Obama '08?

Will Republicans Turn Out for Obama?

02.01.2008

There's obviously been a lot of discussion about whether the latest Des Moines Register poll is prescient or delusional. The skepticism arises not so much because Obama is leading, but because of why he's leading--namely, the unusually high number of non-Democrats and first-time caucusgoers (and, to a lesser extent, young people) the Register identifies as likely voters.

For what it's worth, I'm not ready to say the Register's turnout assumptions are crazy, though the skepticism is certainly warranted. I spent yesterday following an Obama canvasser named Monica Green, who's a precinct captain in Republican-leaning Ankeny, just north of Des Moines. The thing that makes Monica unusual for a Democratic precinct captain is that she herself is a lifelong Republican. She voted for Richard Nixon back in 1968, and for Bush in 2004, and most of the Republican nominees in between. But Obama piqued her interest during an interview he gave after this year's State of the Union address--"he rebutted Bush without being nasty"--and she got hooked when she saw him in Ames a few weeks later. Now she does crazy things like go canvassing in 8-degree weather.

Monica estimates she's been spending about two hours each day working for Obama, and much more than that on weekends. And yet she's one of those people who's going to have to change her party registration on caucus night.

Now, obviously, Monica could be a complete anomaly. After all, I got connected with her via the Obama campaign, which had an interest in showcasing its Republican support. But even if this was just some sort of ploy, it was a pretty persuasive one. Several of the Obama supporters on Monica's walk-list were Republicans and Independents. And, of the two families in those categories we actually spoke with (as with all canvassing efforts, many people just aren't home), both were absolutely adamant that they would caucus on Thursday. They also knew to show up early to change their party registration.

If nothing else, I was struck by how smart (if intuitive) it was to put a Republican like Monica in charge of her Republican-tilting precinct. After the mother in the Republican family--a forty-something woman named Rhonda--opened the door, one of the first things out of Monica's mouth was, "Don't I know you from church?" (She did.) There was also this shrewd exchange:

Monica: This is my first Democratic caucus... Rhonda: Me, too!

Of course, Monica already knew this to be true thanks to demographic information provided by the campaign. But it was a nice way of establishing a connection. After that, Rhonda's 17-year-old son Jordan called out from the next room that he was caucusing for Obama, too.

My sense about people like Monica is that they've actually been Democrats for a long time, they just didn't know it. Monica told me she was increasingly concerned about the environment and wanted the war to end. She said she voted against Kerry in 2004, not for Bush. What kept her a Republican all those years, I think, was an unflattering mental image of who Democrats were--crusty union hacks and effete Northeastern elitists--which Obama shattered. It wouldn't shock me if there were lots more like her.

It has nothing to do with "deal-making" with Obama. It is a survival tactic of those candidates clinging by a thread.

Caucus goers are not going to march in lock-step with any deals their candidates might make. If their candidate is not viable in their precinct, they already know who their second choice is. Iowans who caucus are a savvy bunch.

If I were a cynic, I'd speculate that the deal-making was between Clinton and the second-tier candidates to knock off Edwards by supporting Obama. Clinton thinks she has the rest of the nation's votes sewn up and can afford to let Obama win Iowa. She knows that if Obama were the one to be knocked off the tier, many of his supporters would go to Edwards, not Clinton.

Swimpy wrote:

Caucus goers are not going to march in lock-step with any deals their candidates might make. If their candidate is not viable in their precinct, they already know who their second choice is. Iowans who caucus are a savvy bunch.

worth remembering

Ah -- I found a pollster.com article that discusses averaging polls...

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/a_surrender_of_judgment_conclu.php

The comments and discussions at the end are also interesting.

and here

Quote:

4. Don't be seduced by averages.

[..] If you take a state with few polls -- one good-quality survey, say, and three methodological clunkers -- averaging may well do more harm than good [..]

Rather odd juxtaposition (is that the right word?) in the recent posts...

Voters are easily swayed by inuendo and rumors from anonymous emailers and whisperers yet when the candidate they support directly asks that they support another candidate as a second choice, those same voters become stubborn and not easily swayed.


The human mind is a scary thing to contemplate.

12) "Unprecedented" - [T]he campaigns that were unhappy with the Register poll held nothing back yesterday in their efforts to knock down what was obviously an unfavorable story for their candidates. But what no one seems to have noticed is that by spinning so strenuously Obama's opponents risk spinning themselves into a corner.

Consider what some of the campaign pollsters said yesterday about the Register result:

• Clinton pollster Mark Penn: "An unprecedented new turnout model...an unprecedented departure from historically established turnout patterns in the caucus."
  
  
• Edwards pollster Harrison Hickman (here and here): "The poll is at odds with history" and "at odds with known tenets of partisan caucus participation."
  
  
• Biden pollster Celinda Lake: "I'm sure [the independent percentage] will be higher, but [40%] just seems impossible . . . That would be a revolution."

At very least, by elevating bit of polling wonkery -- the argument over independents -- into a two-day front page story, Obama's opponents have helped hand him more than a "momentum" story on the eve of the caucuses. His precinct captains now also have a strong electability argument to make tomorrow night: Obama attracts independents.

But more important, what if the Register is right? What if an influx of first-time caucus goers propels Obama to a modest victory margin? Given their spin yesterday, it will be quite a challenge for the other campaigns to shrug it off as an inconsequential result they saw coming all along. Now, if Obama wins with the help of a wave of caucus newcomers, it's not just a "win," it's an "unprecedented departure," a result "at odds with history," perhaps even a "revolution."

Butrflynet wrote:

Rather odd juxtaposition (is that the right word?) in the recent posts...

Voters are easily swayed by inuendo and rumors from anonymous emailers and whisperers yet when the candidate they support directly asks that they support another candidate as a second choice, those same voters become stubborn and not easily swayed.


The human mind is a scary thing to contemplate.

I certainly would not switch my vote at the request of a losing candidate. IMO it is the height of audacity for the loser to ask.

Rather odd juxtaposition (is that the right word?) in the recent posts...

Voters are easily swayed by inuendo and rumors from anonymous emailers and whisperers yet when the candidate they support directly asks that they support another candidate as a second choice, those same voters become stubborn and not easily swayed.

Butrflynet wrote:

Rather odd juxtaposition (is that the right word?) in the recent posts...

Voters are easily swayed by inuendo and rumors from anonymous emailers and whisperers yet when the candidate they support directly asks that they support another candidate as a second choice, those same voters become stubborn and not easily swayed.


The human mind is a scary thing to contemplate.

I certainly would not switch my vote at the request of a losing candidate. IMO it is the height of audacity for the loser to ask.

Crossposted from the Polls etc thread, an item the Obama sympathisers will gladly ponder..
_______

Obama's European problem

Dec. 29, 2007 |

Doubts about Barack Obama's presidential credentials have crystallized during the past two weeks over his stewardship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs, which has convened no policy hearings since he took over as its chairman last January. That startling fact, first uncovered by Steve Clemons, who blogs on the Washington Note, prompted acid comment in Europe about the Illinois senator's failure to visit the continent since assuming the committee post, and even speculation that he had never traveled there except for a short stopover in London.

But why should those questions matter to Americans who consider Senate hearings so much useless verbiage? And why does anyone care whether and where a would-be president has traveled, on official or personal visits?

The simple answer to the first question is that Senate hearings do not merely provide occasions for grandstanding as many voters may suspect, but fulfill a critical purpose in providing information and perspective to lawmakers. In the Senate, the foreign relations subcommittees have few direct legislative responsibilities, but they have traditionally gathered substantive research for the committee itself and for the rest of the Senate.

That is why congressional hearings matter, and why a subcommittee chairmanship represents a significant responsibility. Knowledge is not just power but the fundamental requirement for either house of Congress to act as an equal of the executive branch in government.

Should Obama wonder whether he ought to have bothered with his subcommittee, he could ask his friendly rival Joe Biden, D-Del., who chaired the Europe subcommittee for many years during the Cold War. Biden effectively exploited the chairmanship to transform himself from a junior member into one of the Senate's most knowledgeable experts on arms control, nuclear weapons, European attitudes toward America and the Soviet Union, the European Union's policies, and the role of NATO, which also comes under the subcommittee's mandate. As a result, Biden starred in Senate hearings on the SALT II arms treaties and eventually established himself as a leading national voice on foreign policy.

"I wouldn't call it a neglect of duty but a missed opportunity to explore issues that will be of fundamental importance to the next administration," says ambassador John Ritch, who served for two decades as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's senior staffer on European affairs and East-West relations, before going on to represent the Clinton administration at the United Nations organizations in Vienna.

Ritch points out that as subcommittee chair, Obama could have examined a wide variety of urgent matters, from the role of NATO in Afghanistan and Iraq to European energy policy and European responses to climate change -- and of course, the undermining of the foundations of the Atlantic alliance by the Bush administration. There is, indeed, almost no issue of current global interest that would have fallen outside the subcommittee's purview. [..]

Perhaps he could not have been expected to undertake an ambitious round of hearings when he was in the midst of deciding to run for president -- but that decision may merely point up the conflict between ambition and experience that has raised questions about his candidacy. [..]

Oh come on! You know how easy Swimpy is to manipulate.