Is Obama a “Sure Loser”?

That’s how former New York Mayor Ed Koch is being quoted as describing the Illinois senator in an interview at The Huffington Post. Frankly, I think that’s a bit strong. Nothing’s sure in politics other than, as the late Mayor Daley once put it, that however it looks somebody will be elected. But the description at THP fits my judgment pretty closely:

As Democrats coalesce around Sen. Barack Obama, one of Hillary Clinton’s must outspoken supporters is not mincing words: the party is walking needlessly and unaware into a general election buzzsaw.

I think that events are coming together that make a Democratic victory pretty likely: an unpopular Republican president at the end of his second term, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wearing on, gasoline prices rising, the economy in the doldrums (or, at least, sellable as in the doldrums), the Republican Party apparently in disarray. The Democrats are making the electoral hill much harder to climb than they might, displaying their penchant for seizing defeat from the jaws of victory.

6 comments… add one
  • I’m not so sure. Obama, despite his rhetoric, is pretty liberal and liberals historically don’t do well in Presidential elections. I think this is particularly true this year with McCain, who’s probably the most moderate of the GOP candidates than ran. So I think McCain will have an advantage with independent voters. Still, much will depend on each side’s ability to get the base out, and McCain may have a harder time at that since he’s not well-loved by many in his own party. So I guess at this point I’m calling it an even matchup.

  • Outis Link

    I would be slightly stronger in some of your phrasing. The economy is in the doldrums, and it can be sold that it’s in the tank. (The Democrats managed to sell that story in 1992 when the economy was in better shape than it currently is, in everything other than employment numbers.)

    Also, the Republicans ARE in disarray. McCain is not going to be able to count on getting the conservative faithful to vote for him with the kind of dedication that benefitted W. Frankly I’m thinking that he’s going to lose Florida regardless, as I can’t see the conservatives in the panhandle being willing to come out for him in large enough numbers to counterbalance loses he will have elsewhere in the state.

    Now if Rudy were the candidate, or perhaps even a Romney, it might be different. But I think Obama is going to win a close one, because his base will be energized and most Republicans I know (including me) don’t really like McCain. Plus, as an emailer to the Instapundit wrote:

    I am a conservative Republican (more the former than the latter) and do not want to see either Clinton or Obama in the White House.

    I have been contacted by the NRCC several times by phone since the 2006 elections, and been asked for a donation since I gave in the past.

    I have refused each time, telling them they need to clean up their act first.

    Every time the soliciter then brings up the spectre of Hillary as President to make me cough up the cash, and every time I tell them that boogeyman won’t work anymore. I assume they’ll try the same with Obama if he’s the nominee.

    So, I guess the Republican slogan for ’08 is, “Hey, I know we’re terrible, but it could always be worse.”

    For those of us that are “more the former than the latter” the argument that “They’re worse than we are” isn’t going to work anymore. I don’t think the Democrats deserve to win this fall, but the Republicans sure as hell deserve to lose.

  • I am politically independent and ideologically libertarian, but a Jacksonian on foreign policy. The Democrats this year might very well be doing something I could not have foreseen: giving me a reason to vote for John McCain. I might be willing to vote for McCain to keep Obama out of the office (though I wouldn’t be willing to vote for McCain to keep Clinton out of the office).

    I still come back to a point of principle: the very first test that a presidential candidate must meet is respect for the Constitution. Without that, I will not vote for that candidate. Only once in my life have I voted against someone hard enough to vote for a candidate who didn’t meet that test (voted against Kerry, for Bush; in 2000 I voted for a third-party candidate). This year, Obama might get me to vote against him hard enough to vote for McCain, but he still has a ways to go. He seems determined to get there.

  • I am, generally speaking, a Jeffersonian on foreign policy but what I might call a rational Jeffersonian. I sometimes refer to myself as a “neo-Jeffersonian”.

    However, on the political spectrum Jacksonians and Jeffersonians share a common characteristic: both are pessimists (contrasting with the optimistic Hamiltonians and Wilsonians) so I have considerable sympathy with the Jacksonian point of view.

    From my viewpoint all of the current candidates, Clinton, McCain, and Obama, are looney on foreign policy although I have somewhat more confidence in McCain in that regard that the other two. I’m somewhat reassured by some of the statements that Obama has made over the last couple of months. I think he’s being cagey to avoid alienating the pacifists and transnational progressives in his base.

  • Larry Link

    For all of the classifications given of themselves above, I’ve been in the Obama camp long before he decided to run for the whiles house…and I’m still there…it’s a gut feeling, it’s strong…it’s still Obmama…all the way…

  • The reason Koch says Obama won’t win is because the ethnic city voters will vote against him…the Catholics because of his extreme stand on abortion “rights” (Obama once blocked a bill in the Illinois Senate to mandate medical treatment for babies that survive abortion) and blue collar workers because he is extremely to the left of them on all issues.

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