Thursday, February 7, 2008

Presidental Race

Today Mitt Romney dropped out of the Republican race today, leaving McCain as the apparent nominee for that party. The Democratic race is still up for grabs with a long fight lying ahead.

I will go out on a limb and predict that McCain's only chance is that if Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee. I think this because Clinton is the only force that will motivate the conservatives in the Republican Party to vote in November. The conservatives are not overly thrilled with McCain, and will not be motivated to vote if Obama is the contender. Considering the razor thin margins of the recent presidential races, whichever party can maximize voter turnout, will take the presidency.

I still think that the democratic machine will back Clinton and that she will pull out the nomination. I believe that the long fought battle against Obama will drain her war chest substantially as well as enabling McCain start campaigning on a national level while the democrats are still fighting for the nomination. This will give McCain another advantage. I think that at the end of the day, that enough moderates will swing to McCain and join forces with the anti-Clinton motivated base will swing the election to McCain in November.

2 comments:

Joe Allen said...

Obviously you haven't been listening to the far-right commentators (Limbaugh, Coulter, etc.) who claim that they would rather vote for Clinton than sell out and vote for McCain. The fact that McCain got booed today at CPAC is not a good sign. Granted, they have 9 months to get united around McCain, but the vitriol with which they speak doesn't bode well. I think the loss of the conservative turnout will doom McCain come November. I also think his VP choice will be critical given his age. If he doesn't have a good VP (think Quayle), he is in trouble because a lot of indies and moderates will worry about McCain dying in office.

Obama is on fire and the superdelegates (the Dems party machine) will follow the wind. He's a motivational speaker who has the ability to unite more than any other candidate. His problem is he won states that Democrats haven't won in a while (the South). He's got the biggest war chest of all and can raise more funds than everyone with his "Yes we can" speeches.

Of course all bets are off if Clinton and Obama team up...

Joe Allen said...

I can be rather prophetic at times and my commentary concerning the VP-Stakes was explained well by Colbert King from Saturday's Washington Post. Hopefully this link will work for a while:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020802980.html?hpid=opinionsbox1