Could any candidate have been elected to succeed a president of his own party whose job approval rating was 25 percent? Probably not. Could any candidate have been elected to continue his party’s stay in the White House when roughly 90 percent of Americans believed the country was on the wrong track? Probably not. Could any candidate from the governing party have been elected after the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 4,000 points before one could even turn around? Probably not...
And yet in spite of it all, McCain still managed to outperform conditions. The vote totals, as of 2 a.m. Eastern Time, show McCain with about 47 percent of the national popular vote. Perhaps that figure will go down a bit, but there’s no doubt that McCain far outshone George H.W. Bush’s 1992 re-election effort — a campaign undertaken in poor conditions for a Republican, but not nearly as bad as what McCain encountered this time — in which Bush won just 38 percent of the vote. Likewise, McCain outperformed Bob Dole, who won a little less than 41 percent in 1996. And McCain’s percentage of the popular vote might be not too far from George W. Bush’s in 2000, when Bush lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College.
In other words, McCain faced tougher challenges than his predecessors, yet somehow managed to win more votes. Just not enough.
Now the election is over, what happens to Lieberman?
Outlook: Not so good.
Update: For Lieberman, he is a marked man.
1 comment:
Honestly, if Obama was serious about bridging the partisan gap, he would make moves to bringing Lieberman back into the fold. The man is still staunchly Democratic on the big national issues, and if Democrats think the success of their party is going to be furthered by expelling all the hawks who dared challenge the Daily Kos directed party, then they are in for some trouble.
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