Other things being equal, a decent Democratic nominee for president might have expected a reasonably comfortable walk to the White House in 2008. But then the Republican Party nominated the one Republican born for running nationally in the peculiar circumstances of 2008, and Democrats got stuck in a protracted "civil war" for their party's leadership, with a radicalized base making demands of its nominee which leave him or her little room for maneuver.
U.S. presidential campaigns are won and lost in the individual state battles, so it is the state-level polling that best tells the future, and we dreary political science-types have a game of calculating electoral votes based on those state polls.
In the "election-gaming" between de-facto Republican nominee John McCain and the leading Democrat candidate Barack Obama, McCain is bidding fair to collect 260 of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the presidency. And McCain polls very respectably against Obama in another ten states, any one or two of which would put him over the top.
That swath of the country which may be termed the "Rust Belt" is not exactly seized by Obama-mania. And the Rust Belt counts states which any Democrat for president must carry in a general election and which Republicans may expect to lose even in a good year, but polling there has found cause for hope for John McCain, versus Barack Obama.
And that is certainly the pitch that the Clinton campaign is making to the Democrat superdelegates even now. It is a compelling argument, but following it may be to exchange one set of problems for another. It may well amount to Democrat Party elites overturning Barack Obama's majorities in the popular vote and delegate allocation. Obama supporters would be fit to be tied if their votes were effectively vetoed by some party big-wigs in favour of Hillary Clinton, whom they don't much care for as it is.
The schizophrenic Democrat Party primary system, as much as anything else, has led to this state of affairs. Results are allocated by an ultra-democratic proportional representation scheme, then subjected to an anti-democratic veto by party elites. The effect is that an even match in the primaries and caucuses will yield no clear winner, and the superdelegate wildcard will give a close-running loser reason to carry on in hopes of a last-minute reprieve.
A solution has been proposed, of course: split the difference and put both Obama and Clinton on the Democrat ticket. But a shocking WNBC/Marist College poll of April 9 found that a ticket with Clinton and Obama -- in either combination -- would lose to a speculative John McCain-Condoleeza Rice ticket...in overwhelmingly Democratic New York state. If that poll is even remotely close to accurate, it would indicate that Obama and Clinton could be weaker together than individually.
And would either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama be prepared to carry the other's coat, and tie themselves to the other's fate? What if this Obama-Clinton ticket lost the election, or won but managed an unsuccessful single term? There would be little to be gained for either of the two by playing second fiddle, and quite a lot of risk. Still, plenty of primary opponents have wound up as general election running-mates, so it is a possibility, and the Clinton campaign has publicly raised the prospect of sharing a ticket, with Clinton at the top, naturally.
The superdelegates must surely be pondering these days whether Obama would bring debilitating liabilities to a general election, weaknesses that have not been probed much in the primary process. The Democrat Party of 2008 is to the left of its bearing in 1992, '96, or 2000, and consequently Hillary Clinton could hardly campaign by branding Barack Obama as "too liberal" or "too leftist". That would be a stick in the eye of the party base she needs in order to win.
But Obama was rated by the notoriously nonpartisan National Journal the "most liberal" of the 100 U.S. Senators in 2007, further left even than the self-described Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. That is all well and good in the Democrat Party caucuses of 2008, but not so much for a presidential election in what is the Western world's most conservative nation.
Which is not to say that there is no trouble in paradise on the Republican side. The latest twist has been the prospective third-party candidacy of Bob Barr. Barr is a former Republican Congressman who would never be mistaken for charismatic, most famous for his role as a Congressional prosecutor in the Clinton impeachment trial of 1999. But Barr has now abandoned the Republicans for the Libertarian Party, and threatens a vanity campaign as its presidential candidate.
Without reliable polling on Barr, or an electorate that is even aware of him, it is impossible to know what if any effect on the election he might have, but Democrats must be hoping he plays the Kamikaze against McCain, siphoning just enough potential McCain voters to make the difference in a close state or two.
There are still almost seven long months 'til Election Day. In a fraction of that time, Hillary Clinton went from presumed presidential nominee to underdog in a Democrat race that has already lasted over two months longer than anticipated. So, in American national politics as in life generally, anything can happen and it usually does.
U.S. presidential campaigns are won and lost in the individual state battles, so it is the state-level polling that best tells the future, and we dreary political science-types have a game of calculating electoral votes based on those state polls.
In the "election-gaming" between de-facto Republican nominee John McCain and the leading Democrat candidate Barack Obama, McCain is bidding fair to collect 260 of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the presidency. And McCain polls very respectably against Obama in another ten states, any one or two of which would put him over the top.
That swath of the country which may be termed the "Rust Belt" is not exactly seized by Obama-mania. And the Rust Belt counts states which any Democrat for president must carry in a general election and which Republicans may expect to lose even in a good year, but polling there has found cause for hope for John McCain, versus Barack Obama.
And that is certainly the pitch that the Clinton campaign is making to the Democrat superdelegates even now. It is a compelling argument, but following it may be to exchange one set of problems for another. It may well amount to Democrat Party elites overturning Barack Obama's majorities in the popular vote and delegate allocation. Obama supporters would be fit to be tied if their votes were effectively vetoed by some party big-wigs in favour of Hillary Clinton, whom they don't much care for as it is.
The schizophrenic Democrat Party primary system, as much as anything else, has led to this state of affairs. Results are allocated by an ultra-democratic proportional representation scheme, then subjected to an anti-democratic veto by party elites. The effect is that an even match in the primaries and caucuses will yield no clear winner, and the superdelegate wildcard will give a close-running loser reason to carry on in hopes of a last-minute reprieve.
A solution has been proposed, of course: split the difference and put both Obama and Clinton on the Democrat ticket. But a shocking WNBC/Marist College poll of April 9 found that a ticket with Clinton and Obama -- in either combination -- would lose to a speculative John McCain-Condoleeza Rice ticket...in overwhelmingly Democratic New York state. If that poll is even remotely close to accurate, it would indicate that Obama and Clinton could be weaker together than individually.
And would either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama be prepared to carry the other's coat, and tie themselves to the other's fate? What if this Obama-Clinton ticket lost the election, or won but managed an unsuccessful single term? There would be little to be gained for either of the two by playing second fiddle, and quite a lot of risk. Still, plenty of primary opponents have wound up as general election running-mates, so it is a possibility, and the Clinton campaign has publicly raised the prospect of sharing a ticket, with Clinton at the top, naturally.
The superdelegates must surely be pondering these days whether Obama would bring debilitating liabilities to a general election, weaknesses that have not been probed much in the primary process. The Democrat Party of 2008 is to the left of its bearing in 1992, '96, or 2000, and consequently Hillary Clinton could hardly campaign by branding Barack Obama as "too liberal" or "too leftist". That would be a stick in the eye of the party base she needs in order to win.
But Obama was rated by the notoriously nonpartisan National Journal the "most liberal" of the 100 U.S. Senators in 2007, further left even than the self-described Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. That is all well and good in the Democrat Party caucuses of 2008, but not so much for a presidential election in what is the Western world's most conservative nation.
Which is not to say that there is no trouble in paradise on the Republican side. The latest twist has been the prospective third-party candidacy of Bob Barr. Barr is a former Republican Congressman who would never be mistaken for charismatic, most famous for his role as a Congressional prosecutor in the Clinton impeachment trial of 1999. But Barr has now abandoned the Republicans for the Libertarian Party, and threatens a vanity campaign as its presidential candidate.
Without reliable polling on Barr, or an electorate that is even aware of him, it is impossible to know what if any effect on the election he might have, but Democrats must be hoping he plays the Kamikaze against McCain, siphoning just enough potential McCain voters to make the difference in a close state or two.
There are still almost seven long months 'til Election Day. In a fraction of that time, Hillary Clinton went from presumed presidential nominee to underdog in a Democrat race that has already lasted over two months longer than anticipated. So, in American national politics as in life generally, anything can happen and it usually does.
