Antiwar.com Blog

Polls & the politics betting markets suggest that Obama is the candidate most likely to be elected president. I think a McCain victory is more likely so, to get my 2 cents in before the post-McCain victory deluge, I’ll explain in advance why I think the Dems will lose, & what they can do about it.

First, where are we now? The polls I’ve seen indicate that Americans want the next president to be a Democrat rather than Republican by a margin of 16 to 18 percentage points. Asked to choose between Clinton & McCain, however, potential voters consistently choose McCain by a small margin. Obama beats McCain in hypothetical head-to-head contests, by somewhere between a (statistically insignificant) few points and about 10 points. So, right off the bat we can see that either the Dems have picked candidates that are liked less than their party, or the Repubs have picked a candidate who is more popular than his party — or both.

Election futures markets have the best prediction track records — better than pundits or polls. The Intrade market currently gives Clinton a 17% chance of winning the presidency, McCain a 34% chance, & Obama 49%. The odds of the Dems, as a party, winning are 66% to 34%. Strong stuff, but I believe that the Democratic candidates’ demographic profiles are likely to lead to a Republican upset.

What type of president does the country want? A Southern, male, Protestant, Democrat, of northern European descent, who was moderately opposed to the Iraq war.

The demographics are straightforward. Since the Democrats led in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending their support from the South, there have been ten presidential elections, in which the Democrats have nominated 8 candidates. Five candidates were from somewhere other than Dixie, and all 5 lost. The 3 remaining candidates are white male Southern Protestants. Two of them won outright at least once, & the third (who was hurt by running with a Jewish Yankee and against a Southerner) won the popular vote.

It’s very unlikely that a candidate will lose the entire South this year yet still win the national election. Since neither of the Democratic candidates fits the demographic profile of a winner in the South, an obvious question is: have Southerners’ preferences changed? And the answer, judging by the past 2 elections, is: no. The Bush/Cheney ticket was more Southern than both the Gore/Lieberman and the Kerry/Edwards tickets, and every Southern state went to the former, while Bush lost both elections outside of Dixie. (Gore/Edwards would have won either election.)

It’s hard to put odds on this year’s election. McCain isn’t a Southerner; Clinton is sorta half-Southern; the mood in the country is pessimistic; the Repubs are discredited… In a normal year, & just going by demographics, & not knowing the VPs yet (Gore would be perfect), I’d say Obama would have a 1 in 5 chance of winning the election; Clinton would have maybe a 1 in 4 chance. This year? Obama or Clinton will have about a 1 in 3 chance of winning, I’d guess.

The Dems need a Southern strategy.

As Michael Lind pointed out in a brilliant essay published by The Nation almost exactly four years ago, Winston Churchill has been an icon of neo-conservatism for as long as it has existed. Thus, when the neo-conservatives had more confidence in George W. Bush — particularly on the eve of the Iraq invasion and immediately after — they had no hesitation in comparing him to their hero, particularly because they knew that that’s how Bush himself has conceived his own historical role vis-a-vis “Islamo-fascism” in it many forms and that flattery can be very helpful in influencing the president.

So, it’s no surprise that, in their rush to ingratiate themselves with John McCain — with whom, as I’ve noted in a recent post, they already have strong ties anyway — they are now comparing him to the Great Man. In an article entitled “The Model for McCain?” that appeared on the Weekly Standard’s website last week, Michael Makovsky, a Churchill biographer who previously worked in Douglas Feith’s intelligence manipulation office and is now — bizarrely enough — the foreign policy director of the “Bipartisan Policy Center” — points out the many fascinating similarities between Churchill and McCain, concluding that, while “McCain certainly has not reached Churchill’s heights, …he can legitimately claim to be the most Churchillian among the Republicans of his day.” The courtship is well underway.

Michael is the younger brother of David Makovsky, the director of the Washington Institute for Near Policy (WINEP). He also played a key role in re-”organizing” Iraq’s oil sector during the initial phases of the occupation.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

What was The American Thinker thinking when it published the following bit of prose?: 

“As Obama took steps toward the United States Senate he found a very powerful sugar daddy who would help fund his rise: George Soros. The billionaire hedge fund titan began supporting Obama very early — as befits a legendary speculative investor always looking for opportunities.”

The irony is that this classic anti-Semitic trope — the predatory Jewish speculator always on the prowl — comes in the midst of a screed that claims Obama is in bed with … anti-Semites. This is either waaaay too clever, or just plain dumb, like The American Thinker itself. After all, what kind of a name is that? It sounds like some foreigner’s idea of typical American moniker.

Barbara Ehrenreich, writing in The Nation: 

“When did you begin to think that Obama might be unstoppable? Was it when your grown feminist daughter started weeping inconsolably over his defeat in New Hampshire? Or was it when he triumphed in Virginia, a state still littered with Confederate monuments and memorabilia? For me, it was on Tuesday night when two Republican Virginians in a row called CSPAN radio to report that they’d just voted for Ron Paul, but, in the general election, would vote for… Obama.”

Ms. Ehrenreich and I are on the same wave-length, apparently, because the key to unlocking to this seeming conundrum is to be found in my column tomorrow ….