Michael Barone explains why Hillary doesn't look like a sure thing

Michael Barone discusses the polls, dissects the numbers and compares Hillary to winners and losers. The good news is she looks more like a loser. Excerpt:

But it's hard to avoid the conclusion of FiveThirtyEight analyst Harry Enten. Clinton, he wrote last Monday, "no longer looks like such a juggernaut. Not only are her numbers dropping, but she is running on par with a Democratic brand in its weakest shape in a decade."

That's not what optimistic Democrats were expecting earlier this year. They thought nostalgia for Bill Clinton's presidency would enable Hillary Clinton to run ahead of party lines. Voters not eager for a third Obama term might welcome a third Clinton term.

That last line certainly applies to low-information voters. The rest of us know that they would be more-or-less identical. Continuation of failed liberal domestic policies, far left appointments and "what does it matter anyway" foreign policy.

In 1991, candidate Bill Clinton gave three policy speeches to overflow crowds at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall. When Hillary Clinton spoke there last week, the balcony was almost empty and there were empty seats in the lower level, too.

Clinton futures were on the rise 23 years ago. They seem to be in decline 23 years later.

Wow, 23 years ago. I'm that old.

Barone on Obama: Transfixed with his self-image

Great article. Best one I've seen on the difference between Obama and a more traditional, successful American politician like Bill Clinton. Excerpt:

Reagan deployed that ability in establishing productive relations with allies such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with whom he was by no means always in agreement, and with adversaries such as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose character, strengths and weaknesses he shrewdly assessed.

The ability to read other people comes more easily if you're interested in others, curious to learn what makes them tick. It comes harder or not at all if you're transfixed with your image of yourself.

Which seems to be the case with Barack Obama. Not only is he not much interested in the details of public policy, as Jay Cost argues persuasively in a recent article for the Weekly Standard. He is also, as even his admirers concede, not much inclined to schmooze with other politicians, even his fellow Democrats.

That goes double for Republicans. House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, is one of the most transparent and least guileful politicians I've encountered. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy and liberal Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., had no difficulty reaching agreement with him on the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

Hispanics are not "one issue voters"

Michael Barone explains why Hispanics aren't as supportive of Obama as they had been.

Two trends in polling also point in this direction. One is that Hispanic voters don't seem hugely preoccupied with immigration. The Pew Research Center reports that many more focus on education, the economy and health than the one-third who say immigration is "extremely important" to them personally.

The other is that the president's job approval among Hispanics has been falling sharply. He got 71 percent of their votes in 2012, but fewer than half approve his performance today.

It's not hard to see why. The sluggish economy has hurt Hispanics more than most Americans. Obamacare and big government policies have not helped them as they apparently have hoped.

This suggests that non-passage of comprehensive legislation won't hurt Republicans as much as predicted. And inaction, always the easier legislative course, would prevent a debate in which the cries of angry opponents, gleefully highlighted in mainstream media, could antagonize Hispanic voters.

The emphasis at the end is mine. I'm one of those "soft on immigration" conservatives, and while I understand the enforcement-first argument, I literally hate the rhetoric that often accompanies it. I cringe when I hear Rush say "All these people are going to be Democrat voters!!" Well, they are if you write them off that way. Yes, the media is disgusting in the way they bait Hispanics, but we're supplying free chum. The least we can do is keep quiet while Obama is melting down with his own base.

If we're going to say anything it should be to point out—as Barone does—that Obama didn't care about immigration reform when Democrats had Congressional super-majorities at the beginning of his presidency. All Americans—including Hispanics—are paying now for his ridiculous economic policies that he crammed through then, and they're paying attention to recent history now as his reign continues to crumble and stumble toward a close.

Michael Barone: Obama and the 1917 Espionage Act

As always, Michael Barone delivers the most interesting and insightful explanation on what is going on with the Obama Admin/Media Spy-vs-Spy flap. Excerpt:

There is one problem with the entirely justified if self-interested media squawking about the Justice Department snooping into the phone records of multiple Associated Press reporters and Fox News' James Rosen.

The problem is that what the AP reporters and Rosen did arguably violates the letter of the law.

The search warrant in the Rosen case cites Section 793(d) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code.

Section 793(d) says that a person lawfully in possession of information that the government has classified as secret who turns it over to someone not lawfully entitled to possess it has committed a crime. That might cover Rosen's source.

Section 793(g) is a conspiracy count that says that anyone who conspires to help the source do that has committed the same crime. That would be the reporter.

It sounds like this law criminalizes a lot of journalism. You might wonder how such a law ever got passed and why, for the last 90 years, it has very seldom produced prosecutions and investigations of journalists.

Barone on the Leftward March

Michael Barone documents the move toward the far left by the regimes in America and the UK, the resulting loss of popularity and the subsequent blaming of the voters. Short excerpt:

Both parties have moved well to the left. Barack Obama and Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, head governments that are running budget deficits of 10 percent of gross domestic product. Both are promoting higher taxes and expansion of government programs.

The financial crisis is one reason for the large deficits. But it is undeniable that to varying extents both Obama and Brown have pursued more statist policies than their predecessors did a dozen years ago.

And it is undeniable, too, that both are in trouble with the voters.

In these circumstances, it is surprising that the pundit class is not chiding Obama and Brown for abandoning the politically successful policies of Clinton and Blair. The same pundit class is always ready to chide American Republicans and British Conservatives for not pursuing the courses that Rockefeller Republicans and pre-Thatcher "wet" Conservatives pursued with some political success a much longer time ago.

I don't know if Barack Obama et al will lose journalists over their progressive agenda and government expansionism since this sutff all represents moving toward where the mainstream media has been at for decades. They are on the same page.

Conclusion:

Blaming the voters is the last resort of a party in trouble. Old Labor and the Obama Democrats may not yet be finished. But they're not doing as well as their "third way" predecessors.

Barone: Obama's Convenient Fantasies

Lots of good points in Barone's piece yesterday.

Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" that occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" [Van] Jones in the Obama administration.

Reminds me of Mark Steyn's comment on Hugh Hewitt's show yesterday about those ACORN employees caught in a sting where they are giving out advice on how to file taxes for a prostitution ring and other money-laundering secrets. Steyn said something like "They talk about the right wing having a lunatic fringe, but here is the American left's lunatic mainstream." I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist.

If there were money to be made in green jobs, private investors would be creating them already. In fact, big corporations like General Electric are scrambling to position themselves as green companies, gaming legislation and regulations so they can make profits by doing so. Big business is ready to create green jobs -- if government subsidizes them. But the idea that green jobs will replace all the lost carbon-emitting jobs is magical thinking.

I have a good friend who truly believes that wind, hydroelectric and ethanol could be making everyone millions of dollars, providing jobs, getting us off foreign oil (sorry, Canada) and saving the Earth. But "these corporations" are too stupid to take advantage of these huge money-making opportunities. I've tried to reason with him, explaining that there are some smart people who actually work for some of "there corporations" who are exceptionally good at finding ways to make more money... but... well... (sigh).

There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1 trillion over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.

Another sigh is in order, I suppose. Anyway, I love how he ends: "No-enemies-to-the-left and convenient fantasies may work in Chicago. They don't work so well when your constituency is the whole United States." I surely hope not. But Obama sure is giving it the good ol' college professor try.

H/T Rerum Novarum.

OODA Thunk It?

Who would have thought that John McCain could use skills learned as a fighter pilot to undermine the Obama campaign? Michael Barone explains the OODA strategy here.

That term was the invention of the great fighter pilot and military strategist John Boyd. It's an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

"The key to victory is operating at a faster tempo than the enemy," Boyd's biographer Robert Coram writes. "The key thing to understand about Boyd's version is not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such a fashion as to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary."

For a fighter pilot, that means honing in above and behind the adversary so you can shoot him out of the sky. For a political candidate, it means acting in such a way that the opponent's responses again and again reinforce the points you are trying to make and undermine his own position.

The whole thing is short; I highly recommend reading. The election isn't over, Obama hasn't been "shot out of the sky", but it's hard to see how all his George Bush talk is going to help him. I suppose I'm not one to ask since I don't loathe Bush like so many, and I can't shake the contrast between Cheney and Palin out of my head. I stand by my earlier remark, that I'd rather go fishing with Sarah Palin than hunting with Dick Cheney.