Crowd sizes don’t necessarily translate into votes, the press should now that by now:
After a few days on the Huckabee campaign bus recently, we walked into a Hillary Clinton event outside Cleveland last night. What a difference the possibilty of winning versus the likelyhood of losing makes. The Clinton event is in a packed gym with a gospel choir and a marching band. I don’t think the cumulative audience at Huckabee’s four events in Wisconsin matches the size of this one Clinton event. The Huckabee campaign just rented a sound system and played a few CDs…so few the songs repeated a few times.
Here, they just announced a crowd of 2,500, with some 800 more watching a live feed in an overflow room. Yes, McCain draws much bigger crowds than Huckabee. We were with him in Florida and elsewhere. One of Romney’s largest crowds was one of his last in Long Beach, Calif. That was smaller than this.
Hmmm…where have I heard that before? Oh, yes:
By 9 a.m. on Friday, throngs of John F. Kerry supporters clogged the city center, blocking the garage where Julie Edwards parks for work. So rather than fight the crowd, the 41-year-old Republican joined it.
Four hours later, as the Democratic nominee was wrapping up his stump speech, Edwards finally made it through security. As she trudged toward the stage, it was not the candidate who amazed her but the massive crowd that turned out for him, even as President Bush was speaking just outside town.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, surveying the more than 40,000 audience members. “This is going to make a real statement, a swing state turning out [for Kerry] like this, especially with Bush in town. I worry for Bush.”
BTW, this is just observational, I’m not implying that President Obama won’t trounce McCain in November 
I’m just saying that crowds aren’t necessarily filled with voters.
BTW, you may notice that I’ve decided to embrace the inevitability of Obamania and accept his future victory on election day. Whether I believe it or not really doesn’t matter because everyone else does.
posted February 17, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Obama will probably not trounce McCain. He may win but it will be close if he does for the simple reason that the electoral vote map will not change until 2012, after the next census, so each state still has the same number of votes it had in 2004.
Obama has to increase the number of blue states without losing any blue ones from 2004 and I don’t see how he can do much of that against McCain.
And remember, the Republicans have an ace in the pocket. Obama’s own supporters who may unwittingly turn this into a racial election, in which case he gets buried.
posted February 17, 2008 at 6:43 pm
I AM A DEMOCRAT FROM DETROIT, MI, FORMERLY A PRECIENT DELEGATE. WHOMEVER WINS MY PARTYS NOMINATION (BETWEEN CLINTON VS. OBAMA)AND WINS WILL BRING A BREATHE OF FRESH AIR OVER ARE PRESENT ADMINISTRATION. BOTH CANIDATES ARE POLITICALLY EQUIPTED TO TURN THIS COUNTRY AROUND AND BRING AMERICA BACK INTO THE GOOD GRACES OF SOME OF THE COUMTRIES WHO HAVE LOST FAITH IN US.
posted February 17, 2008 at 6:54 pm
What, Charles? That’s heresy and you know it! He’s sure to win in the south because of all the black votes and he’s going to bring in all the young people and haven’t seen the primary totals. The Republicans are getting buried.
Rev Barbara, I’m glad to see that you’ve put your faith in something solid like the Democrats being able to united the rest of the world behind us once again. Though, didn’t Obama say that he would invade an ally? And didn’t Putin just diss Hillary recently? But don’t let that shake your faith in the Democrats.
posted February 17, 2008 at 7:21 pm
*sigh* It must suck having a candidate like McCain at the head of your party right now. Yes, Obama is a light-weight, thin on policy specifics, and still coming up to speed on some very important foreign policy situations. And he has skeletons in his closet with regards to abortion, taxes, and his connections with Illinois Democrats.
Even conceding that, the polling data still shows that McCain is behind Obama in all recent polls save the NPR poll.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
What is McCain going to do in the next 8 months to turn that around. Michele? He has problems with his own party’s base, is getting hammered by right-wing talk radio, and has waffled more than John Kerry on taxes, the war, abortion, gay rights, and dozens of other issues.
The GOP looks to be losing the south for the first time in over 20 years. Throughout the primaries to date, McCain did best in states blue states, poorer in red states. That does not bode well for him in the general election.
Yes, there’s a lot of daylight between here and election day. And as we have seen, McCain is real good at resurrecting a campaign from its death bed.
But every slam that you used against Obama so far could have been used against Dubya and Bubba, yet they won their elections. Heck, the last President that we had that wasn’t a light-weight policy and experience wise was Bush Senior, and look what that got us.
Hitting Obama as a light weight isn’t going to work. Neither is beating him with that abortion vote back in Illinois. For McCain to win this fall he has to do something to advance himself, not just tear down Obama.
What can McCain do to advance himself and his policies, Michele?
By the way…what policies has McCain articulated so far?
posted February 17, 2008 at 8:48 pm
“It must suck having a candidate like McCain at the head of your party right now.”
Actually it’s kind of liberating. It would be worse (much worse) if my candidate was Obama or Clinton, so I guess I should be thankful
You forgot to mention the whole gun thing. That should play well in the south.
Bush supported infanticide? Bush ran on a tax and spend ticket? Bush voted to ban the manufacture of guns? I don’t remember any of that.
I’m not a McCain supporter, so I could care less what policies he’s running on (though, I’ll blog about them). I just plan to vote for the guy in November. He wasn’t my candidate of choice, in fact I wanted anyone but him but anyone but him doesn’t include a Democrat. Now, I’m sure you’ll find some poor McCain supporter out there hidden somewhere in the blogosphere who will play “my candidate is better than your candidate” with you. But I won’t be doing it. I’ve already conceded defeat and I’m just waiting for the coronation. What more do you want more from me? A pound of flesh? How about this? hehehehe