GOP Improbably Tied
by Joseph Barrett
Issue 106 - April 23, 2008

Regarding Scott Rasmussen’s recent article in ConservativeBattleline “Dems Still Up”, it looks like that has changed already. An Associated Press-Ipsos national poll just released begins, “Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama's 10-point advantage in a head-to-head match-up, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates.”

Amen--Amen –That is what I argued in my earlier piece in February. We are a 47%-47% nation--this election is still about both candidates securing their base 47%.

Once more to my Republican/Conservative fiends ---in the election of 2004 President Bush won about 51 % of the national vote --today his approval rating is about 30%. So that means--sort of--that 21% of this year's electorate is comprised of people who voted for this president and now dislike him. Someone on the right better start dealing with this fact of political life. Hint the 21% is not full of doctrinaire conservatives--although there are a lot of dissident Democrats and independents. In 1980 they were called Reagan Democrats.

This 21% is--I think--prone to vote for Mc Cain---but they have to be wooed back. The Dems just have to create an atmosphere in which these people say--" To H-ll with it."

Juts an observation from a bedroom confined ex Political Junkie

About 6% of the electorate swings back and forth. They will determine the next president. They do not like this president---rightly or wrongly --but they just do not like him for many reasons. I think a lot of it can be summed up in the fact that many Americans just get the feeling this president --just does not give a tinkers damn about average Americans--sort of the typical Republican disease.

Still, the polls now show the Republican nominee is improbably ahead. If the Democrats can not win this election they better go into re-think and stop listening to Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and the rest of the left-wing crew leading them over the cliff.

Joseph Barrett is a (conservative) Democratic strategist living in Silver Spring, Maryland.