Specifically the Democratic Party's electability curse. Who the party voters think is the most electable often conflicts with who general election voters appear willing to elect.
Today a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll confirms that this trend continues as Democrats polled claim that Hillary has the best chances to beat John McCain in the general election. This idea of Hillary having the best electability against whoever the Republican nominee may be has persisted and stands in stark contrast to how Independents and Republicans view the situation:
Unfortunately their perception appears to be off from that of likely general election voters who have consistently polled Obama to be the stronger of the two against a McCain candidacy (as well as other candidates). From Real Clear Politics:
Now, it's no secret I'm a McCain fan, but it's still baffling that Democrats are once again looking poised to doom themselves to another unelectable "electable" candidate. I suppose for my own interests it's good that most of my readers come from States that have already voted.
Interesting post. I'd just mention a couple of points.
First, it is difficult to make the case that Hillary is definitely going to be the nominee. I don't want to curse this thing, but they are at least tied in delegate count and Obama has a large amount of momentum right now. He is peaking at the right time. I wouldn't say that Democrats are ready to "doom themselves" by nominating Clinton.
Second, both Hillary and Obama are much stronger overall candidates than McCain. McCain is a decent fellow, I suppose, but offers no real vision for the economy and his strength in foreign policy may be negated in the general with his adamant refusal to commit to a reduction of forces in Iraq. I know you have spelled out McCain's positions quite thoroughly in your other posts, but I'm still not seeing it. The flip flop on the irresponsible tax cuts won't help either.
Also, it might be worth remembering that Gore won the popular vote by almost a half million on '00. It is debatable whether he would have won the Presidency if the recount had been allowed to continue. Kerry was a deeply flawed candidate who still managed to come within a hair of the Presidency and generated the largest amount of Democratic votes in American history. I am not sure how this kind overall success translates into "unelectability" - it seems quite the opposite, in fact.
It is my opinion that the Democrats from 2000 and 2004 suffered because they went against a Republican candidate that genuinely lacked the character necessary to run a fair, decent campaign. It is also pretty clear that the media's overall incompetence led to the reporting of irrelevant, obtuse points like Gore's "boring" nature, or the Swift Boat fiasco. Bush and Rove took politics to a nadir that will be analyzed with a combination of awe and disgust for years to come.
But you already know that because you probably remember how McCain was treated in South Carolina back in 2000. Unless McCain is willing to sink to those depths for his own campaign I have a hard time seeing him win on the issues alone. That he is now reaching out to Bush for assistance in his campaign doesn't bode well for this election.
My take on this, Glock, is to question where these pollsters are finding these Democrats and how the demographics of the polled Democrats relate to the party in general. I am a Democrat who EMPFATICALLY believes that the nomination of Hillary Clinton will lead to a Democratic loss in Nov. 2008 and the ruination of the party for years, if not decades, to come.
One of the problems polls are running into now is that if they call people on landline phones they are missing 10-13% of the population who use cellphones instead of landlines. this population also tends to be younger, and Clinton polls better among older voters than she does among young ones.
onewho... perhaps. But that would still leave a fairly large and disturbing discrepancy with the older Democratic Party voters. There may be more to the generational divide than mere cell phones though. Older people tend to be more likely to be likely voters so they may just outnumber the young respondents due to that in these polls. Also the older generations have probably lived to see far more ugliness from people on issues of race, intolerance, etc and may not be as optimistic as the younger generation. And as much as I wish that all that intolerance is in the past, I've seen too much of it, from both sides of the political spectrum to believe it isn't still somewhat of a factor in this. Hopefully it isn't a significant factor though as that would be a horrible shame.
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Glock21 Op/Ed