The Weak Republican Field
Drum and I are exactly on the same page:
In Hillary's case, my argument is that there are a lot of people who have vague, negative impressions of her from the 90s, and that these people are going to be pleasantly surprised when they see her for the first time in years and she turns out not to be a fire-breathing dragon after all. Maybe it's the soft bigotry of low expectations, but it's real nonetheless. She has nowhere to go but up.
Giuliani is just the opposite. The average voter has vague, positive impressions of Rudy thanks to his 9/11 heroics, and these people are going to be unpleasantly surprised when they see him for the first time in years and he turns out to be nastier than they remember (not to mention being freighted down by a closet full of skeletons they didn't know about). He has nowhere to go but down.
New York demonstrates this dynamic pretty well. Name recognition isn't an issue since both Clinton and Giuliani are well known there. And unlike the rest of the country, the average New Yorker has good, sharp recent memories of both candidates. The result? Clinton is better liked than in the rest of the country and Giuliani is less liked. The same thing is likely to happen when both candidates go national.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Obama's great, but Hillary will probably win, and I'm ok with that.
I only wish more Democrats would vote to win rather than wasting their times on protest votes that barely register higher than the Mickey Mouse statistics. Vote your conscience, sure, but doesn't your conscience understand the logic of moving the needle closer to your ideals than just giving up entirely?
Comments
From the polls I have seen recently it seems that Giuliani has an edge over Clinton nationally.
The gist is this: nationally, Hillary may bump up a few percentage points, and Guliani may bump down a few percentage points, because Hillary may be nationally underrated and Guliani may be nationally overrated.
So there's the basis, or in other words, "the entire points of the post".
The proper use of quotations in these situations is outside the period.
(Don't worry you can delete this comment too)
But I did mistakenly type "points" when I should have written "point".
I think quotation placement is optional for question marks and exclamation points?
My usage is the proper version, being the most logical and used in English speaking countries other than America. One theory about America's illogical approach is that it had to do with the printing press.
I'd prefer to keep using the more logical approach. Now if only we'd move to the metric system. And universal health care.
I have been reading about it too -- so yeah everybody else in the English speaking world does it on the inside.
Though I'm a little concerned to be added to your neighborhood; I've already deleted some comments from someone you're connected to. We'll see how it goes :)
If you look at my neighborhood I would say more than half have a different political view than me.
I just like good political debate -- no mud slinging. :)