It's becoming obvious that Obama whiffed on Rev. Goof.

If TNR's Harvard profs and other Cambridge-based Obamaphiles would bother to drive over to Southie or Dorchester or maybe out to Worcester and spend a few hours knocking back beers with the locals, they'd understand how badly Obama botched this issue. (Hint: these guys don't read Faulkner.)

Am I the only one who doesn't buy this for a second?

"And a Scots-Irish war veteran as the Republican nominee complicates predictions about whom Kennedy Country will support come November."

Scots-Irish? Wouldn't the average Irish Bay-Stater be LESS, not more likely to vote for a son of the Orange Cross?  

So a state in which Obama leads McCain shows Obama's weaknesses relative to Hillary, despite the many other states in which Obama also leads McCain but McCain leads Hillary? You can use polls released in the last two weeks to make a reasonable case for a McCain landslide against Hillary and for a solid-but-not-landslide Obama victory over McCain. Recent polling data does not allow one to make a reasonable case for the reverse of these scenarios.

Theories as to why Kirchick hasn't drunk the Obama kool-aid like the rest of his colleagues:

1. He sees it as a chance finally to distinguish himself from Marty in the eyes of his colleagues.

2. He's not old enough to remember Hillary kissing Arafat's wife, nor her support of the disastrous Camp David talks in 2000.

3. He's actually for McCain, and like any rational American, he understands that the likeliest road to a McCain presidency runs through a Hillary nomination.

If Obama is the nominee, the Dems can kiss goodbye to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey.

"If Obama is the nominee, the Dems can kiss goodbye to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey."

And if Clinton is the nominee, the Dems can try that triple bank-shot thing again.

Rhubarbs,

Per GOP-watcher Jonathan Martin's reporting at Politico.com, more and more GOP operatives are concluding that Obama, post-Wright, is an easier target than Hillary.

Well his national polls are holding up, which are far more important than individual states. Regardless, let's see what the polls are like a month or two; any polling now is just catching the news cycle. I happen to think he's in deeper trouble than he even knows but there's no need to throw Bobby Kennedy's unicorn out of the plane just yet. Unless of course Favour Flav endorses him on one of those criminal youtube songs.  

Go, more and more GOP operatives!!

Don't stand in their way.

pccostello, some sort of evidence to back up those claims would be nice.

Clinton has real advantages over Obama in FL and NJ, and possibly OH.

PA and MI are tossups in either case, and polls to date haven't shown either candidate consistently outperforming the other against McCain.

Saying that the Dems can "kiss goodbye to" those states is a huge exaggeration.

Meanwhile, Obama has consistently been polling better than Clinton in Wisconsin, Colorado, Virgina, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Iowa.  If you're counting, that's 81 electoral votes, 13 more than what's at stake in PA, OH, and FL.

www.fivethirtyeight.com

has some very good analysis and a convenient table of all the recent general election polling.

I like McCain.  He is my choice in this election.  

There is no chance McCain wins Massachusetts.  It's hard to say whether picking Romney as VP will improve or worsen that no chance.  

This post is wishful thinking. Kerry got over 60% there.  With Nader on the ballot, Gore almost broke 60%.  Clinton broke 60% against Dole, and beat Bush by 18 points in 1992.  Poor Dukakis won it by 8.  Reagan, in the landslide year of 1984, only beat Mondale by 3 - having won the state four years earlier by less than a fifth of a percent.  Before that, no Republican won the state since Eisenhower.  McCain is not Reagan;  neither Hillary nor Obama are Mondale or Carter.   This is a state that Mitt Romney won by only a tiny bit in a year that was very good for Republicans.

Even without that analysis, McCain seven points down to Obama during a high-water mark for McCain and a low-water mark for Obama does not give an even chance for Massachusetts going to the GOP.  

Massachusetts will be safely in the Democrats' column in 2008.

OTOH, polls do show Obama tied or losing in Massachusetts in a hypothetical contest with McCain.  Hmmmm.

No.  Nope.  Still not buying it.  

And no one understands southie better than Yale bubbled Jamie Kirchick, right?  

Also, most Scots-Irish showed up THREE HUNDRED years ago.  We sure are a real ethnic constituency, right?  Who can forget Boston's historic Scots-Irish Quarter, San Francisco's Scot-Irelandtown, and New York's Little Scot-Ireland?  

Finally, Scots-Irish doesn't equal Irish.  Scots-Irish were Ulster Scots who came over in the 18th Century, Irish were mostly not from Ulster and came in the 19th.  Looking at Ireland, I'd guess the Irish would, if anything, NOT like Scots-Irish candidates.  

I am a Mass. native and life-long resident who has been involved in politics since I was twelve, nearly fifty years ago. I was a registered lobbiest(non-profit) at the state house and a senior manager for Dem and Rep. governors. I happen to live in one of only six towns out of 350+ cities and towns in the state that voted for Bush: Let me assure you that this state is going to go for whoever the Dem nominee is. Perhaps if the nation came under nuclear attack or the Messiah comes, but short of that, Massachusetts is not going Red.

(Further in terms of my qualifications on these matters:One of my aunt's gave me a subscription to The New Republic for my bar mitzvah and I have been a reader, particularly in the year or two before a national election, ever since.)

Clearly Mr. Kirchik woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or forgot to take his meds last night to make such a fantastically provocative assertion.  There is also a nasty undertone that really doesn't belong on these pages. Perhaps a career move over to National Review would make more sense. Isn't the idiot-savant Jonah Goldberg a fixture there?

There is absolutely not an "even" chance that Massachusetts will go red if it's Obama vs. McCain.  For one thing, this poll still has Obama up by seven points (well outside the margin of error).  Second, even if it's accurate, it's hardly representative, and it doesn't make much sense to pick the one poll that has the most extreme result and cite it as evidence of a significant trend. And Obama just had a terrible week.

Obviously there's *some* chance that McCain might win Mass.  There could be some disaster in September and the race could turn into a romp.  But the only way McCain will beat Obama in the Bay State is in the course of an overwhelming nation-wide victory -- one in which he wins every state except Illinois, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and maybe New York. (Massachusetts' status as the ultimate blue state is a somewhat exaggerated -- three of its five neighbors are arguably just as blue.) In other words, if McCain wins Mass., that will be the very least of Obama's problems, and we'll all know it's going to be a blowout before anyone casts a ballot.

There's some truth to what you say Crock, but I think Irish Americans - especially in this peace now nirvana - are more likely to pull the lever for Cllnton out of some debts being called in. For all the bad coverage - Clinton's managed to get NI on the table, which reminds people.

I see Mr Goldberg hasn't been on TNRtv since his literary public streaking of a book. Get that man a duffle coat.

Jeez- we're talking about a candidate who has universal name recognition as a Dem (Clinton) and another who has universal name recognition as a GOP maverick (McCain). No one is campaigning for the general yet. And we simply are not factoring in the effect of the nomination and (one hopes) the support of the losing Dem contender.

Either dem will win in a romp (40+ states). The economy is in the tank, people vote their pocket books and hate the war as well. Most voters blame Bush war and economic policies for our economic problems, and McCain has no plan to make any changes

Neither Dem will win at all, let alone in a romp.  First of all, Obama utterly failed in his handling of the Wright debacle.  People will look right through his hollow eloquence and see a man who supported the ministry of a crackpot.  Massachusetts, a thoroughly racist state (Southie may as well be Vidor, TX), will not vote for Obama, especially in light of his trouncing in the primary and his narrow lead over McCain which will be easily overcome.  If Obama wins the nomination, McCain will pound him on inexperience and the Wright mess, and the Obama camp will flounder and inflict more damage on itself in other, unanticipated ways (think Power, think Goolsbee) and his campaign will fail.  Also, if Hillary gets the nomination, come November the country will demonstrate that it cannot stomach another Clinton White House, anti-Hillary Republicans will mobilize and McCain would win in a landslide.

For the third straight presidential election, the Democratic party will fail to win the White House, due largely to poor organization and poor strategy.  The response to Michigan and Florida's impudence in scheduling their primaries, which is creating uncertainty in who will win at the worst possible time, is reason enough to can Howard Dean.  

I wonder if there's a "Thinking Man's Plank" feature available, that would allow interested readers to enjoy a blog free of posts from James Kirchick, and free of commentary from teplukhin2you and pccostello.  

As a side note, I live in Southie, and I have a better chance of sprouting wings and flying than Southie does of going Republican in November.  Anybody who states otherwise is either ignorant or has an agenda.  Or, perhaps in the case of teplukhin2you, both.  

irony - "Go, more and more GOP operatives!! Don't stand in their way"

Maybe you've noticed that had BHO taken the approach I'm arguing for, instead of thrusting everyone's face into racial issues, he would have deprived the Swift Boaters of the most potent weapon they could have asked for.

flutie - there is such a thread. It's called The Wank.

happy wanking,

t

"As a side note, I live in Southie, and I have a better chance of sprouting wings and flying than Southie does of going Republican in November."

That may be true, but Southie will never, ever support Obama, just as it did not support Deval Patrick.  I work in Southie - spend most of my waking hours in Boston's Irish ghetto (mostly gentrified now) and find the level of racism in Southie similar to that of West Texas, where I grew up.  This neighborhood is definitely packed with lunchpail Democrats.  But Southie's variation of that breed of Dems also happens to detest black people. Thoroughly.  As the sign at the city limits of Vidor, TX says - "Ni**er, don't let the sun set on you in Vidor", the same applies to Southie. So while Southie may not go Red, Southie residents will mostly sit at home on election day if Obama gets the Dem nomination.

"Massachusetts, a thoroughly racist state (Southie may as well be Vidor, TX), will not vote for Obama."

But the Commonwealth will elect Deval Patrick as Governor.  Please explain how that works.

"But the Commonwealth will elect Deval Patrick as Governor.  Please explain how that works."

Because, first of all, Deval Patrick was running against a very weak candidate - Lt. Governor Kerry Healy.  Patrick ran a phenomenal campaign and simply outclassed Healy in every way.  Consequently, Patrick supporters were a very enthusiastic lot and Healy supporters were simply not.  When the votes came in, Patrick won decisively.  It bears mentioning that Patrick is a pretty unpopular guy right now and lots of people are experiencing buyer's remorse.  His ill-considered casino initiative just got shot down and he's got very little to show for months of advocacy for something many liberals thought was an utterly poor idea.  And, of course, The Patrick/ Healy election was for the gubernatorial office, not POTUS.  Obama, like Patrick, is a very inexperienced politician, and I expect that Mass voters, in the wake of Patrick's flameout, will look at him as another political phenom with little experience to bring to elective office, one with much at stake.  The GOP is right when they say McCain is the Dem's favorite Republican, and in Mass it is no different.  Unless Obama can contain this Wright nonsense (which I highly doubt), he will gradually lose support and if he gets the nomination, Mass voters will simply reject him.

"Because, first of all, Deval Patrick was running against a very weak candidate . . . yadda yadda yadda . . ."

Uh huh.  If Mass were "a thoroughly racist state" as you say,  it wouldn't have elected Patrick over a white opponent regardless of the circumstances.