How unexpected. We’re sitting around considering whether the Indiana primary on May 6 will be decisive in this presidential campaign of front loaded primaries.
Voters and party leaders, including those in California, had grown tired of the power and influence of the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary and wanted in on the early action. Even those not seeking to displace Iowa and New Hampshire wanted to move up their primaries so that they would be decisive in the nominating process. Too often by the time a state’s primary had arrived, the shape of the presidential campaign had already been profoundly molded, many candidates had already withdrawn, and sometimes the final outcome had already been decided.
As a result, for this 2008 campaign, states started falling all over themselves trying to move their respective party primaries to dates very early in the year. The press of front loading was so great that the Democratic primaries in two states, Michigan and Florida, were essentially stripped of legitimacy because the national party leaders wanted to keep some semblance of order or at least continue to permit Iowa and New Hampshire to lead.
And now? With two major candidates running neck and neck and neither likely to reach the convention with the required number of delegates to assure nomination, albeit with Obama holding a lead in elected delegates and popular vote in approved primaries and caucuses that he is unlikely to relinquish before the convention, the late primaries which many thought would be of no significance have emerged as key battlegrounds. Ohio and Texas might have determined the outcome, had Hillary lost. Pennsylvania then became the focus. But once again Hillary emerged triumphant and with a comfortable margin of victory.
So now attention has turned to Indiana, although North Carolina will also vote on May 6. Obama is expected to win in North Carolina, in part because of its percentage of African-American and affluent voters. Indiana, more like Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states with smaller percentages of black and affluent voters, has become more of the focus. If Hillary wins there she surely will continue with energy and gusto, even if she loses in North Carolina. If she loses in Indiana she will likely continue on but her recent string of victories with consequent bragging rights will have been broken and obviously this will work in favor of Obama and remind people that he remains in the lead.
Where is this all heading? Many continue to feel that the Democratic Party cannot deny the nomination to Barack Obama if he enters the convention with a greater popular vote than Hillary and more elected delegates, leaving Michigan and Florida out of the tabulations. The only way he can lose the nomination at that point is if a significant number of super delegates vote for Hillary presumably on the ground that she is more electable than Obama against McCain. And, the argument is that if the non-elected super delegates do that then many African-American voters, perhaps the most loyal Democratic Party voting bloc, and other fierce supporters of Obama, will be outraged, feel that Obama was denied the nomination because he is black, and will sit on their hands in November resulting in a McCain victory.
It is difficult to counter that argument as that is a very likely outcome if Obama is denied the nomination, no matter what else happens in the remaining Democratic primaries. The trouble, however, is that there are many who feel that chinks in Obama’s armor have begun to show, whether due to Hillary’s efforts, efforts of conservative commentators and others, closer media coverage, or as the result of Obama’s own behavior, and that he is now emerging as a very vulnerable candidate for President.
A commentator on cable news today who presumably has done polling of media coverage of the candidates and those associated with them stated that when it came to Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Obama’s coverage stood at 83% positive, Hillary’s at 53% positive and Bill at only 23% positive. In seeking to explain these percentages, the commentator remarked that the media tend to be drawn to candidates who don’t appear to fit the same old politician mold and who preach unity rather than division. I certainly am one who believes that Obama has been given a relatively free ride in the media until now, with some exceptions.
But the Reverend Wright tapes and Obama’s responses and, more recently, Obama’s comments about bitter voters clinging to religion and guns have gradually exposed him to greater negative press and more critical media questioning, and have shown him to be far more a traditional politician (something I have been contending since the outset) than the idealistic, above the fray candidate dedicated to and capable of uniting red and blue, black, brown and white, conservative, moderate and liberal, that he has sought to present himself as since the outset. His extremely liberal voting record and news stories of his friendly, but not close, relationship with Bill Ayers, former member of the Weather Underground, have also undercut Obama’s image as a moderate.
I didn’t watch the Pennsylvania primary debate in which the ABC moderators asked Obama pointed questions on some of these issues and apparently Obama did not shine, but I did watch both Hillary and him deliver their remarks after the Pennsylvania voting showed Hillary had won. It was not surprising that Hillary was upbeat, energetic and seemed to connect with both those present and the TV cameras. Obama, speaking in Indiana, delivered a lackluster speech, no doubt in part reflecting his defeat as well as his fatigue. But I hadn’t seen him give a speech, as opposed to participate in a debate, in which he looked and sounded off his game. He reached into his playbook to patch together segments of his stump speeches but he seemed on autopilot.
Are the Democrats truly headed for a debacle, first at the National Convention and then at the polls in November? Hard to say. And many of us, me included, can’t help but blame Hillary for all this, perhaps unfairly but probably not. Had Hillary developed a strategy to contest the voting in caucus states and in a few smaller ones that had primaries things might not be where they are today. Given the proportional representation voting that is preventing her from mounting a powerful comeback, she might have been able to prevent Obama from rolling up the totals in delegate counts in those caucus and small primary states if she had merely paid some mind to them. I suspect that Hillary and her staff were seduced by the very myth, her “inevitability,” that they sought to propagate in the belief that it would render any opposition impotent and as a result did not elect to expend very many resources in those states.
Some may complain that, in blaming Hillary for her current situation, I am not giving Obama the credit he is due for having run such an excellent campaign to date. He has indeed excited an incredible number of voters to work for his campaign, support his candidacy with financial contributions in small amounts that are cumulatively staggering, and vote for him in caucuses and primaries in small and large states. There can be no question that his charisma, cool under pressure demeanor, and oratorical skills combined with his message of hope, unity and change have been major factors in his success and current status as frontrunner. Nonetheless, given Hillary’s victories in so many of the large, industrial states that have traditionally been the key to Democratic victory, it would appear that she should have been able to rally enough forces in caucus and small primary states to dent the delegate and electoral advantages Obama has been able to amass in them and be in the lead at this juncture, even putting aside Michigan and Florida.
My apologies for taking you this far in this post without now being in a position to provide a simple solution to the Democratic Party’s current conundrum. Right now it still seems to me that Obama will be the nominee. But he no longer is the magical candidate that he was to many a few months ago. While he is not besting McCain in recent one-on-one polls by any significant margin, Obama is faring no worse than Hillary, so her argument that she is a more formidable candidate against McCain has not been unequivocally established. But, as an older, longtime Democrat, political observer and political scientist, I am concerned that the party nominee may well be the candidate who failed to win the primaries in New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas and Ohio and, with a legitimate qualification, in Michigan and Florida as well. Will a very high percentage of primary voters who voted for Hillary turn around and support Obama in November? Will he be able to beat McCain? I have my doubts. But, as I noted above, the selection of Hillary as nominee through the actions of super delegates combined with her historical high negatives may doom her candidacy as well.
Stay tuned!⌂
