The Obama McGovern comparison is horseshit

[Frank Booth]

Interestingly, the poster who quoted from the New Republic article comparing Obama to McGovern omitted the response to that article, which in many ways debunks it. I wonder why.

"John details how Obama's share of white upscale voters diminished, and he attributes this to the Wright controversy. Maybe, or maybe those voters -- especially the women -- just preferred Hillary Clinton, but would also prefer Obama over McCain. Sure, some of the Clinton voters will go for McCain in the fall, but you can't assume all (or even very many) of them will.

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John's asumption that a candidate's primary base will be the same as his general election base strikes me as seriously flawed. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, will her electoral base consist of blue-collar whites? No, it will be highly similar to Obama's, with a major reliance on minorities and white liberals. As my colleague Chris Orr has just burst into my office to point out -- don't be alarmed, he does this several times a day -- right now Obama is having a hard time winning blue collar whites on the economy in large part because he has an opponent with a virtually identical economic platform. When he has an opponent who's tethered himself to President Bush's highly unpopular economic policies, winning over blue collar whites on the economy will get a lot easier.
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Third, John does not address the corrollary question of Obama's electability problem: compared to what? The media has been obsessing over Obama's electability problem in a vacuum. But the Real Clear Politics poll average still has Obama performing a bit better than Clinton versus McCain -- and this is after several weeks when Obama suffered his worst two moments of the campaign, and the Republicans have been concentrating all their fire on him.
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Indeed, polling shows that along the general public, Clinton's unpopularity is rising faster than Obama's. The most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll had 44% of the public feeling favorable toward Clinton, and 54% unfavorable. Obama stands at 56/39, and McCain at 54/40."

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/04/23/on-obama-s-electability-contra-judis.aspx


Another important point to note is that Hillary has succeeded in alienating a good portion of the African-American and progressive voters. No Democrat can win without strong support from these two groups. While Obama may have flaws as a general election candidate, Hillary has more. She'd be a general election disaster.

[Frank Booth]

1. It sure is.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Barack Obama is so-o-o not George McGovern!

1. McGovern didn't project well, didn't have a good speaking voice, looked like a pinched-face, repressed, mid-western Lutheran minister--not who he really was, but how he came across on TV and in front of big audiences. He just couldn't connect. Cursed with no ability to project in the media (rather like Dennis Kucinich, in that respect). 100% honest politician, McGovern--no glitz and no B.S. AT ALL. Obama is the opposite--what a charmer! Fabulous voice. Funny. Witty. Self-confident body language. Much more like JFK than like McGovern (not at all like McGovern).

2. McGovern made the huge mistake, in the land of Lottery millionaire dreamers, of proposing a cap on individual wealth--or was it salaries? I can't remember now. I just remember a figure like $50,000, which seemed like a whole lot of money to me then (1972). It made sense to me. But this just killed him in the corporate media.

3. It wasn't the war. Most Americans were against the war by then. And Nixon had slaughtered about a million more Souteast Asians, with the U.S. soldier carnage well on its way to over 55,000 dead. It was horrible. If it had been an up or down vote on the war, McGovern would have won. Nixon also was out of control, as we were soon to find out, with Watergate, and a lot of people already suspected. And what he was most out-of-control about was campaign dirty tricks. So, who knows how that election really went?--but I truly think that the proposed cap on wealth was McGovern's fatal error. Fatal then--but, hey, we're at Defcon-4 now, on unequal income. Bring back McGovern! (And get rid of Diebold & brethren!)

Obama will never make that big of a political error. He's too media savvy. He seems to be playing to the gallery, but he's also playing to the front row--the ones whose limo drivers are out in the cold. The "haves" fear revolution. His job (from their point of view) will be to quiet things down. Frankly, I wish he were the type of politician and American who would address the huge rich/poor discrepancy as openly as he discusses race, and at least propose a cap on CEO salaries, especially when they fire 10,000 people and outsource their jobs. I think we're ready for it. I think that Americans would vote for some wealth redistribution. Although the (not just corporate any more, but) fascist media would give him a hard time, the American people have proven to be very resistant to their propaganda. In any case, Obama has a much better antenna that McGovern did, about what to say, and how to get messages across, and to whom. And he doesn't mean it, about stopping the war--I mean, really stopping it. McGovern meant it! He was going to go after the "military-industrial complex" (no more wars of choice!) (Oh my, bring back McGovern!) (And get rid of Diebold & brethren!). Obama may bring the troops home. He won't bring the U.S. military home. We are in the Middle East (and all over the world) for as long as our piggy bank holds out.

Nothing like McGovern. There are, however, similarities in their SUPPORTERS--although Obama's supporters represent a much bigger portion of the American people than did McGovern's. SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people now oppose the Iraq War and want it ended (--up from 56% just before the invasion, already a significant majority--Feb. '03, NYT poll; other polls 54-55%). 70%! A whopping, epochal anti-war majority. I think the numbers on Vietnam were just edging into the 55% range, when McGovern ran for president. I think that Obama, if he focuses on the war, will clean the floor with McCain. The current 50/50 number (Obama just beating McCain) is an artifact of the distracting Obama-Clinton fight. Once Obama is up against McCain, he will destroy him.

The problems will come later, when Obama doesn't deliver (or is blockaded) on serious reform (which I don't think he intends anyway--although it's hard to read the entrails on that or any other aspect of our political establishment). Then we will see what his supporters are made of. I happen to think that Obama's supporters are the best thing that has happened to this country in a long, long time--a dedicated, impassioned, activist citizenry. We weren't dedicated enough, us McGovern supporters back in the day. We let all this shit happen to our country--starting with Reagan. Coming out of the Vietnam War, we should have dismantled the "military-industrial complex." But the smart war profiteers got rid of the Draft, and that was that. We didn't follow through. Now we're here, with a full-scale fascist coup on our hands, and the country run by global corporate predators. Can we get our country back? Yes. Is Obama going to do it for us? No. It's up to us--we, the people.