Rough Stuff Ahead?

That’s what the signals seem to suggest.



They were doing the projections last night on CNN and MSNBC…. Matt, Keith, Wolfe, and the rest.



And sometimes it looked as if they were one step removed from guessing....

With the aid of computers, however, before the end of the Show, these political gurus showed what would happen if both Hillary and Obama won.



If Hillary won, we would as of now beat McCain in the polls by one percentage point.



That’s too damn close!



If Obama won, the win was about six percent.



This was shocking to me.



If the Republican Party was so out of touch and in such disarray as everyone claims , how come they would do so well in these early polls?



That’s what troubled me.



Of course, I realize that a lot of things can change between now and November.



But one thing was clear, this was not going to be a clean sweep!....



If McCain wanted a 100 year war, why were people willing to support him to that extent?



It was clear that something was wrong; that something wasn’t logical that was happening….



What we did know was that democrats were coming out two to one over republicans.



And the cable stations point out that the record numbers were primarily due to young people becoming active and getting involved in politics. There was no other explanation;

That Obama was scoring large with Independents and even Republicans were supporting him.



So, if that were the case, why was McCain, a seventy one year old Veteran doing so well?



yet, when push came to shove, it was a virtual dead heat among candidates, if you could put any credibility in these early, early polls.





McCann didn’t seem to understand the economy; he didn’t seem to be current with the latest technology or scientific strides and he seemed to see little reason for bringing back jobs lost overseas.



So what was he about?



. All he could talk about, it seemed, was pushing through Bush’s tax cuts, which he had originally opposed, the Surge which was so out of kilter with the facts that it would have been laughable if so many American lives weren’t involved. What was it about the man that he was able to come up so strong against the much more popular democrats who were coming out in droves to support their candidate?



What’s more, McCain isn’t even liked by the economic conservatives, those who feel that he has no grasp of conservative economic policies.



Nor does he seem to score big with the Huckabee crowd of Evangelicals.



Nevertheless, he still is only separated from the two democrats by as little as a single percentage point. That is the other shoe that’s so hard to understand.



Let’s look at the numbers. What the pundits are saying is that the broad coalition of conservatives and Evangelicals may tally up to as many as thirty five million voters. In the past, they voted to support Bush; now, their loyalties may have shifted because they are no longer of one mind regarding what an Evangelical stands for.



Some have moved more to the Green movement; they want to save the environment; some like the Hispanic Evangelicals and the Pentecostals, are considering more than just anti-abortion, or anti gay rhetoric, they want their movement to be more community conscious, more people oriented and their belief that Bush’s core is somewhat xenophobic about Hispanics…..



What’s more, today, many former republicans have joined the ranks of independents.

They don’t want to be pigeon-holed as a rubber stamp for Bush policies. Nonetheless,

McCain has done well with independents; and he has done well with ex-Military.

People seem to relate to his independent nature while the conservatives damn him for the same qualities.



Despite the rush that democrats feel, don’t count on this election as being an easy win.

There are still 60% of republicans who feel that Bush is doing a good job and 50% of the voters surveyed who feel that the war against Iraq was justified. All of which makes a rather complicated scenario for second-guessing this election.



What we do know is that Obama has cut deep into Hillary’s lead in the polls and that no matter what happens it seems that it will go into April before being decided.



The real danger is that to guarantee a win or change in fortunes, the next debate or speech may degenerate into charges left and right and those charges could splinter the democratic party and give McCain all the ammo he needs to make up the six points in the polls.



With the candidates’ ability to be elected a growing priority among voters, and Hillary’s high negatives that have not come down among possible fence straddlers and Independents, it may just well be that we could find ourselves in an election where the bad feelings and hostility on both sides has fractured the party and our chances at a win.



This is the prognosis that gives me shivers as we strive for some decent rationales.



Les Aaron

The committee for Positive Change