Wisconsin Primary Musings Posted by Michael Cohen

A couple of post-primary thoughts.

BEATEN LIKE A RENTED MULE
Here is the most striking statistic of the night - John McCain beat Mike Huckabee in Wisconsin by practically the same margin that Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton. Now, does anyone think that Mike Huckabee still has a chance of winning the GOP nomination?

Even more to the point, since Super Tuesday, Mike Huckabee has actually won a few caucuses and primaries. Hillary Clinton has lost 9 straight primaries and caucuses and tonight was Obama's smallest margin of victory since Super Tuesday - 17% at last count. That's a shellacking.

DOES OBAMA HAVE TEFLON
I'm really starting to wonder if Obama is the Ronald Reagan of the 2008 race for the White House. In tonight's exit poll, 54% of voters said they thought Clinton attacked Obama unfairly. The silly plagiarism hiccup, notwithstanding, Hillary's most significant attacks were on the issue of debates and Obama's health care plan. Those hits hardly qualified as "unfair." Maybe these types of broadsides just don't stick to Obama. But here's the bigger question, if people thought these attacks were unfair imagine what would happen if Hillary started talking about Rezko with more fervor. If you can figure out how she reverses this tidal wave I'm all ears.

WORST. SPEECHGIVER. EVER
I watched a bit of John McCain's speech and I had two thoughts. Clearly the GOP is going to spend the next few months trying to define Barack Obama as an empty suit and McCain gave a preview of that attack line tonight. Now it's probably a smart approach because inexperience does seem to be Obama's greatest liability, but someone should ask the Clinton campaign how playing the experience card worked for them.

But here's the other thing on McCain - he is an awful speechgiver. He's not just bad, he's terrible. Honestly, there is no enthusiasm or excitement in his remarks. It sort of reminds me of seeing a high school commencement speech. It just leaves you incredibly flat. I know I'm a former speechwriter so I'm a little biased, but this is going to be a problem down the road.

It's not just that his speeches are badly delivered - they're also bad speeches. They're uninspiring; they sound cut and paste together; instead of using short, compact language they are full of run-on sentences and non sequiters; they lack a coherent narrative thread, they are inscrutable and most of all they are real downers. There is just no lift here - in McCain's world there are bad guys around every corner. It's so 2004! And for a guy who complains about Obama not being specific enough, they are stunningly platitudinous. He talks about health care, education and the economy but doesn't offer a single insight into how he would fix it.

There was an actually line in McCain's speech tonight where he said "we live in a world of change." Ugh!

STRANGEST EXIT POLL RESPONSE OF THE NIGHT
In one of their exit poll questions, CNN asked voters if they'd be satisfied if the other candidate was the party nominee. Nine percent of Democratic voters said they would be somewhat dissatisfied if Obama was the nominee - of those voters, 7% voted for Obama. Eight percent said they would be very dissatisfied and 5% of them voted for Obama anyway. Does that make any sense at all?

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

In one of their exit poll questions, CNN asked voters if they'd be satisfied if the other candidate was the party nominee. Nine percent of Democratic voters said they would be somewhat dissatisfied if Obama was the nominee - of those voters, 7% voted for Obama. Eight percent said they would be very dissatisfied and 5% of them voted for Obama anyway. Does that make any sense at all?

I'm guessing that these people are deeply disgruntled left progressives who are already very dissatisfied with both of the two viable candidates, but know that there is no realistic option but to vote for one of them. They believe that Obama is the better of the two, but are going to be very dissatisfied when he is the nominee.

[Mike M.]

I'll bet Dan Kervick has the right answer here. But I'll suggest another... people like to vote for the winner. Are those voters who went for Obama but don't really like him an example of... Obama's growing inevitability?

[shimmy]

Maybe those paradoxical-seeming slivers of the percentages represent Republicans crossing over with plans of sabotage-voting. Some of them throw stinkers at BHO, some at HRC. (Are those in fact open primaries?)

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