Tuesday, June 17, 2008

One More Reason To Celebrate Today

Not only is angry old war monger John McCain wrong on all the issues, he also is on the wrong side of history! Several historians from both parties agree that the last time chances looked this bad for Republicans was 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt destroyed Herbert Hoover. But wait, there is more historical precedent:

“McCain shouldn’t win it,” said presidential historian Joan Hoff, a professor at Montana State University and former president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. She compared McCain’s prospects to those of Hubert Humphrey, whose 1968 loss to Richard Nixon resulted in large part from the unpopularity of sitting Democratic president Lyndon Johnson.

“It is one of the worst political environments for the party in power since World War II,” added Alan Abramowitz, a professor of public opinion and the presidency at Emory University. His forecasting model — which factors in gross domestic product, whether a party has completed two terms in the White House and net presidential approval rating — gives McCain about the same odds as Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and Carter in 1980 — both of whom were handily defeated in elections that returned the presidency to the previously out-of-power party. “It would be a pretty stunning upset if McCain won,” Abramowitz said.

Let's hope history repeats itself.