cognitive dissident

I received a request to answer this comment posted elsewhere:

I will vote for the Democrat's nominee in the general election. Period. I just think Obama is a long shot to win the general election. Yes, he has won more states than Clinton, but take a look at those states.

Republican States:
Alaska, N Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, Kansas, Mississippi, S Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia, Georgia, N Carolina, Montana, S Dakota, W Virginia, Kentucky

That's 124 electoral votes pretty much in the bag for McCain.

Democrat States:
Delaware, Vermont, DC, Hawaii, Maine, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Washington, Illinois

76 electoral votes pretty much in the bag for the Dem Obama.

Swing States:
Iowa, Wisconsin

17 electoral votes

For Clinton
Republican States
Nevada, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Indiana, Tennessee

That's 50 votes McCain will get anyway

Democrat States:
New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, California

That's 159 electoral votes

Swing States:
Ohio, Florida

That's 52

So, while I realize that my logic isn't 100% perfect here, my point is that Obama is winning in Republican states where he doesn't have a chance!

And I think once the nomination is secured for him, the Republicans will rip him to shreds.

I consider Obama to be a stronger candidate against McCain in the general election, but I'll leave it to the experts to crunch the numbers. Some of the data supporting this opinion follows:

Survey USA estimates the electoral results, which show thatObama's electoral numbers are stronger than Clinton's (i.e., he's not a "long shot" at all):

Obama 280 / McCain 258

Clinton 276 / McCain 262

Gallup notes that Obama is stronger in both red and blue states (although not in purple ones) than Clinton:

Democratic front-runner Barack Obama has a four-point advantage over presumptive Republican nominee John McCain among registered voters residing in states that were competitive in the 2004 election. Obama has a comfortable lead in states John Kerry won comfortably in 2004, as does McCain in states George W. Bush won easily. [...] Hillary Clinton also leads McCain by the same 47% to 43% margin among purple-state voters. But she does not fare quite as well as Obama does in blue states, and she trails McCain by a slightly larger margin than Obama does in red states.

Pew shows that Obama does better than Clinton among every category of independent voters (except the 50+ group, which is a tie).

in addition to the difficult red/blue/purple guesstimates, there are a few factors not captured in these polls that are in Obama's favor:

1). a greater enthusiasm for Obama, especially among younger voters;

2). Obama's stronger fundraising ability (he didn't have to lend his campaign millions of dollars, as Clinton did, just to stay afloat); and

3). Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" has encouraged conservatives to vote for Clinton in the primaries. They did this to drag out the primary process in the hopes that the weaker candidate (Clinton) will be the Democratic nominee.

As far as Obama goes, of course the GOP will "rip him to shreds" when he becomes the nominee...that's what their kind of campaigning is all about. He has weaknesses, as we've seen in great detail over the past few months, but the Republicans won't go easy on Clinton if she gets nominated. Much like a group of monkeys with a hoard of feces, the GOP loathes her very name and has years of pent-up hatred to fling at her. (She'll find that their Swift-Boat-style attacks will be much tougher to deal with than that "sniper fire" in Bosnia.)

This tactical analysis doesn't include the genuine policy issues (his determination to "immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq," and his pro-LGBT "moral imperative" remark, to name just two) that will serve to further differentiate Obama from John "just-like-Bush-only-moreso" McCain in the campaign.