No Coronation

Many of us who thought Hillary had the momentum to pull yet another surprise this past Tuesday are perhaps as surprised as the candidate herself that she was finally unable to. It is interesting that once again, as in 2004, as in 1948, poll (in this case, the ones which showed the race narrowing drastically in North Carolina) were so wrong. It appears, however, that even Hillary believed them.
There are numerous opinions on what went wrong for her --some say her support of the suspending the gasoline tax (truly a bit clod-footed for such an adept campaigner) did her in, others that the Jeremiah Wright thing had simply played itself out.
In any event, striding and beaming his way through Capitol Hill the other day, Obama now looks like the candidate, for the first time. Hillary needs to make an exit within the next few weeks, and most people think that right now she should be negotiating for a consolation prize. Vice-president? (Obama does not seem to be dismissing it outright, but a bad idea). Paying off her debts? Lots of opposition there. Making her Secretary of State? Maybe. Or maybe she can just go back to being an effective Senator from New York. Her disappointment must be great, but unlike many, I don't think "the Clinton legacy" will be smeared, either for her or Bill. Their main problem, I think, was an assumption that Hillary was going to be the certain victor. As pasts presidential candidates like Thomas E. Dewey and Richard Nixon (in 1960) could tell her, that is a big mistake.

Do or Die-- Again

In this most fascinating and lengthy of Democratic primary races, it is that time again for Hillary--should she lose both Indiana and North Carolina today, she will find herself in a position where she probably needs to get out of the race. Or even if she splits close contests. It's unlikely, but possible, that she may also win both states, if Jeremiah Wright has hurt Obama as badly as many polls suggest he has.
The race has definitely been getting dirtier. There has been some scandal among Obama supporters about Hillary's pushpolling techniques in North Carolina, although they haven't yet stooped to the level of those used against John McCain by Karl Rove in 2000 in South Carolina. What is a little scarier is that a pro-Hillary group called Women's Voices Women's Votes has supposedly been robocalling black North Carolina voters and telling them their registration packets are in the mail, thus confusing many who have already registered.
In my opinion, at this point in time, despite or because of these (historically-speaking) rather tame dirty tricks, Hillary is making a strong case that she will be the better candidate against John McCain this fall. This is simply because she responds to aggression far better than Obama does. This is not about who would make the better president--a point I make over and over again is that you can do a lot of nasty things during presidential campaigns and still become a very good chief executive-- but simply about which Democratic candidate would have the best chance of winning in the fall. Of late, anyway, that would be Hillary.

"C--T is a beautiful thing!"

The other day, a Baptist minister rose at a John McCain "town hall" event to ask the Republican presidential candidate if he had called his wife a "c--t" (Read and view it here at the Huffington Post). This caused McCain to stutteringly ("now, now..uh") tell the guy that such language was not allowed and the Secret Service then escorted him off the premises. The questioner's name is Marty Parrish and he claims to be genuinely concerned about McCain's temper. The alleged "c--t" incident occurred during McCain's 1992 run for Senate reelection, according to a book called The Real McCain by Democrat Cliff Schecter, the cover of which shows McCain fervently embracing another "c--t" (well, by some standards) George Bush. My study of presidential election campaigns shows this to be the first time the "c--t" word has been used in a public forum (although privately, no doubt, there have been numerous "c--ts" thrown at Hillary, and Hillary herself probably directed one or two at Gennifer Flowers in 1992). And, no doubt, Parrish, a Biden supporter, had political motivations. What disturbs me more is that there was a need to escort Parrish from the house. After all, he was not carrying a loaded gun, although I guess the c-word is considered akin to that by polite society, left or right wing. Using it should not, of course, disqualify McCain from the presidency, but it is quite amusing in that the report is probably true, given Cindy McCain's truly "c--t"-ish aspect. Not that there's anything wrong with it, of course. As my wife's friend Elizabeth is prone to sing out at odd moments, "C--t is a beautiful thing!" But I guess we still have to pretend it is not....

Leader of the Pack

As we near North Carolina and Indiana, Obama is finally speaking out strongly against Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but unfortunately, like John Kerry before him, seems to have little idea of how to respond convincingly to aggressive tactics. Obama is still ahead and the math is still on his side, but...there is a growing sense that Hillary may somehow be able to pull this off. Dorothy Wickenden in a "Talk" piece in this week's New Yorker echoes what I've been saying on my blog--and in my book, Anything for A Vote--about the 1988 election setting the tone for twenty years worth of negative campaigning, but she and I draw different conclusions. Hillary, she believes, is stripping the bark from Barack Obama, just as Lee Atwater, Republican hit man, promised to "strip the bark from that little bastard [Michael Dukakis] and make Willie Horton his running mate."
I don't believe Hillary's actions are anywhere near as offensive as Atwater's--I don't think she has yet claimed, for instance, that Barack would release serial killers from jail if elected. Secondly, Atwater's tactics worked. Despite Wickenden's assertion that the "civility" of Barack Obama and John McCain has "lifted them above the pack," I believe that Hillary, still growling and frothing, has a definite shot at this just because she is so ready to mud-wrestle. But, as I wrote the other day, we haven't gotten anywhere near 1988-level election nastiness--1988 was the year we were letting go of Ronald Reagan and finding out it wasn't "morning in America," after all. The level of anger was very, very high--much more so than now, even with Iraq and the economy.
However, I do long for a few George H.W. Bushisms like “I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism and anti-racism” or “I’m going to make sure that everyone who has a job, wants a job.” Hillary, Barack, John--they're just too well-spoken these days....even when they're insulting each other.

Justice denied....

No sooner do I weigh in on voter registration issues in Florida (see below) when the Supreme Court returns a 6-3 decision upholding the legality of Indiana's tough voter ID law, which insists that every voter produce a valid photo ID before being allowed to vote--a passport or driver's license. This was expected, but it is a shame nonetheless. The justifications for the law “should not be disregarded simply because partisan interests may have provided one motivation for the votes of individual legislators,” Justice Stevens wrote. This is what is known, not as blind justice, but justice with without peripheral vision. Once again, as I wrote this morning, no one has proved that voter fraud consisting of pretending to be someone else when you vote is prevalent in this country anymore. If it is, let's see the statistics. Absent those, these Voter ID laws are intended to keep poor and mainly Democratic people from voting. And they will work.

Ohio Redux?

Damien Cave's scary article in the New York Times today underscores the fact that voting in Florida in the general election of 2008--if we ever get candidates for said election, that is--is going to be a hit-or-miss proposition for many people, especially Democrats. The Republican-controlled state legislature has passed laws which are akin to those on the books in Ohio in their severity. The League of Women Voters may have to pay penalties of fines of up to $1,000 if they turn in forms late. Republican Bureaucrats will scan driver's licences and compare Social Security numbers. The Times article quotes Joe Pickens, a Republican who served on the Florida House’s Ethics and Elections Committee in 2005 and 2006, as saying, with great pomposity: "Some say we err on the side of caution. I would say that’s the place we should be.”
Democrats are saying that all of this is just a way to exclude new voters, Democrats in the main, from poorer neighborhoods, who tend not to have correct ID. The same types of bureaucratic snares were set for Democratic votes in Ohio in 2004, and many people think that, because of this, John Kerry lost the election. That is debatable. What is not debatable is that Republicans have yet to actually come up with any statistics which show that fraudulent voter registration is a real issue in this country anymore.
As I have said in the past, this election will not be decided by "floaters," who travel from state to state voting numerous times for the same candidate. But, if it's down to a close one on election eve, it may be decided by Republican officials whose main goal is to keep poorer Democrats from voting.

Cry Havoc

Well, it's off to Indiana and North Carolina. More and more people are claiming that Hillary's persistance is destroying the Democrats in 08, while others claim that the fight is a valid one which will in the end strengthen the party.
I do like the fact that others are coming around to what I've been saying all along, however, which is that we have only just now started to see the dirty tricks. Lisa Schiffren at The National Review’s The Corner, a conservative blog, quoted in yesterday's New York Times:

"By what reckoning has this primary fight been so nasty? So dirty? So mean? We have all seen much worse. If anything, until this past month the questions and the charges have been much too dainty. Barack Obama is a stranger to most of the electorate. It is just fine to question any and all of his associations and political views. Failure to do so is malfeasance; failure to highlight his weaknesses as a leader would be some kind of suicide pact for an opponent."

Well, the last bit is a little silly, since in these attacks most charges are either wildly exaggerated or even made up out of wholecloth--so that even strengths become "weaknesses," as we saw in the Swiftboating of John Kerry--but it's good to hear that people are finally getting it. The dirty tricks have just started and, so far in that regard, Hillary is winning, despite the kind of scolding she got from the New York Times in their finger-waving (taking a cue from Bill?) editorial, "The Low Road to Victory." In it, they claim that "voters are getting tired of [negative campaigning]; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work." Whaaa? "Demeaning the political process?" Excuse me, Pollyanna, it is the political process. And of course it works--it has worked for over 200 years, and it worked in 1896 when the William McKinley-loving New York Times hired a group of shrinks to assail William Jennings Bryan as a nut and a degenerate.
The Times ends with a cry for Hillary to "call off the dogs." Nonsense. "Cry havoc," I say, and let them slip. The fun is just beginning.