Well, it is nice to see the Left finally starting to admit that Carter deserved to lose big.

He does leave out the fact that Johnson and Truman didn't run because they faced certain defeat-- presidents run for reelection when they think they have a chance (absent the Perot factor), which tends to skew his data.

The Perot factor also skews the big deal about the electoral college blowouts, but that seems to be because he doesn't understand that the E.C. has an effect of amplifying a lot of small wins to a big win. (The two Carter elections show this well). The aberration was the 2000 election, and to achieve it required a silver medal finish in the popularity event. Even if Bush gets just 51% this time, he'll have a Carter ('76) lever of EC vote.

I want a hit of whatever that dude is smoking.

1992: Clinton gets in because Perot takes 20% of the vote. We can assume that those voters were not liberals looking for the man from Hope.

1980: The year I got married. Gold was $800 an oz. and mortgages were unavaiable. It is a joke to compare that economy to one growing at 4.2%.

1976: Do not forget that 74-75 was the worst recession of the post WWII era and the effect of the Nixon pardon on Ford.

1932: The Great Depression. We are not even in a recession now.

1912: The Bull Moose fracture of the Republican party.

He may be right about a Kerry landslide but I agree that the case he makes is weak and based on selective use of facts.

If Bush loses it will be because of a Dem structural advantage in the electoral college, an administration weighted down by manufactured scandals and a hostile media environment, bad news from abroad and a relatively inarticulate candidate. A Bush electoral landslide is inconceivable (though I read this largely to dream that I'm wrong) while a Kerry landslide is not.

JAB: Looking at the 30(!) states Bush won in 2000, how many can you name that Kerry has ANY chance of winning?

JAB:

Structural advantage? Republicans can get waxed in the popular vote and win.

You guys are way too optomistic.

sKerry wins Ohio and he wins, Mo. and he wins, LA and they tie 269 to 269.

Its not that hard.

the challenger wins states that Gore lost despite economic growth of 4% in favor of the incumbent. It's possible, of course, but utterly ahistorical.

On the other hand-- Kerry has to make sure that Wisconsin, Oregon, Iowa and New Mexico don't slip over to Bush. The same for Minnesota and Pennsylvania, which leaves less time for Ohio and Missouri.

See also Election Projection.

Mr. Todd is dreaming. I find it hard to imagine that Kerry will win, much less by a big margin. The examples of '76, '80, and '92 are less than persuasive for several reasons. In each case, the winners had clearer platforms and more sociable-seeming personalities than the losers, and the economy was in some degree of trouble. And, of course, Perot in '92.

Now, though, we have a president who is more sociable-seeming than the challenger, and who is much clearer on what he believes. That, plus 9/11 and the tensions between the wings of the Democratic party and other factors, all add up to a Bush win, as far as I can see.

NH and OH are very vulnerable. FL is polling close again. NV, MO and AZ are too this time.

Having CA, NY, NJ, IL, MA in the bag from the get go is indeed a structural advantage. They are big states and expensive to campaign in, yet Kerry will not have to do anything to win them. Only TX compares on the other side of the ledger.

I agree that WI, MN, WA and OR may be gettable for Bush this year. This is intriguing, but it's hard to see how W loses OH and makes it up in the granola belt. Most likely Bush performance trends (vs. 2000) in these states will be correlated.

Even if he peels off these 4 states plus NM (likely) and HI (unlikely, but trending a bit right lately) and adds them to the 2000 states it will not be a landslide by Reagan standards. However, like any incumbent, he could have a Hoover-style collapse if everything goes wrong (unlikely). So I stand by my theory that a Bush landslide is inconceivable but a Kerry landslide is possible.

JAB:

He won NH and this time around has a popular governor and senator on the ticket with him. It is only a toss-up in the limted imagination of pundits who think 2004 will be just like 2000.

Agree the pundits are lacking in imagination and also agree with a previous brojudd comment that OH has the potential to suck Kerry's resources and still go bad. Good point on NH too.

I read this site to refresh my optimism on the state of US politics and don't want to ruin the atmosphere. Perhaps we can just agree that the threshhold for a 'blowout' needs to be set more narrowly nowadays.

JAB --

If you are going to declare OH and NH vulnerable for Bush, then you have to concede that MN, MI, PA, OR, IA, and even NJ are vulnerable for Kerry based on recent polling. To that I would add that CA could be well in play as economic growth begins to reach the state with Arnold and W getting credit for it. (Add a milk-toast Midwesterner/Easterner WASP as VP candidate and this pick-up is even more possible.)

JAB:

Reagan and Nixon each won 49 states, during wartime, and were at least as divisive.

Agree that divisiveness not the problem with Bush.

Also, forgot to add IA to the list. If anything, it's more likely to go red than OH blue, even if Gephardt gets to ride the bus.

My point is that the days of Reagan/Nixon type blowouts are over for now. My opinion would change if somebody could convince me Kerry was as bad as McGovern and Dukakis and Bush was nearly as good as Reagan. We'll see.

JAB:

Why would they be over?

I should have said the conditions present in 72 and 84 do not exist to the degree necessary to provide a huge electoral college landslide. Saying they were over incorrectly implied that this was permanent.

Examples include:
-Kerry not as big a loser as Mondale/McGovern
-Bush & team are not as good at handling the media (McClellan for Ari was a particularly bad trade)
-The media environment more poisonous than ever before (wait for Plamefest 2004 to heat up and the monthly Sy Hersh exaggerations)
-Iraq as likely to flare up as to calm down
-Lefties are concentrated enough in key areas to form a core in the electoral college (CA, NY, NJ, IL, MA)

A key variable is if the R's can come up with a decent ground game like they did in 2002. Signs are that they will and that could make a difference in states where the unions max out their voters.

JAB:

Mondale was a former VP (a la Nixon). Dukakis a governor (like Reagan and Carter). Kerry is a sitting senator. Only one has been elected this century.

The press despised Larry Speakes who openly loathed them.

Reagan didn't have Rush or Fox or anything but a nascent Washington Times and the then even more marginal because only in print National Review.

Reagan had the Soviet Union more likely to flare up than down and wars all over Central America

CA, NY, & MA have Republican governors, IL & NJ did until their last elections.

AML,

I don't know how to break this to you but Kerry isn't going to win LA or MO, not this election cycle anyway. I'm from MO and there are a lot of local issues that are going to make this a hard year for Democrats in this state. Add to that fact the knwoledge that Bush is very popular in the state, especially among working class Dems, and Kerry is sunk here.

In LA, a buddy of mine down there (a blue dog democrat who's active in local politics) has all but given up on Kerry. He said that the state Democratic party isn't motivated to help Kerry, the DNC's arogance is driving a wedge between state and national operatives and Kerry's own organization is anything but organized.

JAB: Don't hold your breath. There is no Democrat party in Ohio and Kerry does not have an organization here either.

Coming in late to this, but Orrin forgot to note possibly the most critical factor of all; the Internet, especially the blogosphere, which didn't even exist as such in 2000 when GWB made his first run (and the Net was embryonic in '72 and still basically a university-only affair in '84). The existence of hundreds of online pundits, both amateur and professional, fact-checking Kerry's duff on every particular, to such an extent that the mainstream media has to pick up a lot of those stories in spite of itself, is one of GWB's best hole cards in this particular poker game.

Ok, you guys are convincing me.

However, having an R gov in key states (PA, IL, WI) did nothing for W in 2000 so I question why this mattered.

As for the press secretaries: I want a guy the press hates. They hated Ari because he was tireless in going after them on every little distortion. McClellan they like. That's the problem.

Just for the record, not that anyone cares, I'm with JAB. This will be a close election.