Obama
probably has a slightly better chance against McCain than Clinton, but I'm feeling fairly confident that his advantage won't be that large in real-world voting, and that it doesn't matter much anyway because either Democrat will (in my opinion) easily beat McCain in the fall. Consider:
- If Obama gets the nomination, right wing media WILL demonize him until his negatives are in the same neighborhood as Clinton's are now. Clinton has been been "pre-demonized" and is probably maxed out in that department.
- McCain hasn't won big anywhere yet -- he's only gone slightly above 50% in a few blue states. That will change now that it's down to McCain and Huckabee, but it's only because Republicans mostly use winner-takes-all delegate apportionment, where a mere plurality is enough to win all, that the Republican primary season has essentially come to an end already. If not, they'd still be fighting it out because McCain is a bad fit for a large portion of the Republican base. Republicans don't have a clear candidate due to mandate or collective compromise, they have a clear candidate due to funny arithmetic.
- Despite the frenzied in-fighting here on DU, real-world Democrats will find it much easier to collectively line up behind either Clinton or Obama. These two aren't really very different on matters of policy, whereas the Republican candidates have had some pretty substantial policy differences, representing clearly different factions.
- James Dobson just endorsed Huckabee, at a time when it's clear Huckabee has little chance of winning. I take this as a sign that a non-viable Christian Right candidate (probably not Huckabee himself) coming forward, siphoning off Republican votes, is a very distinct and real possibility. Strong emotions are at play here, not the clear, cool reasoning of trying to work for the most favorable outcome (as seen by a Republican) among poor choices.
- Voter turn-out (almost 2:1 in favor of Democrats and Independents voting for Democrats) and fund raising shows Republicans are fractured, dispirited, and not very energized by their available choices. The ability of Republicans to get in line behind their candidate, based on past performance, is far from guaranteed this election. Many will stay home -- and I doubt that even Hillary Hatred will rouse enough Republican voters out of their despondency.
- Some Republicans hate McCain as much or more than Clinton. The hatred in these cases is so strong because, unlike Clinton, McCain is "one of their own", therefore his differences from Right Wing orthodoxy feel like betrayal to many Republicans. (Plenty of the current Right Wing infighting and gnashing of teeth over McCain has already been referenced elsewhere on DU.) For Republicans who see their situation as only being given a choice between an Evil Democrat and Republican Traitor, they'll likely insert a third choice (write-in or non-viable third party candidate) or stay home.
- Even though he's been around for some time now, McCain isn't nationally known anywhere near as well as Clinton. Neither is Obama, for that matter. Both McCain and Obama currently enjoy the benefit many less-known figures enjoy, that voters don't know their faults yet, and voters often project their hopes and desires onto lesser-known candidates. If you doubt this, just look at the early polling favoring Fred Thompson, who turned into a complete wash-out.
For the above reasons, I think it's safe to say that recent polls showing Obama doing better vs. McCain than Clinton will do are nearly meaningless, not much more valid than those early polling results for Fred Thompson were compared to real election results. Obama's advantage over McCain is quite likely to shrink, McCain's advantage vs. either is very likely to shrink, and Republican fund-raising and voter turnout will further reduce any real voting-booth advantage McCain sees from looking at political polling, where turnout is a difficult-to-calculate factor in weighting of polling data, often based on prior elections -- likely a poor predictor for Republican turnout in this election.