Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	June 3, 2008

Why McCain Will Win in November US electoral college votes, 2004; 2008 might be even worse It now appears that Barack Obama has enough delegates to win the Democratic Party nomination for this November's election. He will be running against the heir apparent to the most unpopular president in history. When Bill Clinton left office eight years ago, he was much less unpopular, yet his bumbling was still too much for his successor, Al Gore, to overcome (though, thanks to the inability of the US system to accurately identify the winner of the election, we may never know who actually won in 2000). So why is John McCain, who has done little to distance himself from his incompetent and despised predecessor, running neck and neck in the opinion polls with Barack Obama? If you've read Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus, you'll know why. There is a core group of white, uneducated working class Americans, perhaps 30% of the total electorate, who would vote for any Republican for president (other than those directly tainted with the Iraq failure). That core group is spread across most of the states other than New England, NY/NJ and the West Coast states. Those 39 Southern, Central, Midwestern and Western states are worth 385 of the 538 electoral college votes. There is a comparable percentage of Americans who would vote for just about any Democratic nominee, but they are concentrated in the remaining 11 states, with only 153 electoral votes between them. The main so-called "battleground" states, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, have 105 electoral votes between them. All of them have large, white, working-class populations, and are the Republicans' to lose (or to steal). Look at the state-by-state polls and they are likely to pick up Pennsylvania and Michigan from the Democrats, giving McCain well over 300 electoral college votes. So despite the fact that McCain is following the dismal Bush, in an economy that's in a shambles thanks to Republican mismanagement, he would probably win the election over Obama today, and the muckraking, xenophobia-stirring and fear-mongering the Republicans do so well has barely begun. Why is this Republican core vote so solid? Joe explained it simply: White, uneducated working class Americans don't believe politicians can or will do anything to improve the economy, health care, education, or the environment. The only area of difference they can perceive is the war against Iraq, which they have now been brainwashed to believe is synonymous with the war against global terrorists. And, here's the kicker: They are mad at Bush not because he entered a brutal, expensive and devastating war under false pretenses, at a cost of at least a trillion dollars, bankrupting the nation in the process. They are mad at Bush because he didn't win the war. Remember: The vast majority of Americans have never owned a passport. All John McCain has to do is say, over and over again, with his war medals displayed, that he will win the war, against Iraq and then against Iran and other deemed 'enemies' of America. His supporters can focus their attention on anti-immigration rhetoric and stirring up fear of more attacks (and of rising crime). With that strategy, he can't lose. And he won't. If the Democrats can't muster any better than a neck-and-neck contest after the Republicans have been overwhelmingly acknowledged to have made everything vastly worse for the past eight years and sunk to the lowest level of presidential popularity in poll history, they have lost before they've begun. Category: US Politics PS: Dave's travel schedule for the next few months: Seattle June 14-15 (SLA),  Montreal June 18-19 and September 18,  San Jose CA Sept 23-25 (KMWorld),  Bowen Island BC Sept 28-Oct 1 (Art of Hosting). Meetup, anyone? 11:58:46 PM  trackback []  comment []

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