Sean Oxendine's blog

I write this section very cautiously, because I am taking on one of my intellectual heroes. Let me say from the outset that Michael Barone has forgotten more than I’ve ever known about politics, and most everything that I do know about politics, I owe to my complete set of Almanacs of American Politics (1972-2006). Heck, I even own a dog-eared copy of “Our Country,” his (wonderful) political history of America from 1928 to 1988.

But I can’t agree with his repeated suggestion that there is a new list of target states for Obama and McCain, or that the map is likely to look especially different this time around from 2004. This isn’t to say that there won’t be slight differences – Obama’s strength in the Carolinas and the Northern Plains states may well be the real deal, but overall I think this base map is going to look very familiar when all is said and done.

Part I is here

Part II is here

Warning: This is where is gets long (and interesting).

The “Great Man”/Inorganic Theory Of Re-alignment

It is now time to discuss our initial set of maps.

Map A is the map of McCain counties and Huckabee counties from the 2008 primaries. McCain’s counties are in blue, Huckabee’s counties are in red. Map B is the DeMint-Tenenbaum 2004 Senate race. Map C is the second Democratic gubernatorial primary between Burnet Maybank and Wyndham Manning. Counties in red went to Manning, counties in blue went to Maybank. Map D shows the results of a referendum on liberalizing liquor sales. Red counties voted “no,” blue counties voted yes.

In all four maps we see the same basic divisions between piedmont and the coastal plains. All four maps certainly look similar.

Part I found here

 Landslides as re-alignments

 The easiest alignment theory to dispense with is the idea that we will know it has happened by its size. The gist of the theory as proposed by Bowers is that a 400+ electoral landslide would be a re-aligning election.

Of course, this would be noteworthy, given that the Democrats have only won more than 51% of the popular vote once since FDR passed from the scene. But this is almost an historical accident as much as anything: Clinton likely would have done this in 1992 but for Perot (who actually pulled slightly more from Clinton than Bush, according to exit polling) and certainly would have done so in 1996 when he *almost* won 400 electoral votes, and picked up states like Arizona that had not gone Democratic since 1948. But this victory was passing, not re-aligning.

In fact, history is replete with electoral landslides that no one seriously considers a re-alignment, and many of the elections that are thought to be re-alignments were actually quite close. Consider the chart below, which shows the percent of electoral votes won in Presidential elections where one party or the other won 75% or more of the electoral vote (which is the equivalent of the 400 electoral vote threshold set by Bowers):

This series of posts seeks to address the question of whether 2008 will be a re-aligning year. I had initially intended this to be a single post, but it was way, way too long. So I’m breaking it up into five smaller posts, to be published daily this week. At the end, I’ll re-publish it as a single post. All posts will be cross-posted from Race42008.

We begin our exercise with four maps.

Obviously these are maps of South Carolina, and they represent four different elections. Take a look at them closely, and decide for yourself what the similarities are, if any. We’ll return to them in a bit. Ever since I saw the first map and the last two maps earlier this year, the idea for this post has been percolating in my mind. They’re part of the reason that I don’t think the 2008 election will be a re-aligning election. Rather I think that 2008 will represent the continued aftershocks of the basic alignment we began entering in 1932, and which solidified in 1938. We will return to this shortly.

It wasn't exactly a $100M June, but $52M is well above expectations, and well above what I had expected.  Ain't no two ways about it. 

Of course, the RNC/McCain combo still has more cash than the DNC/Bambi combo.  And I'm still not convinced that Obama's donor base is the bottomless well that it is made out to be.  We shall see . . .

Hmmmmmm...

Obama's then-record-breaking $32M fundraising haul in January was released on February 4.  Which just happened to be right before Super Tuesday.

Obama's record-breaking $55M fundraising haul in February was announced on March 6.  Two days after the Ohio/Texas campaigns, when he desperately needed to release some good news.

Obama's pretty-darned-good $40M+ fundraising haul in March was announced on April 3, early in the month. 

But Obama's now-under-expectations $31M in April wasn't announced until May 20.  You remember, the day of the Oregon and Kentucky primary, when everyone was talking about things other than fundraising numbers?

And the May numbers ($22M) weren't announced until June 20.  A Friday, aka "bury news day."

So in other words, Obama's campaign gets the importance of the news cycle with respect to fundraising.  In the heat of the most competitive primary in recent times, Obama managed to get his fundraising dollars counted in 3-4 days.  But now, its taking him 3 weeks to do it? 

It is still idle speculation, but we might be in for a treat tomorrow or next Friday (or whatever day they can bury the numbers).

Promoted and bumped. -Patrick

Back after the May fundraising numbers came out, I hypothesized thusly in a comment:

I'm not certain what Kavon's sourcing is here, but if it is true, Obama might have a real problem here.  I've been skeptical of the notion that he can wring a half billion dollars out of Dem donors, in addtion to the quarter billion that was wrung out of Dem donors for the primary, and continue to be so skeptical.

UPDATE: I should add that BarackObama.com is not exactly blowing up in terms of traffic . . . McCain's traffic, by contrast is actually higher than during other lull periods during the campaign.

Promoted - Oxendine points out that early polling has not historically been a great predictor.  Jon Henke

It seems like every day, a new post appears somewhere in the blogosphere decrying John McCain's chances of becoming President. Today it is Stu Rothenberg, yesterday it was  DaveG at Race42008 (though an allowance is made by Dave for the possibility of a Bush-like EV/PV split in McCain's favor).

To which I reply, for the umpteenth time, IT IS EARLY. John McCain is in fine shape to win this. In fact, he is probably in better shape than Bush was in 2004, when he was an incumbent polling in the 43%-45% range. Do I think he's the odds-on favorite, or even the favorite? No. But I think for a variety of reasons it is waaaaay too EARLY to count him out.

Glenn Greenwald is plenty angry about Barack Obama's recent two-step on the FISA bill. The gist of his complaint is that, if 2006 proves anything, its that Dems don't have to worry about appearing soft on that pesky issue of terrorism. His proof? Well he starts out by pointing out that, after all, Democrats won a Congressional race in Northwest Connecticut:

Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut was first elected to Congress in 1982, and proceeded to win re-election 11 consecutive times, often quite easily. In 2004, she defeated her Democratic challenger by 22 points. The district is historically Republican, and split its vote 49-49 for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the "false choice between war and civil liberties." Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy's opposition to warrantless eavesdropping, such as this one:The result? Johnson was crushed: Rep. Nancy Johnson, a 12-term Republican who ran a tough-on-terror campaign and touted her co-authorship of the Medicare prescription drug legislation, lost her re-election bid Tuesday to anti-war Democrat Chris Murphy. Murphy had 56 percent to Johnson's 44 percent with 12 percent of the precincts voting. Johnson was the longest serving representative in Congress in state history. Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy -- as he runs for re-election for the first time -- recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

[Promoted - Sean makes some good points about what kind of President Obama would likely be - Jon Henke]

If it weren't for the fact that there were so many huge issues at stake in this election -- The War in Iraq, the potential fifth solidly conservative Supreme Court justice, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts -- I'd almost be rooting for an Obama Presidency.  You see, part of the problem we've had in the House and Senate over the last sixty years is that we've held the Presidency for a large chunk of them.  Parties don't make progress in Congress when they hold the Presidency.  In fact, the last President who left the oval office with more members of his party in Congress than he had on the day he walked into that office was Roosevelt.

Teddy Roosevelt.

Our problems among the youth are especially an outgrowth of this.  My early political years included hostages in Iran, Carter's inept response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and then morning in America, Gulf War I, and Clinton 1992-1994 (ie the rough years).  At that point, it was pretty much predetermined that I would end up a Republican of some flavor.  Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis as the template for a Democrat did not move me toward the Democratic party.

But current crop of 20-somethings remembers none of that.