Craig Robinson at TheIowaRepublican reminds Mitt Romney that there is an Iowa outside the Des Moines beltway. I remind my non-Iowa readers that Des Moines does in fact have a beltway of sorts.
Team GOP wants to portray Obama as the Jimmy Carter of the 21st century but David Frum notes an important difference:
1980 was a three-way race. Reagan won a landslide of the electoral vote, but less than 51% of the popular vote. President Carter's support collapsed in the last weeks of the campaign, with dissident liberals breaking off to support the independent candidacy of John Anderson, who scored 6.6% of the vote - the fourth best performance by an independent since World War II, after Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 -- and George Wallace in 1968.I've always thought the Anderson campaign played an underrated role in the history of realignment. George Wallace played a huge role as an exit ramp for conservative white southerners exiting the Democratic Party, but Anderson was a similar transitional vote for liberal northeastern Republicans moving to the Democrats.
If Anderson had not run - if Carter had not so alienated his liberal base - what would have happened in November?
And no, Paulbots, Gary Johnson is NOT the same thing. For one thing, I'm gut-level convinced that Libertarians draw two votes from small government coservatives for every one vote they get from pro-peace or pro-weed lefties.
More importantly: At this point in 1980 Anderson was polling 15%. He was even in a debate (one on one with Reagan since Carter refused to "debate two Republicans"). That dropped to seven by election day, but it likely cost Carter several states and contributed to the perception of a "landslide" for Reagan.
As for Frum's main point, liberal alienation from Carter, I don't see that with Obama.
One group that definitely IS alienated from Obama is the white South, but NPR looks at a few brave souls fighting the uphill fight for a blue South.
7 comments:
As a staunch Conservative, I fully agree that Gary Johnson takes from Romney 2 to 1 over Obama.
As a staunch Conservative, I fully agree that Gary Johnson takes from Romney 2 to 1 over Obama.
It's way too premature to say how Gary Johnson (or write-in Ron Paul; lots of my Paulbot friends are saying they'll vote that way) will impact the political or partisan landscape. There's no national presidential election, so Johnson's impact shouldn't be measured by a national number; Even if Johnson never polls above 6 percent, he will spoil states for Romney.
http://adambsullivan.com/?p=921
It's way too premature to say how Gary Johnson (or write-in Ron Paul; lots of my Paulbot friends are saying they'll vote that way) will impact the political or partisan landscape. There's no national presidential election, so Johnson's impact shouldn't be measured by a national number; Even if Johnson never polls above 6 percent, he will spoil states for Romney: http://adambsullivan.com/?p=921
Also, I had the same gut assessment you have about Johnson taking some lefty votes, but I'm beginning to doubt that. I don't know any Johnson supporters who would otherwise be supporting the Democrats (or Green, or Socialist Worker, etc).
Obama is far worse than Carter and the polls are tainted, oversampled with Democrats.
Meanwhile, your freedom of speech is being threatened.
http://coralvillecourier.typepad.com/community/2012/09/obama-and-hillary-apologize-for-free-speech-on-pakistani-tv-president-obama-fox-nation.html
If you combine Anderson & Carter, they would have won some (now) reliably Democratic states (NY, MI, OH, WI,VT, ME, MA, CT & DE) and some southern/border states which have moved away from the Democrats (AR, TN, MS, SC, AL, KY) and one (NC) still a battleground. That brings the Carter/Anderson total to about 240. I think the biggest difference between Anderson and Perot is that Anderson drew votes from people who weren't going to vote for Reagan, but might have voted for a different Democrat (or Carter, under other circumstances) whereas Perot seemed more to draw votes from both parties.
Clinton's wins in 1992 & 96 in the South (probably aided by Perot there) seem to be the last gasp of the old Democratic South.
Perhaps for Democrats, one of the legacies of Reagan is not to vote for a third-party candidate. And yes, I recognize that Ralph Nader might have cost Al Gore Florida, but only because the race was so close. Nader won far fewer votes than Anderson, and I suspect that many of the Nader voters were unwilling to vote for Gore under any circumstances (even if they preferred Gore to Bush).
I think the Anderson phenomena differs from the Perot in that Anderson voters understood that Carter was clearly in trouble and needed their votes and still didn't vote for Carter, despite the specter of Reagan. The Clinton-Perot voters understood that Clinton was ahead and that voting for Perot wasn't likely to cost Clinton the election. The Bush-Perot voters (like Anderson voters) either didn't care or didn't think Bush could win under any circumstances.
We do seem to have reached a point where voters are so polarized as to be unwilling to consider a third-party candidate in order perhaps to vote against the candidate they hate. For the next few cycles, I just don't see a third-party candidates on the presidential election, or even on Congressional elections. If Leonard Boswell is pinning his hopes on a third party candidate keeping Latham vote down, he's in real trouble.
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