Five Lessons from Michigan
1. It’s official: My perfect Iowa predictions were a fluke.
Not only did I miss NH (like everyone else), I fumbled Michigan, big time. Accordingly, recognizing that I may very well be incapable of accurately guessing my own birthday, I have now eaten a slice of humble pie and will refrain from further primary predictions … maybe.
2. Bemoan family/dynasty politics all you want, but voters still take comfort in a familiar name.
George. Mitt. What’s the difference? Michiganers apparently get warm fuzzies when they simply hear “Romney.”
3. Kos does not pull the puppet strings of the Democratic Party.
Despite Kos encouraging Dems to vote en masse for Romney (to pollute GOP results and give the Dems a weaker candidate to contend with in the general election) most Michigan Dems ignored him, going for McCain instead.
I’d like to believe that happend for a reason similar to the one why many Republicans (including me) would vote for Obama if we found ourselves in a Michigan-like situation: We want two strong, reasonably good candidates in the general election, not a lesser-of-two-evils duel. (Shaun Mullen offers more on this and related subjects.)
4. Republican leaders are not to blame for the party’s woes; Republican voters are.
Granted, that’s more of a maxim than a lesson, but with all the whining (from yours truly and others) about the imposters in the White House and prior GOP Congress, it’s finally time we pundits (professional and pedestrian) stop complaining about the party’s leadership and start motivating moderate R voters to get off their acquiescent butts and get busy recruiting like-minded candidates, raising money for those candidates, helping with their campaigns, voting for them, etc.
5. Uncommitted polled very well among Democrats.
I fully expect Uncommitted to announce its candidacy soon. Can Conflicted and Confused be far behind?
9 Responses to “Five Lessons from Michigan”
“voters still take comfort in a familiar name”
If the GOP remains weak, will we see Jeb Bush?
2012 is four years away. Memories are short. His dad was a good president. Who knows?
In the meantime, I wonder if Thompson will win South Carolina rather than Huckabee.
Pete: George '4 year recession & War to liberate Kuwaiti Oil' Bush was a good President?
In what universe?
Cosmoetica,
Here's what I base it on …
George #1 built international consensus and coalition before the Kuwait action, in stark contrast to his son's approach to Iraq. Even Obama has given George #1 props for that decision.
Recessions happen and are rarely the fault of the sitting president in office at the time.
Andrew Sullivan and others have labeled George #1 one of “the most quietly effective presidents of our time.”
Good enough for me.
DLS — Recognizing that my predictions are not the most reliable right now, I think Thompson is toast. He's been asleep at the wheel far too long. I also think — despite McCain's budding lead in S.C. — Huckabee will be the dominant one there, pitting him against Romney going into Tsunami Tuesday. Again, don't quote me on that, because I'm probably wrong.
Conventional wisdom is that Thompson is toast, all right. I'd just like to see the crazy situation we have now become even more crazy. I don't have a problem if Huckabee wins in South Carolina, and in Florida; I'd love to see Giuliani's gamble fail there. I suspect Romney may win in Nevada, not because of, as one article put it, “the state's large Mormon population” (Salt Lake metro, in Utah, the real Mormon state, isn't even homogeneously Mormon, as any visitor knows). I believe (this is also true of Salt Lake) that there are so many transplanted Californians and others from elsewhere that have come to Nevada that there is no strong Religious Right presence in Nevada (there is conservatism, but not the Religious Right type, but basic Western conservatism outside the West Coast metro areas).
South Carolina is interesting insofar as it has much conservatism there, and a strong Religious Right presence (the Bible Belt is a crescent through the southeastern to central US and there's a separate “front” of the Religious Right along Colorado's Front Range), so Huck should do well there in theory, but outside this area, Huck won't be strong at all, so continues the theory. Also, the South is the Black Belt, where most black Americans live (and many will return there from elsewhere when it is time to retire, if not earlier in their lives; for ages they have been going the other way). So, it will be interesting to see how Obama does in South Carolina.
(1990)
http://www.census.gov/geo/www/mapGallery/images…
(2000)
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/atlas/…
The big Tuesday series, it will involve big-metro states including New
York, New Jersey, and California, where Huck would do poorly. The big question will be how well Clinton and the machine do there vs. Obama.
(I've already written off Edwards.)
And what if Giuliani wins New York (and New Jersey, thanks to Dem-style subway voters)?
Pete:
'George #1 built international consensus and coalition before the Kuwait action, in stark contrast to his son's approach to Iraq. Even Obama has given George #1 props for that decision.'
***It was better to get consensus rather than not, as his son did. 'Twould've been better had no war been fought at all, and we'd just paid off Saddam, as we've done countless dictators over the last century. Bush 1 set in motion the catastrophic events that have led us to this war. This is like saying that it's better to have Herpes than AIDS. true, but good health is still better, and had Bush 1 not stuck American parts in none too nice holes, we'd not have herpes.
'Recessions happen and are rarely the fault of the sitting president in office at the time.'
***Correct, it was Reagan's trickle down economics that did it. Bush called it Voodoo once, then sucked it in deeply for power. How does he not share the blame, when he knew better? And, again, the mortgage crisis, the runaway and unacountable debt run up in the S&L and other scandals were forerunners to the Enron and Worldcom scandals, not to mention the meltdown of the greenback, with China, India, and other countries holding our economic futures in their paws.
'Andrew Sullivan and others have labeled George #1 one of “the most quietly effective presidents of our time.” Good enough for me.'
Even if I thought Sulivan was a top notch wonk, you have to do better than the Appeal to Authority fallacy.
Granted, he was not a terrible Prez ala LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, nor his son, but he ranks as a failure, with Ford and Carter. Slick Willy might be the only Prez of my lifetime to approach mediocrity, and that's a big 'might.'