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A Wee Question
A WEE QUESTION....In 2004, John Kerry lost the popular vote by a couple of percentage points and the electoral vote by 120,000 votes in Ohio. Now, suppose Kerry were running this year and therefore had the following three advantages over his previous self: (a) he was running after eight years of Republican rule instead of four, (b) the economy sucked, and (c) he had a fantastic fundraising advantage over his Republican opponent.
Question 1: how well do you think Kerry would do? Question 2: how well do you think Obama is going to do this year? Question 3: how big is the difference between the answers to Q1 and Q2?
Kerry would do better than in 2004, but Obama is a better campaigner than Kerry, and the Obama campaign is run better than Kerry's, so Kerry would probably win, but Obama will crush.
Okay, in this hypothetical Kerry 2008 run, he's still running against McCain/Palin, right? In which case, I believe Kerry wins, but not by as wide a margin as Obama.
Amazingly, the standard GOP sleaze attacks have not hurt Obama at all, and I think that's because Obama has been very good at deflecting them without responding directly to them or getting down in the gutter with McCain. Kerry tried to take the high road in 2004 but failed, both because Bush/Rove were better at making their slime stick, and Kerry isn't as good as Obama at deflecting it.
And then, of course, I'm pretty sure Kerry never had 100,000 people attend one of his campaign rallies.
I have predicted on this site that Obama will get 375 electoral votes, and right now I'm thinking that guess might be low. Were Kerry running this year, I doubt North Carolina or Virginia would be trending blue, and Indiana and Florida would probably still be firmly in McCain's court. So Kerry would probably squeak out a victory with something like 290 electoral votes.
Kerry '08, 5 point plurality; Obama '08, 10 point plurality; difference, 5 points.
So far, Obama has run the best campaign of anyone in my lifetime (not that I remember the second Eisenhower campaign, given that I was two at the time). Kerry? Meh. But given current competition, I think he'd squeak out a victory.
Bush was also a little over 50% in his popularity rating in 2004, not at his current 27%.
Kerry couldn't generate the enthusiasm that Obama has. I imagine with Obama's money he could pull it off - IF he had as positive a message.
Actually, (c) the fundraising advantage is not independent of the candidate. Obama's vision and his having the confidence to significantly decentralize his campaign operation appears to have done a lot to build the small donor base that is funding him.
1. Kerry would win by 3. 2. Obama will win by 7. 3. 4 percentage points.
1. Squeak out a win in Ohio and 272 EVs.
2. 370 EVs, minimum.
3. 100 EVs, a genuine mandate, a destroyed repug party and realistic chance to save the nation and the world.
I think Kerry would win but not as well as Obama will. Kerry falls into the wrong side of the culture wars b/c his personality and prior Vietnam 'issues'. As stated above, he also did not run a campaign as well as Obama. Finally, Obama has used the race issue masterfully in creating a narrative and deflecting criticism.
Kerry could have lost even in this environment. Also, McCain's campaign was designed from the start to beat Kerry's, and that would have helped. And McCain never would have lagged Kerry as badly as he lagged Obama, and so he wouldn't have been as driven to do stupid shit like choose Palin.
1. Kerry would still have ended up in a virtual tie. 2. Obama will beat McCain by about 7 points. 3. 7 points.
I'm not sure Kerry would win in 08. Kerry wouldn't excite voters the way Obama does to counteract the slime macine. And earlier on the Culture Wars would have eaten into Kerry's support.
He might win because of the economic conditions. Maybe he'd pick up Ohio and that would be the difference. I don't see Kerry putting Virgina, North Carolina, Nevada, Iowa and Indiana into play.
Kerry would have lost anyway. He was a good candidate on paper who ran a horrible campaign. How the hell does a real war hero and a hero of the anti-war movement let himself get painted as a waffler by a Prez who didn't serve in combat?
I really hated voting for Kerry that November -- he didn't deserve my vote -- but I liked Edwards.
Obama will win by between 5% and 10%.
I've worked in both the Kerry '04 and the Obama '08 campaigns. It's like the difference between a Yugo and a Porsche.
Kerry would certainly win if he were the nominee today (he came pretty close in 2004 - see Ohio), but without the large margin of victory, and thus with fewer Senators from the downticket races to help break filibusters.
I won't say it was worth all the extra damage that Bush caused in his final four years, but I do know that the country will benefit far more from Obama's coming victory than it would have from a Kerry squeaker in 2004.
Kerry would win under those conditions, but not by much. He was an uninspiring candidate compared to Obama, and in no sense as good a politician. (Winning statewide office in Illinois as a Chicagoan is considerably more difficult than winning in Massachusetts as a Bostonian. I sense those years in the state legislature in Springfield provided Obama with plenty of expertise on how to attract support from groups other than urban blacks.)
I think a lot would depend on how he had won the nomination. It's an interesting thought experiment, but somewhat lacking in that it doesn't address the whole Clinton thing. (Remember her?)
I also agree with the earlier comments that the fundraising advantage that Obama enjoys is unique to him, and that Kerry would not have scared McCain into the Palin pick, which is his largest negative now, IMHO.
Question 4: What's the point of questions 1 through 3? Are you trying to make the point that blacks don't do as well as whites, or what?
Walldon, I'm pretty sure that's not Kevin's intent at all.
I think the point is for us to think about the degree to which structural factors affect the outcome of a Presidential race.
I think that Obama is a much better candidate than Kerry was, but Kerry came pretty close to unseating an incumbent in a relatively good economy in the heat of a war.
I definitely think he'd have won, but as other have said I think that it would have been more of a squeaker than what we seem to be looking at in 8 days.
So 1) I think Kerry would have barely won 2) I think Obama will win at least 350 EVs and by at least 6 points nationwide, so 3) 75 more EVs and 5%+ pop vote better.
I'm still mad at John Kerry for ruining some of my favorite jokes.
First question: I don't know; I think Kerry might still lose. Obama is a better politician than Kerry in the same way that the Pacific holds more water than my bathtub.
1. Kerry won his nomination more or less by default; Obama had to figure out how to beat Clinton, including how to nullify her fundraising advantage, which was huge in the beginning. Replace Obama with Kerry, and Clinton would have been the nominee in a walk.
2. Let's assume that somehow Kerry became the nominee anyway. Kerry would not have started building the ground game from day one, would not have gone for the 50-state strategy, would not have put in the shoe leather that Obama has, would not have had volunteers pouring in to help even in red states. Obama's been lucky this year, but to a great extent he's created his own luck. (There was a great piece on this recently on one of the lefty blogs, the Washington Monthly, I think.) Kerry would have played the same cautious, close-to-the-vest game he did in 2004.
3. Whenever the GOP has slimed Obama, he's basically nudged the voters in the ribs and said, "can you believe these guys?" Kerry is not a rib-nudger. He'd have explained in cultured, careful language why the slime was wrong, and voters would have tuned him out after the first three syllables.
4. From what I've read, Obama basically has a lawyer lined up in every precinct (or at any rate a lot of contested precincts) ready to jump in and contest any GOP vote-suppression efforts. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but I still don't think Kerry would be as prepared to get in there and fight.
5. Also from what I've read, Obama has a superb GOTV effort underway. Porsche vs. Yugo, to steal from jimBOB.
Second question: Obama will win with 306 EVs and +8 in the popular vote.
Third question: 49 EVs, 10 percentage points (i.e. Kerry would get 257 EVs, -2 in the popular vote).
These are pretty easy questions, because this election was never in doubt at all.
On New Year's Eve 2003 I sent out an email saying that Ohio was the only state that would matter come election day, and 10 months later it was the case.
So this year I went further, making more specific predictions back in mid-December, again before the primaries even began . I said that -- regardless of who the nominees from both parties would be -- the Democratic candidate for president would win the Electoral College and would win the popular vote by 5%. Additionally, I said that the Democrats would pick up at least 5 seats in the Senate (I actually made this prediction on election night 2006) and that they would pick up at least 12 seats in the House.
But I was even more specific. I'm looking at the file I created last December predicting which party would win each of the states, and if I compare my 50 calls to 538.com, it appears that I'll only be wrong on North Carolina. This election was at no point in doubt in terms of which party was going to be in the White House come February 2009. None. It was a foregone conclusion. The 2 reasons that were going to trump everything else, including the identity of the actual candidates, the running mates and how well the campaigns were run, were the economy and Bush's popularity.
So the answer to Kevin's questions are 1) any of the mainstream candidates from 2004 or 2008 (not Kucinich or Gravel, e.g.) would have won against any of the Republican candidates from 2008. 2) Obama is going to win every state that is even light blue on the 538.com map, including Indiana (something I called back in December) and North Carolina. 3) It doesn't matter with regard to 2008 because either would have won by a decent margin. The better question to ask is, would the Obama of 2008 win an election against the Bush of 2004? The answer is yes.
Bonus answer: if there had been no financial mess at all, no failures of firms, and the Dow above 10,000, the Democratic candidate (whoever it was) still would have won by 5%, the Dems still would have picked up 5+ seats in the Senate and 12+ in the House.
I think people are giving Obama too much credit. McCain was going to self-destruct no matter what, because he's a hothead who thinks he's entitled to the White House. With McCain the Republicans got the most likely to succeed candidate out of all of them, and he's getting trounced. What does that tell you? I like Obama and he's certainly run a great campaign, but Hillary, for example, would have won handily also.
Why isn't the answer obviously, Kerry would get completely eaten? Kerry's '04 campaign ran very heavily on his biography. McCain would beat him hollow there. Now, granted, Kerry's sort of workmanlike role in digging through the S&L bailout might come to his aid, but I suspect McCain could tear him apart.
Question 5: WTF are you talking about, Walldon?
I hate it when people blame Kerry for the success of the Republican's dirty tricks. I think Kerry would win easily this year. A month ago, it looked like Obama might lose. So the financial collapse is a big factor.
Obama has been magnificent, but Kerry was also strong in my opinion. The last 4 years, and the last 4 weeks in particular, have finally sunk the Republicans. Good riddance...
Based on the times alone, a net plus 6 points for Kerry, I'd say.
Obama is a better candidate, in my opinion, and had already gained the initiative before the economic bad news had hit. So I give him another 6 points, and predict him to be plus 10 plurality.
Obama now has more money and is contesting more states so based on the times, I'd give Kerry 290 electoral votes.
People are getting the idea that it's over, and that means that Republicans will stay home. Plus Obama builds his ground game for the late surge that we saw again and again in the primaries. It's a stretch, but he may get 400 electoral votes.
Shhhh! Jesus, don't jinx it.
obama not only got cash out of me but i put up an obama yard sign, slapped a bumper sticker on my car, a button on my shirt AND he's got me making phone calls for him! the organization on the ground is truly astonishing.
although i have respect for kerry, he was never able to create excitement about his candidacy the way obama has. i am not convinced that kerry could win this election the way obama will (enshallah) and i think kerry's chance of winning would be very poor if mccain's vp pick were anyone but palin.
i'm past the half century mark and this is the first time in my life that a politician has been able to make me believe that not only does he share a vision of the america that i hold in my heart but that he could actually come close to making it happen.
Kerry would do well and win handily, but he would not provide the coattails that Obama is generating. And that, my friends, is the most important impact of Obama. We're likely going to have control of all three levels of control - preznit, senate, house. Next revolution: supreme court.
Winning statewide office in Illinois as a Chicagoan is considerably more difficult than winning in Massachusetts as a Bostonian
Not when your opponent drops out of the race and is replaced by a cartoon character.
Kerry didn't lose because he wasn't running as a Democrat he was running as "Not-Bush."
Kerry didn't offer a compelling reason why to vote for him, a withdrawl from Iraq was off the table. He butchered his terrorism stance. And when faced with the slime, he acted weak.
Obama when faced with the slime pulled the same thing Clinton did back in 1992, he let Bush know they had plenty of stuff to fire back. And Obama did the same thing about the Keating website and "Say it to my face." While the slime is still being thrown, it just isn't sticking.
David Bailey,
I dunno, Kerry had some pretty big rallies in 2004:
http://www.fatmixx.com/2004/10/25/no-loyalty-oaths-necessary/
Sujal
What David Bailey said - "Amazingly, the standard GOP sleaze attacks have not hurt Obama at all, and I think that's because Obama has been very good at deflecting them without responding directly to them or getting down in the gutter with McCain."
What an honest person should really say - "Amazingly, the standard GOP sleaze attacks have not hurt Obama at all, and I think that's because the MSM has been very good at deflecting them making it unnecessary for Obama to respond or to get down in the gutter with McCain.
Be fair liberals, this is just part of the advantage from having the media on your side.
John Hansen is out of his mind, or he just forgot 2004, but most commenters above have it about right.
Depending on what you change, it's pretty easy to see Kerry winning Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, and Nevada, which would give him the election. Kerry certainly ran a worse campaign than Obama, and it's hard to see him winning the popular vote by a significant margin. I would say that Obama's superiority as a candidate gives him close to five percent in the popular vote and about fifty extra electoral votes. Much of Obama's improvement over Kerry comes in his appeal to small town America, which is not what you would expect from an African American candidate.
I don't know where it fits as a variable in trying to answer the questions, but IIRC Kerry ran to the right of Bush on the Iraq war, promising to ratchet it up by sending more troops.
To properly answer the questions we'd have to pretend that Kerry was against the war, which he clearly was not, or go with his support of the war which would doom him as a viable candidate for the Democrats, IMHO.
Apologies for the digression. To answer, with Kerry pro-war he'd lose to a not unhinged (due to Kerry's passive agressive campaign & his not being an African-American communist with an Islamo-fascist name) McCain (barring the Palin pick,) while Obama will win with well over 300 EV & pushing 10% in the popular vote (barring voter fraud with which Bradblog keeps frightening me.)
So the difference between 1 & 2 for me is huge. A sane McCain in a narrow victory over Kerry vs. Obama in a mandate- and coattail-creating victory over McRage.
Well I think Kerry might actually do better between the two. Obama's campaign is great but he is fighting uphill due to his name and the fact that he is (part) black. Kerry lost due to him losing the foreign policy fight, and now with the focus on the economy he would probably end up being the "safe" choice to help the economy. The republicans would probably go the traditional "he's too liberal" line after trying in vain to focus on foreign policy, which would not be sufficient.
Hillary would probably have been similar, though she is a very good candidate so would win easier than Kerry. Picking Obama at nomination was always taking a chance - he is a once in a lifetime type of candidate that needs a special year to be elected IMO.
The two word answer to your question: Bob Shrum.
Kerry would have had his ass handed to him.
Kerry's problem was nobody could figure out what he stood for since he had evolved through the years into a babbling politician who never committed himself to any position lest he lose some voters. McCain has the same problem, though he tries to avoid offending voters by being everything to everybody. Both then come across as professional politicians uncommitted to anything but ambition.
Obama (or HRC or JE or fantasy Gore, Kerry, Dean) was always going to win the race with both the incumbent and right track below 30.
Apparently the Obama is Jesus folks forget that the race was tied the week before Wall St. imploded.