it is my impression that obama has won several very close races, and lost nearly every major large state; this must be attriubted, ultimately, to the fact that he scores between 80% – 92% of the black vote every time. this is surely enough to tip the balance in many contests. it also my impression that obama has won several victories on the basis of the caucus structure, which his campaign wisely focused on – but caucuses are not primaries, and not general elections. it is also my impression that, despite the much-increased turnouts this primary season, there is still a much, much larger number of people who haven’t voted yet and don’t really seem to care about this stuff. and then there are those persistent polls that show a large percentage of hillary voters plan to vote mccain in the general election. while at first those might have been taken with a grain of salt, their repetition increasingly suggests that they indicate exactly what they seem to suggest.
these facts augur poorly for obama and democratic fortunes in general. of course, they are counterbalanced by obama’s personal charisma, and his often pragmatic leftism, and his dovish foreign policy certainly resonates with a very large number of voters. but it is my impression that obama faces weaknesses that have a reasonable chance of subjecting him to a rather large defeat.
be that as it may, it could be a close race, and of course obama could win. i do think the length of the democratic race – though not the supposed vitriol, which i personally find mild to non-existent – has hurt the dems’ chances vs. mccain because mccain will likely be able to slip obama’s charge of “bush 2.0″ by a simple and powerful appeal to pragmatism: we are in iraq now, we are in afghanistan now, there surely is a conspiracy of militant jihadis and certain governments to undermine the international system and attack us and europe, any withdraw now, even if clearly forced by domestic politics, will be, without question, perceived as a world-historical victory for these antagonists by all the wrong people. to do so would simply be irresponsible stewardship of the national interests and by extension of the international system, which relies as decisively on american strength as it does on american fairness. all this is quite obvious, in my opinion, and most of the ardent bush-haters that i know are not blind to these facts, as long as presents them gently enough. mccain seems capable of doing so. and this foreign policy disagreement is the clearest divide between the candidates.
however much it is possible that obama will win, i believe he will lose, for the same reasons bush won in 2004.
