spend some time trying to find this map, and print it out, and save it for some future confrontation with some in-Fox-icated rightie who refuses to see reality for what it is. They literally cannot believe their version of reality is completely wrong, their delusion is total.
You can bet if the Repubs lose, they will drag out everything in their arsenal of dirty tricks to delegitimize an Obama administration. Apparently it hasn’t dawned on the GOP that their philosophy has worn out its welcome.
Obama has already hinted that the financial melt-down might impact the health-care thing & other domestic proposals he’s been campaigning on. To be honest, I see Obama as a politician first & foremost — not any sort of liberal nor any sort of fixer (which imo we most desperately need right now). I don’t think he cares about a 60 seat majority in the Senate because he assumes he can make political hay by co-opting a couple moderate Republicans (there are at least 37 moderate Republicans left in the USA, and maybe one or two will be in the Senate) and claiming BIPARTISANSHIP HOORAY!!! while the right collectively moans & groans about how those traitors to the cause were RINOS anyway. (So much for bipartisanship.)
Obama is the least bad of the two candidates for president. Period. For a long while now, that’s what our choice has been: the lesser of two evils.
What we need is a Roosevelt, someone who understands what’s at risk here & isn’t just getting high off the politics part of it all. But there just isn’t anybody at the national level that comes close to fitting the bill.
“Americans don’t really want any of that stuff, even though they elected him because of what he promised.”
I think this is exactly the problem with the far-right and the punditocracy. They don’t believe the elections, in themselves, actually mean anything. The elections are a “test” you have to get past to do what “really needs to be done”–so stealing an election or lying on the stump is no different than pumping up their resume or making a tiny cheat sheet to pass an ivy-league-college entrance exam. As long as they get through that annoying, pointless gate then things are good.
If they were ever able to accept the election results as the true voice of the people, many of their most cherished fantasies would crumble–the most important being the infallibility of themselves and their views.
Much like other forms of irrational reasoning, they start with the premise that X and Y are correct, without a doubt, and so anything that doesn’t fit that model is either wrong or a lie. Sadly, as those other examples have shown up, that sort of thinking will never be excised from humanity.