Nope. At this point in the campaign, Kerry was definitely losing to Bush. Hell, he was losing to Gerphardt and Dean.
And Kerry only briefly got ahead of Bush in the polls. Here is a graph from RCP on the 2004 election.
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Donât do it Joe, go home and enjoy the rest of your life. Youâve given enough of it to your country already.
Am I really going to have to point to D primary polling from around this time in 2007? That would just be mean, given who was enjoying a solid lead at the time.
Donât get me wrong. This email âscandalâ is complete horse__t, like every âscandalâ manufactured against Obama since he came onto the scene. That said, I wouldnât be so confident in such early polling.
Feel free to. The polling in 2007/08 wasnât wrong. Obama didnât suddenly jump out and beat Hillary out of nowhere. The polling instead shows a steady increase in his support; he was definitely within striking distance by Iowa, if not actually neck and neck.
Polling isnât about reading the future. Its about reading the now. Thatâs why my only interest in polls about Clinton vs. anyGOPer are to gauge where the electorate is right now. Not because I think its a magic crystal ball that is saying how people will feel and vote in 15 months. The fact that she is beating them all while the GOP is getting the lionâs share of the coverage, and the coverage of Hillary has been nearly universally negative, actually does tell us something about where voters are at right now.
And they arenât perfect. If you want an example of polling getting something terribly wrong, use 2014 as your example. Nobody was even remotely close in the size of the republican wins. But they are a whole lot better than asking beltway pundits what their guts feel, or counting heads at a rally.
and @feathered_head,
Both Biden and Clinton face a major historical hurdle in this election. Since the end of the Civil War, only two people who have run for President and lost have gone on to run again and won- Grover Cleveland and Richard Nixon. This is probably because each run for President creates a certain amount of baggage.
With regards to Sanders, Iâm not sure the charisma is as important as the message at this point. Clinton has very little charisma as well, and if we wanted the most charismatic candidate, I would probably say that is Martin OâMalley, but then again, the subject of charisma is a little hard for me to understand. I donât really know a lot about what makes someone charismatic and when it comes to men, I have about as much clue with regards to charisma as I do how to put together a car. Actually, I probably know more about auto mechanics than I do about males.
I suspect that the Dems biggest asset is going to be just how loathsome the GOP is by the end of their nomination process.
Thatâs incorrect. First off, neither Biden nor Clinton has ever been the nominee in a General Election for President. They have both run for that nomination, yes, but there are plenty of people who have run for the nomination, lost, and gone on to become President. George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan as two names that quickly come to mind.
Then I stand corrected, but it is still a daunting task to run and run again and win.
Yes it is. All the more reason to be at least a little impressed that Hillary is not only doing it, she is doing it and winning despite nearly universal negative media coverage.
I am impressed by her ability to campaign, but I really do not like some of her ideas. The second she started talking about âtax creditsâ, she really dropped in my estimate because that is not a solution to the problems we have as a nation. What one quarter of the Republicans and one third of the Democrats want is real reform and an end to a lot of the horrible practices of the last thirty years, and unfortunately, Clinton has been pushing some of those bad ideas without really thinking about them. Iâve learned over the years that the whole electibility and inevitability narratives never work and are kind of worthless in choosing a candidate.
I assume you mean tax credits to companies that engage in profit sharing with their employees? How is that a bad idea? Its trying to find a way to incentivize companies to share their success with the people actually doing the work.
I donât know what people mean when they use vague terms like âreal reform and an end to a lot of the horrible practices of the last thirty yearsâ. We are in campaign season, its alright, even encouraged, to speak of actual issues. Unless you are taking a nihilistic attitude to just burn down everything.
Hillary has been putting out quite a few propositions. They arenât getting much coverage because speculating about Gore or Biden getting into the race is sexier to horse race journalists, and speculating about email nonscandals is sexier for rest of the media.
SighâŚI had a good explanation, but let us be honest here. Weâre not really going to agree, and weâre going to go around a lot. So, I suspect that it may be time to agree to disagree and both of us enjoy our days 