It looks like Obama in a no-brainer, but what do I know? I thought OJ was guilty.

McCain has a better chance than he ought to have because the main stream media need a "horse race" to sell papers and airtime with. They know perfectly well how big the gap is, so look forward to seeing them do anything they can to help McCain and hurt Obama rignt now through November and beyond.

The problem is that it is easier to be negative and prey on fear than it is to encourage hope and faith that things will work out. We have such a contrast in this election between fear and hope. But as we have seen over the past seven years fear has a lot of power.

McCain has a better chance than you are giving him credit for because there are a large number of voters who are looking for an excuse not to vote for Obama. They won't admit it's race based, even to themselves, so they glom onto the "he's a muslim, a terrorist, unpatriotic, etc" bandwagon.

It was not primarily the "conservative attack groups" who gored Al Gore and swiftboated John Kerry and thereby got CheneyBush close enough to steal the election. It was the corporate-owned mass media, propagandizing on behalf of its owners, America's Ultra-Rich Ruling Class, Inc. They are going to do the same thing to Obama this year, with the same result: Their Man McCain will be sworn in as president in January 2009.

Don't forget that the actual money raised by right-wing groups matters relatively little. After all, these are usually tiny ad buys, at least at first. They depend upon cable news and Sunday bobbleheads picking up a meme and running it into the ground, then parlaying that exposure into quick cash for more ads. There's still plenty of time for such a phenomenon to develop. Obama, to this point, has shown great skill in responding to criticism, and the GOP has mostly seemed like a beaten boxer stumbling around the ring throwing wild haymakers. But you never know if one of those punches might land.

McCain has one big thing going for him - a ridiculously friendly press, which keeps echoing the whole "maverick", "straight talk", "reformer" BS even in stories whose substance directly contradicts it.

However, I don't think that's going to be enough. Over the summer, and especially during the debates, the unfiltered McCain is going to be on display too much. And lots of voters are going to notice that he's really old, he isn't particularly smart, he's got no idea how to get out of Iraq and doesn't even really want to, and he's got no ideas or interest in improving the economy.

The more voters look at McCain, the less they're going to like him. He's not very smart; he didn't have a very distinguished military career; he hasn't done much in the Senate; he hasn't run his campaign very well; he's not much of an orator;
he doesn't have any coherent policies. There's
just nothing much there.

Your wife is right. Old habits die hard, and the Republican attack machines are more likely laying in the weeds than taking the year off. The casually engaged public buys McCain as heroic, straight talking, and guided by maverick insights to do what is best. Sure, it's all crap. However, we have seen the right wing sell the American voters on spectacularly unfit candidates before.

What Alan said. Also, those groups had had a clear target for months by this time four years ago. Just because those folks have been 1) waiting to figure out if they are going to be trashing Obama or clinton, & 2) getting used to a nominee that they & they're constituents are less enthusiastic about, doesn't mean that they're going to sit out the whole cycle. 1 is already decided, 2 will happen, & then the sewers will open, even if not to the degree they did in 04

I've always thought the Swift Boaters' impact has been hugely exaggerated. Kerry came one state away from winning after all despite the slanders of his military service. It was more the fact that he was for the war before he was against it with the war being basically the only issue in the campaign that killed him.

Ignore the candidates for a moment and look at the externals. The economy sucks, gas is $4.00 a gallon, and the country is tired of the war. These facts should seal the fate of any Republican candidate for president.

The stupid thing the Dems are doing is let the right frame the gas price as: "Those nasty liberals won't let us drill where we want and it's all their fault gas is expensive. Boo Hoo!" I've seen this expressed by letters in the local paper and in blog comments.

We should be framing the issue as: "George Bush started an unnecessary and expensive war and has driven the oil price up to record levels. Do you really want this to go on?" We should be hammering on this message in the media.

secularanimist is right. Why spend money on attack ads when the pundits will do it for free?

Even pundits don't have to do it. The Obama campaign is sounding more and more like a mishmash of Kerry's defensiveness and cowardice, Bill's triangulation, and Gore's obfuscation: in short living up to all the stereotypes of Democrats as propagated by the GOP. Unforced errors will be enough to sink the Obama campaign, especially against the candidate who is immune from criticism and is willing to routinely accuse the Democrats of wanting to surrender to the terrorists with nary a peep from the Obama, his campaign or the other party leaders.

Republicans/conservatives simply cannot stand to lose, will never admit defeat, and cannot admit that they are wrong. This is more than an observation on my part.

Just look at the hot-button issues and their stances:

Evolution - Not true, need to "teach" the controversy.
Global warming - Not man-made, or at least the "science" is still out.
Iraq - Winning, of course.
Bush - Doesn't make mistakes.
Torture - Not when "we" do it.
Wiretapping - If we don't allow it, the terrorists will win.
Oil - More drilling will fix everything.
Tax cuts - They will pay for themselves.

At some point, you can be sure that the money will flow to the Republican groups, and they will launch attacks. It is inevitable.

Kevin: So I'll hold off on breaking out the champagne until November.

Agreed. But we might want to get an early start on the Valium.

The naive passivity of the Obama campaign in Missouri—where they are being outspent 2:1 in TV ad buys—is an indicator of how arrogant and insular David Poofe and Obama himself are. They're so thoroughly convinced of their own awesomeness that they see no need to actually spend the huge sums of money they've collected, because, well, they're so awesome. So McCain is able to define Obama, and himself, in a crucial swing state without much meaningful countering from the Dems. Couple this with the horrid composition of the Veep selection team and the stumbling on FISA, and we have the makings of another Dukakis. Once upon a time it was thought he was pretty awesome, too.

Don't forget that at this point Obama isn't yet the Democrats nominee. If they destroyed him now Hillary would get the nomination. And the attacks on him would have served no purpose. I was watching the Today show this morning Matt Laur meant to say Osama when he was talking about the search for Bin Laden but he said Obama. Why?????? do do do do do

"At some point, you can be sure that the money will flow to the Republican groups, and they will launch attacks. It is inevitable."

Money will flow from whom ? There isn't a big pool of dollars out there: someone has to pay. There are two possible reasons to shell out money: either you think it's the right thing to do; or else you view it as an investment which will more than pay for itself if your candidate wins.

But in 2008, the flow of "investment" money to the Republican machine looks very weak: when the polls suggest that you won't win, the Dems are clearly going to hold Congress, and the Republican candidate for the White House is selling himself as an anti-corruption reformer, it just doesn't look like a wise investment to put money into getting him elected.

That leaves the "right thing to do" money. But that also looks relatively weak this year: the Republican base could have got fired up against Hillary, but Obama justs isn't the same. And McCain isn't their guy either.

So yeah, there'll be *some* money. But there won't be a *lot* of money to push McCain and tear down Obama.

And if there's anyone not completely crazy left in the Republican party, they've got to be shaking their heads at where they've ended up after a decade of Gingrich/Delay/Bush/Rove all-out partisan tactics. The current advice to Republican candidates is to dissociate themselves from the party as much as possible because it's so vastly unpopular ...

I think that blog readers and Democrats in general tend to be issue oriented and issue motivated but many swing voters nd independents are not. They tend to be motivated by perceived personality--how the candidate comes across to them on TV. They are perfectly capable of voting for someone they disagree with, even disagree with profoundly and passionaltely. Example: some folks of my acquaintence who are working class, hate the war in Iraq, believe the most negative things possible about the Bush administration but tend toward McCain because he seems more like them. BTW "seems more like them" isn't disguised bigotry. They are very religious and like Obama because they see him as being religious too. They just think McCain is more...conventional. He seems like a safer choice. Obama is going to have to make McCAin look bad to get votes of folks like them.

Don't rabid animals sometimes appear docile?

The SBVT guys were already in business years before Kerry's presidential run, albeit not under that name. In fact, they had tried to derail one of his prior SENATE runs (sadly, for the Commonwealth, to no avail) - the fact is that a pretty significant percentage of the people who served with him really hated his guts (of course, some of them liked him, too). Always. There was nothing for the "right wing" to invent.

It's not hard to understand why that was: a combination of a lot of the guys who served more than 3 months thinking he chickened out and unfairly got a pass home; a general "style based" aversion to Born-in-the-West-Wing-Man; and the fact that as soon as he got home, while his old "comrades" were still fighting, he crapped all over them to further his political ambitions.

Your wife is right. It's certainly true that all the fundamentals point to a Dem landslide. However, McCain isn't that far behind, which is an ominous sign. This isn't an ordinary election because of the presence of a black candidate. My big concern is that enough Appalachian voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania will vote for McCain to tip the EC to him, because Obama's black, too different, has an Arabic-sounding name, etc.

The more reality-based RePigs, IMHO, don't WANT McCain to win- they know full well the titanic mound of sh*t that Der Monkey is dumping in the lap of his successor, like the Drooling Vegetable did to Bush Sr/Clinton, and would be secretly glad to watch Obama have to deal with it.

In 4-8 (or even 12) years they'll be back, after the sheeple have forgotten the reasons for the economic pain they'd endured, fixing the Pigs' mess. Always seems to work that way.

Kevin: your instincts are right. The reason McCain has no chance is no one wants what he is selling: more war, more tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy with little for the majority of taxpayers (the mirror image of Barack's plan), no solutions on health care, jobs, energy, etc.

When the rest of the country actually starts paying attention in the fall, his numbers are going to drop like a rock, no matter how hard the media tries to prop him up. Add to that the record numbers of minority and young voters the Obama campaign is registering to vote, who WILL show up in November, and not only do you have a landslide for Obama (with states like Georgia and Indiana absolutely "in play") but you have the possibility of coattails long enough to provide a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.

It doesn't even matter who wins in November. The truth of the matter is that the president doesn't have that much power in this country. He is simply the fall guy for congress's lack of ability to get anything done. If anyone is truely interested in fixing our broken country then it is time to convince our Congressmen and Senators to stop representing thier political party and start representing their constituants that hired them to work for them. Wake up people, George Bush did go to Iraq by himself, he went with the blessing of Congress including Hilliary Clinton. And he certainly does not personally control the price of gasoline.

Kevin, you are just repeating hateful right-wing talking points, and it's disgusting that you try to paper over it by passing it off as your wife's opinion. Even if it were her opinion, there is no evidence that she has ever shown good judgment in anything that matters.

Your wife is right. For most voters in the traditionally most likely voting groups (older, suburban, middle-income), McCain will be seen as the safe choice, Obama as the riskier one. Any sign of an increased terrorist threat, any doubts about Obama's competence or resolution, will send them en masse to McCain. The potentially offsetting factor is Obama's appeal to previously low-turnout minorities and young voters. Even so, Obama is still going to have snag 25-30 percent of voters who on the precedents of 2000 and 2004 would be expected to go to McCain.

Although Republicans will engage in massive election fraud and pull out every dirty trick in the book (and invent some new ones to boot), I think John McCain is a weak, weak candidate. Too old, inarticulate, too confused and hypocritical, sporting a massive tumor on his jowl and that doesn't even begin to talk about the skeletons in his and the Beer Queen's closet. When people find out he fathered that black child, like Karl Rove says he did - stick a fork in him. This old turd is toast...

The McClatchy article itself says:

"Of course, they still could jump in at any time, thanks to their ability to raise cash fast with a few huge checks.

"These groups can pop up overnight because they can take unlimited contributions from almost anybody," said Massie Ritsch, the communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that analyzes money in politics.

"Just because they're not doing anything now doesn't mean they won't jump out of the shadows.""

So yeah keep that champagne on ice Kevin.

Ignore the candidates for a moment and look at the externals. The economy sucks, gas is $4.00 a gallon, and the country is tired of the war.
-Stuart

I agree, but I would also add that "conservative attack groups" are typically media-driven events full of faux outrage, a la Judge Judy or Jerry Springer-it's infotainment outrage. It's a little tough to make fake outrage "work" when *everybody* (including their target audience) is getting hammered with escalating gas/food prices and worried about their jobs, the banks, their retirements, etc. That sort of thing conjures up REAL outrage. It takes precedence! Bullshit from attack groups isn't going to push genuine here and now, bread and butter issues off the front burner.

Wonkie is right. I have friends and relatives who think exactly this way. Fairly intelligent people at that. They have never read a political blog, get all their news from people like Charles Gibson,and don't understand that Fox news is a division of the Republican party.
When this is the extent that you are willing to go to be informed, you will not make an informed choice. At this point this is all Republicans can hope for, but believe her when Kevin's wife says that it's closer than you think.When you try to help these people out with a few pertinent facts, their eyes will glaze over and you become very unpopular in a hurry. I know why they say you shouldn't discuss religion or politics. Many, many people simply,amazingly, are not interested.

Doc:

Agreed. My sense of things is that they know, at least right now, that any nonsense they try to stir up will just backfire on them. They seem to have taken the "first rule when you're in a hole is to stop digging" approach.

He's not very smart; he didn't have a very distinguished military career; he hasn't done much in the Senate; he hasn't run his campaign very well; he's not much of an orator;
he doesn't have any coherent policies. There's
just nothing much there. Posted by: Richard Cownie on June 30, 2008 at 11:30 AM

Who are we talking about again...Bush in 2000, Bush in 2004, or McCain in 2008? Because its 2 out of 3 so far on exactly that criteria.

When soup comes to nuts, the comfort and cohesiveness of the party loyalty mindset will prevail in the consciousness of far too many conservative voters in this country. One cannot listen to 8+ years worth of anti-liberal drivel without it becoming a habit.

sporting a massive tumor on his jowl Posted by: The Conservative Deflator on June 30, 2008 at 5:38 PM

That's not a tumor, that's his wife...nuk nuk

Depressed? An interesting way to put it. These groups are hardly depressed. They don't mind throwing money away, but only if it's a fairly sure bet.

I think they are waiting for the Dem Veep. If BO nominates Edwards (or any other white male!), then it's game on!! If he nominates Richardson, game over! They will only spend token money so no one came say they didn't "support" McCain.