Places where McCain was a better candidate than Bush

[nclib]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

[Sbane]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

I would think those types of areas uniformly swung towards Obama. You could make the case that it would have swung even more had the candidate been a "bush type" republican. 

[Stranger in a strange land]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

I would think those types of areas uniformly swung towards Obama. You could make the case that it would have swung even more had the candidate been a "bush type" republican. 

pretty much yeah. McCain was a better candidate than Bush in the West Coast States, the Northeast, and most parts of the Rocky Mountain West. Problem was, Obama was a much better candidate for these regions than Gore or Kerry had been.

California is a good example of this: on paper, McCain should have been a far better candidate for the state than Bush, yet he did 8 points worse than Bush had done in 2004. This was caused by a number of factors: California was one of the states hit hardest by the housing bubble and the stock market crash, and these especially hurt areas that normally vote Republican. Obama was an almost perfect candidate for California and ran a far better campaign nationally. Had it not been for Prop 8, McCain would probably have done even worse. However, had he been running against a Kerry or Gore-type Democrat in a 2000 or 2004-type environment, the result would have been much closer. Of course, in a 2004-type environment, neither Obama or McCain would have been nominated.

[Zarn]

Strange how the bubble hurt Republicans and not Democrats.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Strange how the bubble hurt Republicans and not Democrats.

lack of regulation and lazziez faire economics are generally Republican policies. Moreover, McCain's "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" remark hurt him badly in the areas worst affected, giving the impression he was out of touch.

[RIP Robert H Bork]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

No. Arizona and Massachusetts were both more Democratic in 2008 than in 2004.

[nclib]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

No. Arizona and Massachusetts were both more Democratic in 2008 than in 2004.

I was referring to the fact that they had counties which swung Republican, possibly due to the home state effect, esp. considering that no state bordering Mass. or Ariz. had any counties that swung Republican.

[Zarn]

Strange how the bubble hurt Republicans and not Democrats.

lack of regulation and lazziez faire economics are generally Republican policies. Moreover, McCain's "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" remark hurt him badly in the areas worst affected, giving the impression he was out of touch.

Which is humorous, because that is similar to Obama's current message.



Too bad people didn't remember 2005 in 2008.

[Smash255]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

Obama only won Long Island by a few points more in 08 than Kerry did in 04 , and it was a much smaller margin than Gore's 2000 numbers.  04 I think had a bit to do with 9/11, but McCain was a much stronger candidate than Bush around here.  Its not a socially conservative area, and although Bush already had the primary pretty much locked up when it came to NY in 2000, McCain won both Nassau & Suffolk (only other county he won was Manhattan)

[Alcon]

I actually think that Long Island is probably the only place where McCain>Bush more than Obama>Kerry, where the vote wasn't just anti-Obama, outside of Arizona.

[pbrower2a]

Most areas that swung Republican, were more anti-Obama than pro-McCain (Ark., Appalachia) and the home states Mass. and Ariz., but are there any areas where the swing was caused by McCain being a better candidate for the area than Bush?

It's ironic, but for much of 2008 McCain was faring better than the GOP Senate and Congressional candidates.

We need not address areas that the Republicans always seem to win: Mormon country, most notably, and the Deep South, the latter a region in which the Democrats are the Black People's party and the Republicans are the White People's Party. It's unfortunate that such a polarization exists in any state, as it allows nasty, corrupt, and and incompetent machines to develop even in hick towns because black people are not going to vote for white reformers and white people are not going to vote for black reformers. 

First, there were places that Obama just could not reach that Carter and Clinton could reach. most notably Appalachia and the Ozarks. For Obama to win those states he would have needed a change in the culture of the area. That was not going to happen in less than four months after winning the nomination. That region can vote for moderate populists, but they had better have Southern accents. Obama simply got crushed from Oklahoma City to Knoxville.

Second, the GOP put out some scares that Obama would be an environmental radical who would "punish coal". The GOP may have been able to convince coal miners in West Virginia, a state that had been one of the most Democratic-leaning states until 2000, to vote Republican. Obama can prove those wrong only in office, but he didn't get the chance to do so during the limited time of the electoral campaign. Watch West Virginia in 2012 and see whether Obama can be tripped up on that issue a second time.

Most Democrats recognize that John McCain was less right-wing and authoritarian than the GOP as a whole -- and less likely to do much that Dubya did that liberals object to on principle.  Many of us think that he would have been a better President than Dubya had he been elected in 2000 or 2004.  But Dubya made McCain irrelevant.

This is alternative history, but who among us can imagine John McCain (sure, he was one of the Keating 5, but none so learn as those who get burned) pushing the bad lending, deferring to Karl Rove, promoting outsourcing of jobs on the grounds that such is progress,  neglecting intel that warned of aerial mischief by al-Qaeda, or invading Iraq on a falsehood? Can any of us have expected him to game the Constitution and to use word games to deceive the American people?

McCain ran as a moderate who would work as well as imaginably with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate... then came the Republican National Convention and many of us began to wonder whether McCain would really be in charge if President as one after another Hard Right stance came from Republican speakers. 

I think that McCain would have defeated John Kerry in a landslide in 2004:

McCain 378
Kerry    160

even picking off an electoral vote from Maine. McCain would not have offended so many liberal sensibilities as Dubya did and would not have set up such regional polarization that Obama could exploit.

In 2008, Obama ran as essentially the "Anti-Bush"... and won because McCain had to defend everything just as the Dubya-era economy tanked.

[Wall St. Wiz]

McCain wasn't a better candiate then Bush in any respect.  He is another example of why moderate republicanism and watered down conservatism lose time and time again in presidential politics.

He inspired no enthusiasm among base conserative voters.  In fact he caused many to stay home as they viewed the election as a choice between two liberals. 

He was a mess on the campaign trail, saying ridicuclous things that made it easy for his opponents to attack him (100 years in Iraq, economy is fundamentally sound).  Bush was a much more disciplined candidate, sticking to his main themes and generally not making mistakes. 

McCain was a lousy debater. The guy brought up hair transplants in a presidential debate lol.  McCain was too repetitive with pork barrel spending and Maverick every other word.  Bush wasn't the best stylistically, but he hammered home his points and was able to come off to the average voter as well intentioned and genuine.

In 2000 and 2004 Bush was a terrific candidate.  Let's not let our personal views of him cloud that.  In the same vein, I hated Bill Clinton, but readily admit that he was a great candidate, which is why our side could never beat him.

[pbrower2a]

Dubya wasn't so much a good campaigner but instead a pliant stooge of his handlers. His ideology fit a window of opportunity for Karl Rove's "majority of a majority" technique. Karl Rove's puppets (Bush among them) offered government contracts, regulatory relief, and tax cuts to well-heeled special interests; they also promised red meat to the Religious Right (abortion ban, creationism, school prayer) to people who would put up with any  economic sacrifices so that they could "save" people from damnation from a "Believe it or Burn" god. The rest of America, roughly 48%, would be $crewed badly.  Places that voted "wrong" would find that government services disappeared or were 'privatized' to profiteering monopolists.

A political campaign needs satisfy only a plurality to get elected, no matter who leads the coalition -- whatever the ideology. With the Rove clique it was a watered-down version of fascism: militaristic corporatism with a taste of religious fundamentalism. The "right people" would get the goodies and the rest would get the shaft. The cartels and shady operators would wax fat while wrecking all else, and religious superstition would become public policy. After a point, majority-of-a-majority politics fails because  the majority becomes a minority. The leadership then turns to terror or fraud (examples: commie states, Third Reich, contemporary Iran)  or gets defeated. 

Karl Rove, as political boss of the GOP between 2001 and 2006, was Dictator in all but name, and hardly a dictator calls himself one. He controlled the political life in enough of America until the 2006 elections, and even the President was at his command. Had it not been for the electoral defeat of the GOP in 2006 we would have the same political realities in place. A different stooge would be  President; a rubberstamp Congress would reliably fulfill the dictates of the Boss; and the well-connected would get lax regulation, low taxes, and rich contracts; the Religious Right might get what it wants in cultural life; the rest would get the shaft. Meanwhile the Supreme Court would fill with people who believe exactly what Karl Rove wants them to believe.

The majority became a minority. The Religious Right shrank because it couldn't keep a hold on youth -- even its own. Regions that got the shaft because they voted wrong developed solidarity among themselves. The base of the GOP shrank and the base of the Democratic Party expanded. The youngest voters generally saw no stake in the cartels and scammers that had come to dominate the American economy and offered neither prosperity nor economic security but instead the prospect of personal ruin.

I can't think of any GOP candidate who could have won the Presidency in 2008. The GOP needed a charismatic leader who could appeal across region and across class boundaries to convince people that inequality and superstition were all for the best.  Giuliani was spent. Romney and Huckabee both had regional weaknesses that McCain didn't. Romney would likely have lost everything that McCain lost as well as Texas and  Arizona; Huckabee would have probably lost the Upper Plains as well as everything that McCain lost.

To win in subsequent years the GOP must either change its message or expand the base. The fanatical support of 20% of the population isn't enough to win in a democratic election if that base offends 53% of the population. Such a base can then maintain power only with fraud, repression, terror, or some combination of them.

Americans no longer believe that so long as the "right people" have complete power over the economy that all will be well, and the "Believe it or Burn" segment of the population is itself shrinking. 

[Franzl]

You seriously underestimate the principle of political cycles. Eventually, even without changing itself much, the GOP is bound to get power again. What they do, however, will greatly effect how quickly that happens.

[Rob]

McCain was probably stronger than Bush in the areas immediately surrounding his seven (?) houses. Most swings (not all, but most) were anti-Obama and not pro-McCain.

[RIP Robert H Bork]

McCain wasn't a better candiate then Bush in any respect.  He is another example of why moderate republicanism and watered down conservatism lose time and time again in presidential politics.

He inspired no enthusiasm among base conserative voters.  In fact he caused many to stay home as they viewed the election as a choice between two liberals. 

He was a mess on the campaign trail, saying ridicuclous things that made it easy for his opponents to attack him (100 years in Iraq, economy is fundamentally sound).  Bush was a much more disciplined candidate, sticking to his main themes and generally not making mistakes. 

McCain was a lousy debater. The guy brought up hair transplants in a presidential debate lol.  McCain was too repetitive with pork barrel spending and Maverick every other word.  Bush wasn't the best stylistically, but he hammered home his points and was able to come off to the average voter as well intentioned and genuine.

In 2000 and 2004 Bush was a terrific candidate.  Let's not let our personal views of him cloud that.  In the same vein, I hated Bill Clinton, but readily admit that he was a great candidate, which is why our side could never beat him.

You also forgot, McCain said that he does not use a PC.

[pbrower2a]

You seriously underestimate the principle of political cycles. Eventually, even without changing itself much, the GOP is bound to get power again. What they do, however, will greatly effect how quickly that happens.

It's easy to see political cycles, but hard to predict their partisan specifics. It is conceivable that should the Democrats succeed in winning over conservative interests that eventually take over the party, then Republicans could eventually pick up disgruntled liberals. It is also possible that the Republican Party could fade into insignificance and that the Democratic Party could splinter along a rift between conservatives and social democrats.

One theory  (I refer to Neil Howe and the late William Strauss in Generations and subsequent books) suggests that a eighty-year cycle that corresponds to the preservation of personal memories as the last people of political and cultural influence die off, go senile, or retire in their eighties.  What people remember and despise they resist; for example, the financial recklessness and speculative boom of the 1920s offended people born as late as the mid-1920s. People who had no memory of an economic calamity often found the role of a George Babbitt (a shyster who sold people houses that they couldn't really afford) abominable. Such pro-business politicians as Barry Goldwater (born 1908) and Bob Dole (born 1922) had no use for such speculation, but once off the scene the shysters started to operate with impunity. People who remembered the economic meltdown of 1929-1933 and associated it with weak political leadership and rampant speculation that preceded it would resist any tendencies toward a corrupt speculative boom and would insist upon political process that would keep a Harding or Coolidge from becoming President of the United States. About 2000, those constraints vanished, we got Dubya (a very permissive leader toward shysters, rapacious executives, and well-heeled special interests who exploited religious intolerance). Could someone like Dubya have become President in 1980? Absolutely not.  1960? Likewise. 1940? More of the same. 1920? That's when we got Warren G. Harding, arguably the weakest President of the 20th Century.  

Although the cause of political change between 2006 and now (and this will likely continue into 2010) was very different from that of 1930-1934 in cause (corruption as opposed to an economic meltdown, the economic meltdown coming later in recent months, and with no certainty that the 2007-20?? meltdown will last as long and maintain the severity) it suggests the end of tolerance for weak, inattentive politicians like Dubya who serve narrow clienteles.  The Republican Party will either separate itself from the Dubya era and agenda or go the way of the Federalists and Whigs. We might be two years ahead of schedule for the economic meltdown parallel to that of 1929-1933 meltdown and things might not be as bad, but note well what happened in the 1930s and early 1940s: a worldwide depression, the rise of Satan Incarnate in Germany, two Japanese invasions of China, Stalin's forced collectivization and Great Purge, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Holocaust. That is what Howe and Strauss call a Crisis Era, a time in which everything is at stake.

 Nobody says that things this time will be as scary. Maybe this time we will have the historical knowledge (including film clips of dead bodies stacked like cordwood)  that causes people to think twice about supporting leadership that makes its political points through street brawls. Kindness, caution, and conscience can thwart some political agendas, but they also can decide who ultimately wins any Great Struggle.  But seventy-or-eighty years earlier some countries underwent wrenching change, violent rebellions and wars. That was the time of the Crimean war, the Sepoy Rebellion, the Taiping Rebellion in China, the Meiji Restoration (really a revolution),  Canadian independence, the unification of Germany, Italy, and Romania, an abortive rebellion in Poland, French occupation of Mexico, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, and of course the American Civil War.

After a Crisis Era comes a placid, conformist, and culturally-conservative time (a Recovery or High) when people are scared of major wars.  Wars may happen as veritable appendices of major wars (the Korean War)... but all in all, people know their places and trust their institutions more. Optimism develops -- perhaps a little too much -- as the economic order rebounds.  Then comes a cultural awakening in which youth who have no personal experience with the Crisis and its hardships challenge the fuddy-duddy grownups. The awakening peters out and adults clamp down on youth expression in an Unraveling Era while turning to corporate power and fundamentalist religion to solve all problems. At the end of the Unraveling everyone is a hustler because everyone knows that work pays badly but speculation and the right connections can pay off well, only to see those fail.

We are in a Crisis already; 2009 is roughly 1931 again. Barack Obama has many of the characteristics that one associates with Lincoln or FDR, which looks very promising until one remembers the times of those leaders. If we are lucky he will "only" be a composite of Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower... which is about as well as one can hope for a peacetime President. (Truman was a wartime President, and Jefferson was President when America was one of the few large countries at peace).

The Republican Party is in deep trouble, and one charismatic leader will not be enough to stem its decline. It has become a regional party for now supporting a coalition that represents about 40% of America, and that's before it stands to lose even more ground. It is not attracting the youth vote, which suggests that ten to twenty years from now the rising politicians who become city councilmen and state legislators will largely be Democrats.

It's possible to see how the Republicans of 2008 resemble the Democrats of 1980; twelve years after Reagan trounced Carter and a bunch of  Democratic Senators lost their seats, Bill Clinton, a politician similar to Carter in ideology, won election in a near-landslide.  But 2008 could be a portent of very bad times for the GOP. Should things go well enough, then Obama wins in a monster landslide in 2012 after the GOP loses even more House and Senate seats in 2010.

The period 1930-1950 was a bad time for the GOP; never mind that Truman barely won, he still won, and would have won in a landslide in 1948 had it not been for the Dixiecrat secession.  The Republicans couldn't get people to forget Herbert Hoover until they had Dwight Eisenhower to offer. Eisenhower might have as well been a Democrat.  

Say what you want about Herbert Hoover, arguably the greatest disappointment that America ever had as President until recently -- Dubya is worse.

[Psychic Octopus]

it is hard to imagine a scenario (besides this one of course) in which McCain loses in a landslide. The Reason McCain Lost is, in every way, Dubya.

[nclib]

it is hard to imagine a scenario (besides this one of course) in which McCain loses in a landslide. The Reason McCain Lost is, in every way, Dubya.

Certainly, though this thread is in regards to areas where McCain improved (or declined less than the average swing) over Bush (2004) because he was a better candidate for the area than Bush (2004).

[Lief 🗽]

it is hard to imagine a scenario (besides this one of course) in which McCain loses in a landslide. The Reason McCain Lost is, in every way, Dubya.

You're giving McCain way too much credit. He turned out to just not be that great of a candidate, and he made a lot of stupid decisions. Certainly Bush hurt him, but he hurt himself a great deal as well.

[pbrower2a]

You seriously underestimate the principle of political cycles. Eventually, even without changing itself much, the GOP is bound to get power again. What they do, however, will greatly effect how quickly that happens.

Of course, Dubya's incompetence and perverse agenda shortened the cycle for the Republicans. Dubya won re-election in 2004 only because he faced one of the weakest candidate that the Democrats could put up against him... and in view of what happened to the Republicans in 2006 and 2008, his re-election may have been a Pyrrhic victory for the GOP.

Cycles exist, and conservatism will surely rebound; it just may be that the Republican Party will have died before conservatism revives. Conservatism could revive in a new party that appears as the Democrats split or in an existing Third Party (most likely Reform among existing Parties). Political parties can die, as did the Federalists and Whigs. 

[RIP Robert H Bork]

Cycles exist, and conservatism will surely rebound; it just may be that the Republican Party will have died before conservatism revives. Conservatism could revive in a new party that appears as the Democrats split or in an existing Third Party (most likely Reform among existing Parties). Political parties can die, as did the Federalists and Whigs. 

If the Republicans could survive the Great Depression, at a time when they had less than 20 out of 96 senate seats, then they can survive almost anything. The Republican party is not about to "die" anytime soon.