LockeColeMA wrote:
lolgaxe wrote:
"Dominating the outsiders" is about as good a sign as "The chess club is behind you!" is for school elections.
Whereas "Getting young and first-time voters behind you" is what led Obama to win in 2008.
lolgaxe wrote:
There were way more factors to Obama's victory than getting young and first time voters. While obviously getting more voters is never a bad idea for a candidate, I simply don't hold much faith that it's that huge of a deal this early on.
This. Young and/or first time voter turn out had close to zero to do with Obama's victory. Obama won because of lowish relative GOP turnout and (primarily) because swing voters swung his way. And that happened because of some combination of the following three things:
1. A decade of drumbeating the "GOP is bad" mantra on everything from Wars to Economy.
2. GOP control of the government for long enough that they seemed the clear and easy ones to blame for everything "bad" (especially a nearly perfectly timed economic collapse in 2008).
3. Chance to vote in first black US president.
Issue three is gone since said milestone has already been reached now. Issue's one and two are pretty completely negated now that a couple years of Dems controlling both houses of congress and the white house have reminded those swing voters that things really can be worse than when the GOP is running things. Obama won on a "Blame Bush" and "Blame the GOP" ticket. It's getting harder and harder to play that card now though, and most voters place the blame for our current sluggish economy squarely on the Dems shoulders, especially those very swing voters who went Obama's way in 2008.
That's not to say he can't win. But it'll require a pretty amazing amount of negative spin on a whole array of policy issues in order to pull it off at this point. Basically, if the Dem's spin doctors can successfully convince people that the economy really would have been worse if we hadn't passed the stimulus bill, Obama has a chance. Right now, that's a pretty steep uphill slope to climb though.