Who can beat McJerk?
It appears that Obama has the nomination pretty much sewed up, but of course the big question is whether he can beat McCain -- and Hillary's sole remaining scrap of argument for remaining in the race is that she can and Obama can't. Interestingly enough, data compiled by the conservative Karl Rove and the liberal Electoral-vote.com agree on this point. Electoral-vote.com has maps (updated daily from the latest polls) that show the general election delegate tallies for Clinton-vs.-McCain and Obama-vs.-McCain. As of today, the results would be Clinton with 310 delegates and McCain with 211, where as Obama would get 242 compared to McCain's 285 (270 needed to win the presidency).
If you scroll down almost to the bottom of today's Electoral-vote.com post, there are tables showing new polling data from several states showing that Clinton would do significantly better than Obama in the key state of Florida and would also do better than Obama in North Carolina and Missouri. (In the primaries, Obama beat Clinton decisively in North Carolina, 56% to 42%, and it was basically a tie in Missouri: Obama, 49% to 48%. Florida of course doesn't count, at least not yet, but Clinton won big there, 50% to 33%, while Edwards got 14%.)
The North Carolina general-election poll is a little odd, given the primary result there. Florida historically swings Republican in the general election, except of course in 2000 when it actually went Dem, but we know what happened in the end. You could argue that Obama really really needs to win over Florida to beat McCain -- but even though polls today show Clinton winning there over McCain, she would still win the election even if Florida went for McCain after all.
Stepping back a bit, I have to marvel once again that Americans are so stupid as to prefer another Republican who supports the Iraq war and knows nothing abut the economy (and could care less), when the evidence is all around us that those two issues alone, courtesy of Bush, have brought this country to the sorry state it's in today. Everyone complains about high gas prices, but does anybody ask WHY they're so high? Inflation -- maybe. Bush, Cheney et al sucking up to U.S. Big Oil and having zero respect from anyone in the Mideast? Um, yeah... And the really baffling thing is that the "family values" issue really isn't part of the discussion right now. The Republicans successfully twisted legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts in 2004 into a national issue that probably was the deciding factor in that election. Now California has just done the same thing, so it will be interesting to see if the GOP tries that shit again once the general-election campaign gets going. Hopefully that issue has lost some of its traction and/or people won't fall for it again, but never underestimate the gullibility of he American public.
If you scroll down almost to the bottom of today's Electoral-vote.com post, there are tables showing new polling data from several states showing that Clinton would do significantly better than Obama in the key state of Florida and would also do better than Obama in North Carolina and Missouri. (In the primaries, Obama beat Clinton decisively in North Carolina, 56% to 42%, and it was basically a tie in Missouri: Obama, 49% to 48%. Florida of course doesn't count, at least not yet, but Clinton won big there, 50% to 33%, while Edwards got 14%.)
The North Carolina general-election poll is a little odd, given the primary result there. Florida historically swings Republican in the general election, except of course in 2000 when it actually went Dem, but we know what happened in the end. You could argue that Obama really really needs to win over Florida to beat McCain -- but even though polls today show Clinton winning there over McCain, she would still win the election even if Florida went for McCain after all.
Stepping back a bit, I have to marvel once again that Americans are so stupid as to prefer another Republican who supports the Iraq war and knows nothing abut the economy (and could care less), when the evidence is all around us that those two issues alone, courtesy of Bush, have brought this country to the sorry state it's in today. Everyone complains about high gas prices, but does anybody ask WHY they're so high? Inflation -- maybe. Bush, Cheney et al sucking up to U.S. Big Oil and having zero respect from anyone in the Mideast? Um, yeah... And the really baffling thing is that the "family values" issue really isn't part of the discussion right now. The Republicans successfully twisted legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts in 2004 into a national issue that probably was the deciding factor in that election. Now California has just done the same thing, so it will be interesting to see if the GOP tries that shit again once the general-election campaign gets going. Hopefully that issue has lost some of its traction and/or people won't fall for it again, but never underestimate the gullibility of he American public.
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