I have a new obsession: the 2008 presidential election. I follow it with an intensity most men only muster for their favorite sports team...or sex. I find politics to be heady stuff: polls and speeches, power and influence, maneuvers and machinations, scandals, debates, rebuttals and retorts. American politics is human nature at its best and worst.
The Darwinist in me really gets turned on by this stuff. The Christian in me absolutely abhors it. Kind of.
The Republican process seemed to end before it got really interesting, but not before I realized that Mitt Romney’s name and hair scared me. Still does.
Anyway, John McCain should be a formidable Republican nominee; military hero, experienced senator, and well-known for his candor and maverick attitude. I’m looking forward to the moments where he goes “off script” and speaks his heart. I just love when politicians do that.
The Democratic drama, however historic it may be, is still unfolding between the two remaining candidates.
Barack Obama is the grandiloquent speaker whose words inspire in ways most politicians envy. Words like “destiny”, “hope”, and “change” seem to mean something when he speaks them. People flock to his rallies in droves and he exudes political rock star status as effortlessly as Michael Jordan dunks or John Grisham writes novels about lawyers. Barack's racked up states, votes, delegates, and has fund-raised the crap out of everyone else.
Hillary Clinton is the savvy senator and former First Lady. When Hillary says she will wake up each morning thinking about how she can fight for the American people, she’s believable. She is politically adept, tough as nails and if I’m about to mix it up with someone, I would want her watching my back 'cuz I have no doubt chick would fight dirty if she needed to. Hillary’s the Jack Bauer of politics and the cat with nine lives; when all the pundits count her out, she pops up again and gets the job done.
The two are not without flaws. Hillary has enough baggage to fill an Airbus A380, while Barack’s affiliation with Reverend Jeremiah Wright has badly tarnished the initially transcendent nature of his campaign, rudely thrusting race into the election in ways that we are still talking about.
A great deal has been said about Hillary Clinton’s chances of becoming the Democratic nominee. At this point, even if she won every remaining state in play, she would not capture the required number of delegates to secure the nomination. Neither would Obama.
And there’s a new wrinkle: Superdelegates.
The morning after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, I watched Tim Russert tell an MSNBC panel that he’d recently heard Chris Rock joke about how no one had ever heard the term "superdelegate" until a black guy was in the lead for the nomination.
Like a number of Rock’s comedic observations, there may be some truth behind the joke. 794 people not required to announce a candidate preference in advance and free to change their preference right up to the second before they declare their choice at the convention might make for great television, but is poor political form.
Senator Clinton’s argument to the Supers is simple: yes, Obama’s won more states, leads in total delegates and has more popular votes, but she is the stronger candidate and the one who stands the best chance of defeating McCain. She is the candidate who won the critical states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. She is the candidate who appeals to the broader base and is, thus, more electable.
Hillary Clinton believes her argument should override all other considerations. It’s a smart strategy, one salespeople refer to as changing the base: instead of addressing the concerns your potential client/customer has voiced, you subtly show/tell them that they aren’t really concerned about what they’ve said, but about something else entirely. Something you define for them.
Could such a strategy work? Absolutely. George Bush’s 2004 campaign convinced the majority of voters that they weren’t nearly as concerned about the economy as they had expressed in poll after poll leading up to the election. Instead, national security and whether a Kerry administration would protect them in the War on Terror was the pivotal issue. Bush, of course, handily won a second term.
An aside: Who actually thought up the title, "War on Terror"? It's sounds so lame, futile and...funny. For the first few months, I couldn't hear that term without snickering a little on the inside. Can you really declare a war on terror? I mean, I know we did just that, but seriously: Hollywood thrives on the fact that we can willingly be coerced to give our hard-earned money to theaters to see movies purposely designed to scare (or terrorize) the bejeezus out of us and now we've declared a war on it? Wow.
I don’t know whether Obama would triumph against McCain. Republican campaigns are nothing if not shrewd, ruthless, and willing to repeat a message any number of times and any number of ways to drive a point home. I have no doubt the conservative media will trot out more Jeremiah Wright clips, continue referring to Obama as little more than a ‘motivational speaker’ and say he’s achieved nothing over the course of his political career. They will question the substance of his platform, judgment, patriotism, readiness as a leader and everything else.
Yet there are no guarantees Clinton could defeat McCain, either. It is her opinion that she has been "fully vetted", all her skeletons exposed for the world to see. But is that ever really true for a politician? Political skeletons, no matter how deep they’ve been buried, have a funny way of reanimating. For all we know, the Republicans have already assembled a dossier of campaign-killing revelations. Or maybe the dirt they currently have is enough.
I believe that unless something truly catastrophic occurs, Barack Obama will have earned his ticket to the big dance. The Supers should not be permitted to usurp this accomplishment from him because their analysis concludes he may not be victorious. He should be given the same chance past presumptive nominees of his party has had: the chance to win. Or the chance to lose.
Obama may feel he’s up to the task, that he’s toughened his skin in recent weeks. I'm reminded of the “Star Wars” movie where a cocky Luke Skywalker defiantly asserts that he is ready to face his father, Darth Vader, and is not afraid.
“You will be,” Yoda responds. “You will be.” Luke Skywalker lost his hand to Darth Vader in battle. Al Gore and John Kerry lost their political voices to George Bush. What might Obama lose against his competitor?
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