quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Twinky, after McCain announced Sarah Palin was his vice presidenial running mate, his polls shot up five or six points, better than Obama's poll numbers, and stayed there through mid September--until September 15 when Shearson-Lehman collapsed, and McCain said "the fundamentals of the economy are sound." Obama exploited that remark unmercifully, and poll numbers for McCain at that exact point began to decline.
Ron, the only time McCain posted better numbers than McCain was during the post-convention bounce. Obama had already recovered the lead he had held the entire rest of the campaign two days before the collapse.
Read that again:
He had pulled ahead of McCain again.
Two days before the collapse.
To note: the post-convention bump is a well-documented phenom in polling and EV counts. After a party's convention, you see a bump in popular support for that entire party, which dissipates in a pretty predictable timeframe.
Same thing happened in the last two elections in a way which was recorded very accurately.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Perhaps even more telling are the post convention polls and the exit polls on election day. After the convention it was Palin who gave McCain the bounce that pushed him a couple points ahead of Obama, but by election day, her numbers had tanked. She ended up costing him more votes than she secured for him by turning off a huge swatch of independent voters. Her unfavorable/favorable split was 60/40. That's an awful number for a spot whose first duty is to "do no harm," when it comes to the election.
Even without the economy as an issue his numbers would have come back to Earth as the Palin bounce disappeared and people got to know her better. I think without the economy it wouldn't have been the blowout that it was, but don't pretend that the economy handed Obama the election. And for that matter, don't pretend that the economy itself gave Obama a magic free ride. McCain constantly bungled the economic problem while Obama looked cool as a cucumber. It wasn't just his fundamentals comment or the goofy way he tried to fix it afterwards. Instead of actually going a little wonkish on us and telling us WHY he felt the fundamentals were strong, he went to baseball and apple pie and said the workers were what made us strong. Well, I know here in Michigan where we have the highest unemployment in the country, saying the workers are the backbone of the economy when thousands of people are losing their jobs rings rather hollow, and it felt the same way all across the rust belt.
But add on top of that his ridiculous side show antics with the whole suspending his campaign to fly to Washington, and then he hung around for a day to do interviews and then went to New York and then finally arrived in Washington just in time for the negotiations to blow up, then went to a meeting at the White House where he didn't utter a peep whilst Obama was taking the lead for the Democrats and asking questions, then he left Washington saying everything was hunky dory only to have the vote he claimed to fix fail!
It was a truly awful turn of events that even if Obama had stayed home for the whole week would have pushed McCain down and Obama up in the polls. He overreacted, badly, to the problem.
He shot himself in the foot repeatedly, and instead of putting the safety back on the gun, he just kept loading new clips.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
If you want a completely, honestly, absolutely serious discussion about why the Republican party is facing dire straits — many estimating a decade or two of great irrelevance — you could use a lot of words, or you could mill it down to some choice bits.
I believe earnestly in all of these stated points and they are not soundbites. I could post pages of descriptive essay about what I mean by them. Please ask me to.
But simply put
The Republican Party is failing because:
• They put their stock in Bush, and Bush sucked. He was a god-awful president, honestly. He made terrible appointments to most any post he could get his hands on. He took a time of international solidarity and squandered it. He leaves a legacy marred by incompetence, an extralegal terrorism war that failed, a sharp and abusive reduction of personal liberties, and a sellout of American interests to a connected internal network of — and I'm sorry, there's no better word for them — cronies. Early in his presidency, right after 9/11, the party regulars got real big into touting him as the spearhead of the new, permanently dominant Republicanism of the country. They put their faith in him and sold their image in him as the new Reagan. And they'll never live it down until Bush is a long-removed, academic subject.
• They sold out. They used to be a party of limited government and personal freedoms. This is a fading memory of the past. "Neoconservative" is a pejorative these days, but not too long ago it was the star they hitched themselves to; resulting in a schizophrenic and dishonest mismatch between ideals and reality, as the party tore away at privacy and liberty and balanced budget, expanding government at a furious rate.
• They tied themselves to a 'core' of Evangelical voters and it really seemed like a good idea at the time. They are zealotic, organized, and they vote in great numbers, and are easily persuaded to vote in a monolithic bloc for "god's party" and "god's candidates." The bad news is that these people are declining in influence, and they demand obsequiousness to ideas which now frequently scare away the moderates and makes Republicanism the party of backwards bigotry. They want candidates that rebuke the evolution lie, that disbelieve science, that will claim to work towards overturning roe v. wade, and who have to give major lip service to tearing down gay rights at every opportunity. Stand up fokels, I'm sure.
• They were terrible stewards of congress. They broke down a system of compromise and acted like anointed rulers, then as the 109th transferred to the 110th, they began the heaviest campaign of furious vote obstructionism ever seen in the history of congress. The eponymous "Do Nothing Congress" was actually literally more productive than these guys were. They grew indolent and impertinent.
• They established a critical inability to manage themselves or their money, racking up huge debts and wasting money fantastically in spectacular failures.
• They fought reality, and reality won. The historical stories of the last eight years are dominated by the spectacular failures that occurred when the system they put in place were challenged by real-life circumstances. Suits like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld were, I'm certain, positive they knew how well they would manage a ground war in the middle east. Bush was confident with his appointment of FEMA's leads. I'm sure they were all fantastically confident with their management of the economy. Yup.
• They made it so that people got tired of Roveian politics and you could no longer bludgeon your way into political majority through vicious, amoral campaigning and pandering to the far-right. You lose the middle.
• They broke the wall of cognitive dissonance when people finally figured out that when they were sucking at the morals thing and the values thing, they couldn't get out of it by just saying they were the morals and values party. They lost their credibility, mostly with the help of Iraq, since they continually had to sell the war to the people and continually assured everyone how well things were going ("last throes," et al) as things proceeded to get worse and worse and finally broke down in sectarian conflict.
• They sucked at war, both against countries and against concepts.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
A succinct summary, though I bet I could add a few more if I took the time (maybe later I will).
quote:If you want a completely, honestly, absolutely serious discussion about why the Republican party is facing dire straits — many estimating a decade or two of great irrelevance
This exact theory was postulated today on NPR, and the guest speaker was quick to note that the current composition of Congress is almost identical to what Democrats won in 1992, and they lost it all two years later when Republicans took over in 1994.
Do I think that'll happen? No, if for no other reason than the 2010 midterms look favorable to Democrats if for no other reason than Democrats up for reelection are in strong positions and there are a lot more Republican than Democratic seats up, just like this year. Blue Dog Dems in the House might face some danger, but there is a pretty big cushion, and really it all depends on what they get done in the next two years. If Democrats totally flop in the next two years, and Republicans can get their crap together with a cogent message, they might have a good shot at narrowing the odds.
I have no idea how likely I think that is until Obama's first 100 days are over, and I wouldn't even care to speculate as it'd just be a WAG. I think the big fallout from this will be the downfall of the Baby Boomer GOP leadership to be replaced by a younger crowd of "New" Republicans. They have to adapt or die. If nothing else, demographics will kill them if the rate in which "minorities" are quickly inching towards becoming the majority stays stead. Minorities vote for Democrats (by and large), and if they do become a collective majority, Republicans will be shut out of power forever. They need to take a subjective look at their platform far more than their tactics, and figure out what they can do to broaden the support of their base beyond what I'm basically going to call the Confederacy. Outside of the Confederacy they didn't win a single state that had more than 10 electoral votes. And heck, they didn't even take the whole thing, losing states like Florida, Virginia and North Carolina are a body blow.
Most of your reasons Samp, while excellently distilled, don't help them get back into power. It smacks of failed tactics, which can shift from day to day even, but it doesn't get to the heart of their strategy (platform). With two exceptions possibly, in your list, everything listed there is a tactic. Their real problem is what they stand for as a party. I don't think anyone really knows anymore, other than, like you mentioned, the core of Evangelical voters. Evangelicals don't win you national power though.
They need to decide how to form a new coalition that'll get them back into power, and it's going to involve a lot more than abortion and apple pie.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Most of your reasons Samp, while excellently distilled, don't help them get back into power.
The distillation process turned that mostly into a 'what went wrong' — the reparation strategy is way easier.
When conservatism comes back, they or their successor party will have to be a sharp, smart, crusading machine that will chop down the pork-fattened, indolent machine that the democratic party will doubtlessly have metastasized into by then. It's just a question of whether that gets to happen sooner rather than later or if Republicanism is going to flail around for half a century being unable to reconcile the differences between the Rockefeller Republicans and the fundie crowd.
And the cycle will continue onward, and onward ..
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
McCain won 46% of the popular vote. It was highly skewed by state and region, urban and rural, but that number is not so far off of 50/50 that the democrats can declare a holiday.
The democrats won because the republicans suck. It didn't hurt that Obama was a great candidate, but IMO he created the landslide, not the victory.
A few years ago, when the democrats were "irrelevant," I couldn't help but notice that they weren't really trying to find a new angle or to redefine themselves. They basically waited for the republicans to screw up.
My biggest fear, and unfortunately my prediction, is that republicans will win back power under the same circumstances. The democrats will screw up.
In my idealistic dream universe (the one I think many of us here would like to see, judging by the posts), the republicans get their act together and reunite under different leadership and with different priorities.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:They basically waited for the republicans to screw up.
I buy that for the 2006 Midterms, I'm not sure I buy it for this election. Obama was a totally different mold of Democrat. His campaign wasn't a wait and see holding pattern to watch McCain flop all over himself, he was aggressive, and had a totally new message for America from what Democrats had presented in the past.
If Pelosi were in charge of things, I'd share your worry. But Obama is the leader of his party, and Reid is a moderating influence to a degree. I have a lot more faith with Obama at the helm. I think they'll roll out the agenda very slowly. SCHIP will be the first bill up. Maybe a small stimulus package for road construction after that. Small stuff to get the ball rolling before they push the big stuff through.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
Moose, Governor Palin's arch enemy, turned the tide.
They snuck in over our ridiculously unguarded Canadian Border.
(With the help of some of those darn sneaky Canadians)
They registered to vote thanks to ACORN.
(Who eat acorns? Squirrels. So it seems fitting that ACORN is a front group for the national Squirrel Liberation Army, and we all know how friendly Moose and Squirrels are. They helped register 125 million Moose all across the country.)
Then, on election day they used a combination of clones and the holographic technology as seen on CNN I think, to infiltrate the American poling places, and pick Obama.
Why?
If the McCain/Palin ticket would have won, Sara Palin, as VP, would have had more free time to do as she wished, and we all know that she wishes to HUNT MOOSE. (Her husband and kids would also have more free time.)
If she were to actually succeed McCain, why there was the real threat that Moose Hunting would become a national sport, or that she would authorize the invasion of Canada to claim the better hunting grounds.
Either way, for their own safety, the Moose came down as far south as they dared (all the way to Virginia and North Carolina, though there was also a large group vacationing in Florida) and totally ruined our democratic system.
(Notice, they didn't get into Alaska. Alaska is prepared for a moose invasion, and its people will shoot one on sight.)
And who do we have to blame?
Steven Colbert.
Why?
His attack on Bears.
If there is one thing that could have saved this country, it would have been more bears to defeat the moose. But noooooooooo. Mr. "I'm America" Colbert had to shoo them all up to Canada.
No wonder the moose migrated down here.
So next time you see someone with an Obama sticker, check closely. Make sure they are not a moose.
posted
Have any of you followed this set of articles over at Slate? I like Douglas Kmiec's the best, personally (and Tucker Carlson's the least, although even he has something interesting to say). Anne Applebaum also has an interesting article on how Obama's race, and the faith in ourselves his personal narrative inspired, played a pretty decisive role.
It's hard for me to point to anything to be done. Honestly, I think the pendulum will swing back regardless of what changes and what doesn't. But if forced to choose, I think the Republican party should: (1) Increase it's support for non-profit, local community movements. Sort of a back-to-basic, Burkean civil society world view. This dovetails nicely with small government principles. (2) Find a workable compromise between increasing legal immigration, defining a new role for illegal immigrants with family or other ties that keep them in US communities, and still providing adequate law-and-order restrictions on immigration, for reasons of security. (3) Find a new narrative that positively asserts conservative social values; it's been too easy for too long to caricature social conservativism as a bunch of backwoods (see the implied "Southern" there) flatearthers who want to militantly evangelize your children against the evils of sex and science.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by lem: I voted third party. I wanted to participate, but I don't endorse Obama.
I know... it was a big upset when he lost your endorsement. Good thing he had Colin Powell to balance you out or he probably would have lost. Posts: 2804 | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
It would probably help if he stopped calling press conferences . . .
And, y'know, bald lying in front of news cameras was a bright move.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
It wasn't until about a week before the election that I saw a Joe the Plumber interview and realized he was a real person. Ever since his name started being tossed around I assumed it was a hypothetical person representing working class America or something.
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Hear, hear advice for robots.
I think Obama won for 2 main reasons.
1) A brilliantly organized and managed grass-roots campaign.
2) Bush's awful record.
I think the republican party wants us to think it was just Bush, but I'm sorry I can't agree. He had a republican congress backing him up and frankly, many of his bad policies were continuations of bad policies created by Reagan, who the republican party still seems to idolize.
I fail to understand why people think that Reagen had bad economic policies. Economic problems do NOT happen overnight people. They do not happen as quickly as many people think. The only reason why we had such a prosperous time during President Clinton's presidency was because of the economic policies of Reagan.
Two years into Reagan's presidency, the United States experienced its worst recession since the Great Depression, with unemployment peaking at 10.8 percent. However, Carter had been experiencing a growing unemployment rate during his entire presidency.
President Clinton and Congress passed the legislation to enable the sub prime lending mess that we are in right now. To blame this all on Presiden Bush is ridiculous. Three years ago quite a few congressmen warned about this crisis we are in now, and nothing was done about it. It took 3 more years after that until it became what it is now.
I just love how people always say that Clinton was this great economic powerhouse of a President, but fail to understand the economic issues are not created nor can be solved overnight. Obama even acknowledged this in his acceptance speech when he said it may not be in his first year or even his first TERM, but that he would do his best to help America get out of the current financial crisis.
Posts: 45 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
You're attributing far too much power to the office of the President.
I do think people often denigrate Reagan's economic policy overly much. Not that there isn't stuff to criticize, but a lot of the criticism goes overboard.
However, your criticism of Clinton's administration goes overboard. Some of what helped the current situation along happened under Clinton, but the legislation that's being bandied about as 'the cause' is fairly obviously not the cause on any examination of the current situation. Blaming it all on Bush would also be a mistake, but there's plenty of blame to spread around. For instance, it was the Bush administration that greatly raised the amount of leverage certain investment banks were allowed to use, which was a huge contributor to the crisis.
Also, saying that the prosperous time in Clinton's presidency was due to Reagan is very much wrong. Some of it was due to Reagan. More of it was due to Federal Reserve policy (which has turned around to bite us), and some of it (less than the amount due to the Federal Reserve as well) was due to Clinton's policies, notably his great expansion of free trade (one of the areas Reagan's economics were particularly abysmal; the 'voluntary quota' on Japanese automobiles cost Americans millions upon millions of dollars).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
As Kate said, he's cashing in on McCain's plugging. Which is the American way recently, but it does subject him to criticism. Joe's website: http://secureourdream.com/ Complete with his unfinished ghostwritten book and "Joe the Blogger" newsletter, and 1-Year "We Are Joe" Freedom Membership Subscription for just $14.95.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: Good thing he had Colin Powell to balance you out or he probably would have lost.
He begged me to endorse Obama at the same time to give a powerful one-two punch to the undecideds. But I just couldn't.
Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Morbo: Also, McCain hitched his wagon to Joe the Plumber, who's a complete idiot.
I am glad I am not Joe Wurzelbacher. I would not like anonymous people judging my character after I had been made into McCain's campaign platform. Hopefully his life can get back to normal.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots: He's calling press conferences? I was not aware.
He has a publicist and is ( or was before the election) working on a book deal and possibly a recording contract.
As Kate said, he's cashing in on McCain's plugging. Which is the American way recently, but it does subject him to criticism. Joe's website: http://secureourdream.com/ Complete with his unfinished ghostwritten book and "Joe the Blogger" newsletter, and 1-Year "We Are Joe" Freedom Membership Subscription for just $14.95.
OK, never mind. I didn't realize he was trying to Paris Hilton his 15 minutes.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I did feel sorry for him being thrust suddenly into the spotlight and having some of his dirty laundry aired, since he didn't ask to be mentioned on national TV. However, one thing that makes him look somewhat uninformed is this interview where he insists that electing Obama would mean death to Israel. When pushed, he did name meeting with Ahmadinejad as a reason, but then refused to give any other support for his position. He said, "Let people go out out and find...find out the issues, find out why they would think I would say that." I'm not particularly sorry for him when he makes himself look bad while pursuing publicity.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Christine: McCain won 46% of the popular vote. It was highly skewed by state and region, urban and rural, but that number is not so far off of 50/50 that the democrats can declare a holiday.
You are incorrect. The Democratic Party can declare a holiday because America elected a Black man who reminds many of us a little of Martin Luther King Jr.
His election is the GREATEST thing this country has ever done to heal the deep scars of slavery in the Nation of Freedom and Christianity.
7,000,000,000 more Americans voted for Barack than Mccain.
It's a holiday.
Posts: 262 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Were you watching the same campaign? Sen. Clinton's message was experience. remember the 3:00 am phonecall bit? She jumped on the change bandwagon later (though not as late as Sen. McCain).
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Really? I have it on good authority that Obama's victory was due to - and I'm quoting here - "$$$$$".
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Really? I have it on good authority that Obama's victory was due to - and I'm quoting here - "$$$$$".
That's no more insigtful than saying Obama won the election because . . . he got more votes!!
Both analyses is pathetically shallow because they don't address how he people to give him those $$$$$ (or votes). If Romney had won the election, or if McCain had poured his wife's fortune into the campaign and won, it might have meant something to say they won because they had the money. With Obama its just banal.
Both Clinton and McCain started out with with much bigger war chests than Obama. Until the last two months, nearly all of Obama's money came from small donors who had never given to a political campaign before. It was only after they could see which way the wind was blowing that the big corporate interests started climbing on board.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
To me the real question isn't why the republicans lost this election, its why they were even competitive given the royal mess they've made in both the domestic and foreign arenas. Given that only 20% of Americans think Bush is doing a good job, why did any more than 20% of Americans vote republican.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: To me the real question isn't why the republicans lost this election, its why they were even competitive given the royal mess they've made in both the domestic and foreign arenas. Given that only 20% of Americans think Bush is doing a good job, why did any more than 20% of Americans vote republican.
Because more than 20% of Americans are still republican (or what they believe the republican party to be) and remain so despite Bush's failings.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Until the last two months, nearly all of Obama's money came from small donors who had never given to a political campaign before.
posted
Anybody who thinks that Obama won because he is black...is a former lobotomy patient.
Seriously? Do people think this?
Anyone who does has never met an actual liberal. Liberals vote for people who would carry forward their ideals. In a race between Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton, white liberals are going to vote for Clinton, because he's *whisper* an actual liberal.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
2004. Kerry looses because mostly he campaigns on Bush hatred.
2008. McCain looses because mostly he campaigns on Obama fear.
Maybe the electorate is trying to say, "Hey. The power of the spin-lords is broken. We want actual answers to our questions, not talking points and choices of who's not the worst."
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I read one theory posted on cnn's message board that Obama won because he was black, which made the black pimps vote for him. And the pimps made all their whores vote for obama, which is what won him the election.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by lobo: Obama's message was no different than Clintons. Hope and Change. It helped that he was black...
Were you watching the same campaign? Sen. Clinton's message was experience. remember the 3:00 am phonecall bit? She jumped on the change bandwagon later (though not as late as Sen. McCain).
I still think she secretly hopes Obama would lose so she could run in 2012. Clinton/Palin would have been interesting.
Posts: 45 | Registered: Oct 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by steven: Anybody who thinks that Obama won because he is black...is a former lobotomy patient.
Seriously? Do people think this?
Anyone who does has never met an actual liberal. Liberals vote for people who would carry forward their ideals. In a race between Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton, white liberals are going to vote for Clinton, because he's *whisper* an actual liberal.
The point of Anne Applebaum's article (I'll link it again, in case you weren't able to read it before) wasn't that liberals voted for Obama because he was black, but that Americans in general would like to view our country as a place where somebody with Obama's narrative can become President. And that desire to "be proud of our country" tilted a sufficient number voters opinions for Obama to win (including Applebaum, I would guess, who wrote a piece a few days earlier about why she would not vote for McCain).
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: The real answer--Moose.
...
They snuck in over our ridiculously unguarded Canadian Border.
...
They registered to vote thanks to ACORN.
(Who eat acorns? Squirrels. So it seems fitting that ACORN is a front group for the national Squirrel Liberation Army, and we all know how friendly Moose and Squirrels are. They helped register 125 million Moose all across the country.)
Are you trying to insinuate as a political analogy that McCain/Palin = Boris & Natasha?
Who's the socialist now...? Posts: 382 | Registered: Jan 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
An Obama Tilt in Campaign Coverage This is an interesting link to the Washington Post. The first time the link asked me to register, the second time I clicked the link it went right in.
quote: The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.
quote: Bill Hamilton, assistant managing editor for politics, said, "There are a lot of things I wish we'd been able to do in covering this campaign, but we had to make choices about what we felt we were uniquely able to provide our audiences both in Washington and on the Web. I don't at all discount the importance of issues, but we had a larger purpose, to convey and explain a campaign that our own David Broder described as the most exciting he has ever covered, a narrative that unfolded until the very end. I think our staff rose to the occasion."
The op-ed page ran far more laudatory opinion pieces on Obama, 32, than on Sen. John McCain, 13. There were far more negative pieces about McCain, 58, than there were about Obama, 32, and Obama got the editorial board's endorsement. The Post has several conservative columnists, but not all were gung-ho about McCain.
quote: Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.
quote: Some readers complain that coverage is too poll-driven. They're right, but it's not going to change. The Post's polling was on the mark, and in some cases ahead of the curve, in focusing on independent voters, racial attitudes, low-wage voters, the shift of African Americans' support from Clinton to Obama and the rising importance of economic issues. The Post and its polling partner ABC News include 50 to 60 issues questions in every survey instead of just horse-race questions, so public attitudes were plumbed as well.
posted
Again, DarkKnight, you fail to show - or even to claim - that this doesn't reflect reality. Should the press have made up good stories to report about Sen. McCain so that they would be "even"? Or suppressed good stories about Sen. Obama?
And how about those Newsweek reporters who promised not to report the stories of Gov. Palin's lack of knowledge until after the election? The San Francisco Chronicle video controversy pales in comparison.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I thought there was a thread that derailed to racial issues, but I can't find it. Thus, this may be an appropriate place to highlight this article:
quote: While Obama attracted more support from white voters than did Sen. John Kerry in 2004, he garnered just 43 percent of the white vote while drawing almost all black voters and 2 out of 3 Asian and Latino voters, according to CNN exit polls.
"The playing field of presidential politics has changed," said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research center in Washington focused on the African American electorate. "There was a great deal of discontent with the state of the country and the economy; that was a big part of it. But this was a historic occasion with Obama being the first black major-party nominee."
Obama inspired African Americans to vote in record numbers this year, and analysts believe that will continue as more closely contested elections in Southern states are likely to keep black voters engaged. And the growing political muscle of Latino and Asian voters signals that, after decades of robust immigration, immigrants and their children and grandchildren are becoming full participants in the American political process.
All three groups turned away from the Republican Party definitively this year.
"That's something that should be very concerning to the Republican Party: They are losing support from both Asians and Latinos, the fastest growing population groups in the country," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of political science at UC Riverside.
If Republicans can't regain their appeal to those groups, they might become a party of white voters in an increasingly minor role, said several analysts.
I thought that might be an interesting tidbit to chew on. Even after Bush, who polls as the worst president in American history, not only would Obama *not* be President if it was up to white voters but if you take Asian, Latino, and Other as an objective baseline, the white vote is almost as much of an outlier as the black vote.
It will be interesting to see how the Republican party adjusts to this process of marginalization. Additionally, this illustrates just how far we have to go until racism is really over and white people see black people just like the rest of us do Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Again, DarkKnight, you fail to show - or even to claim - that this doesn't reflect reality.
I've yet to see someone show that it does reflect reality? From the article:
quote:McCain clinched the GOP nomination on March 4, three months before Obama won his. From June 4 to Election Day, the tally was Obama, 626 stories, and McCain, 584. Obama was on the front page 176 times, McCain, 144 times; 41 stories featured both.
Our survey results are comparable to figures for the national news media from a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It found that from June 9, when Clinton dropped out of the race, until Nov. 2, 66 percent of the campaign stories were about Obama compared with 53 percent for McCain; some stories featured both. The project also calculated that in that time, 57 percent of the stories were about the horse race and 13 percent were about issues.
Forget negative/positive. Two men were running for president. In the 5 months leading up to the election, there were significantly more stories about Obama.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
How does that compare with what there was to report? Were there stories about Sen. Obama that they made up? Stories about Sen. McCain that they suppressed? Did both candidates do an equal amount of "interesting" things?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:How does that compare with what there was to report?
They were both running for president. There was "news" every single day about each of them.
quote:Did both candidates do an equal amount of "interesting" things?
That's not the standard I want in newspapers, that's for sure. We already had an overwhelming majority of stories be about the horse race because that's more interesting.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have a question to throw out there. In the months leading up to the election, I saw far more stories about Obama than about McCain, but I saw a LOT of stories about Sarah Pailin. Has anyone thrown her numbers into the mix and looked at them? Because it seemed she had an insane number of stories, given that she was just a VP candidate, and I often felt she was taking away from the presidential race.
Posts: 2392 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
