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I've strongly felt for most of the last year and a half that we're going to lose the White House this election, but gain some seats in congress. I haven't changed my mind now either (even though I'm an Obama supporter), though I have changed why I felt that way overtime.
Reasons why I think we're going to lose.
1) I'm sorry to say it, but there's just too much arrogance and overconfidence in our party this year, there has been since our 06' victories. So many people I've seen saying "there's no way we'll lose no matter who we run" over the last 18 months. Pride often leads people to a downfall, when they get too overconfident they've got something in the bag and let their guard down. We have let our guard down with all of the stuff said in the primaries that the republicans can use against us.
2) Parties that have a long drawn out primary fight like ours rarely win the general election. This primary battle has inflicted wounds on Obama and Hillary's images. Worse yet, a few of the ads Hillary aired (like the one with Osama in it) will allow the republicans to air similar things, and when we complain they can say "well Hillary did something just like it, and half of you were perfectly fine with that".
3) I've sadly come to the conclusion studying the electoral maps and past elections, and trends, that the electoral college is very heavily biased against us. The republicans have more very safe states then we do, and despite the republicans losses in congressional races, not much has changed on the electoral college map with each candidate (although each has a stronger grip on some swing states of each party, and weaker grips on other swing states).
4) Michigan and Florida democrats who didn't stand up to the republicans and stop them from moving their primaries up early. It's committing general election suicide to move the largest swing state in the nation (Florida), as well as a moderately strong democrat state worth a lot of electoral votes (Michigan) up early enough in the primaries in violation of party rules when they know that democrats will be stripped of all their delegates, while republicans will lose only half of them. Gee, half delegates gone, or all delegates gone, makes it really obvious who they would be pissed off more at over losing delegates.
5) The media is on McCain's side, he's the guy who can do no wrong to them, and when he does do wrong then the media will ignore it, or tone it down a lot. Clinton meanwhile, her and her supporters have been complaining that the media is biased against her (for good reason). The media is biased against Obama to with how they had the one sided reporting of the Wright scandal on old sermons. I read one article commenting on Wright going on that show (I forget where) for an interview after it died down initially, and it said that Wright came off as a very reasonable man throughout the whole interview, so what did cable news media do after talking about the promo of the interview reviving talk of the scandal, they ignored the interview itself, and never commented on how it's content would effect Obama. Do you see the media making controversy out of radical pastors McCain has sought endorsements from, of course not, because they love McCain. I saw a video of one such pastor, who was basically a racist condemning all Muslims, including innocent American ones. (I forget exactly how he said it, he may have associated Hamas with them all)
6) With the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding voter ID laws it's going to hurt us, at least one swing state, Missouri, is seeking to get even tougher voting laws passed before the November election (in the form of a state constitutional amendment, because that pesky state supreme court overturned the last voter ID law). This new voter ID law being proposed there that voters would vote on during the governor's primary in August would force voters to have proof of citizenship to stop illegal immigrants from voting (and unfortunately you know how immigrant hating can get people to jump on that side of an issue). It's a blatant attempt to make sure that Missouri stays in the GOP's hands in November.
7) Unfortunately, one thing I feel strongly about from the last presidential election, is that we just plain suck in comparison to the GOP at negative attack ads. I could have thought of half a dozen 100% true and very damaging attacks on Bush myself, but almost all of our attacks on Bush just felt so weak to me. I don't have much hope that we'll be any better at such attacks against McCain either. I mean come on, which sounds worse to you, "Candidate A has sucked up to Bush for 8 years and would be Bush's 3rd term" or "Candidate A has been endorsed by a terrorist organization, he's a threat to our security with his cut and run strategy" (what McCain basically said about Obama recently, even though it was just one person in Hamas who said they liked Obama).
8) In 2004 John Kerry's campaign was flat broke after he secured the nomination, so what did the GOP do, they quickly threw up negative attack ads labeling Kerry a flip flopper, etc, while he had no way to defend himself. What did we do when John McCain won the nomination and was flat broke? Absolutely nothing except throw more mud at each other. We've lost a golden opportunity, and it's too late to launch such an attack against him when he's broke now, because he's not broke anymore, and he probably won't be again.
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