MS-1: Will Nationalizing Obama Work?
by Patrick Ruffini :: May 11th, 2008 10:48 pmAnother too-close-for-comfort special election looms on Tuesday, with Republican Greg Davis in a dogfight with Democrat Travis Childers in MS-1, a Bush 62%, Cook PVI R+10 seat. Childers nearly won an outright majority in first round balloting two weeks ago.
Once again, the strategy of tying Obama to a Democratic Congressional candidate is being tested aggressively, with Childers stirring the pot after denying Obama had endorsed him (when he in fact had).
This was what the NRCC put on the air in LA-6, our last special election defeat:
It’s no wonder Woody Jenkins came up short. This is a conventional cookie cutter ad that could have been run in any of the other 434 districts in any election this past decade. The NRCC claims some credit for tightening the race from the 5-9 point lead Don Cazayoux had a week or so out to three points, but at the House level and with the additional variable of a conservative independent on the ballot, that spread is not too convincing. Obama/taxes was ALL the NRCC ran in LA-6.
The NRCC’s IE unit is doing better work in MS-1, targeting its ads squarely against Childers:
Still, the Obama message is being heard in a big way, with Freedom’s Watch dumping at least $500,000 into anti-Obama spots like this one.
I have to ask: Is this it? Is this the best we can do? Demonizing Nancy Pelosi has worked nowhere because of the Speaker’s milquetoast public persona. Absent some scandal or hugely controversial statement, it’s difficult to nationalize a local race around a party leader. In the wake of Rev. Wright and “bitter,” some are betting Obama can be this lightning rod.
He may well be, but these special elections are the wrong places to test the theory. Special elections are low-turnout affairs dominated by high information voters likely to know a lot about local issues. These are the voters least likely to be swayed by a boilerplate nationalization of the race. This is part of why specials can often diverge so wildly from the partisan trend in a district despite the local majority party’s best efforts. In special elections more than most elections, candidates rise and fall on their own merits.
In the general election, with an extremely high noise level surrounding the Presidential race and Congressional elections an afterthought, Republicans might have better luck with tying red state Democrats to Obama. In November, a smaller percentage of the electorate will be making an independent decision about a local Congressional candidate. For many, their Presidential vote will influence their votes down ballot. This is why we seldom see huge partisan swings at the Congressional level in Presidential election years. Expanding the universe of low-information partisans voting tends to dampen the partisan mood swings we see in midterms. In Presidential election years, districts more easily revert to their partisan norms, normally a good thing in places like LA-6 and MS-1.
Still, we have to do better than the ads Republicans have run in these spring specials, which are so conventional they’ll automatically get tuned out and have zero persuasive impact whatsoever.
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Why are we running an ad in the deepest of the deep south aimed at seniors using a narrator who sounds like she’s 30 and grew up in MI?
Clinton takes Indiana by a ‘razor’ and Obama wins North Carolina by a huge margin. Nevertheless, Kentucky, Montana and West Virginia are still to come.
The Democratic race for nomination is still very much alive – and most likely to be decided by superdelegates
If you’re tired of waiting around for those super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them to support Clinton or Obama
If you haven’t done so yet, please write a message to each of your state’s superdelegates at http://www.lobbydelegates.com
Obama Supporters:
Sending a note to current Obama supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Clinton supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Obama, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Obama. It’s that easy…
Clinton Supporters too …. !
It takes a moment, but what’s a few minutes now worth to get Clinton in office?! Those are really worth !
Sending a note to current Clinton supporters lets them know it’s appreciated, sending a note to current Obama supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Clinton, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Clinton. It’s that easy…
Whether Childers wins or loses, the Republicans have already lost that seat by having to spend so much effort to defend it. By the way, have you noticed that McCain continues to lose ground to Obama in opinion polling, in spite of all the negative publicity about his minister?
And then there is Ron Paul, who is reported to be getting ready to stage some sort of floor revolt at the Minneapolis convention. He got 16% of the vote in Pennsylvania when no one was looking.
If you guys play your cards right, McBush could be the second Arizona politican to lead the Republican Party straight off an electoral cliff. See you in November, chumps!
This just in from Rasmussen: Democrats trusted more than Republicans on 10 of 10 issues, including national security and terrorism. Kids, do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you this year?!
AS a republican I love your strong support of Obama. It will do my party a great service to unite considering that McCain is soft to most true conservatives. Obama has made many mistakes in judgement his stated reason that qualifies him to be elected as President Of The United States. He points out racial slurs that her camp has made while sending out press releases that have sexiest remarks in them. An example of one was mentioned last night on CNN soon after the polls closed. In his press statement he acknowledged that she has done well in this race for a woman. Add it all up his remarks, world views, associations, lobbiests that worked for his political organization and things like his pro Hamas ties. You did not know of them? read what the Arab world has known for years.
A television news segment produced by Al-Jazeera shows Palestinians in Gaza engaging in phone banking activities for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The segment explains how young Palestinians have banded together to call American voters at random asking them to vote for Obama.
“It all started at the time of the US primaries,” says one of pro-Obama Palestinian organizers. “After studying Obama’s electro campaign manifesto I thought this is a man that’s capable of change inside of America. As for potential change in the Middle East, he can also do that if he can bring peace to the area. At least this is what we hope.”
The video by American Spectator’s Phillip Klein, who wrote Tuesday “It’s been around, but I’m just now seeing this Al Jazeera report of Palestinians in Gaza phonebanking for Obama. I hear that Hamas, which has endorsed Obama, has a bit of influence in those parts.”
Ahmed Yousef, a political adviser of the anti-Israel terrorist group Hamas said Hamas supports Obama last Sunday.
“We don’t mind–actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance,” Yousef said in an interview on WABC radio.
In recent days, Obama’s position on the Isreali-Palestinian conflict has been scrutinized. One of his Middle East advisers, Robert Malley, resigned over the weekend after reporters found Malley had met with Hamas.
Just came across this website which is providing CMS based Free Campaign websites for Contesting Candidates
http://www.ezcampaigns.com/free-campaigns-sites.html
“LobbyDelegtes.com is a great tool, I have contacted all my State Delegates for free through email, I have come accross another tool from the same company www.statedemocracy.org its also free and I can contact my lawmakers, apply for an absentee ballot & voter registration and on election day I can locate my polling places. Great tool…. use it”
You ask if the this is the best that the Republicans can do? Well, when you have a party that threw away all of its crediblity for short term pork programs and personal entitlements, then, yes, that is the best that the Republicans can do.
The Bush Administration has made sure that there are no issues that a Republican can run on. What is a Republican suppose to run on? Good Government? Balanced budgets? Less regulation? Better Schools? Less Corruption? Immigration Control?
Until everyone who ever worked in the Bush Administration is out of politics and everyone who enable the stupidity of the Hastert/Frist run Congress is gone, the Republicans have nothing to run on?