Nascar Dads For Obama
“They’re basically saying that if you vote for all these democrats, democrats are gonna run the country.”
Chris Hayes, Washington Editor of The Nation
It’s funny how that works. A friend of mine sent me a picture of a house with a Confederate flag flying underneath the traditional American flag. Curiously, there was an Obama sign on the front lawn. As we all know, a number of leading lights in the Republican Party have come out for Obama. Not just Scott McClellan and Colin Powell, who arguably had an axe to grind, but others like Ken Adelman, former senator Larry Pressler, former governor William Weld etc. Ken Adelman practically wrote the plans for the invasion of Iraq and now he’s endorsing Obama.
We were further reminded this week of Mark McKinnon. McKinnon had worked his heart out to secure the republican nomination for John McCain. He told McCain before he started working for him that if Obama were the nominee for the Democratic Party, he would quit. As soon as Obama won the nomination, he quit. He refused to stand in the way of the first African American nominee of a major party. Oddly enough, he would’ve had no problem working against first female nominee of a major party.
Over at Politico, Ben Smith has made numerous entries on his blog on the obscure subject of Racists for Obama. Experts estimate that roughly 25% of voters who hold negative views of African Americans are planning to vote for Obama.
That brings me to several problems I have with the McInturff Memo, released yesterday. My biggest problem with the memo was his estimate of how rural, uneducated whites would vote on Nov. 4th. Andrew Kohut, Executive Director for Pew Research concurs with his conclusion that the 8% of respondents who refuse to respond to polls tend to be non-college educated, rural, whites. Statistically, this group tends to have more negative views of African Americans than the rest of the population.
Non-college educated, rural whites broke 2 to 1 for George Bush in 2004. Bill McInturff surmises that this group will break by a similar percentage for John McCain. There are two problems with this conclusion. First, as John McCain keeps telling us, he’s not George Bush and polls show he doesn’t have the same appeal to the base that George Bush had. Sarah Palin does, buy she has her own problems. She’ll help with the base, but she’ll hurt with women and independents.
Second, Barack Obama isn’t John Kerry. I’ve never seen as many high level republicans openly endorse the democratic nominee as have done so in this election cycle. There are legions of them. My own theory is that these leaders in the Republican Party serve to make it okay for republicans to pull the lever for Obama.
This is, I think, the third problem with the McInturff Memo. Republican voters are more organized than democrats. This is reflected in mail-in balloting. Mail-in ballots are showing a 2 to 1 advantage for republicans. This is common in general elections. But how many of those republicans are Obamacans? How many are following the lead of Colin Powell, Christopher Buckley, et al? It’s the ultimate unknown. But I’m having a hard time believing that the behavior of the electorate will differ dramatically from what we’re seeing in the upper echelons of the Republican Party. There will be defections among ordinary republicans, including among non-college educated, rural, whites. The McInturff Memo takes no account of this phenomenon (See Racists for Obama above).
Polls can drive you crazy. I’ve looked at a raft of polls over the past couple of weeks and Obama has maintained an average lead of from 6-8 points nationally. But in that average, I’ve seen leads as high as 15 points and as low a 1 point. I’ve yet to see a poll with McCain in the lead since mid-September. What the McInturff Memo does is look at the polls they like and ignore the polls they don’t like. It’s unprofessional. The only legitimate way to look at the polls is to look at the average.
One of the things that jumped out at me in the memo was his analysis of the African American vote. Typically, African American poll at 78% to 14% in favor of the democratic candidate. The actual vote tends to be closer to 90% to 10%. That is, republicans tend to underperform with African American voters. John McCain is currently polling at 97% to 1%. There’s no room to underperform. For the first time in history, a republican is likely to perform exactly the way the polls predict among African Americans. Bill McInturff believes the polls as it pertains to African Americans, but refuses to believe the polling data on the rest of the population. That’s pretty convenient. It’s also probably wrong.
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