I am still mulling over in my mind my impressions of the South Carolina Primary. One issue is important to note in regard to the nuts and bolts of winning elections. Or not.
Again, as in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, turnout to vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses significantly exceeded the numbers who turned out to vote in the Republican primary. As the article in this South Carolina paper notes, that is a sharp reversal from 2004. In fact, as the television commentators were at pains to point out, Barack Obama got more votes than even turned out for the Democratic Primary in 2004. Was his win in South Carolina just a racial thing, since South Carolina has such a large percentage of black voters? Maybe, except the African-American population in Iowa is only 2.6% of the overall Iowa population. Obama won there and the Primary drew something like 60% more Democratic caucus goers than in 2004, and far more than turned out for the Republican caucuses, in a state normally viewed as a "swing state", that is capable of going either way. This year it seems to be trending strongly Democratic.
And then there is the whole speech thing. My idea of torture is to be strapped to a chair and be forced to watch George W Bush deliver a State of the Union speech. Contrast that with Barack Obama, whose victory speech in Iowa, his concession speech in New Hampshire and his victory speech last night in South Carolina have been among the three best political speeches I have ever seen. Better than Bill Clinton. Better than Hillary, better than Reagan, better than Robert Kennedy. Pretty incredible stuff. That helps people get elected. It may not always help them govern, but you can't govern unless you get into office first. Preferably with a large enough vote that you are considered to have a "mandate", whatever that means. It also helps to have sixty reliable votes in the Senate and control of Congress.
What being able to give a great speech also seems to be doing in Obama's case is draw Independents and moderate Republicans to him. A lot of Americans have decided that they want a President who maybe has a "faith", but they'd rather not know too much about it. Rather like them being okay about a President having a sex life, but again, not something they want to hear about in too much detail. Moderate Republicans are tired of being dragged along into an untenable prison of niche prejudices; rejection of climate change, rejection of stem cell research, "pro-life-ism", bellicose foreign policy, the injection of Christianity into every facet of our government. Even some who are deeply religious find themselves repelled by the sorts of thuggish mega-pastors who are being handed government checks and given remarkable access to the White House, as part of political strategy. Those people are deciding, in numbers that startle me, that they rather like young Mr. Obama. And they are going to vote for him. They've had it with the direction the Republican Party has taken, and they have lost hope that it can be hauled back from its present course. They appear to be turning into, in numbers that surprise me, what we may come to describe as "Obama Republicans".
And Republicans do not appear to be the only ones who are touched by something that Obama brings to the discussion.
The Clintons have helped a lot by running what has seemed to me to be a tightly-scripted and generally graceless campaign. Those who want soaring rhetoric need no apply. But what the heck is going to draw in the increasingly large numbers of Independents and disaffected moderate Republicans who feel that their party has abandoned them? Are party loyalists going to do it? If so, Clinton has that covered. The more disciplined Old Guard has that well in hand for the Clintons, as could be seen in the Nevada caucus where actions that constituted voter suppression took place, to help Clinton get that win. But at quite a cost to her in voter perceptions. The Clinton campaign's choice to let Bill Clinton knock around and dress down reporters and deliver long rambling speeches is a puzzling one. If Hillary Clinton were President, would Bill be permitted to ramble around the world and cut diplomatic deals, according to his assessment of the situation? That is the best equivalent to the role he is playing in the campaign that I can think of. It all seems a bit sloppy. And negative.
What came out of South Carolina was a clear sense that the voters did not like an overly sharp tone. They were okay with some backbone, but against the use of knives.
My hunch is that John McCain is likely to be the Republican nominee. As his mother so eloquently put it, the Republican base will, "Hold their noses and vote for him". That's a ringing endorsement, isn't it? So the issue is, how would Obama (if he is the nominee) poll against McCain? What would McCain throw at him? Well, probably not the issue of race.
If you recall the South Carolina Primary in 2000 there was a push- poll campaign asking voters if they were aware that McCain had a black child who was born out of wedlock. The true facts are a good dealer stranger, because when McCain's wife went on a trip to Bangladesh one time she brought back an orphan that she had spontaneously adopted. The girl is now about 14 and is dark complected for an Indian (which would make her "lower caste" or perhaps even "untouchable", the caste system in India having a huge skin color component). Cindy McCain apparently did not ask McCain before doing this, which is amazing. McCain was enraged by the attack on his family by that bit of creative race-baiting. I very much doubt that he would permit his campaign or any surrogates to go down that road. Too bitter a memory for him. Despite McCain's claim that he has his temper under control, no one believes it.
Obama's financial dealings with donors? Since McCain was famously one of the "Keating Five" who was deeply in the pocket of a Savings and Loan embezzler, I am not sure McCain, since he lives in a glass house, would want to start throwing stones. Whatever dumb things Obama did, or did not do, pale into insignificance beside McCain's blunder, which he got out of in part because of sympathy for his period of imprisonment in Vietnam. But that would not stop the issue from being raised again, and it is a fairly sordid story.
In summary, I think because of these coincidences, the General Election would be a fairly clean one, assuming McCain to be the candidate. Another reason I think McCain will be the nominee is that a lot of people find the Mormons strange. That they are Christian does not cut it, just as the fiercest hostility in Iraq is not between different ethnic groups, it is between the different Islamic sects, the Shiia and the Sunni, who have been fighting for 1,300 years. Over Religious issues within Islam. I do not believe that the most fervent Christians could bring themselves to vote for a Mormon. Their choice might be to sit out the election.
Or vote for Obama. Oddly enough, the crazed e-mails about how Obama is a secret Muslim and his middle name is Hussein have played to Obama's benefit: anyone who would believe that junk probably would not vote for him anyhow, but for him to be forced to respond to it gives him a chance to talk about his religious background and beliefs without it being HIM who raised the subject. It comes back to my contention that most Americans (according to a poll, 56%) want less overt religiosity in the White House. That statistic gives me hope for the American people, that despite all attempts to turn them into mindless sheep, it has not worked.
And then we come down to this thing about being sort of... black. Will that fly in 2008? Are the American people ready to elect a dark- skinned guy? One word. Oprah. When the single most popular talk show host in the United States is a woman whose skin is the same hue as his, I like his chances to transcend that apparent barrier. Seventy-five percent of voters in South Carolina identified Obama as the one most likely to bring "change", whatever that meant to them. I think it meant something like, "Something as far away from what is going on as is possible to arrange". The fact that even his skin and family background is so sharply different may actually help him. We know for sure he is not part of the Bush family, don't we?
Lastly, since I am working on a lobbying thing with someone whose cousin is deeply involved with the Obama campaign, I took the liberty of mentioning to my friend that in case he ever has two spare tickets to stay in the Lincoln bedroom, that my wife and I would be delighted to accept. At the very least I anticipate that my chum will get a laugh out of my request. And hey, if I am the first one to ask, who knows?
Joking aside, I find myself increasingly optimistic about the outcome of this election. I am still supporting Edwards, who Obama spoke yesterday of thinking might make a great Attorney General. I wondered if that was a round-about way of indicating that he'd ask Edwards to be Vice President? I would not be surprised. That said, Edwards would also be a holy terror as Attorney General.
Lastly, for anyone wanting to delve into the religious thoughts and connections of the candidates, start here with the Obama section of what seems to be a really useful series on all the candidates done by the Christian Science Monitor, which continues to do some excellent reporting, on a shoe-string. Their work on the Iraq war was incredible when compared to most of the major newspapers.
Again, as in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, turnout to vote in the Democratic primaries and caucuses significantly exceeded the numbers who turned out to vote in the Republican primary. As the article in this South Carolina paper notes, that is a sharp reversal from 2004. In fact, as the television commentators were at pains to point out, Barack Obama got more votes than even turned out for the Democratic Primary in 2004. Was his win in South Carolina just a racial thing, since South Carolina has such a large percentage of black voters? Maybe, except the African-American population in Iowa is only 2.6% of the overall Iowa population. Obama won there and the Primary drew something like 60% more Democratic caucus goers than in 2004, and far more than turned out for the Republican caucuses, in a state normally viewed as a "swing state", that is capable of going either way. This year it seems to be trending strongly Democratic.
And then there is the whole speech thing. My idea of torture is to be strapped to a chair and be forced to watch George W Bush deliver a State of the Union speech. Contrast that with Barack Obama, whose victory speech in Iowa, his concession speech in New Hampshire and his victory speech last night in South Carolina have been among the three best political speeches I have ever seen. Better than Bill Clinton. Better than Hillary, better than Reagan, better than Robert Kennedy. Pretty incredible stuff. That helps people get elected. It may not always help them govern, but you can't govern unless you get into office first. Preferably with a large enough vote that you are considered to have a "mandate", whatever that means. It also helps to have sixty reliable votes in the Senate and control of Congress.
What being able to give a great speech also seems to be doing in Obama's case is draw Independents and moderate Republicans to him. A lot of Americans have decided that they want a President who maybe has a "faith", but they'd rather not know too much about it. Rather like them being okay about a President having a sex life, but again, not something they want to hear about in too much detail. Moderate Republicans are tired of being dragged along into an untenable prison of niche prejudices; rejection of climate change, rejection of stem cell research, "pro-life-ism", bellicose foreign policy, the injection of Christianity into every facet of our government. Even some who are deeply religious find themselves repelled by the sorts of thuggish mega-pastors who are being handed government checks and given remarkable access to the White House, as part of political strategy. Those people are deciding, in numbers that startle me, that they rather like young Mr. Obama. And they are going to vote for him. They've had it with the direction the Republican Party has taken, and they have lost hope that it can be hauled back from its present course. They appear to be turning into, in numbers that surprise me, what we may come to describe as "Obama Republicans".
And Republicans do not appear to be the only ones who are touched by something that Obama brings to the discussion.
The Clintons have helped a lot by running what has seemed to me to be a tightly-scripted and generally graceless campaign. Those who want soaring rhetoric need no apply. But what the heck is going to draw in the increasingly large numbers of Independents and disaffected moderate Republicans who feel that their party has abandoned them? Are party loyalists going to do it? If so, Clinton has that covered. The more disciplined Old Guard has that well in hand for the Clintons, as could be seen in the Nevada caucus where actions that constituted voter suppression took place, to help Clinton get that win. But at quite a cost to her in voter perceptions. The Clinton campaign's choice to let Bill Clinton knock around and dress down reporters and deliver long rambling speeches is a puzzling one. If Hillary Clinton were President, would Bill be permitted to ramble around the world and cut diplomatic deals, according to his assessment of the situation? That is the best equivalent to the role he is playing in the campaign that I can think of. It all seems a bit sloppy. And negative.
What came out of South Carolina was a clear sense that the voters did not like an overly sharp tone. They were okay with some backbone, but against the use of knives.
My hunch is that John McCain is likely to be the Republican nominee. As his mother so eloquently put it, the Republican base will, "Hold their noses and vote for him". That's a ringing endorsement, isn't it? So the issue is, how would Obama (if he is the nominee) poll against McCain? What would McCain throw at him? Well, probably not the issue of race.
If you recall the South Carolina Primary in 2000 there was a push- poll campaign asking voters if they were aware that McCain had a black child who was born out of wedlock. The true facts are a good dealer stranger, because when McCain's wife went on a trip to Bangladesh one time she brought back an orphan that she had spontaneously adopted. The girl is now about 14 and is dark complected for an Indian (which would make her "lower caste" or perhaps even "untouchable", the caste system in India having a huge skin color component). Cindy McCain apparently did not ask McCain before doing this, which is amazing. McCain was enraged by the attack on his family by that bit of creative race-baiting. I very much doubt that he would permit his campaign or any surrogates to go down that road. Too bitter a memory for him. Despite McCain's claim that he has his temper under control, no one believes it.
Obama's financial dealings with donors? Since McCain was famously one of the "Keating Five" who was deeply in the pocket of a Savings and Loan embezzler, I am not sure McCain, since he lives in a glass house, would want to start throwing stones. Whatever dumb things Obama did, or did not do, pale into insignificance beside McCain's blunder, which he got out of in part because of sympathy for his period of imprisonment in Vietnam. But that would not stop the issue from being raised again, and it is a fairly sordid story.
In summary, I think because of these coincidences, the General Election would be a fairly clean one, assuming McCain to be the candidate. Another reason I think McCain will be the nominee is that a lot of people find the Mormons strange. That they are Christian does not cut it, just as the fiercest hostility in Iraq is not between different ethnic groups, it is between the different Islamic sects, the Shiia and the Sunni, who have been fighting for 1,300 years. Over Religious issues within Islam. I do not believe that the most fervent Christians could bring themselves to vote for a Mormon. Their choice might be to sit out the election.
Or vote for Obama. Oddly enough, the crazed e-mails about how Obama is a secret Muslim and his middle name is Hussein have played to Obama's benefit: anyone who would believe that junk probably would not vote for him anyhow, but for him to be forced to respond to it gives him a chance to talk about his religious background and beliefs without it being HIM who raised the subject. It comes back to my contention that most Americans (according to a poll, 56%) want less overt religiosity in the White House. That statistic gives me hope for the American people, that despite all attempts to turn them into mindless sheep, it has not worked.
And then we come down to this thing about being sort of... black. Will that fly in 2008? Are the American people ready to elect a dark- skinned guy? One word. Oprah. When the single most popular talk show host in the United States is a woman whose skin is the same hue as his, I like his chances to transcend that apparent barrier. Seventy-five percent of voters in South Carolina identified Obama as the one most likely to bring "change", whatever that meant to them. I think it meant something like, "Something as far away from what is going on as is possible to arrange". The fact that even his skin and family background is so sharply different may actually help him. We know for sure he is not part of the Bush family, don't we?
Lastly, since I am working on a lobbying thing with someone whose cousin is deeply involved with the Obama campaign, I took the liberty of mentioning to my friend that in case he ever has two spare tickets to stay in the Lincoln bedroom, that my wife and I would be delighted to accept. At the very least I anticipate that my chum will get a laugh out of my request. And hey, if I am the first one to ask, who knows?
Joking aside, I find myself increasingly optimistic about the outcome of this election. I am still supporting Edwards, who Obama spoke yesterday of thinking might make a great Attorney General. I wondered if that was a round-about way of indicating that he'd ask Edwards to be Vice President? I would not be surprised. That said, Edwards would also be a holy terror as Attorney General.
Lastly, for anyone wanting to delve into the religious thoughts and connections of the candidates, start here with the Obama section of what seems to be a really useful series on all the candidates done by the Christian Science Monitor, which continues to do some excellent reporting, on a shoe-string. Their work on the Iraq war was incredible when compared to most of the major newspapers.
Arthur
P.S.: To be fair, there is one thing that strikes me as being a potential deal-breaker for Obama's political hopes. There must be both written material and video of the leader of the church Obama belongs to, when he has written or said things that would not go down well with most of the electorate. If the campaign seems to be getting close I think we can count on Hillary's surrogates to raise this issue. If Obama can explain it well enough to get through the primary I think he will be okay in the General Election, but if not, this could sink him.
