The Dish

A reader writes:

Basically the exact same thing played itself out in Canada a couple of years ago. You have a conservative party banished to the woods for over a decade due to a combination of charismatic and dynamic opponents and internal incompetence. Then the leader on whose back the party rose to power (Blair and Jean Chrétien) gives way to their wonkish but dithering deputy (Brown and Paul Martin).

Combined with the standard stories of overreach and incompetence that come from being in party so long sullying the good name of the government party, the conservative party out of power long enough for everyone to forget what made them so obnoxious in the first place and replacing the old conservative leaders with newer, younger faces, add water and – bingo! – instant "conservative mandate".

It’s not that complicated, sure Cameron’s green noises help soften the party image a bit, but this is a story of complacency in the left of centre leading towards overhaul.  You can hear in it Brown’s voice in question time, rambling about results as the opposition harasses him on the bumblings of the party.  He sees it coming, it’s happened before, it’ll happen again, and there aren’t really earth shatteringly deep reasons for the move.

Some exit poll data from West Virginia. Eye-popping:

One in four Clinton voters and about one in 10 Obama voters said race was an important factor in their vote.

A quarter of Clinton voters? And how many weren’t saying?

Oh dear:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

Using demography, 538 foresees a a Clinton victory by 39 points and 105,000 votes. But this isn’t news:

No, Barack Obama won’t carry West Virginia against John McCain. And yes, Hillary Clinton very well might. But this has been an open secret since at least February, when SurveyUSA polling showed Barack Obama trailing John McCain by 18 in West Virginia, and Hillary Clinton leading him by 5.

Gary Langer, the director of polling at ABC, sorts through the numbers. Money quote:

It’s fair for the Obama camp to point out that he doesn’t do significantly worse against McCain among working-class whites than Clinton does, and that he does better with their upscale counterparts. And Obama’s numbers are nothing like John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s; they lost working-class whites to George W. Bush by 24 points and 17 points, respectively.

I didn’t realize that Obama has actually been doing much better than Gore or Kerry in this demographic.

Stuart Broad of England in action during a practice session prior to the first test match between England and New Zealand at Lords on May 13, 2008 in London, England. By Clive Rose/Getty Images.

The majority of Democrats think that both candidates should continue to campaign. But look at the intraparty split.

A British reader writes:

I am not yet sure the Conservatives are revivified, but they may be,

Still, I think you have the wrong end of the stick. People like Cameron and Johnson are Tories. Up to 1/3rd of working class people (and I do find back here that people will still use the term) in the UK have always been willing to vote Tory. Heath, Pryor, Butler, etc. What you see now in the UK is a revival of Toryism over Thatcherism. There is nothing more odious to working class people than over-reaching nouveau middle-classishness. Eton toffs are massively preferable, especially when Labour has become obsessively centralist and authoritarian.  

Now, Obama makes sense as a Tory, but not as a Thatcherite.

By the way, Boris Johnson’s full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

"It seems to me that the reason why people are doing this is to attempt to dramatize some sort of duplicity in a man who… I’ve known John McCain for a long time. He always said he was a conservative. He was a conservative. He is a conservative. It seems that people should take John McCain for what he says he is," – Warren Beatty.

A word for the day:

Long flowing sideburns.

[After the bushy sideburns worn by actor Edward A. Sothern who played the part of Lord Dundreary in the play Our American Cousin (1858), written by Tom Taylor (1817-1880). This was the play being performed at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC during which Abraham Lincoln was shot.]