(b) The fact that as recently as the 1990s, the current pattern wouldn’t have been forseeable easily, but it’s been entrenched as a given and as a guide to the future by conventional wisdom when it’s neither.

One of the disadvantages of a pseudonym is that one can’t take demonstrate past successes, but I pretty much predicted the current line-up in the mid 90s or possibly as far back as 88 (can’t remember for sure). I don’t think this was a major achievement, it was pretty obvious. Obvious not that we’d have two elections this close, which I certainly didn’t predict, but the trend of which states the democrats were most likely to win.

Take a look at the states Dukakis won in 88. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Us_Presidential_Election
They’re the core of the current blue states, except for West Virginia. Most of the states Gore and Kerry have added are the ones Dukakis lost by small margins, such as Illinois and Pennsylvania, which largely reflect a national swing.

The other blue states of recent years have been places like Maine and Conneticut, which while Dukakis fell well short, have been trending Democrat for quite a while and it wasn’t too hard to project they’d favour them some time.

Basically since Nixon’s Southern strategy turned the south away from the Democrats other states have moved in the other direction for balance. You would expect the ones to do this to be the ones that have least in common with the south - New England and the North-West in particular, and that is what has happened. Add in Democrat-leaning demogrpahics moving into southern Florida and eastern Virginia and there are only a few outliers to a predictable pattern.

Most of the red states that Clinton won were a simple product of going further up the pendulum - score 6 and 9% more than your main opponents and you’re going to get some of their states - combined with him coming from Arkansas and picking up a home state advantage there and nearby.

That’s not to say the alignment can’t be broken. It will presumably pass as have so many before. However, I’d be surprised if it will break in one election.

Obama may win a lot of red states, but only if he’s pulling 54%+ of the national vote. Otherwise victory will be about holding onto most of the stats Gore and Kerry won and picking up a few where they weren’t far off.

Racially Obama may be African, but culturally he is Anglican ie a genteel Ivy league milquetoast, thats the sort of stuff that white people like in their black friends.

Actually, I think that’s his problem, because while his white friends might like it, Hillary’s don’t! With the lower income voters, he really needs to make sure economics trumps identity.

As to McCain, I thought this from the Guardian’s American editor was interesting:

In the face of it, you’d think McCain would be making moves to distance himself from Bush and his party. You’d also think that it wouldn’t be that difficult for McCain, of all candidates, to make such moves. After all, he came into this campaign with the reputation as the independent maverick. That was exactly the right profile for a Republican candidate to have in 2008.

Yet, with one or two fairly tepid exceptions, McCain isn’t doing that. In fact he’s done the opposite, embracing orthodox conservative positions that he’d once rejected on tax cuts, immigration, detainee policy, abortion rights and several other issues. So he’s been doing exactly the opposite of what he should have been doing.

The reason is simple enough: the constituencies that run the Republican party won’t brook much deviation from the party line. And precisely because of McCain’s heterodox past, these constituencies are suspicious of him and more inclined to demand from him public and grandiose commitments to orthodoxy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/30/johnmccain.barackobama

Here’s a (potentially dumb) question: do you personally give a lot of credence or weight to the Red/Blue thing as a genuine phenomenon or organizing principle that can really be observed in the world as a constant?

Not a lot, based on my reading of Hough, j_p_z.

His argument is also that the amount of value dissensus in the electorate doesn’t reflect the amount between the extremes among both parties’ activists. And he points to:

(a) A number of “red” states won by Clinton once or twice;

(b) The fact that as recently as the 1990s, the current pattern wouldn’t have been forseeable easily, but it’s been entrenched as a given and as a guide to the future by conventional wisdom when it’s neither.

Look at it this way. I don’t think there’s practically anybody who genuinely WANTS McCain to be president; insofar as he has any realistic support (kind of a big if really), it’s just among people who a) would prefer a GOP pres to a Dem anyway, and/or b) are just plain scared that Obama will turn out to be a crackpot, or else a guy who’s too inexperienced and arrogant and so really doesn’t know what he’s doing. Obama has for support his zany true believers, sane people who are just plain really sick of Bush, people who want free stuff from the government instead of wacky tax cuts, and (my pet theory) a lot of people who will just prefer to have a young, well-spoken, energetic president with a natural aura of authority, than a mumbley grouchy old man. Obama may be wrong about a whole slew of things, but he simply stands for the future in a way that McCain doesn’t and can’t.

So the swing I think will be not in specific policy issues (except insofar as they are seen or spun as crackpot policies), but just in how afraid you are (or aren’t) that Obama will turn out to be a crackpot. (And also, –seriously– the aesthetic issue of whether or not you will really be able to stomach four whole years of the ludicrous pro-BHO propaganda the MSM is continually drooling out; after 8 years of Bush I’d like an invisible president, not the most visible man in the country… [sorry, Ralph Ellison]) And even if it turns out he isn’t personally a crackpot, he’s still going to owe lots of favors to the real McCoy, and this alone is worrisome. That’ll be interesting, to see how he handles that.

So I think if Obama can in the next few months make himself seem like a genuinely, believably, non-crazy, non-hard-leftist, non-racial/racist partisan, and non-utter-neophyte (and that’s all somewhat of a big if), then he’ll win with a comfortable margin just on the strength of being young and charismatic and optimistic. (If his idea of trying to look more presidential really is stuff like re-designing the presidential seal, well, we’ve got a big worry on our hands.)

If he can’t strongly convince undecided people that he’s not a nut, it’ll be close, and he’ll either win or lose by a hair.

Of course, all the Dems really had to do this time around was find someone fairly smart and generally non-controversial whose name wasn’t George Bush, and they woulda won with no worries at all. But noooo! They have to do everything the hard way…

Whatever happens, and my bet at this stage would be a narrow win for Obama and a rather disappointing start in office, this will be an interesting election.

Its good to see Mark finally sticking his neck out to make a cautious prediction. But i’ve already beaten him to the punch and naturally I think I can one-up him by going out on a limb. In May 08 I predicted that “the GOP will lose the next US election by a landslide - whoever the DEM candidate is.” I stand by that.

This implies that Obama will win the 2008 election in a 53%+ majority, assuming no Nader spoiler. My prediction will be refuted if Obama loses outright or only makes a narrow victory. This may happen if the race card comes up trumps, which I doubt.

The identity of the DEM’s candidate is not that important. But I argue Obama’s identity, to the extent it is important, will be a net positive for him (contra-mumbles and pro-John Derbyshire). Racially Obama may be African, but culturally he is Anglican ie a genteel Ivy league milquetoast, thats the sort of stuff that white people like in their black friends.

Conversely, McCain is a poor candidate. His Bush me-too “invade the world-invite the world-indebted to the world” program will not mobilise the GOP base.

The “its the economy and military, stupid” peace and bread model of US politics is the best predictor of US presidential contests. The recession downturn in the business cycle is enough to finish off the GOP. Iraq and Afghan war-fatigue makes a GOP victory go from unlikely to impossible.

I argue those models underpredict voter dis-affection with the GOP. The populist majority regard Bush’s regressive policies as making a bad situation worse. And Bush’s gratuitous militarism (”bring ‘em on”) is neither forgotten nor fogiven.

Also, “its the incumbency, stupid” is critical. The electoral pendulum invariably swings back, no matter what. Hence Obama’s harping on the policy substance-less but stylish formality of “change” (Rudd was the same).

I argue the incumbency factor underpredicts voter fatigue with the GOP. The populist majority regard Halliburton-affiliated GOP as the party of corrupt rich people. Time to kick the bums out.

Looking beyond cyclical swings there are secular trends that favour the DEMs, although not necc Left-liberal DEMs. So far as the US fed polity is concerned, party-psephological trends have favoured the DEMS for most of the post-Cold War era.

Fundamentally this DEM-ward shift is driven by demographic change: increased diversity though more DEM-leaning colored minority households and reduced fertility of GOP-leaning white majority households.

The GOP can only beat this demographic trend by getting out the vote of its white, family-valuing, god-fearing, flag-waving majority base, based on cultural identity and national security issues. The Bush I presidency leaned heavily on the Culture War. The Bush II presidency leaned heavily on the Civilizational Clash. aint gonna happen this time.

This does not necc imply we are in for a Left-liberal policy-ideological change. Obama’s hands will be full cleaning up Bush’s many messes. There wont be much political capital in reserve for make-the-world-over social reformation programs.

Its time for a “change you can believe in” - but only if you are the credulous type.

What does this mean in plain English?

Obama must placate the Economist and the rest of the economic establishment, by reasuring the rich and powerful that it will be business as usual when it comes to paying the costs of restoring profits and profit share. We can all be sure of that.

The real question is, is his campaign, and the ‘promise’ of something better, capable of unleashing sufficient political and social mobilisation, to ‘permit’ him room to manoeuvre, once he is elected?

It has been a very long time since the powerful believed they had anything to fear from the debt burdened and overwhelmed working and middle classes in the US. It will take quite a bit of mobilisation to turn that around.

The Clintons, despite Hills’, brave impersonation of a well dressed ‘Norma Rae’ are simply more of the same. Democrat money is Entertainment industry advertising/marketing, and the ‘new technology’ financing industry. The repugs are more traditional. Oil (energy) and real estate in the South and South West. There is not a skerrick between them in reality. But hopes and expectations can move mountains when poeple are sufficiently aroused. Sometimes. it will be interesting to see if this one of those times.

Via Possum, the Obama campaign strategy. On the upside, Obama is skipping the Blue State strategy, trying to expand everywhere, and relying on Democrat turnout (and lack of the same from the Republicans). On the downside, there are no issues mentioned whatsoever in the document - no economic populism, no liberalism, nothing to distinguish himself from McCain, nada. That is a worry!

I hope Obama has some “Textor-Crosby” analysis lying somewhere, and it is yet to be leaked.