Wherever I go — from glittering dinner party to glittering dinner party — the famous and powerful people I meet (for such is my life) tell me how lucky I am to be a journalist in this the greatest of all presidential contests. I tell them, for I am wont to please, that this campaign is indeed great when, as history will record, it is not. I have come to loathe the campaign.

I loathe above all the resurgence of racism — or maybe it is merely my appreciation of the fact that it is wider and deeper than I thought. I am stunned by the numbers of people who have come out to vote against Barack Obama because he is black. I am even more stunned that many of these people have no compunction about telling a pollster they voted on account of race — one in five whites in Kentucky, for instance. Those voters didn’t even know enough to lie, which is what, if you look at the numbers, others probably did in other states. Such honesty ought to be commendable. It is, instead, frightening.

I acknowledge that some people can find nonracial reasons to vote against Obama — his youth, his inexperience, his uber-liberalism and, of course, his willingness to abide his minister’s admiration for a racist demagogue (Louis Farrakhan) until it was way, way too late. But for too many people, Obama is first and foremost a black man and is rejected for that reason alone. This is very sad.

I find it funny that Cohen, like so many others, would argue against the practice of racial profiling, yet has no problem profiling whites.

Those voters didn’t even know enough to lie, which is what, if you look at the numbers, others probably did in other states. Such honesty ought to be commendable. It is, instead, frightening.

Is it possible that people in other states voted against Obama because he is black, but did not disclose that? Sure it is. However, pockets of ideology are like concentrations of anything – they don’t always disperse. To assume that others “probably did” is to engage in the same conjecture he decries in “the incessant blogging and commenting and talking and yapping and hype.”

Cohen’s central thesis seems to be “If you oppose Obama, you’re a racist. If you oppose Hillary, you are a misogynist.”

Yes, voter participation is way up and in the end, the Democrats will choose a woman or an African American and, to invoke that tiresome phrase, history will be made. But this messy nominating process has eroded the standing of both candidates. It has highlighted the reality that racism still runs deep and that misogyny, although more imagined than real, is not yet a wholly spent force.

How exactly has it done that? The contest brought more people to the polls (arguably a good thing). All the white men in the Democratic primary didn’t fare to well compared to Obama and Clinton, so clearly race and sex had little to do with preference.

I’m just not sure how he can make the leap that the entire Democratic party either loathes women or loathes minorities, given they’re the only two that remain standing at the end. Maybe Cohen should have started with the unspoken question that is inherent in his column – “Where did all the white guys go?”

With regard to Hillary specifically:

I loathe what has happened to Hillary Clinton. This person of no mean achievement has been witchified, turned into a shrew, so that almost any remark of hers is instantly interpreted as sinister and ugly. All she had to do, for instance, was note that it took Lyndon Johnson to implement Martin Luther King‘s dream, and somehow it became a racist statement. The Obama camp has been no help in this regard, expressing insincere regret instead of a sincere “that’s not what she meant.”

I loathe also what Hillary Clinton has done to herself. The incessant exaggerations, the cheap shots, the flights into hallucinatory history — that sniper fire in Bosnia, for instance — have turned her into a caricature of what her caricaturists long claimed she already was. In this campaign, Clinton has managed to come across as a hungry hack, a Janus looking both forward and backward and seeming to stand for nothing except winning. This, too, is sad.

Now to be fair, Cohen also points out that Hillary casually mentioned that RFK didn’t get killed until June. Taken with the Johnson/MLK comment, and the way her campaign has used veiled bigotry to further its cause, is it any wonder we’re left with this “caricature”?

Make no mistake, this is no caricature drawn within the last year of campaigning. When someone is in the public eye for long enough, you generally get a pretty good sense of who that person really is. Bill Clinton was a guy whose personal addictions (food and women, mostly), led to heart surgery and a blow job focused impeachment. George W. Bush is the guy you want to have beer with, but in retrospect may not have been intellectually curious enough to make an effective steward of our nation.

Hillary Clinton, for all Cohen’s cocktail party chats with her is, for lack of a better description, “a hungry hack, a Janus looking both forward and backward and seeming to stand for nothing except winning.” That is an image of her own making.

Perhaps Cohen should spend less time at those Washington cocktail parties and spend a few weeks wandering the streets of the real America. Perhaps all journalists should have their blackberry, and expense accounts taken away and be dropped into mid-America with nothing but a pair of Levi jeans, a Gap t-shirt and their wits and forced to live as real Americans live.

If nothing else, seeing these pompous assholes milking cows, stamping sheet metal in a rusted factory, or doing some other Paris-Hilton-Simple-Life-esque chores for a month or two would be great fodder for a new reality series. Call it The Real Life.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say for the record I think this is a bunch of crap.

First, people in this country have incredibly short attention spans. Any fatigue present in June is unlikely to carry until November. It’s just not like us to carry that baggage for five months. This whole notion stems from the fact that nobody has seen a race like this in generations. People are used to these fire-and-forget campaigns. The argument assumes that people prefer that and don’t want something more. I think there is ample evidence, just in the water cooler conversations, that people are engaged in this, have picked a candidate to back (regardless of their party) and want to see who wins.

That’s significantly different from an election plagued by fatigue.

Second, the Democrats will end up with a huge advantage coming out of this. Having been forced to compete in all 50 states, they will have a ground game in all 50 states. They will have built the machinery to compete in places the GOP has ignored for decades either because it was “safe” red territory or because the states simply weren’t on the radar.

Voters in these states will be intimately aware of the Democrat, will have seen countless ads for them, will have seen them in their state. The GOP, by comparison, will have no exposure, name ID solely based on their name, not their message, and no organizers. That’s going to make more states competitive.

I think hopes for Democrat burnout are overstated. I think pundits underestimate the people and the race. Hopefully, the GOP apparatus doesn’t make the same mistake.

It’s no wonder Hillary’s campaign is trying a desperate gambit to save those votes, and her candidacy, from the trash heap of history. The following is her latest e-mail.

Please take the time to listen, as I have, to the voices of our fellow citizens in Michigan and Florida.

A supporter from Marion, MI put it simply: “We want to have our voice heard! We want to vote!” Another in Delray Beach, FL reminded Americans of what we all believe, “Our votes should count. We went to the polls in good faith that our votes would count and our voices would be heard.”

Tens of thousands of people in Michigan, Florida, and all over the country are standing up and speaking out, urging that we live up to our democratic ideals. In our hearts we know that voters everywhere deserve the chance to make their voices heard.

Hillary Clinton respects all voters and their right to participate in this historic contest. Their votes, along with all the others, will and should determine when this contest is at an end. It’s the American way — everybody counts in this country.

I know you will join with Americans everywhere who are proudly standing with their fellow citizens in making sure the great states of Michigan and Florida have a voice in this race — along with all the states who will cast their ballots in the upcoming months. Today is the day to step forward for democracy. Today is the day to sign on to make sure that all American voices are heard.

Thank you for all you are doing for our country and for our campaign.

Sincerely,

Maggie Williams
Campaign Manager

In other words, Michigan and Florida misled their people into believing their votes would be counted regardless of stern warnings to the contrary from national party leaders. The other candidates refused to waste campaign dollars trying to win those votes because they were told they would not be counted. Hillary pushed for and won the votes that don’t count, and is now trying to force them into the process.

It really is funny. It sends a message that any vote, regardless how uninformed or illegal it may be, is a vote Hillary will try to use to save what was once her frontrunner status. Behind in delegates, behind in popular votes, and behind in number of states won, her whole campaign now hinges on the votes of people who told the Democratic system to screw itself.

Stack this on top of her support for licensing illegal immigrants, aiding and abetting perjury, and accusing half the country of being part of an evil conspiracy – all in an attempt to take the spotlight off her own sham marriage – and you get a real sense of what she might be like as a President.

Update: NPR reports the Clinton camp would have to win every remaining contest with 60% or more of the vote to close the gap. With only 914 dlegates remaining, a 50/50 split, or something close, would give Obama 2086 (44 votes more than enough to win the nomination. In the meantime, a 50/50 split would give Hillary 1943 – still about 100 votes shy of the win. She’s only up by 28 on the superdelegate count, and that number is shrinking daily.

That math spells doom for Hillary. It’s no wonder her last flailing hope is to admit states where her opponent didn’t even run.

Granted he’ll have to spend an awful lot of it to beat Hillary. He’s currently out raising her almost two to one. He’ll blow through a lot of cash between now and the nomination, but anything that’s left (assuming he eschews the general election funding provided by the FEC) can go straight to his general election account. If he continues raising $30 million or more per month, he could conceivably end up up more in the bank to transfer than McCain will get from the FEC funds.

What should really make McCain nervous, though, is the situation at the FEC and the fact that he may not get those funds. The FEC is currently missing commissioners and cannot count a quorum. Without a quorum present, the FEC cannot approve the disbursement of those Presidential funds to the McCain camp.

The Senate won’t recess because they do not want Bush to make recess appointments. The Republicans and Democrats have relatively inflexible positions on the current crop of appointments, and don’t appear likely to blink. With that stalemate in place, and no reason for the Democratic majority to overturn it, McCain could well enter the fall campaign completely unarmed.

McCain’s team is currently raising about $12 million per month, but blowing through it just as fast. If they’re not banking any dough, it is possible the campaign will enter September without any money at all. Now, the GOP could take great offense to the Senate Dems using procedural maneuvers to keep their candidate broke and rally in large numbers to show J-Mac the money love. If that’s going to happen, though, it needs to start soon.

The Bush team in 2004 considered skipping the general fund and raising money, but they determined the costs would simply be too great. To raise the $75 million they’d be giving up, they would actually need to raise about $150 million – due largely to the high overhead of the Ranger/Pioneer model of fundraising.

Obama’s model has a much lower overhead. It’s possible he could raise vast sums of money on a small dollar model. He’ll have a lot more ready cash for a much smaller investment of time.

McCain’s team needs to get on the stick and go open-source. They should be e-mailing their list with the facts I have just laid out, and urging every single Republican to give to McCain. They could even be honest and upfront about it. Here’s a sample of the e-mail I would send.

While we may not have seen eye to eye on issues in the past, I hope I can count on you now. We, as a party, face an incredible challenge. In just 7 months, I will face the best funded Democrat to run for President in generations. As the liberals are stuffing the campaign coffers of my opponent, their allies in the US Senate are working to deny you a candidate.

As the Senate holds up confirmation of commissioners to the FEC, I am awaiting approval of the funds that will carry our party’s message in the fall. Roughly $80 million dollars is riding on a high stakes game of chicken. The Democrats want us to back down. They want to hold my campaign hostage and prevent the disbursement of the money we need for the election in an effort to deliver a defeat to the President.

Whether you agree with me, and whether you support President Bush and his policies, we must unite as a party, and beat the Democrats at their own game. How? We must ask every single Republican to make a donation of just $5 to this campaign.

If every single Republican who voted for President Bush in 2004 gave $5, we could unite as a party, raise more than $300 million dollars, and fund our election without the FEC.

Take the power out of the Democrats hands. Show them the people of this great nation will not allow them to deny half of us our candidate and our vote. Show them that like any family we may have our internal squabbles, but we will not hesitate to come together against someone who threatens us.

Please, ask every Republican you know to give $5. If you can give more, or they can give more, please ask them to do so. We

That’s it. Begin a fundraising drive to combat the situation you are in. Beat Obama at the small dollar giving and use the fact that the Democrats are purposefully blocking the FEC appointments in an effort to screw you against them.

If they don’t do something, and keep spending money under the theory that the FEC situation will be resolved before August, they run the real risk that they go into the general out gunned to the tune of $150 million or more.

After a weekend filled with Hillary playing up the idea of a joint ticket, Obama responds back in his speech in Columbus, Mississippi. The short version? ‘No Friggin’ Way!’ He unequivocally stated that he was uninterested in a joint ticket – going so far as to say that she and McCain represent the conventional wisdom of DC. He says he’s not interested in simply going along.

It really was a very impressive and very public rebuke to the Clinton campaign which has sought to play up the idea of a joint ticket (with Hillary on top, of course). It should end the talk coming out of Hillary’s camp.

For Hillary’s team, it really is sort of a bad idea to push this. The Vice-President is someone who can assume the mantle of Commander-in-Chief if the President dies. Apparently Obama is ready to fit that bill, but not ready for the actual job. Not sure how they did the math that says he’s ready for one but not the other. It seems an illogical argument to make.

What’s most interesting about the ad is their choice of picture. It’s especially interesting when you look at it in context of all the Internet chatter about Barack Obama’s alleged “un-American” activities.

What do you do when the national anthem plays? If you’re like most Americans you stand with your hand over your heart. This posture says a few things about a person…they’re American, they love their country, and most think that it also honors those who have fallen protecting our liberties. You might think that a U.S. Senator like Barack Obama would understand this about the national anthem. You might think that a U.S. Senator like Barack Obama would appreciate all of this more than most people because he’s seen the power of the people elect him to office and privilege.

Now Clinton’s people have one a good job portraying themselves as pure of heart when it comes to forwarding Internet rumors about Obama. This ad, however, seems to be sending a very subtle message to anyone familiar with the un-American charge. It’s not overt, but the pic of Hillary definitely seems to say, “See. I’m American. I put my hand over my heart. He doesn’t.”

It may have been unintentional, sure. They may not be that clever over at Camp Hill. But maybe they are…

The question in which I was mentioned had to do with this Washington Post article in which I said most online campaigns really aren’t moving the ball forward. The question was whether Garrett agreed with my assertion. I’ll let you watch for yourself the discussion and his answer. It’s good, so I recommend you do.

Let me, however, elaborate on the original question I was asked and the reply. I did not mean to imply that campaigns weren’t doing interesting things. Mindy Finn with Romney’s campaign did some really good work on the “create your own ad” effort. Obama’s people have done an amazing job of fundraising online. There are some novel online efforts being undertaken.

What I meant, more specifically, was there does not appear to be any effort to convert that excitement and energy into actual votes. Most of the GOTV work being done is still being done offline. Take for instance this note I got from Hillary’s people.

I’m writing to you because Hillary needs you now more than ever. As I write this email, Team Hillary volunteers here at headquarters are on the phones talking to voters. Can you pitch in for Hillary and join us at the phone bank for at least two get-out-the-vote shifts between now and March 4th? Reply to this email to let me know when you can do your part.

Every night this week a senior advisor to Hillary, including Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliffe, Guy Cecil and campaign manager Maggie Williams, will join our volunteers for strategy discussion of the path to victory. Which night will you volunteer this week?

We need help every day. Our shifts are:

10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
2 p.m. – 6 p.m.
6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Reply to this email to let me know when you can pitch in for Hillary.

We also have a critical need for volunteers this weekend. Can you pitch in this Saturday or Sunday? Please reply to me and let me know when you can help out!

Obama, Thompson, and Romney all gave me tools that allowed me to make such calls any time it was convenient for me. The technology really isn’t very difficult to create or manage. You allow your user to log in, get a script and numbers, make calls and complete a survey form, and report back the same data they would report back if they were sitting in your HQ.

The Hillary model, which looks like the same model Bill used in 1992, assume I have four uninterrupted hours to spend in your office. It also assumes I want to drive there, find parking, arrange for a sitter, etc. etc. It doesn’t allow for me to participate on my terms on my schedule.

This was something we understood in 2004 and was the reason we pioneered online call tools with the Bush campaign. We made a half-million contacts using our online tools. That was over and above the millions made in the traditional way.

Had Clinton’s campaign spent some time building such a tool instead of figuring out how many Drudge clones they could make (ahem, ahem) they could have empowered their supporters to get involved when and how it was convenient for them.

That was the point that I was trying to make in the Post piece. It’s not that campaigns aren’t doing anything jazzy with technology, it’s the fact that very little of it is meant to empower voters. Romney’s create your own ad effort was a great example. Give people stock footage, audio, video, images, etc, and let them be part of your creative team. Give them walk lists, call sheets, and other tools to mobilize voters and let them do it.

Where the campaigns this year have fallen short is they gave us tools without showing me the best way to use it. If I hand you a hammer, nails and a saw, you could eventually figure out that you could cut down a tree and make something. If I gave you the same tools with a guide to woodworking from raw materials, you’d be much better off.

My vision of campaign 2008 in December of 2004 was dramatically different from what has been. While it still may come to fruition, I’m not seeing much evidence that it will. It should, by nature, have been Obama, Paul or Thompson who pulled this off. I’ll explain what I had hoped to see.

Imagine a completely different campaign. Imagine a campaign that invested heavily in both the mobilization tactics and the microtargeting acumen of the Bush campaign, with the grassroots groundswell of the Dean campaign. Imagine taking a national database of registered voters and creating a sense of ownership among your online activists to reach low-propensity or non-voters. Here’s how it would work.

A campaign invests in microtargeting to determine what their typical supporter looks like as a function of consumer behavior, issue preferences, etc. The campaign buys consumer data for every citizen of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, etc that matches their model. Not just voters, mind you, but every single citizen that fits the mold.

Online activists are given tools like online phone banks, walk tools and handouts to go door-to-door reaching out to other voters who support their guy. More importantly, though, they match the consumer data for unregistered voters against their voter data to determine who is NOT registered to vote. An intensive campaign is run among online activists to reach them.

When activists are engaged, but nobody else is (say January through October of 2007) the campaign has their people working to register those people. The activists are brought in at the ground level to begin building what will be a long-term relationship with these folks. Geotargeting will allow the activist to find people located very near them, and reach out to them not just as a campaign volunteer, but as a neighbor – as someone who shops at the same grocery store, whose kids go to the same school.

The campaign would ask those volunteers to “adopt” those non-voters and urge them to a) drop off registration forms, b) follow up to make sure they get registered – which the campaign would verify by tracking voter registration additions against it’s internal database of targeted non-voters, c) deliver news and information about the campaign, and d) get them to vote in the primaries/caucuses/general.

We had, with the Bush campaign, developed tools along two separate lines. We called them all “Virtual Precinct”, but they were comprised of either your friends and family (to whom you could e-mail info) or targeted voters living near you (to whom you could walk, call, etc). This year, I had expected to see the two merge as campaigns used microtargeting, geotargeting, and online activism in synchronicity.

You have given your activists incredibly powerful tools to build the campaign. By explaining the goal, building a community, empowering them to be involved, and fostering a sense of ownership in the outcome, you have given them the instruction manual and a way to judge their success.

In addition, you could have volunteers in states with late primaries reaching out to those with early primaries – not in the way Howard Dean attempted with outsiders identified by their neon hats tromping through town, but via phone, e-mail and mail. Personal messages of support for a candidate delivered with passion by a voter in the comfort of their surroundings, are more effective that any stale script repeated over and over by an underfed, underappreciated volunteer jammed into a tight space with 85 other people on phones two feet away.

Think of it as the difference between telecommuting and working in a sweatshop.

That’s what I had expected to see and that’s where I think campaigns are still missing what’s possible. Campaigns in 2008 are, for the most part, still stuck in the mold of the 1980s and 1990s.

We can buy groceries from home and never have to go to the store. We can buy any product we want from Amazon, Buy.com or others and have it the next day without ever leaving the couch. We can play video games with friends we have never met a half a world away. We can engage in whatever pursuits we choose with others who share our hobbies regardless of where we all reside.

But despite all of that, campaigns stil force us to go to their office, to use their phone, to drink their old, cold coffee and eat their leftover doughnuts. Campaigns are still about me doing what they want, when they want me to do it. They miss the simple fact that there is no better spokesperson for the campaign than a single dedicated supporter talking to their friends, neighbors, and family in comfortable surroundings.

Update: Apparently the Clinton campaign actually does have an online phone bank tool. That actually makes the plea for me to appear in person even more confusing. I have not, at any time, received an e-mail asking me to make calls using that tool. I, as a would-be volunteer, was sitting here untapped. I could have made countless calls into states that voted earlier, and states that vote after Virginia. The campaign, however, never mobilized me to use the tool they built. Instead, they waited until after my primary, and until it was almost too late. to ask me to make calls at all.

Today the RNC released the Barack Obama Spend-o-meter. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because in 2004, the RNC released the John Kerry Spend-o-meter, and in 2000, the RNC released the Al Gore Spend-o-meter. I can’t find a reference to 1996, but I am fairly certain the RNC rolled it out then, too. That was the when the Internet was in its toddler stage, so perhaps it was only shown to the press.

This is indicative of the larger problem the GOP has with Obama. This is a young, dynamic, charismatic guy who hits a chord with people and really connects. In response, the GOP has picked a candidate beacuse “it was his turn”. We’ll dust off the every-four-year playbook and count on it to bring us to victory one more time.

The trouble is, Hillary has been working from our playbook. Everything she has thrown at Obama is right from “Republican Campaigns for Dummies” – he’s not experienced, he’s unelectable, he’ll take all your money, he’s black (I’m being facetious, but they did try it). Yet no matter how many of our plays she calls, she can’t seal the deal.

Do we honestly think that we’re so much better at running these plays that we’ll have a dramatically different outcome? Newt Gingrich doesn’t seem to think so. On Fox News last night he pointed out the strength of Obama’s appeal and commented that the GOP may be in trouble if it tries to run the same old campaign.

I think he’s right. If the RNC’s grand plan to beat Obama is to dust off the greatest hits of the last 40 years of campaigning, they’re going to be in trouble. This guy is running a different kind of campaign, and the old models aren’t going to win it.

That said, if Hillary’s the candidate, I think that model works fine. You’ll have two people who are re-running the same campaign we saw in 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. It’ll be just like old times. For that reason, I hope I’m wrong and Hillary gets the nod. We know our tactics work on that battlefield.

Obama, however, is playing by a different set of rules. If he’s the guy, we need to step up our game.

(Note: I could care no less about the battle between Huckabee and McCain, so I have to get my electoral thrills vicariously through the Democrats.)

Our office is pretty evenly split as are most of the delegates in their race. The most interesting conversation, however, seems to boil down to a) experience and b) electability. The Hillary fans claim Obama doesn’t have enough juice to be the Pres – a few years in DC doesn’t qualify him to lead. The Obama folks claim (and I agree) that he has a much better chance against McCain.

The fact is, for all the “can a black man be president” chatter, there is very little corresponding “can Hillary be President” chatter. It strikes me as odd. A Gallup poll almost one year ago asked about a bunch of attributes (religion, gender, race, sexual preference, etc) and found that people were more accepting of the idea of a black President than a woman President. add to that the fact that half of the country would never vote for Hillary Clinton and the current lead Obama enjoys over McCain in a head-to-head, and you have the makings of a disastrous candidacy on your hands.

Looking at 2004, Kerry received 44% of the male vote to Bush’s 55. According to the Hill polling, 56 of men would absolutely not vote for her, so she starts with a larger gender gap with men. Bush got 48% of the female vote. 45% say they would never vote for Clinton. Would the remaining 55% vote as a single bloc? Maybe, maybe not.

Kerry carried 89% of Democrats versus Bush’s 93% of Republicans. Hillary already operates without the support of better than 20% of her party. Being below 80% as a candidate that people know A LOT about is bad news for her. She has to run a major public image campaign to even convince a large chunk of her own party.

Finally, Kerry won 47% of those over 65. Hillary, according to the polls, is viewed as acceptable by only 31%. That’s a huge problem given that these are reliable voters.

Hillary is, by most polling, likely to lose the Potomac Primary today. It is entirely probable that Barack will sweep the three states. Now say what you want about Illinois, Arkansas, or New York being her home. The reality is Hillary has lived for the past 15 years in Washington, DC. These are the people that know her best, and they aren’t pushing the button for her. Why would anyone believe the rest of the country will come November?

The Democratic Party, unless they want to hand the GOP a gift, should really take a good hard look at Hillary and honestly ask if she can be elected. Experience aside, can she actually win? The likely answer to that question is no.

Allahpundit at HotAir:

“What does it say that after conservative talk show hosts rail against McCain for a week, we do see a bunch of deep red states go for a candidate besides McCain… but it’s not Romney, but Huckabee?”

Well, it’s interesting that McCain won nine states, but it’s more interesting that he failed to win 11. With Romney picking up six and Huck grabbing five, there is an argument to be made that there is more momentum against J-Mac than with him. However, the GOP’s winner take all system gave McCain a sizeable lead among delegates.

It would be fascinating to see Romney and Huckabee announce a Rom/Huck ticket and combine their 434 delegates. That would at least make it close and give the conservatives something to rally behind. The only problem is whether their giant egos would be able to determine who gets top billing.

The bigger problem for the GOP, though is this:

State	Dem Vote Total	GOP Vote Total	Differential
AL	533521	550573	-17052
AR	278764	202700	76064
GA	1040873	952474	88399
MO	820453	584618	235835
OK	401230	329843	71387
SC	530322	442918	87404
TN	612791	548783	64008

These are all states that the GOP carried in 2004, and yet, with the exception of Alabama, the Democrat turnout in those states was dramatically higher then GOP turnout. If those gaps held constant in the general, and both parties voted for their respective nominee, the Democrats would currently hold a 310 to 228 electoral advantage.

Now all of that remaining constant is unlikely. There are a lot of things that will impact turnout and voter behavior in a general election. This is likely a worst case scenario for the GOP at this point.

However, in a year with a wide open field, it doesn’t bode well for the GOP that turnout by Democrats is significantly greater. Keep in mind, the conventional wisdom says primaries and off year elections generally see higher turnout among the GOP because they tend to vote in every election, rather than just Presidential years and General elections. If the turnout among the Democrats in the primaries is that much greater, I shudder to think what sort of fight the eventual nominee is in for.