Background
There is no doubt that any extemper worth their mettle will be watching the election returns on November 4th and already begin thinking of the many questions they will receive about the next presidential administration, the fallout from the election, the legacy of George W. Bush that was reflected in the election, and why the candidate who ends up losing ended up doing so. This is also the very last week for competitors to receive questions they have been receiving since the 2004 election ended which asked “Who will win the 2008 presidential election?” That question will be resolved, barring another Florida/Ohio scenario, on Tuesday evening.
Due to the fact that this is the last week extempers could receive a question on the 2008 presidential candidates, I felt that it was timely to write this brief. In two weeks I will break down the 2008 presidential election results (as well as Congressional results) and offer some additional analysis for extempers to ponder.
This brief will focus primarily on the presidential contest between Illinois Senator Barack Obama and Arizona Senator John McCain, but will focus briefly at the end about the odds of the Democrats achieving a filibuster-proof majority in the United States Senate.
The Presidential Contest: Obama vs. McCain
Extempers who have been following polls at realclearpolitics.com, a polling website I recommend to extempers on a daily basis, know that the odds of Mr. McCain winning this election are not good. Having pulled out of Michigan weeks ago, McCain is in danger of being blown out in this election content, weighed down by doubts about his running mate, judgment, and the current state of the American economy. According to the website 270towin.com, another fun and informative website for extempers in terms of the Electoral College, Barack Obama already has 277 electoral votes. Keep in mind that to win the Electoral College, a candidate only has to win 270 electoral votes. This means that even if John McCain were to sweep the table of the tossup states according to the map, states which include Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida, he would still lose the election by a total of 277-261.
John McCain’s campaign has come under fire in recent days from the Republican ranks who feel that the campaign has been poorly managed and inept. Republican supporters are wondering why McCain was so quick to withdraw from Michigan and to withdraw further support from Colorado, concentrating much of his attention on the state of Pennsylvania, where he still trails Obama in most polls by double digits. Republicans also worry that Mr. McCain’s unwillingness to play the Jeremiah Wright card against Barack Obama has cost him dearly. In later years, political historians will look back on Mr. McCain’s unwillingness to use this against Mr. Obama as a unforced error or as a professional gesture during the campaign. Either way, Republican supporters are not happy and are bracing themselves for Mr. McCain’s defeat at the polls in a week’s time.
McCain continues to assuage these fears by Republican supporters by arguing that he is closer in the polls than he is given credit for. McCain has devised a strategy to win the Electoral College that centers on flipping the state of Pennsylvania, with its 21 votes, into his column. As was said previously, polls show Mr. Obama with a commanding lead in the state, although the Strategic Vision poll of October 23rd shows Mr. Obama with a 50-43% lead on McCain with 7% of voters still undecided. McCain’s team is hoping that it can get enough of Pennsylvania’s rural and suburbs voters out in large numbers to mitigate any advantage Obama could gain from Pennsylvania’s big cities, such as Philadelphia, that helped to deliver the state to John Kerry in 2004. The latest issue of The Economist has claimed that Pennsylvania has become McCain’s “last stand” of the race and it’s hard to see how that is incorrect. If McCain fails to flip this state, it is hard to see how he can arrive at a 270 electoral total, unless he sweeps the table of the swing states and gets Virginia back into his column, something that could happen but is hard to see due to the Democratic tide that keeps picking up in that state.
The McCain camp believes that it still has a chance in Pennsylvania for two reasons. First, McCain believes that the polls are way off target. McCain cites polling data in 2004 that said that John Kerry would comfortably win the state over George W. Bush, but the election there was decided by less than 150,000 votes, a mere two percent margin. The Republicans have also slowly sawed off Democratic win margins over the last four presidential elections they have contested in the state, and lost, to the Democrats from 1992 to 2004. McCain believes if he can get enough turnout in the rural areas he can defeat Obama, believing that despite voter enthusiasm for him, Obama will not pull more votes out of the cities that Kerry was able to in 2004.
However, most pundits note that McCain would have an easier time in this state had he chosen Tom Ridge as his running mate as the first head of the Department of Homeland Security and Pennsylvania governor is wildly popular in the state. Ridge was rumored to be on the McCain shortlist, but was most likely not chosen due to this pro-choice views which would have angered the base of the Republican Party. Nevertheless, one wonders that if McCain had to do it all over again or got to have a “redo” based on current information, if he would not have chosen Ridge or Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who would have had a command of the economic issues more than any other candidate running for office.
The controversy around McCain’s vice-presidential choice has also worried the GOP ranks. Although Alaska Governor Sarah Palin provided an early spark to the ticket in September, her level of support has waned. Palin’s involvement in Troopergate, a messy situation about the cost of her wardrobe, and her terrible outing in television interviews before early October has caused doubt to surface in voter’s minds about whether she can be trusted to lead the country. There are concerns also in the McCain camp of Palin looking out for herself in these waning days of the campaign and going “rouge” on the campaign trail to support herself and not John McCain. Insiders believe that Palin sees herself as the next leader of the party, potentially as a candidate in 2012, and does not want to be dragged down by the perceived sinking ship of the McCain campaign.
On another note, all Barack Obama’s campaign has to do over the next seven days if get its voters to the polls and not make any major mistakes. Obama has been criss-crossing the country, making stops in states such as New Mexico and Virginia, and has urged supporters to participate in early voting. It is estimated that over one-third of the U.S. electorate will vote early in this year’s election, effectively locking in their vote and insulating it from a surprise revelation in the waning days of the campaign. Obama also appears unfazed by worries about the “Bradley Effect” whereby voters might tell pollsters that they are voting for a minority candidate and vote differently when they get to the polls. Extempers may encounter this question at a tournament this weekend, but they should know that most political experts now concur that the Bradley Effect wore itself out in the 1990s and that polls with minority politicians have consistently held true from that time period on. However, Obama cannot afford to get cocky and all he needs to realize is that he saw a nine point lead going into the New Hampshire primary earlier this year evaporate to Hillary Clinton in less than 24 hours, paving the way for an unprecedented 18-point swing that kept Hillary in the race to the very end.
The Senate: 60 Votes?
In order for Congressional Democrats to avoid a GOP filibuster, they need to manage to win sixty seats so that they make invoke cloture and stop a filibuster in its tracks. The current makeup of the Senate is 49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and two independents (Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Independent Joseph Lieberman of New Hampshire), with the two independents reliably voting Democratic. In order to win their sixty seats, Democrats have to flip nine races in their column, and primed with cash and the advantage of having to defend fewer seats in an environment toxic to Republican ideals about the free market, Democrats are projected to get close to the sixty vote margin.
Notable gains for the Democrats will include former Virginia Governor Mark Warner taking retiring Republican Senator John Warner’s seat, Colorado Representative Mark Udall who will succeed retiring Republican Senator Wayne Allard, former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen taking down incumbent Republican John Sununu for his seat, Democrat Representative Tom Udall taking over retiring Senator Pete Dominici’s seat in New Mexico, and Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich of Alaska most likely defeating long-time Republican Ted Stevens for his seat (which all the more likely now after Stevens has been found guilty on seven counts of corruption charges).
These gains over Republicans give the Democrats an additional four seats to bring their total to 56. Democrats are leading in the polls in races in Minnesota (where comedian Al Franken leads Republican Norm Coleman by a slim margin), North Carolina (where Republican Elizabeth Dole is hanging on for her life and is down in the polls to state senator Kay Hagan by a slim margin), and Oregon (where State House Speaker Jeff Merkley leads Republican Gordon Smith in most polls). If the Democrats take down these three races they increase their number to 59.
To get the magic 60th seat, Democrats will need to win one of three states seats: Kentucky (where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell leads in a nasty campaign over Democratic businessman Bruce Lunsford), Georgia (where Republican Saxby Chambliss barely leads former Democratic state representative Jim Martin), or Mississippi (where Republican Roger Wicker is starting to build a comfortable lead over Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove). The best bet for a flip here is in Georgia, due to the tight race in the polls, but a victory in any of these races appears uncertain.
In my personal opinion, extempers need to understand all of these races heading into the weekend because they could feed a lot of analysis about how voters will make decisions next Tuesday. The Republicans have finally found a message that might connect with voters that a Democratic-controlled Congress, especially one with a filibuster-proof Senate, and a Democratic controlled White House would have no check. Republicans are trying to remind Americans that divided governments get things done, ironic since they ruled Congress for the better part of five years during the Bush administration, and that this Democratic tide could easily raise taxes, institute the fairness doctrine to clamp down on conservative voices, create a nationalized healthcare system that would bankrupt the country, and give statehood to the District of Columbia, which would assuredly provide the Democrats with two safe Senate seats and one safe House seat in each election cycle. This message might get the vote out in competitive races in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Georgia where GOP victories are a necessity to stave off a filibuster-proof Senate. As the Christian Science Monitor commented on Monday, the Republicans seem to have thrown in the towel for the presidential race but are growing increasingly desperate over their chances in the Senate.
One characteristic of the Senate extempers must keep in mind, though, is that there are two wild cards at play. First, if the Republicans were to be down in the Senate their 59-41 situation would not guarantee the ability to create and hold a filibuster each time. Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine are fiercely independent and could easily break ranks with Republicans to invoke cloture on more conservative measures. Political observers usually argue that for a political party to sustain an effective opposition to measures from the other party in the Senate, they need 43 seats. The only way the Republicans will have that many is if they are able to win two of the three races contested in North Carolina, Minnesota, and Oregon, no small feat given the current polls there.
The other wild card is Joe Lieberman. For speaking at the Republican National Convention, Lieberman will most likely be stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in the new Congress. If Lieberman feels so inclined, he could cross over the Republican ranks if the Democrats held a 60-40 vote margin and give the Republicans the 41 votes they need for a filibuster. However, there is little likelihood of this happening since Lieberman could have done so in this last Congress and handed the Senate back to Republicans, which did not occur.