It's Our City is a project that uses TV, Radio and Web
to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.Pennsylvania is Obama Territory
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 3:12 pm - by Tom Ferrick. Filed under: Politics.
It looks like Barack Obama has closed the deal with Pennsylvania voters.
The latest Franklin and Marshall poll out today confirms it.
The Democrat holds a 12 point lead over Republican rival John McCain going into the final days of the campaign.
I doubt Obama will win by 12 points on Tuesday, but it looks like he will win Pennsylvania and its 21 electoral votes in a walk. We are talking a statewide margin of 500,000 votes.
Public opinion polls are snapshots of voters thinking, so it’s best not to focus too much on the point spread. It can, does and will change. Better to look at the trends from poll to poll, which will show you where the electorate is headed.
The F&M poll, done by Terry Madonna, shows all those trend lines pointing to Obama.
In almost every category and among almost every voter bloc, the Democrat is doing better today than in the F&M polls in August and September.
Where is the base of his support? Let me quote the poll:
“Obama holds a sizable lead among younger residents, non-whites, college graduates, women, and residents of Philadelphia and Allegheny County.”
“McCain has an advantage among Protestants, fundamentalist Christians,
and residents of Southwestern Pennsylvania.”
This list of Obama backers is problematic for McCain and running mate Sarah Palin. Despite all the time and money they have spent in the state, the Republican ticket is not getting traction. Why? To quote James Carville, it’s the economy, stupid.
Pennsylvanians are rightly worried about the economy. The majority believe McCain is too much like President Bush on this issue. By a margin of 52%-37%, they believe Obama can do a better job fixing it.
The passage of time - and a careful, post-convention re-crafting of his image - have convinced Pennsylvanians that Obama has the common touch. In the spring, he lost out to Hillary Clinton on that issue. She was seen as the champion of the little guy and went on to win the Pennsylvania primary.
In the latest F&M poll, when asked which candidate understands the concerns of ordinary Americans, 62 percent named Obama, compared to 37 percent for McCain..
If I were in the McCain campaign, I would be worried about two ominous sets of numbers in this latest poll.
One shows Obama favored among voters in the Philadelphia suburbs by a margin of 58%-37%. If that holds, it means he will win the suburbs by a margin of 200,000 votes. To compare, John Kerry won the ‘burbs by 82,000 votes in 2004.
Even worse, the Madonna poll shows Obama ahead in Central Pennsylvania by 46% to 44% for McCain. Don’t put too much stock in that spread. On Tuesday, McCain will win in Central Pa. - it is, after all, the Republican heartland.
His problem is that he needs to win this area by 60 percent or better if he is to have any chance of winning the state. President Bush got 64% in that area in 2004. It looks like that margin is out of reach for John McCain this year.
It looks like Pennsylvania is out of reach for McCain, too.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
War Economy and Change to Distrust
During the primary months, the Iraq War appeared to be potentially the top issue for the 2008 election. Since then, the 1992 campaign slogan: It’s the Economy Stupid has gained ground. More narrowly we have the housing crisis, by Presidential decree the root cause of the financial crisis. The more likely the root causes of both of these crises are Greenspan’s unsustainably low interest rates and the unbridled, unregulated competition by lenders and their financiers.
With regard to the “Terror War”, it is actually two wars, but not Iraq and Afghanistan touted by the presidential campaign candidates. The first war, declared, was Al Qaeda’s War on America; with it central goal to “bleed America to bankruptcy” and the second is America’s “War on Terror”, with Iraq proclaimed by Bush and Cheney to be its central front. Aside from aforementioned unbridled/unregulated competition, our most pressing economic woes are traceable not to the acts of 9/11 but to Cheney/Bush response to the acts of 9/11 and resulting unorthodox War Economy. The “War on Terror” and the Bush tax-cuts have been financed by foreign borrowings primarily by China and OPEC. This fiscal irresponsibility is the primary driver toward Al Qaeda’s central goal and amounts to trading certain economic insecurity for questionable homeland security.
A no-new-tax style War Economy and an overly accommodating fiscal policy have resulted in huge budget and trade deficits. These deficits have accumulated into an unsustainable national debt and an unsustainable balance of payments deficit, which when combined with an overly accommodating monetary policy unleashes “Weapons of Economic Destruction”. The high oil/gas prices, a high tolerance for China’s protectionist currency manipulation and the housing/financial crises are early effects of the resulting destruction and any reversal requires changing the unorthodox War Economy.
The changes necessary to reverse the effects of the ill-conceived 2003-2008 War Economy are unlikely to come from the no-new-tax advocates, who provide President Bush’s current 25% favorable rating. These approvers make-up more than half of Senator McCain’s current support. Unless Senator McCain flip-flops and throws the Bush/Cheney base under the proverbial political bus, promise of change by Senator McCain to address the root causes of economic woes is: Change to Distrust.