Losing as an art form
From Rolling Stone.
In head-to-head polling against the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, Clinton and Obama have managed to post only modest leads. Edwards, by contrast, not only bests every Republican candidate in the race, he trounces them -- by an average of twelve points.Naturally, that means the Democrats won't nominate Edwards.
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4 comments:
In the poll I've seen Clinton beats Guliani by 3, McCain by 6, and Thompson by 11. Edwards' lead is 1, 8, and 17 against the same candidates. I think the difference is relatively small--especially considering how far out we are from the first vote.
Give 'em some time. The Dems have been nominating white guys for about 200 years now. We can wait a few more months before falling back into that rut.
Not when someone else is the annointed one and has bigbigbig bucks.
Full Federal funding of elections, anyone? (The Annointed One didn't care for the idea when she was on Letterman last night - )
Of course she didn't. Along with name recognition, her fundraising ability is one of her advantages. I'd wager most politicians who excel at fundraising would oppose public funding.
It would have a huge impact on the corruption in Washington, but the cynic in me says it's never going to happen. The incumbents who write the laws have no reason to make it happen.
About nominating white guys for 200 years, I see the point, and there's value in electing either Obama or Clinton to exorcise that demon. But there's also value in electing someone who's more progressive (or at least who's espousing more progressive ideas), after decades of rightward drift.
The election isn't as far off as it should be, though, considering the front-loaded primaries. The nominee will probably be chosen within 5 months, and unless Democrats start swift-boating each other, I don't really see why the numbers would change between now and then.
Part of my "200 years of white guys" argument is that if Americans are going to support a female or minority candidate it may take them a while to get themselves enlightened enough to cast that vote.
I know the '08 election looks close to the election to those of us who have been thinking about it since '04. However, most Americans are just starting to tune in and figure out who these people are.
You're right that this nomination will move quickly and could be settled by early March. Still, I think a lot could happen in February.
On public financing: Nobody's going to touch that issue and do well with voters. I suspect that the idea of our tax dollars paying for the next Willie Horton ad probably traumatizes even dedicated reformers like Darrin. It may be a good idea that would cost less than one bomber, but Americans don't seem ready to see their tax dollars paying for that. Participation in the voluntary checkoff on tax forms for the current partial funding system has been dropping.
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