The primaries are over and Barack Obama has won and accepted his party’s nomination. But you wouldn’t know that by the months of canned advice from the right. The McLaughlin Group’s right lineup included the ubiquitous Pat Buchanan, the smart blonde Monica Crowley, and on the left, Eleanor Clift and Derek McGinty. Among the topics: The Bradley effect, presidential polling and NASA. Kennedy got credit for creating NASA from nada; Bush and Barack also spoke about NASA's future this week.
I believe it was Pat Buchanan who started: “Why hasn’t Obama closed the deal?” I wondered aloud why Pat hadn't closed his mouth. Buchanan is no Neocon. He’s an old con with a long record of fear mongering. While he has no criminal record (that we know of), his take on politics is sometimes downright criminal. So if you’ve tired of pundit Pat you're not alone. Here’s a man who makes himself at home in the most unlikely of places, including the ratings goldmine, the new Rachel Maddow Show—a fresh face who presents political satire sans snark. It’s not that he is tiring—it’s his tired old idiom “Why can’t Obama close the deal?” Millions of Americans have seen past this hackneyed line and Obama supporters simply were not fazed by it. But it fazed the pundits, who repeated it nonstop. This idiom was fresh because of Obama’s low-flying post-Denver-convention bounce. Obama has bounced back. From June onwards, he has been in a dead heat according to all polls, both national and statewide. And in some state polls (red states) he has lagged far behind. But according to Pat and company, he had no business being so far behind. They sought to explain it away; enter the Bradley Effect.
The Bradley Effect is a racial meme begun in California after Mayor Tom Bradley lost the California governor’s race, even though he was polling double digits ahead of his opponent. This was the meme du jour, applied like actor’s pancake makeup to the Obama campaign; he’s black, and white people will lie to the pollsters to avoid appearing racist. It was only after the MSM properly bandied about the Bradley effect that it appears now, drum roll, it has been reversed. Or better, it never existed. Yes, there is a reverse-Bradley effect - who knew? The conservatives among the McLaughlin group agree—the Bradley effect never existed then and does not exist now.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Baritone
Hel,
While the numbers look really good, I will not be assured of anything until it's a done deal - until it's announced that Obama has secured the magic number: 270 electoral votes.
Pat Buchanan is irritating, but relatively harmless. I find an evening watching MSNBC more entertaining than about anything the networks have to offer in prime time. Both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have their own irritating ways - Matthews tends to prattle on while not allowing his guests to actually answer his questions. Olbermann's head is big both physically and metaphorically. His "special comments" tend to be over-wrought and sanctimonious, but overall his show is fun. Maddow's show is pretty much a delight. She has a charm about her that even those from the right seem pleased to be there. A good time is had by all.
B
2 - Heloise
What's with the Hel? When I was Netemara I got called Net. That stuck. Anyway "closing the deal" does not refer to winning the election it refers to polling above 50% and being in the lead. I am not taking any cheap shots on the election. It is not UP for grabs, we still have to vote. But Barack has closed the deal...exactly.
Heloise
3 - Baritone
Well HELoise, Obama polling 50% is comforting, but no deal is closed until he is refered to as "President Elect Obama" Polls don't mean a hell of a lot. The only things that count are votes, and then electoral votes.
Will there be a "Bradley Effect" or "Bubba Factor?" Maybe, maybe not. The question now is: Are the polls to be believed? Recent history would suggest that polling has some distance to go before they are truly reliable. I'm not convinced that they will cover that distance any time soon.
B
4 - Dan(Miller)
It's going to be an interesting election. I agree with Baritone that the polls are not highly reliable. Here is a link to a disclosure by Rasmussen on how it weights polling results. My understanding is that most other polls do much the same thing.
If the election turns out to be inconsistent with the polls, it probably won't have much to do with the "Bradley effect," voter fraud, or the other claims which will doubtless be made.
Dan(Miller)
5 - Baritone
Dan,
Don't know if I agree with you on that last comment. While presidential polls have not gone well during the past 2 elections, it does seem that polling in other races, congressional, gubernatorial, etc. have tended to be reasonably accurate in recent years.
Should Obama lose, it's hard to believe that McCain would be the majority choice to handle the economy and the rest without other factors at play. I believe that if Obama somehow had similar charisma, but was white, he would likely be polling much higher than he is.
B
6 - Clavos
I'm beginning to hope that McCain DOESN'T win, just because I don't want to have to listen to pissed-off lefties rend their hair and gnash their teeth about what racists we all are for the next 4-8 years. They're all already setting the stage.
"Oh the whining! The whining!"
7 - DL13
The Seduction Is Working:
Ah yes, Obama and the Democrats and their well planned game of seduction; with nice, background music being played by Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, the Acorns, and the Main Stream Media, and fine, vintage wine (OK, actually it was really Kool-Aide), they broke down the resistance of the virgin in the wilderness so they could, by dis-honorable means, take from her what she cherished most, her sense of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
8 - pablo
The only whining I see around here Clavy, is the whining of the republican pundits crying about how awful its gonna be when the Dems control the executive and legislative branches. It almost makes me want to shed a tear (not really).
How soon we forget that the republicans owned all three branches for several years. We got the unpatriotic Patriot Act, we got the Military (bye bye habeas corpus) Commissions Act, we got legalized torture of human beings, we got the unitary (I am dictator) executive, then there is the US ID (your papers please)Act. Oh and dont forget how bush has castrated the congress from its duty to the people to investigate by denying subpoena power of the legislature.
So yeah I am all tears Clavy. Too bad most of the democrats are in the same back pocket as the republicans, otherwise I would be kickin my heels in glee.
9 - Dave Nalle
Clav, there are more reasons than that to secretly hope that Obama wins next week. Nothing will galvanize the GOP into getting its shit together like a few years of total democrat domination, and the GOP really needs to get its shit together. An asskicking from Obama might be what it takes to separate the religious right from the sane part of the party and get things back on track.
Dave
10 - Lisa Solod Warren
Two comments: The mainstream media has been kicking up a lot of shit because they WANT this race to be closer than it is because otherwise it just isn't fun to cover..... A landslide isn't good for ratings.
And, I think race plays and will play less of a factor if Obama doesn't win than all the Republican purging of voter rolls and trying their nasty tricks once again like they did in the last election. Already they are trying (and some say have already succeeded) to steal once again this election in close states like Jeb Bush did with voter rolls in Florida....
It IS legal for former felons to vote in 46 out of 50 states, BTW. Poor people are more often disenfranchised and poor people more often vote democratic.
Go to to download a free comic book by Gregg Palast that shows you can steal back your vote!
And clearly the Republicans are a mess..... They are two parties: the party of nutcases who support Sarah Palin and the party of moderates who have been driven away and often support Obama. They DO need to get their act together. This race has completely divided them and they don't know what to do.
11 - Mark Saleski
...might be what it takes to separate the religious right from the sane part of the party...
so would it have been such a bad thing for mccain to have picked somebody more moderate for veep? i always read that having somebody like rice or hutchinson on the ticket would have been the kiss of death.
12 - Heloise
Yes, our future was stolen by futures markets.
Today, Oil is in the tank to the tune of 60.00 a barrel in trading per Reuters.
Remember talk about futures and how the market had fucked up everything. And folks in DC were saying we were crazy for suggesting it was the saintly stock markets.
And that nothing wrong with the stink market? Once again bloggers and great economists were right...it was the greedy fat cats on Wall Street and their freakin' derviatives and futures. It scared me stockless, but kept a few because they were too low to sell and I didn't need the dollars.
Heloise
13 - Heloise
B not true. That is not what the term means. It is not contingent on who actually wins. Because one can close the deal and still have it fall through. Are you at all familiar with business? It's the same deal. People sign contracts and close the deal only to get a call, like an actor recently and was told another actor got the job.
Heloise
14 - Baritone
For the Republicans this time around the problem starts with McCain. Since the party has been fractured into at least 3 camps - the relgious right, the neo-cons and the traditional fiscal conservatives, there was no candidate who adequately reflected all 3.
McCain's status as a "maverick" further sent waves of doubt through the party faithful. What faction would he betray first?
Should McCain lose, Palin may be seen as the final nail in the coffin. While she initially thrilled everybody, her lack of experience on the national stage and her lack of any depth of knowledge regarding world politics quickly became evident. McCain's judgment is put much into question by having gone with Palin over any number of more experienced men and women in the party.
I still won't count McCain out. As we've noted here and elsewhere, polls have proven to be wrong in the recent past. It is not known if the 'Bubba Factor" will raise up its ugly head. With 8 days remaining, anything could happen.
B
15 - Dave Nalle
Mark, Lisa is wrong about the GOP being two parties. There are really three factions:
A. Fiscally conservative and socially moderate/liberal
B. Fiscally moderate/liberal and socially conservative
C. Fiscally conservative and socially conservative
Hutchison, Rice and McCain both fit somewhere between group A and group B.
Palin fits in group C.
So Hutchinson and Rice would be right out because they're too close politically to McCain. He needs someone who appeals to group C, and Palin fits that bill.
The theory is that McCain himself ought to appeal to liberals, while Palin ought to be ignored by liberals as being only the VP and being inherently more moderate because she's a woman, yet be embraced by the social conservatives who McCain doesn't appeal to.
The problem is that Palin is too dynamic and a larger-than-life figure, so she can't be minimized easily to placate the left.
McCain picking someone like Hutchison probably would have been good for the party by driving the theocons away, but it also would have guaranteed a loss in the election, because more and more of the extremists are gravitating towards candidates like Chuck Baldwin - our own Archie being an example of this - and McCain didn't think he could win on moderates and independents alone.
Dave
16 - Lisa Solod Warren
Oh, face it, Dave, you guys are just a mess. I don't think you can even begin to unite into one party again at this point, do you?
17 - Baritone
Lisa,
Granted that the Republicans are in a state of disarray which they largely brought on themselves allowing the neocons to wedge themselves into positions of power within the party, and then their blatant wooing of the fundies in 2000 and 2004 - the only way to get Bush into the WH.
I'm not sure they will be able to rid themselves of either of these elements in the forseeable future. The neocons are entrenched and the fundies have found a home. Which of the factions will ultimately prevail, if any, is anybody's guess.
But, just look across the aisle. The Democrats have long been a conglomeration of various factions - some at odds with each other. Just consider the defection of the so called Reagan Democrats. Few have ever accused the Democrats of being overly organized or focussed (with now, the possible exception of the Obama campaign.)
The Democrats are nothing if not essentially a coalition of factions who have found enough common ground to remain under one flag as it were. This coalition is a difficult balancing act that sometimes doesn't know how to stay on the rope or avoid getting in their own way.
That is largely why since FDR, the Republicans have prevailed in the national arena more often than the Democrats. The Republicans, though smaller in number, have succeeded by being more galvanized, more concentrated in focus and singular in purpose.
Now, though, they are experiencing what the Dems have dealt with for years. They just don't know how to handle it. That's why you have people like Dave who are adamant that the fundies be expunged from the party rolls. They don't have much experience in dealing with different factions within the party, and they want them gone - kind of like the Serbs trying to achieve ethnic purity in the Balkins.
However, given time, the GOP may well find a way to reconcile all the relatively new ingredients that now make up the party into a more cohesive coalition as have the Dems. Obviously, I hope not. I'd like to see them tear themselves up with internal squabbling for several years to come.
But hell, I'm 62 years old. After 2 or 3 more election cycles, I'll probably be a mindless mass of protoplasm being fed my dinner out of a blender or through a tube in my gut, aware only of the festering bed sores on my butt. By then, I won't give a rat's ass who is pulling the strings in Washington.
B
18 - Lisa Solod Warren
Oh, Baritone, at 62, I think you have more than 2 or 3 more election cycles in you before you become a mindless mass of protoplasm. As for me, before I reach that point, there is always a bottle of pills and a plastic bag. My husband, being a man, prefers a shotgun in the woods (he refuses to mess up the houses, a sentiment of which of heartily approve!).
I agree, though, that I hope they squabble and quibble, and fight like cats and dogs for years to come!!!!!
19 - Dr Dreadful
Dave, I would have thought the last thing you'd want would be the division of the GOP, because that would be the one thing to guarantee Democratic administrations for at least the next couple of decades.
You also take it as a given that the theocons would be the ones to up and leave. In fact, if McCain the moderate loses, he and those politically aligned with him will more likely be the ones to get the blame and the boot.
Look at what happened when Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Progressive in 1912 and took most of the moderate Republicans with him. The GOP survived that schism, but was dominated by conservatives for the next 20 years until the other Roosevelt flattened them.
20 - Baritone
Lisa,
Yeah, but even out in the woods, that's a messy proposition. One should consider the feelings of whoever might discover the aftermath. Pretty grisly.
Hemingway's last wife, Mary got a pretty horrific jolt in finding her hubby's brains spattered on the foyer wall and his head little more than a stub. That's a hell of a thing to wake up to. It would have been nice had he taken it outside, though. :)
B
21 - Dave Nalle
It doesn't really matter who leaves, the point is that the party would split into two separate parties.
And the reason I want the division is that I think the country would be governed better if a viable third party put Congress into a situation where it had to govern by consensus and compromise.
If the split I suggest were to happen, it would not leave the Democrats in control, either. If anything it would weaken them.
You'd end up with a small Christian Conservative party representing maybe 20-25% of the population. Then your remaining Republicans would form a party of about the same size, but with the religious right out of that party it would become attractive to moderate Democrats and independents and it would grow at the expense of the Democrats.
So while the Democrats would remain the largest party with maybe 40% of the seats in Congress, they would be unable to get anything done without making deals with members of the other two parties or the two former Republican parties could join up against the Democrats on certain key issues where they shared common ground.
I think a lot more and a lot better work would get done in Congress on this basis.
The problem with your Roosevelt scenario is that the progressives got absorbed into the Democratic party. I don't see that happening in the current environment. The non-theocratic Republicans are too strongly opposed to socialism and to the Democrats as a party to join up with them and they aren't held together by allegiance to a single charismatic figure like Roosevelt, which makes them stronger.
Dave
22 - Clavos
There well may be enough disaffected people in the Rep party to split off altogether and form a serious third party, a development I think would be very healthy for the political system of the country.
The two main parties have dominated for too long, and two parties do not offer enough options for our increasingly diverse population.
Something closer to the European multi-party systems,where any one party dominating is much more of a rarity, would be a lot healthier for the country as a whole.
23 - Dave Nalle
Baritone, I don't necessarily want the fundies gone. I just don't want them in a position where they can put their moralistic agenda ahead of individual liberty and fiscal conservatism.
There are a surprising number of fundamentalist christians who I've run into recently who do seem to understand that there needs to be a dividing line between religion and politics. Any of them who understand that concept are welcome to hang out in my new GOP.
As for the Neocons, if the GOP does break down you can look forward to them returning to the Democratic party. In fact I bet some of them will find their way into an Obama administration almost immediately. His foreign policy ideas and theirs don't seem all that far apart and the neocons will go where the power is.
Dave
24 - troll
Clavos - I don't see how any serious 3rd party can develop under our 'winner take all' system
25 - Baritone
True, the Neocons are nothing if not opportunists. The question remains - who will actually sit in the cat bird seat in the Republican party after this election - regardless of who wins? It's hard to say just what factions of the Party a McCain presidency would cater to. In the campaign, McCain is trying to be all things to all people, but that's not necessarily how he will run his administration.
The fundies appear to be in a weakened position at present, but to count them out could well be premature. They are doggedly determined to gain control of government. The structure and prominance provided by the Republican Party give them a tested and sturdy launching pad. They may flex their collective muscles and refuse to leave forcing your old line fiscal conservatives to set up new digs. That may take some time for any kind of majority to wrap their heads around the viability of any third party. The Republican/Democrat "brands" are all most people know. Substantive change often comes hard and slow.
B