Saturday, July 26, 2008

Crystal Ball says Obama the likely winner this general election


We periodically receive newsletters from a wide variety of government reform news sources; the organizations focus on only the major events within their respective areas of expertise. Here is a selection from a recent email newsletter:
From Crystal Ball, Univ. of Virginia
http://bit.ly/3OgaoY

THE MYTH OF A TOSS-UP ELECTION
By Alan Abramowitz, Thomas E. Mann, and Larry J. Sabato

[...] It is no exaggeration to say that the political environment this year is one of the worst for a party in the White House in the past sixty years. You have to go all the way back to 1952 to find an election involving the combination of an unpopular president, an unpopular war, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession. 1952 was also the last time the party in power wasn't represented by either the incumbent president or the incumbent vice-president. But the fact that Democrat Harry Truman wasn't on the ballot didn't stop Republican Dwight Eisenhower from inflicting a crushing defeat on Truman's would-be successor, Adlai Stevenson.

Barack Obama is not a national hero like Dwight Eisenhower, and George Bush is no Harry Truman. But if history is any guide, and absent a dramatic change in election fundamentals or an utter collapse of the Obama candidacy, John McCain is likely to suffer the same fate as Adlai Stevenson.

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