Norman Leahy
Super Tuesday was supposed to have made things clear. With so many states voting at once, surely, each party would know on Feb. 6 who its nominee would be and we could then settle into one of the longest general election campaigns in memory. Something like that happened for the Republicans. But for the Democrats? No chance.
Sens. Hillary Clinton (New York) and Barack Obama (Illinois) traded wins and losses across the country. Clinton was winning in the big blue states, Obama in the somewhat smaller red states. When the dust sort of settled, each could claim victory, of a sort, but Clinton held a slight lead in the delegate total. Obama won more states than Clinton, that's true. But she won the biggest states – California and New York.
And now, after a few smaller caucuses, the Democratic presidential race comes to the mid-Atlantic and Virginia. And for once, how Virginia's Democrats vote could make a difference.
But the question is, what sort of difference, and is there really a dime's worth of it between the two main contenders?
Democratic voters don't really seem to think so. Exit polling from NBC found that three out of four Democratic voters say they would be happy with either candidate as their nominee.
But under the surface, there's a slightly different story. Clinton draws strength from women, seniors, Asian and Hispanic voters. Obama finds a wellspring of support among blacks, men and people under 30. The splits are just wide enough to create the patch-work results we've seen so far -- as well as a couple of genuine surprises.
Perhaps the biggest came in Massachusetts. There, Obama enjoyed endorsements from Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick. He had the press behind him, wrapping him in a faux-Camelot cloak so tight that he seemed an inevitable winner.
But he got thumped.
Why? Some say it's the Paul Tsongas/Bill Bradley factor. Obama gets the wealthy and educated, the young and idealistic. They are passionate and they will get a lot of press attention. But there just aren't enough of them to win.
One Boston analyst, perhaps still reeling from the New England Patriots' Super Bowl loss, put it better. He said that the difference in Massachusetts and elsewhere was between the workhorses and the showhorses.
Obama, as has been the case throughout his campaign, still comes across as a showhorse. Even in his weirdly disjointed ads now running in Virginia (where we are told we can save the planet, end the war and probably cure acne too), one is left to wonder whether there's anything to the man besides platitudes.
It's a fair question that doesn't get asked enough. But given the existing campaign environment, it doesn't seem to matter.
Absent any really tough questioning (or any guided verbal missiles from Bill Clinton), Obama has been able to rack up an impressive list of victories. But like the man, they may only be for show, because his overall vote totals trail those of Mrs. Clinton.
And because he gets so much unquestioning love from the party's wealthy faction, he's doing better than ever in the money race, allowing him to spend even more on gauzy ads while Clinton's top staffers are foregoing their checks and she's reduced to making a desperation pitch for fresh capital (she managed to raise more than $4 million in less than 24 hours).
In spite of all of this, though, the race is hers to lose. At least for now.
Unlike Obama, she is a widely known quantity (which explains why she has some of the highest negative ratings for a presidential candidate anyone has ever seen). She has been running for the White House since she left as first lady in 2001. People know what's under her surface -- a steely determination to win.
She's helped by the fact that the field has narrowed substantially with the exits of Bill Richardson and John Edwards. She is helped even more by the fact that Obama's "above-partisanship" pitch failed to deliver victories in big Democratic states (there's a lesson here for Mark Warner, if he cares to take it). Democrats want to win in November – not hold hands with Republicans and skip into a golden, nonpartisan future.
Those Democrats are flocking to Clinton.
Obama is also hurt because, beginning with Bill Clinton's attacks pre-South Carolina, he has been cast as the black candidate. While people will never tell pollsters they aren't comfortable voting for a black candidate for president, it's a factor (one that Doug Wilder can attest to). This may help Clinton blunt the Obama appeal, but it also runs the very real risk of damaging her own general election candidacy.
Which is also why, though she remains the favorite for now, Obama could just as easily take the top slot after Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., vote on Tuesday. Two factors that help Obama in Virginia are that Gov. Timothy Kaine and Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder are in his corner. Kaine is still a huge draw in Northern Virginia and Wilder, for all his foibles, remains a very potent force in the black community. Combined, their efforts could blunt Clinton's natural appeal to victory-hungry Democrats.
But as with everything else we've seen so far in this contest, the only sure result from Tuesday's balloting will be that nothing is sure. And as a conservative bystander watching the Democrats try to pick a winner, the longer their uncertainty goes on, the happier I feel.
Norman Leahy is a senior copywriter at a Richmond-area marketing agency. He is a graduate of Colorado College, Johns Hopkins University and was a 2006 Fellow at the Sorensen Institute. From 2002-2007, he published the blog One Man's Trash. Currently, he is a contributor to Bacon's Rebellion, Bearing Drift and Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Thad Williamson
Political Science 101 teaches us that in a two-party political system, rational political parties who want to win elections will move their policy positions as close to the views of the "median voter" as possible, in an effort to capture the middle of the electorate and thus the election.
It doesn't always work that way in American politics, however, for one big reason: presidential nominees are selected not by rational party bosses strategizing how to win elections, but by the voters of each party (plus in some states, independents or even those from the opposite party who eschew their own party's candidates). That means that in primary season, according to the conventional models, the candidates will be competing over not the middle of the American electorate as a whole, but the middle of their respective party, meaning that candidates will stake out positions more liberal or conservative than the "median voter" might like.
But even this doesn't tell the whole story, because usually the most fired up people in the primary season are strong partisans of a particular person or a particular ideological view. These are the people who give money, make phone calls, knock on doors, write blogs and initiate political conversations with their neighbors and co-workers. Without such activists, campaigns can't function very well. The activities of those committed persons, in turn, can help shape the views of the many other Americans who don't necessarily think about politics in the systemic, ideological way that almost all pundits and activists do.
All this is useful to review in considering why the conservative right is not overjoyed that John McCain is their party's presumptive nominee — even though, from the perspective of the general election, McCain was and is by far the most formidable and electable candidate in the GOP mix. McCain is perceived as relatively moderate, even though most of his policy positions are decidedly not, simply because he has cultivated (and to some degree earned) a reputation for thinking for himself as opposed to swallowing the Republican party line, whatever it is.
That reputation, along with the condescension McCain has expressed over the years toward "agents of intolerance" on the far right, explains why much of the conservative base is so distressed at McCain's clear triumph. Whereas on the Democratic side, the party base has often been taken for granted by establishment Beltway party "strategists," the GOP has both run and governed toward its base over most of the last generation (a fact that enough political science 101 textbooks have fully recognized). Conservative activists feel entitled to have one of their own leading the party and betrayed at the idea of a candidate who occasionally violates any of their core mantras.
From an outsider's perspective, it's a somewhat amusing sight to see, though not nearly as amusing as the desperate efforts of many party elites and opinion shapers such as Rush Limbaugh to prop up Mitt Romney as the conservative standard bearer, one of the least likeable and most transparently inauthentic presidential candidates of recent years. The fact that so many religious right voters have supported Mike Huckabee, a candidate who at least shows some concern for and familiarity with families earning less than $30,000 a year, speaks well at least of those voters' integrity. More worryingly (or promisingly!), it might portend a fracturing of the Reagan-fusion conservatism coalition that has enjoyed such political clout since 1980.
Whether that turns out to be case remains to be seen. In the meantime, liberals and Democrats will take heart from continued conservative sniping at McCain, because it will force him to move rhetorically farther to the right at a time when most presumptive nominees try to track toward the center.
Even better (from a left point of view), the most obvious issue upon which the various strands of GOP might unite behind McCain is the Iraq war and the belief that it can still be won. Focusing on Iraq and re-heating the rhetoric about rallying together in a time of war, "no surrender," etc, etc. is a good way to re-unify most of the Republicans, but Iraq itself is much more likely than not a losing issue for the Republicans to lead with in the fall.
Most Americans are fed up with the war and recognize it as a grave mistake; McCain's intention to recommit yet more resources and lives in pursuit of a lost cause is not going to be an easy sell to a war-weary public. McCain's position on the war — more troops, more tours, yet no draft — presents a clear target for Democrats. If Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton can't translate the discrepancy between most Americans' desire to find a way out of Iraq and McCain's determination to stay there into an electoral majority, then the Democrats don't deserve to retake the White House.
Thad Williamson is an assistant professor of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. After growing up in Chapel Hill, N.C., he earned his bachelor's degree at Brown University, a master's degree in theology from Union Theological Seminary (New York) and a doctorate in political science from Harvard University. He is the author of three books and has written on public affairs for numerous national publications.
w LAST TIME OUT: Williamson takes on the Democrats; Leahy tackles the Republicans.
Election Day Reading Room
w RBlog: Race for the White House - Our RBlog takes a look at what's been going on so far.
w Agree to Disagree - Richmond.com's political columnists discuss the race for the White House.
w Campaigns Come to Richmond - Coverage of the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, which featured Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
w Primed for the Primary - What you need to know for Election Day.