StevenD’s already run a pretty good roundup of this morning’s coverage on the main page, but there’s more hysterical stuff from the usual suspects today.
We’ll start with the Good Cap’n Crunch, who seems to think that Obama can’t win, because his campaign lacks specifics and the GOP can win the fiscal responsibility race. No really.
The Republican National Committee has developed a cute but effective graphic showing the expansion of federal spending that will result in the adoption of Barack Obama’s agenda. Called the Spendometer, it highlights what the Republicans hope will provide an effective argument for John McCain and his call for more discipline in federal spending.
Oh reaaaaaaally. The GOP calling attention to massive government spending? Is that really a good idea?
The site details quotes from news coverage of Obama’s speeches and from agenda points on his website. It calculates the total four-year cost of Obama’s pledges for federal programs over the course of his campaign. The RNC estimates that the added spending would come to $850 billion in that period of time.
At CPAC, I noted that the National Taxpayers Union had done a similar analysis, only couched in per-year spending rather than a four-year cumulative total. They show that Obama would spend even more than the RNC credits, with $287 billion more per year, or almost a 10% increase in current federal spending. He far outstripped Hillary’s $218 billion — and John McCain’s agenda will only cost taxpayers $7 billion more than current spending.
McCain can own fiscal discipline in the general election, and it’s one reason Obama can’t afford to debate specific policy, almost literally.
Not much I can say. From the comments:
docjim505 –Today 08:22 AM with 3 points
Please login to rate.
HMPH! A jolly sight too late for this. Where the hell has it been these past seven years???
Yeah. Brilliant idea there. What’s the cost of four more years in Iraq compared to Obama’s programs, hmm?
Meanwhile, Dick Morris thinks Hilliary is screwed because…wait for it…
Yep, because she’s a bitch.
Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a “firewall” to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani’s supposed Florida firewall, Hillary’s will crumble as Obama’s momentum carries him forward to the nomination.
Before Hillary lost her first primary or caucus, she lost the dialogue with the Obama campaign vis-à-vis the totally misguided decision to focus her message on experience, surrendering the ground of change to her opponent.
The more she tried to emphasize Obama’s inexperience, the more she seemed to fence herself into the status quo. That it was the status quo ante of the Clinton years, not the status quo of the Bush administration, made less and less difference as the campaign progressed.
She ran on a message perfect for a Republican primary — experience — and abandoned the key to winning a Democratic primary — the message of change — to Obama.
Her decision to rely on special interest political action committee and lobbyist contributions and to seed her war chest with the checks of maxed-out donors gave substance to Obama’s contrast of the status quo vs. change. With her chief strategist a lobbyist and her top campaign team all in the business, she was awash in associations that crippled her ability to fight for change.
Obama became the attraction in the race while Hillary recited her laundry list of proposals with a deadening monotony.
On the other hand, Jay Cost will tell you that Obama is screwed because…wait for it…he’s black. (Also, he has numbers!)
These contests are tailor-made for a candidate that fuses the coalitions of Hart and Jackson, and one who inspires tremendous enthusiasm among his supporters. Given the voting coalitions that have formed over the last month and a half, Clinton never really stood a chance in any of them. African Americans drove Obama’s victory in Louisiana. In the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, African Americans combined with wealthy whites to secure him victory. In Maine, Nebraska, and Washington – Obama took advantage of largely homogenous white populations and caucus contests to secure victory.
In other words, it is hard to identify a momentum effect here. Clinton’s losses in the contests are as explicable as any of her losses before or on Super Tuesday. Obama has systematically won states that play to his particular strengths since the Iowa caucus. So has Clinton. Her problem has been that she has not had any good states in the last week.
This is not to say that momentum is not playing a role. The point here is more modest: if it is playing a role, it is currently undetectable. Relatedly, this is not to say that momentum will not develop as we move forward. It very well could. If it does, what we will see is Obama doing better among Clinton’s strong groups, or him consolidating his position among his strong groups. However, I noted back in December that this the kind of momentum – where a contest in moment one influences a contest in moment two – tends not to describe candidates like Clinton and Obama. Front-running candidates with high name recognition, secure bases of support, and money to spend usually win or lose depending on how much money they spend and whether the state plays to their strengths. The most immediate results tend not to be factors for front-runners (though there are exceptions, e.g. George H.W. Bush in 1988). If front-running candidates benefit from momentum, it is usually via a process similar to what has aided McCain: they are launched by big wins in one of the early states (usually New Hampshire).
What can we expect to happen in the future? It is difficult to say. We can make a few modest statements if we assume that what has generally been true in past past cycles hold true this cycle. Namely, let us assume that momentum does not develop, and that both candidates face a hard slog through the sixteen remaining contests. Can we use what we know to examine the remaining states? We can.
Sorry Prof, I won’t snore in Poli Sci statistics anymore, I promise. The problem is “what generally has been true in the past” doesn’t apply anymore.
And that’s what bothers the hell out of the Village the most. New stuff means they aren’t the arbiters of all wisdom anymore, and their power is on the wane. They hate that. Seriously.
Meanwhile, Novakula says Obama can’t win because he’s black, Susan Estrich says he can’t win because he’s black and Democrats are racist and the TNR guys say he can’t win because he’s black and he’s fake, presumably because he’s clean and articulate or something.
And just because, Doughy Pantload says McCain’s problem is actually Bush.
There’s a fascinating irony to John McCain’s de facto victory in the race for the Republican nomination. While the self-styled independent maverick is arguably the best “change” candidate the Republicans could offer in the general election (itself ironic given that he has been in Washington longer than any other GOP contender), McCain wasn’t the change candidate in the primaries. And GOP voters wanted change, too.
There are lots of reasons, some good, some bad, for conservatives’ angry dyspepsia toward McCain. I have bouts of it myself. From campaign-finance reform, to his proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants to his general tendency to burnish his own maverick street rep by triangulating off conservatives, McCain just seems to relish breaking ranks too much.
But that raises an interesting and remarkably undiscussed question for McCain’s detractors: Who are you really mad at?
Most of the criticisms aimed at McCain can be directed at President Bush himself. Campaign-finance reform is a great example. Most conservatives think McCain’s effort to regulate political speech is an unconstitutional abomination. But in fairness to McCain, he doesn’t think that. You know who does? George W. Bush. The president signed the McCain-Feingold bill though he admitted that he thought it was unconstitutional. But as a “uniter not a divider,” Bush felt it wasn’t his place to veto an unconstitutional law — his oath of office notwithstanding — that was very popular, particularly with independents, centrist Democrats and the New York Times crowd.
You know, the same Bush the Cheetos Crusader here loved like a hero for the last seven freakin’ years.
I swear, I’m going to write a book on how all idiot Village pundits are in fact ZOMG SECRET FASCISTS!11!one1! and then eat a sammich.
