Wall Street Journal: Why Obama Can't Close the Sale

[Destino]

Using that line of thought, Ralph Nader may have very well closed the deal for Bush in 2000.

No "may have" about it.

Bush 2,909,176

Gore 2,907,451

Nader 96,837

[mjah]

Why do people think Perot took more votes from Bush than from Clinton in 92?

From this New York Times article:

...the impact of Mr. Perot's supporters on the campaign's outcome appears to have been minimal. If Mr. Perot had not been on the ballot, 38 percent of his voters said, they would have voted for Gov. Bill Clinton, and 38 percent said they would have voted for President Bush.

That's roughly an extra 7 million votes for Clinton and an extra 7 million votes for Bush, had Perot not been in the 1992 race.

Not exactly an outcome-changer, given that Clinton won the election with 100 Electoral votes to spare.

Take a look at the Electoral map from 1992 (pick 1992 on the sidebar) and try to find 101 EVs that would go to Bush if Perot wasn't in the race. The best you can do is to take all 11 of the states that Clinton won by a small margin, and give them all to Bush for some reason. And under that extraordinarily generous scenario, Bush barely squeaks a win with just 6 EVs to spare. Never mind that without Perot in the race, Clinton very well could have won many of those states by larger margins.

Ridiculous.

Maybe you can claim that merely by showing up in the debates, Perot made Bush look bad and that cost him votes. But Clinton, who by all accounts came out ahead of Bush in those debates, would have gotten even more face time without a Perot in the mix. So there's no way to demonstrate that the Bush underperformance in the debates is due to anyone but Bush.

By the end of his 2nd term, just seeing Clinton's face on TV was enough to get me fuming. But he would have won that election without Perot's assistance.

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

I think they were expecting a bigger post-convention bounce. Apparently he should be ahead by 15 points or something.sounds like, well like something Bush's economic policy people would say.

The average convention bounce is 6 points. Obama got a 4.4 point bounce.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/what-convention-bounce-looks-like.html

[Prosperity]

Tenuous?

Maybe, maybe not, but all the American people see is that the Democrats didn't deliver on their promises.

Maybe I should start a new thread on this topic so I don't hijack?

if this is true then the democrats ought to lose seats shouldn't they?

why do all polls indicate that they will gain seats?

This is because your argument is a carefully constructed, yet substantially shallow, talking point handed out by the GOP.

[PleaseBlitz]

But here's the thing: It's not that Mr. Obama hasn't been specific enough in his governing plans. To the contrary, he has been very specific about his tax policy, health-care and energy proposals. It's that voters are paying attention and appear not to like what Candidate Obama is saying.

Mr. Obama has proposed a massive tax increase on investors, business owners, and the "wealthy." At a time when the American people rate the economy as the central issue of the campaign, a tax hike doesn't make a lot of political sense. Voters know that a tax hike won't help the economy.

Why i wont be voting for Obama in 2 paragraphs.

[CliffBattles]

Congress always gets low approval ratings...and it is never that partisan, but everyone loves "their" congressman.

Poll Q: "Do you approve of your district congressman, John Doe?"

A: "Yep, he's doing a swell job...no complaints."

Pol Q: "Do you approve of congress as a whole?"

A: "No! Get rid of the bums!"

This happens all across the country, it is why reelection rates are over 90% for congressmen.