And don't forget the poor McCain being shown flying coach and being way behind. That "sob" story pushed him back into the limelight.
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McCain was probably going to win anyway. The Republican Party since 1960 - with the exceptions of 1964 and 2000 (when there was no "heir to the throne" running) - has traditionally nominated the early front-runner, whoever's "turn" it was to run. Eisenhower begat Nixon who begat Ford who begat Reagan who begat Bush who (along with Reagan) begat Dole, etc. Since McCain was the runner-up in 2000 and Cheney didn't run, it was McCain's "turn," just like it was Romney's "turn" in 2012 after his decent showing in 2008. The Democrats only nominate the early front-runner a little less than half the time. Just go ask Presidents LBJ (who "lost" NH in 1968 by winning it by only six points over McCarthy), Muskie, Hart, and Hillary Clinton how those polls work.
McCain also got lifted by the assassination of Pakistani PM Bhutto since none of the other Republicans running had any foreign policy experience at all while McCain had been in the Senate forever and had helped try to repair relations with Vietnam where he was a POW.
Btw - back when it was de rigeur to pick Clinton vs Giluiani in 2008, I offered an
EARLY contrary opinion that got me laughed at but turned out to be more right than what all the highly paid experts were saying:
I picked Edwards, which was wrong, but note that my larger point was it would NOT be Hillary. Regarding the Republicans - at a time that McCain was considered a cooked goose - I picked McCain as the nominee. Two weeks before I wrote this, the highly respected pollster
Gallup gave us a poll showing Giuliani 24 points ahead of second place McCain. McCain was
third in October 2007 behind Giuliani and Fred Thompson while the very same Gallup poll said, "No other announced or potential Democratic candidate has come close to threatening Clinton’s front-runner status since the campaign began, including former Vice President Al Gore and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards." In that same poll, Clinton led Obama by THIRTY POINTS - less than three months from the actual voting in Iowa that began on January 3. At a time nobody gave him a chance, I wrote:
The Republicans have always nominated the early front-runner even if that front-runner was doomed (see Bob Dole, 1996)....But it will be McCain at this point.
I also correctly predicted on another board (now gone) that Obama and Huckabee would win Iowa - which was contrary to what everyone was saying early on. No, I'm NOT always right - but
despite not having Nate Silver's smart pill machine or making a bundle like some of the prognosticators, I AM more right than they are.
And don't ask because right now I can't tell you. I CAN tell you that this is more difficult than ever because with some sixteen candidates splitting the vote - the most ever as far as I know - a truly odd result might happen when candidates A, B, and C split the same voters while E wins early contests solely due to the split. This is the kind of year a Pat Buchanan or David Duke COULD conceivably win the GOP nomination (this is part of why Jesse Jackson emerged as the runner-up in 1988 - the Democrats need to be thanking whatever they pray to that Hart and Biden both had to withdraw or it's entirely possible Jackson might well have won the nomination.....and polling that year was showing that if he did they would lose BOTH houses of Congress as well).
But the press DOES to a large degree FILTER the information through their preconceptions. My goodness, even liberals like Elizabeth Drew and the late Jack Germond acknowledged that the press CAN kill off a candidacy or keep it alive with how they interpret the results. Note the difference in these two statements:
a) "Senator Kerrey shoehorned his way into the picture with a resounding victory in neighboring South Dakota, presenting himself as a viable alternative to Governor Clinton and Senator Tsongas"
b) "Senator Kerrey proved himself nothing more than a regional candidate with an 'as expected' win in neighboring South Dakota. Polls, however, show that unlike Governor Clinton, he has no national recognition and is trailing badly in other states (unmentioned - all these "other states" are in Clinton's own region)."
I watched the election returns that night when Kerrey won South Dakota and it was B that was the spin job the reporters all gave both locally and nationally. I'm NOT saying Bob Kerrey was a better candidate than Bill Clinton because he wasn't - but I AM saying the perceptions are shaped by the media. If the press had picked several of the big states Hillary won in early 2008 as "more important," then she would have won even when Obama won 14 of 22 contests in one day.
Btw - don't get too overly worried about the 16 candidates in the Clown Bus. The first two races will knock it down to 2 or at most 3 candidates. It always happens because the money goes to who won the earliest contests. But here's some irony for you - the WORST thing that could happen for the GOP short-term is for Hillary to lose Iowa and NH. The LAST thing they need is to have to share equal billing in the races. This happened in 1988 to the Democrats when Bush finished third in Iowa behind Dole and Robertson. Long-term, the GOP would likely be helped if Bernie "The Socialist" Sanders won the nomination.
Then again - since Hillary has never done well in any COMPETITIVE race, I don't know - maybe Sanders is actually a better candidate.
And now back to The Hair Job.