Excitable Andy, fully in the grip of Obama love and still one of the laziest of the high-traffic bloggers, claims that Barack Obama is ending the Red-Blue divide in the electoral map. He bases this on a link to his Atlantic co-blogger Ross Douthat, who in turn links to Michael Barone and Patrick Ruffini, none of whom claim that Obama will end the Red-Blue divide in the electoral map.
Barone actually writes that nominating John McCain and Barack Obama may result in more cross-party voting, which may put more states in play. Although Barone does not cite specific data, recent polling matching McCain against either Obama or Clinton nationally shows there would be more cross-party voting in a McCain vs. Obama contest. The same polls show that McCain would pick up more Democrats than Obama would pick up Republicans, with the margin in any given poll coming from the split of independents. But they say nothing about how this dynamic might affect the electoral map.
Rasmussen’s “Balance of Power” calculator shows a Blue shift at the moment (not surprising given Obama’s 4%-5% national lead at the moment, not to mention the disparity in the volume of media coverage of the Democratic contest). But the list of toss-up states is pretty familiar: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico. Indeed, the Democrats have long contemplated going after Mountain and Western states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico — it is why they are holding their convention in Denver. The dynamic existed long before many Dems thought Obama was going to be the nominee.
Ruffini’s worry is that if Obama locks up the nomination soon, his campaign’s command of new media and Internet fundraising could be used to buy unopposed advertsing in these states, as well as swing states in the upper Midwest, and possibly in the South (the last being unlikely). However, Hillary Clinton is showing no signs of going away yet, even if she loses tonight, with Mark Penn making noises like Clinton fully intends to be Jesse Jackson. Moreover, Camp Obama currently may be a little concerned about Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Oregon. Accordingly, while the GOP should be upgrading its “new politics” ops, Ruffini’s scenario seems unlikely at this juncture.
Finally, let us assume, solely for the sake of argument, that 2008 turned out to be as big an Electoral College blowout for the Democrats as Bill Clinton got in 1996. Would anyone who lived through the 1990s argue that there was not a serious partisan divide in the nation at that time? If a President Obama was as ineffective as JFK, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton were after “change elections,” (or as ineffective as Gov. Deval Patrick was in Massachusetts after winning on the Axelrod plan of hopeyness and changitutde), would anyone predict that everyone will be holding hands and singing “Kumbayah”?
People used to talk about the GOP’s “electoral lock,” until they started talking about Bill Clinton picking that lock, until we had two cases of near-deadlock. The notion that an Obama victory — or a McCain victory — will hold any great message regarding the electoral map or the partisan divide in the US would be an overstatement.
The candidates are not far enough apart yet in perceived ideologies. That is starting to change as the press finally starts digging into what the Obamessiah is really about beyond changeiness and hopeitude; we’ll see if they continue to look or move back to a “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” philosophy. Beyond the Iraq war issue, the perception in ideologies has more to due with party alignment than revealed truth. And, with McCain traditionally being a “Maverick” on so many occasions, it isn’t surprising at all that is a high crossover vote at this time. McAmnesty (to be fair since I ragged on Obama’s name previously) has moved himself to what the legacy media calls the center, which is actually left of center, thus making him more palatable to Democrats who secretly support the war even if they won’t say so in public.
The press, however, will soon start to do its job, which is to sensationalize everything and elect a Democrat. I expect that, if they play it more fair than normal, they will demonstrate that Obama is more like Carter than JFK, and in either case they will paint McCain as being on the far right. Thus, the electoral road map this fall will probably not look much like it does now. And no matter what happens, the partisan divide will not be healed by any election.
I could easily be wrong, of course. I’m not even a good part-time political analyst; I flip bits for a living.
Obama is a dorky socialist from Chicago. For serious I don’t think he’s gonna be unexacerbating any partisan divides. Also his middle name is Hussein and he wants to nuzzle Ahmadinejad’s scrotum, which is sort of just inherently controversial behavior.
If you look carefully you will see signs that the MSM both here and abroad are seeing Obama for who and what he is and are becoming very concerned. For example I was rather surprised that Nightline last night mentioned the Rozko affair at all, especially on the night before the make or break primaries. Another example is Gerald Baker’s column from the Times of London a week or so ago. That “press conference” yesterday of Obama gave them a hint of how they will be treated by him if elected and I don’t think they liked what they saw. These are just a couple examples, mind you-there are more.
I think they are beginning to see Obama as the embodiment of the old adage “be careful what you wish for-you just might get it”.
I heard he is thinking of changing that middle name, but he can’t decide between “Ned” and “Lamont”.
I agree with the assessment that their will be no major shakeups in the electoral map with a few exceptions. New Jersey is one I do honestly think McCain will win if Obama is the opponent. McCain is the perfect moderate ” Tom Kean” type Repub that can do well in NJ . As far as ” Culture of Corruption” in New Jersey Dems own that title. Corzine is also experiencing low approvals due to his tax increases and proposed 800% increase in Road Tolls.
[…] map from 2004. Obama is slightly stronger in the Mountain and Western states, but Democrats have long thought this is where they had a chance to make gains on the map. Obama can claim that he will redraw the […]