US Presidential Primaries: The State of the Campaigns
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Franklin Otorofani, Esquire
March 08, 2008
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Having returned
from my so-called ‘sabbatical’ leave from the US Presidential primaries to touch
base with Nigeria, it is time to give an update on the state of the presidential
primaries in the US and offer some prognosis of where the primaries and the
elections are headed in the next several weeks. While the elections are several
months away the Democrats have seven more weeks to go before Denver where the
nominee will emerge—no thanks to Obama’s failure to deal a knockout punch to
Hillary in either Ohio or Texas last Tuesday as widely expected. Obama’s win in
either of the two big states would have forced Hillary out of the race as her
husband Bill, had hinted. The elders of the Democrat Party would have shown her
the exit door even if against her will. Unfortunately, Obama flunked the chance
to shove her aside for good by playing high minded politics while she trashed
him around.
It is important to bring this update to readers because a lot of water has
passed under the bridge since my last piece on the US elections. In addition
that readers have sought from me informed opinion on the state of the campaigns
and the relative chances of the presidential contenders of both parties to not
only clinch their party’s nomination, but their chances at the presidential
election proper as well, come November 2008.
But there is more to it: The whole purpose of doing the series is to help bring
to the fore the dynamics of presidential electioneering in a developed democracy
for the benefit of readers at home in Nigeria and hopefully in other African
countries that indulge in primitive politicking and diabolical political
competition that is almost completely devoid of principles and issues. It is
important to put an insider’s gloss and perspectives on the political processes
in the United States because of the likelihood of folks living outside the
states to interpret things differently from the realities on the ground here in
the US. By ‘insider’ I do not mean being directly involved in the campaigns as
such but having access to information about the campaigns that might not
otherwise be available to those outside the United States or not sufficiently
attuned to the electoral process in the US.
Where Things Stand Today
It’s no longer news that Vietnam War hero, Senator John McCain, has finally
clinched the GOP nomination for the Presidential Election having massed up the
required delegates’ number, which was once thought to be beyond his reach. As a
result of that feat Mike Huckabee, his main remaining stubborn challenger,
finally threw in the towel after Ohio and Texas primaries and bowed out of the
race with grace and class. With that the Republican Party presidential
nomination contest which had alarmingly begun on a fractious note giving rise to
the fear of a bitter drawn out slugfest has ended on a unifying note for the
Republicans.
With the graceful exit of Governor Huckabee McCain has set out to further cement
the unity in his party and promptly reached out to President Bush to help him in
reaching out to the estranged hard core conservative Evangelical Christians who
have voiced doubts about their support for McCain due to his position on social
issues like gay marriage, stem cell research, global warming, immigration,
campaign finance reforms (McCain/Feingold Bill), and even the treatment of
prisoners of war, just to mention but a few—for which he is at odds with the
Republican base. President Bush wasted no time in endorsing McCain’s
candidature, thereby signaling to the base that he has certified the Senator as
a fit and proper person to fly the conservative flag in the next presidential
election as if it has any choice in the matter. It’s a take it or leave it
matter! Like it or not, McCain has boxed in the conservatives in his party and
they have nowhere else to go but tag alone. After all, a liberal conservative
like McCain is still better than some wimpy liberal from the stable of the
Democratic Party.
Some commentators have voiced the opinion that Bush’s endorsement McCain carries
some risk because of his huge unpopularity with the American public with his
poll numbers in the gutters presently. However, such fears overlook the fact
that President Bush is still hugely popular with his party base. What is more:
He still has more than six months to go before the elections—time enough to
reverse and spruce up his unfavorable image and unpopularity arising mainly from
his handling of the war in Iraq. Now, however, the tidings from Iraq are not so
galling as they once were, with violence down considerably due to General
Petreaus brilliant military strategy of troops escalation adopted by the Bush
administration.
The success of that strategy has not only redounded to the glory of the Bush
administration but has rehabilitated McCain politically whose dogged support for
the war had hitherto alienated him from the American public. Now, McCain is
beating his chest like a chimp for advocating the Petreaus strategy that has
proven to be a roaring success in Iraq. Americans are no long as bitter with
President Bush over the war as they used to be. As a matter of fact, polls show
that they don’t want the troops out of Iraq before the job is done. But for the
economic bad news spawned by the disaster in the housing market that has now
spread to the other areas of the economy, President Bush and McCain would
probably be ridding the wave of popularity by now given the amazing turn around
in Iraq.
That is not to say that all is now well in Iraq. As a matter of fact, there is
fresh uptake in violence in Baghdad itself in the last couple weeks.
Nevertheless, McCain is in his best shape ever since he threw his hat into the
ring to face as yet unknown flag bearer of the Democratic Party. And that
complicates matters for him a little bit because he does not know whom to train
his guns at. He now fires at both Hillary and Obama depending on the issue
although he would rather have a softer target like Hillary than hard-to-get
Obama—the so-called ‘Teflon’ candidate, to vaporize with Republican blitzkrieg.
Thus, while McCain and the GOP are revving up their monstrous campaign engine,
the Democrats are in a state of total disarray not knowing how its nomination
will end. While Senator Barrack Obama remains the front runner despite Clinton’s
largely symbolic wins in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island, which only gave her a
net gain of 12 delegates, neither of the them will be able to amass the required
number of the over 1200 delegates required to win the nomination as McCain did
on the Republic side, leaving the field open for super delegates to clinch the
deal for either candidate.
If all of the nearly 800 super delegates were to go for either candidate at the
party convention in Denver, Colorado, the candidate would easily get the
nomination. But that’s not likely to happen given the fact that the super
delegates are now split between Obama and Hillary almost down the middle with
the massive defections to Obama lately. The huge super delegate lead that
Hillary had enjoyed at the beginning has dwindled considerably in favor of Obama
due to his victory run before last Tuesday. Added to that is the unwritten
assumption that the super delegates ought to go with the candidate with the most
pledged delegates won in the primaries and caucuses. By this unwritten rule, the
odds are definitely in Obama’s favor if followed through, at least as the front
runner at the moment with 120 delegates lead over Hillary.
But nothing is certain. There are still primaries to come in Wyoming, West
Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and the big one in Pennsylvania. All
informed projections point to the fact that no matter what Obama will still be
ahead at the end of the day unless he literarily goes to sleep on Hillary in PA.
While Hillary is favored to win PA by some indeterminate margin, Obama seems to
have Mississippi, North Carolina, Wyoming, and West Virginia in his corner
already. Again nothing is certain in politics. But if that scenario eventually
plays out as predicted, it will be next to impossible for Hillary to overtake
him in the pledged delegate count even if she wins PA with a wide margin. PA has
only 158 delegates and even if she wins by a margin of 20% in PA for example—a
highly unlikely proposition—that will not be enough to cut the deal for her.
Given the fact that she only won by a margin of about 12% in Ohio which she
touted as her bulwark state and less than 5% in Texas, it is highly unlikely she
could defeat Obama by a margin as wide as 20% in Pennsylvania. Right now Obama
is closing in on Hillary in the polls for PA.
The Michigan-Florida Conundrum
In the end not even PA will clinch the deal for either of them. This nightmarish
scenario has given rise to a reconsideration of the rejection of the delegates
from Michigan and Florida as penalty for moving their primaries forward. It will
be recalled that both states flouted the party rule not to move their primaries
forward or risk losing their delegate seats at the convention. On the basis of
that rule to which all the party’s presidential contenders agreed, there were no
campaigns by the candidates during the primaries in those states save for
Hillary who put her name on the ballot in Michigan. All the candidates pulled
their campaigns from the two states in compliance with the party rule. Now,
having fallen behind Obama, Hillary has gone back on that agreement and
advocating for the party to seat those delegates at the convention regardless of
the earlier agreement and regardless of the penalty imposed on the states. I
thought she was a lawyer! What manner of lawyer is Hillary? In other words, she
wants to change the rules of the game in the middle of the game because she got
some votes in those state primaries boycotted by all the other candidates in
compliance with party directives. She now figured she could use those illegal
delegates to offset Obama’s advantage at the convention.
Needless to state that the party would have none of Hillary’s desperate game
plans. It has stuck to its gun. Yet the party realizes that sticking to its guns
would alienate the voters of those states from the party at the general
elections—a proposition that the party can ill-afford. What to do? A do-over
primaries and/or caucuses is one of the solutions in the works. Another is to
split the delegates equally between both so as not to confer undue advantage on
either. But nothing has been agreed upon at the moment.
The Florida and Michigan debacle will sap the energy of the party and makes all
the more vulnerable for defeat by the Republican Party. The reason is that both
the Clinton and Obama camps have proffered diametrically opposed solutions that
could further tear the party apart. While Hillary would want the delegates
seated without questions in defiance of the penalty imposed by the party, Obama
wants a fair process that would lead to a do-over of the primaries in a real
contest not the dummy contest that threw up the illegal delegates in those
states and the party seems to be going along with this position as recently
voiced by its Chairman, Governor Howard Dean—himself a radical former
presidential candidate of the Obama cast who lost to John Kerry in Iowa when he
overplayed his hand back then.
It remains to be seen how the party will wriggle out of that corner it has boxed
itself into. It would appear however that a way out would be for the party to
field both candidates in a joint ticket—a proposition that Hillary has been
touting lately. But that depends on who is ahead in the delegates count after
PA. Whoever is ahead should be the head of the joint ticket. For now it would be
Obama, but nothing is certain in view of the remaining primaries especially in
PA. In the unlikely event that Hillary is able to tip the scale in her favor
after PA she could be the head of the ticket otherwise it would be Obama without
questions. If that happens, it could heal the wounds inflicted by the bitter
primaries and thus unite the party for the general elections proper. On the
other hand pro-longed primaries will damage the party beyond repair and hand the
presidency to the Republican Party on a platter.
Clinton’s hit job on Obama is not helpful at all in that regard. Worse still is
Obama’s lack of effective response to Clinton attacks. His new message of
politics without bitterness (apology to late Ibrahim Waziri of Nigeria), hope
and change prevents him from answering Hillary in kind. But some of us have
advised him to take on Hillary in kind and put her away because she is not ready
for clean politics. She and her husband Bill Clinton majored in gutter politics,
and will do all in their power to drag Obama down to their gutter level and
wallow in the mud like political pigs. Rising above that and allowing Clinton to
damage him as she did in Texas after South Carolina is not at all helpful to his
chances of nomination. Negative attacks while generally abhorred by Americans do
have some effects especially in close elections as it was in Texas. That was
what killed John Kerry who was ‘Swift boated’ by the Republicans with blistering
attacks on his patriotism. Obama stands the risk of being another Kerry in the
hands of Hillary if he does not hit back hard at her. There is a way he can
handle that by not been overly negative yet effective by highlighting her
legions of failures and weaknesses or otherwise linking her with the low points
of her husband’s tenure in office. Americans will avoid the Clintons like double
plagues if their scandals are exhumed and replanted in the minds of Americans
again. If that is what Hillary is looking for Obama should give it to her hot
and hard.
Beyond the Primaries
Now, all that is happening to the Democratic Party at a time the Republican
Party is about to roll out its campaign train. In the next few weeks McCain is
likely to announce his running mate. While many names are being bandied about as
likely candidates for the VP slot, one that stands out is Collin Powell, the
African-American Operation Desert Storm war hero during Bush’s Snr’s tenure and
Secretary of State in the first term of the current President. A McCain/Powell
ticket will be a hard nut to crack by the Democratic Party even if it fields
Obama/Hillary or Hillary/Obama ticket as the case may be. The reason is not
farfetched. Both McCain and Powell are war heroes with unmatched national
security credentials. Despite Hillary’s hollow posturing on national security
issues, she is only a shade better than Obama on national security issues, if at
all, by virtue of being in the White House, and not even good enough to be a
student of McCain, or for that matter, Powell on national security!
Why did I zero in on national security? It’s because McCain has made that his
sole campaign issue which he described as his “strong suit” and Americans
couldn’t agree more. Add Powell to that and you have a killer machine for the
Republican Party that would smoke out the Democratic Ticket with one cluster
bomb from the generals! Hillary might be assembling generals around her as photo
ops to pose as a strong candidate on national security, but McCain and Powell do
not need to assemble any surrogate generals around them—they are the generals
themselves!
The only answer the Democrats have is their strong suit on the economy and
health care issues. Unfortunately, rather than work to make those their issues,
Hillary is busy playing into McCain’s hands by dwelling on national security
issues where she stands no chance in hell against McCain. She has not fired a
single bullet all her life and has no idea how a war is fought won or lost. Yet
she is touting national security which has been one of the Democrats’ weakest
links for generations—all in her desperate bid to undo Obama. The Democrats
stand no chance against the Republicans on national security and that’s a fact
not opinion. In polls after polls the Republicans are head and shoulder above
the Democrats on matters of national security. The Democrats simply cannot stand
toe to toe with the Republicans on security matters and even less so with a
towering candidate like John McCain who lives and breathes security.
Therefore, Hillary is well advised to retrace her steps and tout economic and
social issues where the Democrats have comparative advantage over the
Republicans. The US economy is on a tailspin right now and headed for recession.
In fact it is in recession already. The US Labor Department has just reported a
loss of 63,000 jobs in last month alone. Manufacturing sector alone or what
remains of it, lost 52,000 jobs last month. The economy has deteriorated from
few job gains to outright job losses of that magnitude. It has been reported
that 450,000 Americans are stuck with part time jobs having failed to obtain
permanent jobs for years. Many have given up looking for non-existent jobs and
are going back to school according to ABC World News Report (03.07.08).
There is gloom and doom scenarios in virtually every direction you look in the
US economy. That should be good campaign talking points for the Democrats who
are viewed as being strong on economic issues. Playing on the Republican turf of
national security in a bid to undo Obama is therefore suicidal and pig-headed.
She is not undoing Obama but the party as a whole, making national security as
the major issue in the presidential campaign. McCain couldn’t have wished for
more. It’s a gift from heaven for him!
Added to that is the prospects of white males deserting Clinton for McCain.
Right now the sexist white males are breaking almost even for both Clinton and
Obama by reason of race and gender because there is no white male left after
Edwards left. With McCain on the Republican ticket however, the dynamics will
change overnight and the white males will troop to him. Moreover, McCain has
huge advantage over Hillary amongst the independents and equally popular with
Hispanics like Hillary, so Hillary has no Hispanics advantage over McCain as she
has over Obama. Contrast that with Obama’s advantage over McCain and Hillary
among the independents and the huge crowds of young voters he is drawing into
the democratic process for the first time. That’s why Obama leads both McCain
and Hillary in national polls in match ups for the general election proper. That
is why it makes more sense to have Obama as the head of the Democratic Ticket.
Obama’s star power, his prodigious fundraising ability ($55 million raised in
February alone compared to Hillary’s $35 million), and his inspirational message
that has caught fire with the American public, must not be ignored by the
Democratic Party in favor of the drab, uninspiring Hillary to give President
Clinton his third term. The Demcratic Party cannot afford such luxury if it
truly wants the Republicans out of power. It will not happen with a Hillary
candidature against McCain—I guarantee that!
Unfortunately, Clinton has in her desperation handed the presidency to McCain
and thus the Republican Party on the back of national security issues should she
become the party’s nominee. Even if she does not, the damage has been done
already for Obama to fix. And that ties in to Hillary’s negative attacks on
Obama. Hillary has put a number of hit jobs on Obama that have become
combustible materials for the Republican Party if Obama becomes the candidate. A
badly damaged Obama in the hands of his fellow democrat will be hard to fix by
the party itself in the general elections. And in the event that Obama is not
fielded, the African American community would have been sufficiently angered by
the Clinton damage on Obama that they would be hard to reconcile with Hillary’s
candidacy save in a joint ticket. If anything, that is the lesson taught by
voters in South Carolina when Bill did a hit job on Obama on behalf of his wife.
It did not go down well with them then—it will not go down well with them now.
We can see the handwriting on the wall with the pressure from their super
delegates to go for Obama. We shall see that Mississippi, West Virginia, and
North Carolina in the weeks to come. The Clintons have pissed off the
African-American community members and it will be hard to have them back as
allies. And the Hispanics alone cannot fill that void.
A Hillary candidature therefore will be a terrible disaster for the Democratic
Party on several scores some of which have been touched on above. A more scary
reason not to field Hillary is the simmering hatred the Republicans have for her
and the fact that they are spoiling for a fight with Hillary and the Clintons
generally. Nothing will energize and mobilize the Republican base more than a
Hillary candidature. Even those Christian evangelicals who are not otherwise
enamored of the McCain candidature will overlook his ‘sins’ and troop to the
polls just to finish off Hillary. The defeat of Hillary will give them the
greatest joy of their lives! That is why they are praying night and day to have
Hillary as the Democratic Party flag bearer instead of Obama that will be
difficult to beat. And Obama’s age (46) makes it even more difficult for McCain
to beat in contrast to Hillary’s at 60, which is pretty close to McCain’s 71.
My prognosis therefore, is that should Obama fall by the wayside and Hillary is
fielded by the Democratic Party, the Republican Party will be handed return
ticket to the White House and ride triumphantly back to power on the back on
national security horse. And you bet— national security will be placed in the
front burner in the campaign. After all, Hillary has placed it there for them
already, and it will remain there to lead the war hero—the distinguished Senator
John McCain of the great State of Arizona to the White House to continue the
policies of President George Bush! And the Democrats will hold on to their
control of Congress with Senators Clinton and Obama back to the floor of the
Senate like John Kerry before them to continue their losing streak…No thanks to
Hillary—and no thanks to a party that cannot get its acts together!
A stitch in time saves nine….
Franklin Otorofani, Esquire
Contact: mudiagaone@yahoo.com
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