Legal Commentary

On Electability and How the Presidential Race Has Changed

By Jeralyn

From Only in America, Newsweek's cover story today (page 4):

Eyeing those Reagan Democrats, the McCain camp believes that if Obama wins the nomination, the Republicans might have a shot at some states considered to be safe Clinton territory, like New York and New Jersey. Those big former industrial states—Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan—could all go Republican if the Democrats pick Obama. On the other hand, the Obama advisers argue that by appealing to independents and registering new young voters, Obama could take states in the West like Colorado and Nevada that seem unreachable to Clinton. By energizing his black base, Obama could even take away two or three Southern states—Virginia and the Carolinas, perhaps—from the GOP. The Obama-ites also predict that once the hard fighting of the primaries finally ends, the Democratic Party will come together, and Democrats alienated by all the feuding will come home.

More...

Obama's promise of success depends on more than soothing the Democratic base, however. He will not be able to re-create the magic of those huge, idolatrous rallies in January and February by drinking beer chasers and eating more waffles. What he had—and what he has lost, at least for the time being—is something more ineffable, a hope of changing politics as commonly understood, and disdained, by voters of all classes and races.

The article concludes:

To get the Democratic nomination, and to win the presidency, Obama has to show that he is not just a rock-star speechifier—or a worn-down pol trying to limp over the goal line without saying something that could possibly be used against him. He has to show voters who he really is. Most of them still don't know.

My thought on the electability part: No matter how many new and black voters Obama brings to the polls, there are only so many electoral votes in the southern and western states conceivably at play: Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Virginia, the Carolinas.

The votes in those states don't compare to Ohio, PA, Florida and Michigan. And if Obama might also put New York and New Jersey at risk, how can superdelegates possibly view him as the better candidate? He seems to me to be the riskier candidate in November by miles.

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Full post as published by TalkLeft on May 04, 2008 (boomark / email).

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