Why Obama won

uk_dave said:

http://tinyurl.com/6jfhmk



(It's a 'tinyurl' because the site (The Onion) has a naughty word in it's URL and I don't want to tweek anyones suspenders....so to speak.)

Click to expand...

Just to make it perfectly clear to those (like me) who were confused until I checked the link, the comments you quoted are satire. Obama never said them.

Tricky said:

Correct. News is news. Can you see the editor saying, "Sorry, you can't run that story about Palin being charged with ethics violations. We've already reached our quota of negative articles about her."

Or worse: "We don't have enough Obama negative stories. Go dig up Bill Ayers again."

Click to expand...

Especially when one considers what a "negative story" is. If you do a poll after a debate and 60% think Obama won and 40% think McCain won, and you report that result with no spin at all, that counts as a positive story for Obama and a negative story for McCain. If Obama outraises McCain by 50 million dollars in a month, that is a story that is positive for Obama and negative for McCain.

It’s also possible that many undecideds simply weren’t paying attention to the race until near the end, which happened to coincide with the financial crash. This would make the crash look at least a little more of a factor than it necessarily was. That is, I wouldn’t write off all the other factors (Palin, the war, etc.) as readily as some in this thread seem to have done.

Not that I have any data. Just running it up the flagpole.

Quad4_72 said:

2. It was "cool" or "hip" among young people to vote for him (And the older crowd for that matter). Again, many young people had no idea of the issues. They go off of what they see on the Daily Show and in the news.

Click to expand...

Daily Show viewers are a demographic well-informed on the issues. It would be a mistake to think these young voters are any dumber than the rest of the population.

Sword_Of_Truth said:

I can explain the Obama victory in two words: Economic Crisis.

McCain was ahead of Obama when the market crashed and he simply never recovered. It was the best 3 trillion dollars of Obama campaign advertising that the American people paid for.

If Lehman Brothers were able to cook their books and hold on for just another six weeks, you'd all be checking into Bellvue with terminal cases of Palin Derangement Syndrome right now.

Click to expand...

Hardly. Obama had been consistently leading by about 3 points throughout the summer. He bumped up slightly during his convention, and McCain bumped it backed to about even with his. Had the crisis not intervened and changed the nature of the game, Obama would probably have gone right back to his 3 point lead (instead of 6-7 points), which would be very consistent with historical elections.

And before you criticize the polling, recognize that it pretty much nailed this election (with exception of Indiana).

Ausmerican said:

Please explain how, if this financial collapse WASN'T the republicans fault, why it was only damaging to them.

Click to expand...

Because they hold the Presidency. I'm not saying they don't bear responsibility, but that's who the hammer falls on regardless of the reality.

I don't think it's any big mistery why Obama won. Unpopular president, unpopular war, and a tanking economy. It's a classic recipe for kicking the incumbant party out of power. The Presidency was being handed to the Democrats on a silver platter and I think their biggest strategy was just to not screw it up. But everybody saw the tide was turning against the Republicans since 2006 and it was long anticipated that this would be the Democratic year. The only real question that was up in the air was by how much the Democrats would win.

aerosolben said:

Daily Show viewers are a demographic well-informed on the issues. It would be a mistake to think these young voters are any dumber than the rest of the population.

Click to expand...

I heard a "traditional" news reporter quote a young "Daily Show" fan to the effect that the "Daily Show" isn't funny unless you follow and understand the news.

Quad4_72 said:

Here is what I think are the primary reasons Obama won (unresearched):

1. He is black. Most black people voted for him simply because of the color of his skin. Many did not even know the issues involved.

Click to expand...

Oh please. Keep telling yourself that people don't understand Obama's plans, that America is a conservative nation.

2. It was "cool" or "hip" among young people to vote for him (And the older crowd for that matter). Again, many young people had no idea of the issues. They go off of what they see on the Daily Show and in the news.

Click to expand...

Shall we discuss Republicans who don't know what they're punching? How many people pull the lever on one issue - abortion? The Republican party has milked that one for decades, keeping their nice core of ignorant people who have no idea what they're doing, except pulling a lever for one issue that NEITHER party has the intention of more than cosmetically touching.

3. Liberal media pushed Obama much more than McCain. (For young people especially, MTV and BET only advertised for Obama).

Click to expand...

Given John McCain was on MTV, I think we need to talk about ignorance here.

Ignorance is: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/E/htmlE/equaltimeru/equaltimeru.htm

Yeah.

4. Obama actually did have a very effective campaign strategy.

Click to expand...

Running on the issues, and winning on them. Yes. McCain's strategy was to run away from them top speed.

5. A good amount of Americans are very ignorant.

Click to expand...

And most of them were won over by Palin's smile and winks.

I voted for Barack Obama in the Florida Primaries when my son and wife voted for Hillary Clinton. We all voted for Obama in the main election. Now for the first time in years, since John Kennedy, I watch the news to see what is going on with the political scene and haven’t felt the need to throw up. I haven't felt this happy about an outcome of a presidential election in decades.

As for one reason Barack Obama won, he looks and acts the part of being the Presidential, McCain on the other hand looked has to be on the edge of losing it many times. Other reason Obama won, was his first important decision after being selected to run was his running mate. On the other hand McCain could have picked a good running mate from many good women, so what does he pick, a Gold-Digger.

Paul

aerosolben said:

Because they hold the Presidency. I'm not saying they don't bear responsibility, but that's who the hammer falls on regardless of the reality.

Click to expand...

This is certainly in part true. However I am an Obama supporter and I certainly do not blame one single party for the financial crisis. To do so would be silly.

To me, and I would assume those like me, the way the financial crisis mattered to the election was in how the two candidates reacted to it. McCain muffed it badly.

To listen to the spin now going on on many conservative sites and by many commentators however McCain was whuppin butt in this campaign until this nasty financial crisis came along and messed him up. I understand why conservative pundits might like it to be remembered that way. I do not understand how coherent humans that were not in comas at that time remember it that way this soon after.

I still say it wasn't the economic crisis that did in McCain, it was his CLUELESSNESS about the economic crisis that was the problem.

When you come out a day before the economy collapses and proclaim that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, you really lose all credibility when it comes to talking about fixing the economy. In fact, you have to avoid discussing the economy at all costs, because your opponent will just bring up the fact that you have no cred. So you can't really address this serious problem.

I think the amazing thing in this campaign was how Obama really restrained himself. Other than releasing that internet video, did they ever even bring up Keating 5?

Obama is a liberal who ran as a centerist, and McCain is a centrist who abandoned the center and ran to the right.

Winning national elections is about capturing the center.

That AND the economy is in the pooper, McCain openly admitted knowing very little about economics, and it is time for the Republicans to swing out of power.

As for the polls and McCain lead at the start of the financial meltdown -- yes, he did have a lead, but it was the remaining part of a very typical convention bounce, slightly dampened by the Dem convention that immediately had preceded it. Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com had a good model of the historical trends of post-convention poll bounces, and it was pretty simple to combine the DNC and RNC bounce trends, with a diminished factor for the DNC being eclipsed, and the polling was following a very predictable cycle... after the Biden VP pick, there was some backlash for Obama, and his lead had dropped to about 1.5 points. The DNC raised him to around 9, and then the RNC put them slightly ahead.

It wasn't until the financial meltdown (notably, McCain's weird reaction to it) and the first debate immediately thereafter that there was notable movement off that predicted curve. There's no real reason to think McCain had anything but an ephemeral and temporary slight lead at the time.