Re-election watch: Happiness is a warm pundit corps!

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012

Will Obama be re-elected: Will Obama be re-elected?

We have no idea. But if you’re watching MSNBC, this has started to sound like a snap. Here was Chris Matthews on Monday night, reciting some numbers with which liberal viewers have been pleasured all week:
MATTHEWS (3/5/12): There’s more bad news for Mitt Romney from that latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll just out today. After months of negative campaigning in the primaries, Romney’s favorability is at—you might call it the collateral damage of all those ads of the campaign he’s run.

Take a look at how he stacks up to previous nominees. Right now, Romney is about—well, he is at 28 percent favorable right now, 28 percent! That’s a lower score than almost all the recent party nominees at the same time of March of the election year. And that includes John McCain, John Kerry, George W. Bush and Bob Dole.

So what’s behind this low favorability? Senator Rob Portman of Ohio is a backer of Romney’s. He’s campaigned with him today in the state.

That’s a pretty low favorability rating for a candidate, Senator, who has spent millions, maybe tens of millions of dollars either directly or through his super PAC.

PORTMAN: Well, it’s about the primary, Chris, as you know. And once we’re through this primary, and he’s the presumptive nominee, which—pretty soon, things will be different, because then he will be talking more about Barack Obama and there will be fewer negative ads about him...

MATTHEWS: Well, let me show you some numbers here that must be dispiriting to a guy like yourself who knows politics. Look at this number. Look at how your candidate, Romney, is doing among women voters nationwide. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows President Obama leads Romney among women by 18 points. That’s a heck of a gender gap for a guy in a country in which most of the voters are women.
Does Matthews know what a “gender gap” is? It isn’t clear that he does. But liberal viewers have been pleasured all week by the highlighted numbers from this new NBC poll.

We’ve been struck by another part of this new poll. Overall, it has Obama ahead of Romney by only six points, 50-44. That’s the same margin this same poll measured in late January. (Click here, scroll to page 16.)

Will Obama win re-election? We have no idea. But given Romney’s low favorability, that strikes us as an amazingly low margin. And who knows? To some degree, Portman could be right. If Obama is only ahead by six after all the negativity of the GOP race, isn’t it possible the race might tighten once this nonsense stops? (If it stops before the convention.)

Last night, we watched John King run through all the states on CNN’s big glowing electoral map. On a state-by-state, electoral college basis, re-election doesn’t seem assured in any way. But here’s the good news:

On MSNBC, you won’t be asked to think about that. Your friends are sitting there on the set. They’re eager to give you pure pleasure.

The road not taken: Mathhews forgot to say which recent nominee had the same favorables/unfavorables as Romney.

Bill Clinton, 1992.

2 comments:

  1. No one is commenting here?

    Well I guess that proves no one cares about the education of our poor kids.

    What? Oh this post is about electoral politics?

    Then I guess the lack of comments must prove Bob's readers don't care about electoral politics. Yeah. Logic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I never watch MSNBC, but the wife had it on to hear Super Tuesday results, and I was appalled at the sheer dumbness of the coverage by NBC's usual suspects and the off-putting propagandism of Maddow and Matthews' commentary. If my fellow lefties are depending on this channel for their election coverage, they are in for a rude surprise on election day.

    ReplyDelete