Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Chris Bowers, for the last time: Obama is an infinitely better politician than Dukakis.

This is really getting silly.
The nation still moving away from Republicans demographically, too. It can't be emphasized enough that Michael Dukakis would have won the 2008 election. His exit polls of 40% among whites, 89% among African-Americans, and 70% among Latinos is enough to reach 50%+1 now, even in the event that African-American turnout was only 12% of the vote instead of 13%.
538 shoots this down statistically, but c'mon.

Dukakis wouldn't have gotten out of the primary, let alone beaten McCain. He was not a very appealing candidate. Obama, despite being black and named Hussein, managed to defeat the Clinton machine and win the general election by the most comfortable margin in 20 years, beating a candidate who was probably more popular than George HW Bush. He's written multiple best-sellers, is the best speechmaker of his generation and ran a brilliant, innovative, bottom-up campaign. Dukakis, while admirable in many ways, was none of those things.

Please, enough.

If demographics alone explain presidential elections, why did John Kerry lose to George W. Bush?

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