Financing Obama and McCain

After the American Century

From abroad, the cost of American elections is unbelievable, appalling. In 2008 more than $1 billion will be spent just on the presidential primaries and general election. But I will spare readers a sermon on this matter. The media world has been actively discussing Senator Obama's decision not to accept public financing, established back in the 1970s to eliminate fund-raising and create a level playing-field. It has never worked well, but it seemed a step in the right direction. All along Obama has refused to accept any money from lobbyists (in contrast to McCain), but he apparently accepted the idea that campaigns should be financed by the government. Taking public money means accepting a cap on spending, however, and Obama has found that he can raise vast sums from private donors. He does not need public financing, which would cap his spending.

Obama is the first candidate who has understood how to use the Internet to reach potential donors, and to involve them in his campaign as partners. Anyone who gives begins to receive a regular stream of emails with information about campaign events, opportunities to join others in raising money, and chances to meet fellow supporters (both on-line or in person). So while Obama himself seldom needs to eat a rubber chicken and make a speech in person, the virtual Obama has been prodigiously successful at eliciting donations. By comparison, McCain is computer illiterate. For more on how Obama raises money, see Joshua Green, "The Amazing Money Machine" The Atlantic.com Alternately, give Obama $10 or more and you can experience it first-hand.

Obama presented his campaign funding decision not as a change of heart about campaign reform, nor as a proof of his on-line wizardry, but as a recognition that the public financing of campaigns has not worked. It has not worked because it is too easy for an "independent" group to raise money and spend it lavishly to help a candidate, who thereby can get both the public financing and the benefits of private funds. Anyone who looks at how John Kerry was "swift-boated" in 2004 knows that this is true, yet a surprising number of commentators, such as John Brooks in the New York Times, are taking Obama to task. They want him to play by the Washington rule book. But he has decided not to work with an ill-conceived, broken system.

Fortunately for Obama, most voters seem to agree with him. Indeed, his fellow Democrats are most likely to be upset that he has abandoned public support, while Republicans have never supported it much. So the decision might even help him with swing voters. In any case, subsequent polls have not detected any loss of support since he decided not to take public money. In fact, most voters are not that interested in the issue. Americans generally do not mind if a candidate says he is independent, can stand on his own, needs no assistance, or is individualistic.

The irony is that for decades the Republicans have always been better at fund-raising that the Democrats. McCain is the first GOP presidential candidate I can remember that has had trouble getting contributors. That is what derailed him last year, when it looked like his campaign was over, due to near bankruptcy. Even now that he has been the nominee for months, he has raised less money than either Obama or Clinton. As of May 31, McCain had raised $121 million, only a little more than Mitt Romney, who dropped out of the race long ago. By comparison, Hillary Clinton barnstormed for $221 million by the same date, and yet had run out of funds even as she lost the nomination to Obama.

By the end of May the Senator from Illinois had put together contributions of $295 million, all of it from small donors. He has also shown good financial management, keeping costs under control. He has a rather tidy surplus, too, with $43 million in cash at the end of the primary cycle. McCain was almost as well off, however, because he sewed up his nomination much sooner and could use far less of his money against fellow Republicans. At the end of May he therefore had $31 million - less than Obama, but not so much less.

So no one should be surprised that Obama has decided not to subject himself to the restrictions of public financing, when he does not need it. That leaves the Internet-challenged John McCain to take the government handout, like a charity recipient, because he has not been able to motivate his base.

Bush Dusts off Reagan's Energy Script, for McCain

After the American Century

In my last Blog I recalled the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan on energy in the 1980 campaign. No sooner had I published it than the Republicans began to talk just like Reagan did at that time. Back then the oil crisis apparently made it necessary to drill for Alaskan oil. The hue and cry was that the whole energy crisis was caused by over-zealous bureaucrats cheered on by environmentalists. It worked for the Republicans then. The public preferred to hear not that the shortages were real but that the US had lots of its own oil.

So the Republicans will try to blame the Democrats for the oil shortage! Not Detroit automakers who made inefficient cars and fought every attempt to raise the mandated minimum mpg (miles per gallon) for their fleets. Not campaign donors who run the oil corporations, who are reporting obscenely large profits. Not the Saudis and OPEC! Not rising demand in Asia. NO! Blame the Democrats.

Ronald Reagan, 1980: "The truth is America has an abundance of energy. But the policies of this administration [President Carter] consistently discouraged its discovery and production."

Until yesterday, McCain opposed off-shore drilling on environmental grounds. Now he is singing from the oil corporation song book. He said yesterday: "We must take control over our own energy future and become once again the master of our fate." Where? In Houston, Texas, the oil capital of the United States. He was talking to oil executives at Bush Family Central. This is the same McCain who last week wanted everyone to believe that he cares about global warming and is much different from G W Bush.

Meanwhile, Obama - correctly - told the press that off shore oil, even if found, drilled for and extracted, would not be available for more than ten years. "Much like his gas tax gimmick that would leave consumers with pennies in savings, opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best, since America only has 3% of the world's oil. . . .It's another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil."

Drilling for off-shore oil will not solve the current problem of higher gas prices, but it will continue the US fixation on oil, and it will make corporate Republicans billions of dollars. Interestingly, a few Republicans from tidewater states, notably California's Arnold Schwartznegger, openly rejected the joint McCain-Bush call for off-shore drilling. Oil spills are bad for tourism, destroy wildlife, and threaten fishing. Oh, and burning oil creates greenhouse gases. But please don't tell Mr. McBush, as he thinks drilling for oil that will not be available for a decade is better than using less oil immediately or leading a determined drive to find alternatives.

Obama and McCain on Energy

After the American Century

John McCain and Barack Obama have both announced energy programs. McCain says that he is more "green" than Bush on the issue of global warming, but is this proclaimed difference really visible? To the casual observer, McCain and Obama might look similar on this issue. Both want to reduce US emissions of methane and CO2. By 2050 McCain says he will bring them down to just 40% of the 1990 level; Obama expects to reduce them ever further, to a mere 20%. These promises deal with the situation 42 years from now. Conceivably Obama might still be alive at that time, but such projections are not too meaningful by themselves.

A bit more concretely, both candidates like the idea of trading CO2 credits. This is not a new idea, and has been pushed by American representatives at climate meetings for years. The idea of turning pollution into a market, where the "right" to pollute is bought and sold appeals to US politicians because it makes the environment a part of business. Rather than set limits and then fine people for exceeding them, the notion is that corporations and cities will cut back on pollution if they get paid to do it. However, McCain wants to give away the initial quotas, at least the first time. Obama wants to sell pollution quotas and used the 150 billion dollars generated that way to support research into alternative energies and the like.

In line with this, Obama's goal is, by 2025, to produce 25% of all US electricity from wind, solar, biomass, and other sustainable sources. McCain has not set any definite goal, but claims that he supports alternative energies. In fact, he has a poor voting record in this regard.

With regard to ethanol, it is much the same story. Obama has a definite goal, while McCain "supports" the idea, but has no quota and in fact wants to stop subsidizing ethanol production. In other words, he says one thing but will do another.

Both candidates are realists, and can see that it is impossible to do away with coal-burning plants any time soon, but each wants to see "clean coal technology." Both also accept that atomic power can be an important source of electricity, but Obama is distinctly less enthusiastic about it. McCain sees atomic power as a good way to halt global warming, and admires the French for setting up such a comprehensive atomic power system, which supplies more than 75% of the nation needs.

The greatest differences between them lie in the area of curbing demand and conservation. Obama wants to convert all federal buildings to zero emission facilities and to give homeowners incentives for better insulation. McCain has no plans in this area at all. Likewise, Obama would give credits to utilities that managed to reduce customer demand, so they could profit not form growing the market but from shrinking it. McCain has no such plans.

Overall, Obama has made a greater commitment to alternative energy and to reducing demand. McCain sees nuclear plants as alternative energy, and seems not to understand that the most effective way to reduce oil dependency and CO2 emissions is to reduce energy use itself.

Overall, Obama has the more ambitious plan. McCain apparently thinks the market will solve the problem of global warming with the right incentives and leadership. Obama wants the government to invest directly in alternative energy R&D and set definite goals for conversion from the old system to a new, less polluting one. Where the Bush Administration at first questioned the reality of global warming and never made many efforts to change US energy use, McCain would at least rhetorically change the party line.

The basic McCain program looks quite a bit like that of Gerald Ford in 1975 . He claimed that if the US only would build a lot more nuclear plants and burn more coal, the nation could achieve energy independence by 1986. Obama's plan is more like that of Jimmy Carter, who also stressed alternative energies and greater conservation. Note that the public did not like Carter's plans, as they called for self-sacrifice and "the moral equivalent of war."

In 1980 Ronald Reagan proved far more popular with his energy plans, which basically denied that there was any real shortage. As he put it then: "Those who preside over the worst energy shortage in our history tell us to use less, so that we will run out of oil, gasoline, and natural gas a little more slowly. . . .But conservation is not the sole answer to our energy needs. America must get to work producing more energy. The Republican program for solving economic problems is based on growth and productivity. Large amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas lie beneath our land and off our shores, untouched because the present Administration seems to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, more taxes, and more controls, than more energy." This was irresponsible nonsense, and yet the public embraced this message. Under Reagan the country denied that there ever had been an energy crisis or that it could ever come again. As he declared during a speech in Cleveland, "The truth is America has an abundance of energy. But the policies of this administration consistently discouraged its discovery and production." He promised to "get America producing again" and concluded, "Every available resource we have must be used to free us from OPEC's domination." 28 years later, the Reagan promises of energy abundance ring rather hollow. But don't be too surprised if McCain's rhetoric begins to shift toward the winning Reagan formula. [In fact, McCain and Bush both began to do this two days after this Blog was published. See my posting for 18 June.]

The Forgotten Issues

After the American Century

The endless Obama-Clinton duel has now devolved into a contest of errors. Hillary made a huge one recently, by talking about the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 as an example of how campaigns may be decided in June. Was she saying, stay in the race, because your opponent might get whacked? Surely not, everyone agreed, after she apologized, saying she "misspoke." Perhaps the worst part of such episodes is that they take attention away from the issues. Why talk about the people dying in Iraq or the soaring price of gasoline or the thousands of foreclosures, when you can discuss pratfalls and stupid remarks?

There are real issues in this campaign, however, even if the media often reduce it to a popularity contest that focuses on who is the best bowler or who said something idiotic last week.

Will the US stay in Iraq until at least 2013 (McCain's plan) or for as short a time as possible (Obama's plan)?

Will the Bush tax cuts for the rich become permanent (McCain's plan), or will the US return to something like the tax arrangements of the 1990s? To put this another way, will the US again start to pay off its national debt, or will it assume it can keep borrowing money from foreign creditors forever? Also indirectly involved in this issue is whether the dollar will be backed by a government that lives within its means and that can protect the dollar from falling further?

Huge balance of payment problems are not a good long-term economic policy, either. Will the US continue its massive oil imports, or will government force automakers to produce more fuel efficient cars? Students have built experimental cars that can run an astonishing 300 kilometers to a single liter, roughly 600 miles to a gallon! But neither the American SUV mad consumer nor Detroit is going to get there without some leadership. The Republicans have had eight years to provide it and failed.

Will the next appointments to the Supreme Court further tip the balance in a conservative direction? McCain is now on record as being a firm opponent of all forms of abortion, and if elected would likely be able to tip the balance on this issue.

Will the US really embrace efforts to curb global warming? McCain is better on this issue that Bush, rhetorically, but the Republican Party is not. The only real chance for the US to take a responsible role on this issue is if there is a Democratic Congress and President.

Will the next president be beholden to lobbyists who have donated to his campaign (McCain) or will he only have received support from ordinary voters (Obama)? This has implications on a host of issues.

Will the next president try to solve world problems by using the military (McCain) or by "soft-power" and diplomacy (Obama)? McCain evidently agrees with Bush that negotiating with an enemy is a bad thing, a sign of weakness. Obama does not want to be another cowboy president.

Finally, McCain now backs the use of some forms of torture, which is quite astonishing in his case, because he was tortured himself while held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Obama unequivocably rejects the use of torture. This is a serious issue, because recent news reports indicate that the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture have been more widespread that previously disclosed. The American military appears to be infected with this undemocratic practice, which is appropriate for sixtenth century witchhunts but not for any civilized nation today. McCain's treason to his own earlier convictions on this issue makes him a deeply problematic candidate. If he can reverse himself on torture, one can only ask, does he believe in anything?

Of course, none of this is as much fun as hearing about a tactical mistake or silly remark made by a candidate. But these and other issues are what the campaign should be about. Looking at these contrasts between McCain and Obama, I find no reason to support the Senator from Arizona. I am not aware of a single issue where his positions appear to be the wise choice. On the contrary, McCain's election could easily be a disaster even greater than the Bush Presidency. It may be hard to believe that something worse is possible. But it is.

McBush and Appeasement

After the American Century

Senator McCain has endorsed George Bush's attack on the Democrats for "appeasement." I will return to this, but only after looking at the many absurdies in this attack. Bush chose to go after the Democrats while making a state visit to Israel to mark the 60th anniversary of that nation's independence. Partisan attacks are to be expected from now on until the election, but it is poor form to go to another nation and distract attention from their celebrations to engage in electoral politics. However, where Bush made his statement had a special resonance when he chose to compare the Democrats to those who appeased Hitler. The implication was that if Americans elect Obama, they will be responsible for another holocaust. But there is no historical sense to these assertions.

It was the Republicans far, far more than FDR's Democrats, who were in the appeasement camp. In the 1930s many Americans, especially Republicans, wanted the nation to remain neutral. It was Roosevelt and the Democrats who have the more honorable record. Who wanted to negotiate with Hitler? Republican Senator Borah! Yes, that wonderful party leader who also helped to sabotage Wilson's League of Nations. He was from Bush's party.

And another thing. Just which leader or which nation today can realistically be compared to Hitler? Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust. They sponsor terrorist groups. Democrats and Republicans would all agree aboout these things. But Iran simply does not have the geopolitical clout that Germany had in the 1930s. Because we are talking about a nation, not an amorphous group of terrorists, they could conceivably be negotiated with. The Neo-Conservative Republicans seem to have forgotten that the Cold War was won not by arms, but by a much slower process of dialogue, trade, cultural interchange, and, yes, negotiation. The Berlin Wall came down without a shot being fired. Bush's continual refusal to talk to Iran's leaders has pushed them into the willing arms of the Russians, who are happy to help them build oil and gas pipelines and trade with them. Furthermore, many in Washington, even some Republicans, have come to recognize that it will be impossible to forge a peace in Iraq without somehow involving the Iranians.

Leaving aside historical analogies, Bush himself has at times been a negotiator, so that must make him "an appeaser." At almost the very moment the President was declaring one should never negotiate with terrorists, his administration announced that it was sending massive food aid to North Korea. This is part of the complex negotiations that have, with some success, sought to turn that nation away from its nuclear program. Thus Bush's own administration has been doing the very thing for which he criticized the Democrats.

Bush is trying to distract attention from his foreign policy failures. But his shoot-first-preemptive-strike-cowboy approach to the world has not yielded success in Afghanistan or Iraq. His administration arrogantly refused to listen to its allies. France and Germany both tried to dissuade him from invading Iraq, but Bush told the world that US intelligence information was more reliable than theirs and charged ahead. However, the French and the Germans got it right. There was no pressing national security reason to rush into that war. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Bush either lied or his intelligence services were incompetent. Either way, it was an expensive mistake that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the vast majority civilians. The Iraq War has increased instability in the Middle East and served as a training ground for terrorists. Bush's interventionism has also indirectly driven up the cost of oil, because the Iraqui oil fields are not producing as much as they might. Anyone who thinks the US is more secure or better off economically than it was before the invasion of Iraq has not been paying attention.

John McCain had an oportunity to show he was not like the President, but he has endorsed Bush's attack on the Democrats. So much for his claims to represent "straight talk." Perhaps the fall ballots should read "McBush" so voters will know what he represents. For McCain's remarks show once again that he is a throwback from another age, living in the mental universe of the Cold War where he was trained as a military man. McCain by temperment and education is not prepared to be a negotiator or to understand the world as a complex place. He is the candidate who thought it was funny to sing "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune. He is unfit to be President precisely because he has all that Cold War and Vietnam military experience. The world is a different place now.

Finally, suppose we were to evaluate Bush by his own Rambo standards. Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, he has been unable to find Osama bin Laden. By any measure, he has been a miserable failure.

Boycott Shameless Florida

After the American Century

Florida is without shame. After the debacle of the hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election, one might expect that Florida would do all in its power to make its voter registration and election above reproach. Not so. The Republican dominated state legislature is actively inhibiting voter registration. It has done so by passing laws that fine volunteers who help others to register to vote. These are not trivial fines. The first version of the law set the fine at $5000 for every form with a mistake on it. The League of Women Voters, hardly a radical organization, took this law to court and it was struck down. But the Florida Republicans know that their state is crucial in the coming election, and they immediately got up another law which reduces the fine to "only" $1000. So, the League of Women Voters has stopped registering people to vote in Florida. 

Now imagine that you are a volunteer, seeking to register voters for either party, and the form you help someone submit has a mistake on it somewhere. Perhaps the middle initial in the applicant's name has been left out. Perhaps you have forgotten to tick the small box, which says that you have never been judged insane or mentally handicapped. (I am not making this up.)Three forms out of 100 lack that little tick in the box, and are rejected.  Register voters at your peril, for not only is there a fine of $1000 for each erroneous form, but the volunteer's name ends up in a database. Instead of being praised for trying to do the right thing - getting people to vote - volunteers feel threatened by the Republican State of Florida.  In other words, every mistake is treated as though one were engaged in the fraudulent activity of intentionally filing a false claim. That, of course, should be punished.

But the Shameless State of Florida has created more obstacles. Suppose that you discover an error in your own voter registration, quite possibly an error made by some state employee in recording the information. Possibly a computer error, especially when dealing with a Spanish or Russian or Scandinavian name. Suppose your name has the letters ñ or ø or å in it, and suppose that  the State of Florida - glorious state of the hanging chads - has computers that simply do not process those strange letters. Un-American letters. What then? Even if the mistake is not one you made, on election day, you will not be allowed to vote. 

Now, who benefits from such a system? Who are those new voters that the Florida Republicans are so keen to punish should an error crop up anywhere? Well, the punishment is completely non-partisan, of course, and the fines can be taken from anyone, rich or poor, white or blank, Anglo of Hispanic.  These laws are surely not directed at poorer people, who tend to vote Democratic, and who might decide not to register since it could cost so much money. Of course not. It would be unworthy of me to suggest that. Surely, Florida's Republicans are (not) just proudly carrying on the traditions of voter intimidation pioneered in the American South and used so successfully against African-Americans and poor people for more than a century, part of the wonderful heritage of that region. It is outrageous, of course, for a Yankee outsider like myself to question such traditions.

What can we do? I am going to boycott all products from Florida, and I will not visit Florida so long as these un-democratic laws are on the books. [It is now 2012 and I still have not visited Florida.] I am going to tell all organizations of which I am a member, that I will not attend any convention or meeting held in Florida so long as these disgraceful and intimidating laws are on the books. I will urge these organizations to take a public stand on this issue. For the shame of Florida can well make a mockery of the 2008 presidential election.

Finally, I hope the news media will ask John McCain, repeatedly, whether he supports those Florida laws or not. This is about whether the United States is a democracy or not, about whether voters can be fined and intimidated and excluded. McCain should denounce these laws and show himself to be a man of democratic principle. Or is he too shameless?

McCain's Torture

After the American Century

In a world of political spin, perhaps I should not be surprised that John McCain continues to enjoy the reputation of a moderate maverick. Sadly, this is not the case.

McCain has courted extremists, notably Rod Parsley who is a well-known Moslem basher and John Hagee, a preacher from San Antonio Texas, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for granting gay rights. He has also called the Catholic Church a "false cult." Hagee wrote a book, Jerusalem Countdown, which reads current events in the Middle East as the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy. Iran and Armegeddon, as 'twas foretold. This is ideal reading material for a future commander-in- chief. We will all sleep more comfortably, if we are certain that President McCain sees diplomacy as a part of escatology. President Bush made a start in this direction, but an even more militant attack on "evil" is surely just what the nation needs. Otherwise, we might get distracted by the economy, as it slides into recession.

At the end of February, The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called on McCain to disavow Hagee's endorsement. At the very same time that Obama was being roasted by the press for statements that his pastor had made, but McCain got off lightly, with relatively little attention to his relationship with Hagee.

There is no space here to discuss McCain's conservatism in its entirely. But consider that this is the man who voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Think about that for a moment, and keep in mind that he has a poor record on civil rights laws.

Consider next that he voted against a legal ban on waterboarding. Yes, the man known for his suffering as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and for his opposition to torture did not want to stop waterboarding. He cast this vote in this election year, showing where he stands on the torture question. But if waterboarding is OK, McCain is adament that abortion should be outlawed. He is also a fiscal conservative when it comes to liberal frills, like children's health care, which he voted against last year. To make certain no one would mistake his view, he defended George W. Bush's veto of the bill.

Many people think McCain is pro-environment, but in 2007 the League of Conservation Voters studied his voting record and found he deserved a zero. That is a truly remarkable result for a Senator from Arizona, a state with some of the nation's most attractive scenery and with real environmental problems. Arizona's conservatives often have been environmentally aware, notably Barry Goldwater. He was among the first 100 people ever to go down the Grand Canyon in a boat, and he had a reverential attitude toward wilderness. McCain has a more utilitarian view of nature. How is it that in 1964 Barry Goldwater had no chance of winning the presidency, where today McCain, with similar positions on many issues, has a very real chance of winning?

The Republican Party as a whole has moved so far to the right since 1964 as to be almost unrecognizable. Had McCain stood for election 44 years ago, he would have seemed to the right of Barry Goldwater. But today, McCain is widely perceived as being to the left of President Bush.

Clinton Rises from the Mud, But McCain is the Winner

After the American Century

Hillary Clinton has wallowed in the mud and been rewarded for it. No one doubts that her series of dubious allegations and fear mongering in the last week has been decisive in winning Texas and helping her in Ohio. Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater back in 1964 with an advertisement that bluntly asked voters, whose finger did they want on the atomic button. Hillary's advertisement was a bit more subtle, but not much, suggesting that for reasons never stated, she would be more competent to answer a sudden emergency in the middle of the night. Actually, I cannot think of any particular reason why Hillary, who has no military experience at all, and whose record on the Iraq War is uneven, would have better judgement than Obama when half awake in the middle of night. Perhaps we are to assume that she has Bill Clinton beside her to offer his non-existent military experience. The sad fact is that advertisement, effective as it may have been in the short run, undermines both Democrats. If the election really is about who should answer that phone in a military emergency, then most Americans will think of John McCain.

The advertisement is just one of many examples from the last week of how the Obama-Clinton fight runs the danger of damaging the eventual Democratic nominee. Suppose Obama decides to stop being so nice to Hillary? What if he put together an advertisement showing her many sharply different moods, including crying for the cameras? And suppose that advertisement ended with him asking: Is She Stable Enough In a Crisis? Every feminist in the US would rise up in fury, and help convince the electorate that Clinton indeed is unstable. By playing the "angry woman" which was her persona during much of last week, she runs a terrible risk. It worked for a few days, but the Republicans can easily undermine her for being moody if she does not hit and maintain a steady and measured tone, as McCain has been doing for some time.

Clinton's next stunt, yesterday, to suggest that Obama, who is leading, should subordinate himself to her and become her running mate, is calculated, too. There is no example in American politics, ever, of the person with the most delegates giving up like that. Obama should, of course, accept her offer to be his vice-presidential running mate! Which she too would refuse.

Then consider Clinton's successful smear tactics on NAFTA. Even Danish reporters who are following the campaign in the US, like Politiken's Marcus Rubin, are repeating the misrepresentations spread from the Clinton campaign, that Obama gave secret assurances to Canadian officials that he did not really mean what he was saying about NAFTA. Now the Canadians say that this did not happen. But if you throw enough mud just before people vote, then some sticks and is even spread around by reporters long after the lie has been discredited.

Meanwhile, throwing that particular mud at Obama helped voters forget that Bill Clinton championed the NAFTA Treaty and signed it, or that Hillary also supported it for some time. NAFTA should have been a problem for her, but by throwing mud it became his problem. Worst of all, NAFTA is not really the problem. Ohio did not lose its steel industry because of that agreement, nor are its automobile parts plants closed because of it. A far more nuanced debate on jobs and trade never took place.

Or again, Clinton is doing her best to make Obama look as though he was tightly connected to a Chicago wheeler and dealer, now on trial. But that man, in fact, has given campaign money to both Republicans and Democrats for a generation, and Obama gave back all the funds he ever contributed. She wants to make it seem that Obama, who bought his house and an adjoining strip of land at the market price, has committed a crime. Last time I checked, there is nothing illegal about purchasing land at the market price from someone who has legal title to the land. Should Obama reply in kind, and dig up old Whitewater allegations against Clinton? Should he remind the public that the Clintons took quite a lot of White House furniture with them, illegally, when they left in 2001? The Republicans will be ready to do that anyway, but what if it starts already now?

The Clintons headed into the mud with less success in South Carolina. When behind, their instinct is to go negative. We have not seen the end of it, but the consequences can be dire. For these tactics take the gloss off both candidates, and deepen the split between Obama's and Hillary's supporters. Mud slinging will make it harder to unify the Democratic Party later, and it will weaken the party's appeal to the Independents. And don't forget, those swing voters decide every close election.

Meanwhile, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination, as Huckabee withdrew from the race. McCain has not thrown any mud, but remained statesmanlike during his campaign. He was at the White House yesterday, getting the endorsement of President Bush. Republicans are beginning to adjust to the idea of McCain as their leader, and Mrs. McCain has now had a chance to think about how to rearrange the White House furniture. Meanwhile, the Democrats are getting dirty, and no where near the Rose Garden.

Three months ago, many said that 2008 would definitely be a great year for the Democrats, because of Iraq, because of the failing economy, because Bush is so unpopular. But McCain is the strongest opponent the Republicans had available, because he is definitely neither a Bush clone nor a religious, right-wing candidate. He appeals to swing voters. According to polls, still early of course, he would beat Hillary now and is running close to Obama. Think what he might do after some more mud has been thrown, once he has, for the first time some money to campaign with. All in all, it has been a great week for the Republicans.

Crunch Time for the Democrats

After the American Century

Now that we have heard perhaps the last primary debate, the psychology of the Democratic presidential campaign has reached a decisive point. If Obama wins either Ohio or Texas, Clinton is expected to drop out. Many stories in the media are saying this. Symbolically, Senator Dodd has just endorsed Obama, saying that the campaign should not go on too long. Dodd hopefully put himself forward as a candidate, but was one of the early casualties in the primaries. I believe he is the only former candidate to endorse either Clinton or Obama. Even Bill Clinton has said that Hillary must win both Ohio and Texas if she is to go on. Admittedly, he said it a while ago when she had comfortable leads in both states. The latest polls now show that - as has happened in so many other states - Obama has overhauled her in Texas. Two weeks ago Clinton had more than a 10 point advantage, but now she trails by as much as 4 points.

The Obama team smells victory in Texas, and so do the Move.on activists. They are putting together a gigantic nationwide phone-a-thon, getting members to gather on Sunday, bringing their cell phones along, for a massive effort to get out the Texas vote. In the past phoning voters was usually done from a central location, but Move.on is getting people together in smaller groups in their home towns. This demands a high level of organization, getting lists of phone numbers in Texas to each of these calling groups, and organizing tens of thousands of volunteers through Internet communications. If they can pull that off, Obama will get quite a boost. I think it likely he will win Texas. He will also win Vermont, but probably not tiny Rhode Island, where Hillary has been more.

Obama can easily afford to lose Rhode Island, but Ohio is another matter. Hillary still has a lead there of 4 to 6 points, depending on what poll you look at. He has been chiseling away at her, but the shift toward him is more gradual than in Texas. Averaging all the polls together, his momentum might push him into the lead in a couple of weeks, but five days may not be long enough. Today, I note that he has left Ohio for Texas, while she remains in the Buckeye State a bit longer. Still, the difference between them is about the same as the margin of error, so he has an outside chance to win there, too.

Ohio is suffering economically more than Texas. Cleveland has been especially hard hit by teh mortgage crisis, and thousands of homes have been foreclosed there, and neighborhoods are dotted with For Sale signs. There are not likely to be many buyers in Cleveland. That city looked pretty depressed in 2003 when I visited there twice, and it has gotten much worse since then. Judging by the still weakening national economy, Ohio will likely suffer more during the spring and summer. Clinton has appealed to struggling blue-collar areas throughout her campaign, so it is appropriate that she makes what may be her last stand in Ohio. Back in the 1970s Ohio was the heart of the "rust belt" and some parts of the state never entirely came back to full prosperity. The steel mills are mostly gone from Youngstown, for example, and Clinton seems popular with the voters there. Should Obama be the nominee, he will need to find a way to appeal more strongly in such places, because it is a vital swing state. Kerry would have been president had he carried Ohio.

John McCain has a chance to win Ohio in the national election, especially if he can convince blue-collar voters that national security is the central issue of the campaign. He is there now, of course, ostensibly running against Huckabee and Paul, but focusing most of his attacks on the Democrats. Polls show him narrowly defeating Clinton, but trailing Obama by as much as 6 percentage points. McCain surely would prefer to face Clinton, whom the Republicans love to hate, so he spends much more energy running down Obama. (Yesterday he accused him of having a weak, naive approach to Al Qaeda.) I would not be amazed to hear that some Republicans were even giving Hillary contributions now, in hopes of derailing the mesmerizing Senator from Illinois.

With McCain sniping away every day, it is becoming essential for Obama to wrap up the primaries and shift attention to a full scale challenge of the Republicans. If it is crunch time for Obama, however, it is do-or-die for Hillary. She is becoming more shrill and aggressive, but I sense that she becomes unappealing in the process. One has to admire her grit and determination, but the hectoring tone and tired voice begin to wear on the nerves. Worse, the "shame on you" tone may have worked for Bill Clinton, but when she uses the same phrase it does not sound "presidential," but more like an angry mother.

It is not (yet) easy for any woman to run for president. Should Hillary bow out next week, she will have done far more than any previous female candidate, pushing open the White House door for other women. She will remain a force in the Democratic Party and the Senate, and she could also run again in four years time. Then again, this race is not yet over. It's crunch time.

Enter the Spoiler: Ralph Nadar, Again

After the American Century

Just when it looked like the election might soon become focused on two candidates, a familiar Wild Card has appeared in the political deck. Ralph Nadar, admirable crusader for consumer causes, and perennial candidate for president, has declared himself a candidate. This will have little or no effect on the primaries, but it might become extremely important in the national election. Al Gore certainly remembers him, because Nadar did not siphon off many votes from the Republican Party. Nadar's 2.7% of the vote came almost entirely from the liberal side of the electorate. Gore would have won Florida and the presidency had Nadar stuck to fighting consumer issues. Nadar had far less effect on the 2004 campaign, getting less that 0.5% of the votes, although he certainly did not help John Kerry.

I heard Nadar speak in the spring of 2003 at Notre Dame University. To be accurate, no lecture room was big enough for the student crowd, and I ended up seeing him on a closed-circuit TV screen down the hall. But in any case there was not much back and forth with the audience. Nadar spoke long and well, but without much humor, and one often could agree with a what he said. Nadar is a lawyer, and he presents an argument for the prosecution, detailing the sins of the defendant - not just the current president but both political parties - and offering prescriptions for change. He is, after all, the man who wrote Unsafe at Any Speed that led to greatly improved automobiles and undoubtedly saved many thousands of lives. Nadar is also an Arab-American, which may give him an extra reason to join the political fray, though neither Iraq nor the Palestinians are even mentioned on page one of his homepage. There, he attacks the "corporate Democrats" and the "corporate Republicans" and their domination by the lobbyists. His homepage slogan is "Corporate Greed, Corporate Power, Corporate Control." The targets of his wrath are "the health insurance industry, agribusinss grants, corporate criminals, nuclear power, big banks, drug companies, polluters, union busters, war profiteers, credit card companies, Wall Street, and big oil." Nadar reportedly liked John Edwards' message, and he might have supported Obama. After all, the Democratic front-runner has accepted no money at all from the lobbyists. However, Nadar's psychology is combative and adversarial. His idea of a dialogue takes place in court. Obama is more pragmatic and looks for negotiation.

Nadar's candidacy is good news for John McCain for several reasons. Nadar is 73, a year older, so McCain is no longer be the oldest one running for president. More importantly, when Nadar attacks McCain it will help to consolidate the Republican base. Even better, when he attacks the Democratic candidate, some voters will be drawn away to the Green Party.

Nadar has no chance to win, but he can be the spoiler. Should the race be close, count on the Republicans to donate a little money, quietly, to his campaign. They want Nadar to have a large megaphone. McCain might conceivably attack Nadar in a few speeches, but more likely he will ignore him and hope a brawl breaks out between Democrats and Greens. To make this a fair fight, we need a comparable figure on the far right to run to take some support away from McCain. Will someone please call Ross Perot?

McCain, Yesterday's Man

After the American Century

As predicted in this Blog on 7 February, Obama won all three contests against Clinton yesterday. Taking Washington State, Nebraska, and Louisiana – all by wide margins – he has made the race even tighter. Without super delegate support, Hillary would now be behind. I will return to that race in my next Blog.

On the Republican side, the race is not quite over. Huckabee not only refuses to drop out, he won two contests yesterday. Compared to this evangelical Baptist minister with his extreme views, McCain can appear to be a centrist candidate. Indeed, a number of European newspapers are mistakenly reporting that Senator John McCain is a moderate. This is dangerous nonsense. McCain presents himself as a straight-talking maverick, and he refuses to embrace some of the issues of the rabid right. Huckabee would ban homosexual marriage, replace the Internal Revenue System with a flat tax, abolish abortion, and in general return to the United States of c. 1910, or perhaps 1880. Huckabee is so far to the right on these issues that he makes McCain look moderate by comparison. Furthermore, McCain does not want to deport all the illegal immigrants, but find a way for them to become lawful citizens. This is a sensible position. But forget about these issues. Realistically, there is little chance of the US adopting the flat tax, banning gay marriage, abolishing abortion, or evicting millions of illegal immigrants. This is the rhetorical grandstanding of the religious right that Reagan and Bush II would encourage in an election year and then pragmatically ignore afterwards.

But on other issues dear to the right wing, McCain is quite conservative. He would extend the so-called "Patriot Act" and continue the extensive use of wire-tapping. The NAACP gives him only a 7% rating on affirmative action. He believes that school prayer at the start of each day should be allowed, and also thinks religious symbols are acceptable in schools. He has given strong support to the voucher system, which would undermine public education, and would give state money to private (typically religious) schools. He strongly supports the death penalty, and he would limit the number of appeals a prisoner can make, to speed up executions. Many of his Senate votes have tried to reduce the availability of abortion and to cut funding for sex education. McCain can hardly be considered a moderate on any of these issues.

Likewise, to see the real McCain look at the war and the economy. He has voted for just about every free trade agreement, making him a strong proponent of economic globalization. He now wants to retain Bush's tax cuts for the rich, though he once voted against them. He is not about to put billions of dollars into welfare, and he would continue Bush's programs of directing welfare aid through "faith based organizations" – in effect forcing the poor into the arms of the religious right. At times McCain has been a critic of the conduct of the Iraq war, but he has never been a critic of the war itself. To the contrary, McCain embraced the war from the beginning. He saw Saddam Hussein as "a threat of the first order," and he asserted that the UN program of weapon inspection had not worked. He voted to give Bush the power to go to war, and he championed the fallacious idea that a war would bring democracy to the Middle East. Two weeks before the invasion began, he declared that that the people of Iraq would welcome it as their liberation. [Speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2/13/03] 

While he had some differences with the Bush Administration over the conduct of the war, he embraced the neo-conservative idea that the invasion would "send the message throughout the Middle East that democracy can take hold in the Middle East." He also long supported Donald Rumsfeld. After the Abu Ghraib scandal he was asked if Rumsfeld should continue as Secretary of Defence. He replied, "I believe he's done a fine job. He's an honorable man." In Derry, New Hampshire (3 January 2008) McCain declared that the occupation of Iraq will continue, if necessary, for "100 years." McCain is an officer, however, and he has not always supported the veterans as much as the Administration. In 2006 he was one of 13 senators who voted against appropriating $430 million for inpatient and outpatient veteran care.

If McCain becomes president, the world can expect a leader who seeks military solutions to political problems, including those rooted in religious differences. His worldview is mostly black and white, with few shades of gray. Born in the middle of the 1920s, he came to adulthood during World War II and the McCarthy years. He embraced the military at the height of the Cold War. This Manichean worldview was further hardened when he was held as a prisoner of war during Vietnam. To his credit, this experience also made him a forceful critic of the Bush Administration's use of secret prisons and torture.

If McCain has been shaped by the military, at least it is a proud and principled military tradition. His grandfather, his father, and his son, like McCain himself, all attended the Naval Academy at Annapolis. For two reasons it is rare in the United States for four generations in a single family to send a son there. First, it is just as difficult to get into that elite school as it is to go to the army's West Point. Second, it is rare for one family to have sons for that many generations who want to that career. This puts McCain in the super-patriot class of true believers in the United States. Attending Annapolis is like going to boot camp for four years, followed immediately by an obligatory four years of military service. Each graduate begins as a junior officer, and a preponderance of the generals and admirals come from West Point and Annapolis. Electing McCain would put the military establishment in the West House. He would raise military pay and appropriate more money to defence, while at the same time closing some bases to rationalize the use of funds.

Huckabee would go back a century, while McCain would go back "only" fifty years. Such a leader is more appropriate to the either/or psychology of Cold War than to the complexities of today's world. But he is ill-suited to world where the US will decline as the world's most powerful nation, both economically and militarily. In the next twenty-five years, China and India each will rival or surpass the American economy in size. Even now, the Bush legacy is a weak economy, a weak dollar, and a huge imbalance of payments. As the global balance of power shifts, the United States will be best served by a leader who can maximize what Harvard's Professor Joseph Nye has called "soft power." The go-it-alone arrogance of the Bush years has eroded that soft power, which builds upon international respect for a nation's values, behavior, and culture.

During the Bush Administration the rest of the world instead has endured lies, bluster, arrogance, and ignorance. Recall Rumsfeld's nasty remarks about "old Europe," or Powell's speech at the United Nations justifying a war with Iraq, which turned out to be full of misinformation and lies. Recall Bush's refusal to sign many international treaties, notably that banning land mines. Recall the hubris of the neo-conservatives, certain that Iraq would quickly become a model democracy. Remember that for years Bush refused to believe that global warming even existed, and tried to silence government scientists who disagreed. The Bush team has damaged the nation's credibility.

The next president needs to restore faith in the good intentions and the honesty of the United States, primarily by exercising soft power and serving as a useful leader. McCain might well be a more effective commander in chief, and let us assume he would be honest. But he will always be yesterday's man.

Super Tuesday

After the American Century, voting statistics updated 11:30 PM

For the Republicans, McCain was the winner on Super Tuesday. For the Democrats, there was no victor, but the results suggest Obama may be a stronger candidate than Clinton.

On the Republican side, McCain won the most delegates, but he did not win a majority of the states. Huckabee won all the Southern primaries yesterday (Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia), and no doubt he would be president of the Confederacy, had the Union not won the Civil War. To the North, reports of Mitt Romney's political death seem to have been announced prematurely. He won a number of western states, not just Massachusetts and Mormon Utah. Bishop Romney also took Colorado and three states along the Canadian border, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. With seven states in all, Romney kept himself in the race, especially considering that California, unlike most of the other Republican contests, is not a winner-take-all state.

Nevertheless, the Romney camp is a bit unhappy today, first because they know that McCain is far ahead in the only area that really matters: delegates. Second, because McCain and Huckabee ganged up on Romney in West Virginia in the caucus there. When the early ballot was inconclusive, McCain told his supporters to give their votes to Huckabee. Romney feels he got mugged. McCain won the four biggest prizes of the day, the populous states of California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois. He also took Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Arizona,, Oklahoma and Missouri. It you plot the results on a map, Huckabee won the Old South, Romney the plains and Mountain West, and McCain the heavily populated more mainstream states in between.

In terms of delegates, it is too early to make a final count. CNN gives McCain about 680, putting him well ahead of Romney (270), Huckabee (176), and Paul (16). These figures (and those listed below for the Democrats) are still being revised as I write, and the final results will be somewhat different. However, the relative standing of the candidates will not change. McCain certainly looks like the winner, but even he has only about half the delegates needed. Huckabee and Romney insist that they are still in the race. Conceivably each of them hopes that McCain will not be able to sustain this campaign marathon. They would never say it directly, but a front-runner over 70 is vulnerable should any questions arise about his stamina, his heart, or any aspect of his physical condition. Huckabee makes a point of jogging in full view of the press, and Romney radiates good health. In short, McCain will probably win, but he needs to look vibrant and energetic. Apparently, he still has to fight for another month or so.

On the Democratic side, Obama can claim 14 states versus only 8 for Clinton. He can also point to impressive victories in states with virtually no African-American population: Alaska, Idaho, Minnesota, and North Dakota. Recall any African Americans in the film Fargo? A few weeks ago it would have seemed madness to think that a Black candidate could win in these places, but in each case he won by a landslide over Clinton. Obama received an astonishing 80% of the votes in Idaho, more than 70% in Alaska, and more than 60% in Minnesota and North Dakota. Obama also triumphed in Georgia and Alabama, receiving not just the Black vote but a sizable while vote as well, showing that the victory in neighboring South Carolina was no fluke. In Georgia, Obama had more than twice as many votes as Hillary. In addition to the South, Obama can claim victories in all parts of the nation, including New Mexico, Colorado, and Idaho in the West; Kansas, Illinois, and Missouri in the Midwestern heartland; and Connecticut and Delaware in the East. It was an impressive showing. His campaign staff did an excellent job in a complicated contest.

Hillary can also claim victory, even if she won fewer states, and even though she won them by smaller margins. She will get the most delegates because she took the two biggest prizes: her home state of New York and the most populous US state of all, California. Her two areas of strength were the Northeast and a clutch of states in the upper South, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, where Bill was governor. 

In terms of delegates, the precise results will not be worked out until 7 February at the earliest. But as of 5:30 PM (EST) on Wednesday, CNN estimates that Clinton has won 625 at the ballot box, plus 193 super delegates, and that Obama has won 624 delegates, plus 106 super delegates. There are still more than 100 delegates to be awarded, but the fact it is taking so long strongly suggests that they will be divided up pretty equally. Neither will be close to the 2025 needed to win the nomination. Note, too, that there are 75 uncommitted and some also remain formally committed to John Edwards. If the race stays tight, these votes, along with the other super delegates will become crucial.

Strategically, Obama's showing tells party professionals that he has the best chance to win against McCain in November. Hillary won states that the Democrats usually win, notably Massachusetts and New York. However, she showed little strength in the marginal states that must be won to beat the Republicans, such as New Mexico and Colorado. Bush and Cheney triumphed by carrying the South and West, and Obama poses a stronger challenge to the GOP in these areas than she does. The more analytical Democratic managers will read Super Tuesday as proof that Obama can threaten McCain in all areas of the nation, while Hillary is strongest in the areas of their traditional strength. If he is nominated, Obama can no doubt carry traditional Democratic strongholds such as California, New York, and Massachusetts, where Hillary won, but where he also did respectably. If Hillary is the nominee, however, she has less chance than he does of winning the swing states. That matters.

Obama challenges the Republicans in those swing states and even in places they long have taken for granted, like Alaska and Idaho. He has the potential to lead a landslide, fundamentally changing the contours of the Congress. In contrast, Clinton has the potential to win a hard fought, close contest. He is more likely to lead a fundamental change. She can bring a shift in power, but it would likely be a narrow triumph, bitterly won, that could only lead to more partisanship.

To see what such a close struggle might be like, no need to wait. Hillary and Obama will continue to battle for at least another month, probably more.

For an overview of future primaries, see Blog for 3 Feb.

How Moderate is McCain?

After the American Century

Writing on Super Tuesday before any votes have yet been cast, I shall say nothing about the exciting Democratic contest, except that Obama seems to have momentum, rising in the polls each day. He might surprise Hillary in California. But more about that tomorrow. Today it is time to think about the Republicans, who apparently will make John McCain their nominee. It may not happen in a formal sense on Super Tuesday, but all the polls suggest that his competition will fall so short that the race will effectively be over. Huckabee may win a state or two in the South, no more. Romney will apparently run second in many states, though he should win at least Massachusetts, his home state.

It is therefore time to look more closely at McCain, and ask what his positions are. Is he really a moderate? For my European readers, I should say that compared to the Scandinavian or German politicians, he is off the scale to the right on many issues. No one with his views would have a shadow of a chance of leading any of these nations.

The American media's image of McCain, however, is that he is a moderate compared to the other Republican candidates. He is also perceived as something of a maverick, unwilling to toe the party line. It is true that he has not been a knee-jerk supporter of Bush's foreign policy. He is not a Bible-thumping fundamentalist like Huckabee, and he does not quote the Book of Genesis on the campaign trail. He admits that climate change is real (though he argues that nuclear power is the remedy). And he has supported stem-cell research, along with that wild-eyed radical Nancy Reagan. But on most of the issues McCain is quite conservative. Consider the following examples.

Abortion. McCain consistently has called the Supreme Court decision that legalized avortion, Roe vs. Wade, a mistake. He said again in the California debate last week that he would appoint "strict constructionists" to the courts. In American political code, this means he wants judges to stay away from legislating from the bench, particularly on abortion. McCain considers the "right to life" to be a human rights issue, and he has voted consistently on this issue. For example, he supports punishing doctors who perform abortions.

Iraq. McCain wants to fight the war as long as it takes. As a Vietnam War veteran who was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, he has strong feelings on this issue. He has said the United States should stay in Iraq for 100 years, if necessary. Note that McCain went to the Naval Academy for his education, as did his father, his grandfather, and his son. By comparison, Bush was not trained as an officer. He served briefly in the National Guard and never saw combat. McCain is a warrior by instinct. He is also reputed to have a fierce temper.

The Arts. McCain would eliminate Federal spending on the arts and humanities. This is a symbolic issue, as annual Federal arts funding is less than the Iraq War costs every single day.

Civil Rights. McCain wants to keep the Federal government out of rights issues and leave them to the states. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) consistently has rated McCain as hostile to civil rights. In 2002, for example, McCain had the lowest possible score (0%) in their annual rating of candidates on civil rights issues. Nevertheless, at times his conservatism can lead him to vote with liberals on specific issues. On gay marriage, for example, he has voted against a federal ban, saying that imposing this from Washington is inconsistent with Republican principles.

Evolution. McCain would allow the decision about teaching "Creationism" to be made in each school district. No Federal imposition of the teaching of Darwin would be allowed.

Death Penalty. McCain supports the death penalty, and would have it extend to drug dealers. He would increase spending for Federal prisons.

Drugs. McCain strongly opposes any legalization of marijuana, which he sees as an addictive, "gateway drug" that leads to more powerful drugs.

Energy. McCain has voted against achieving energy independence, even though he rhetorically supports that idea. He has opposed putting research money into alternative fuels, and he has opposed federally supported development of ethanol as a partial substitute for oil. The Campaign for America's Future (CAF) rates law-makers' voting records on bills dealing with energy independence, and they give McCain only a 17% rating. That is quite low compared to Clinton and Obama, both of whom CAF rated at 100%.

McCain's positions are what passes for "moderate" in the Republican Party, which suggests how far to the right the other candidates are. On all of these issues, the Democratic Party has a different stance. Internal party differences between Obama and Clinton pale to insignificance by contrast.

In short, do not be deceived by the assiduously cultivated "marverick" image of John McCain. On most issues, he is not a moderate. Rather, he is much like the George Bush that has emerged during his second term. Bush too now admits that global warming is real and that the US is "addicted to oil," while doing little about either of these problems. He too wants to stay in Iraq, pack the Supreme Court with strict constructionists, keep the death penalty, encourage the Creationists, and discourage those pressing for Civil Rights. McCain does smile more, but he is a real warrior and a real conservative.

The interesting question becomes, will this conservative McCain become visible to the voting public by November, or will he still be perceived as a moderate maverick?

Clinton vs Obama: How Long the Race?

After the American Century

As the candidates make their final appearances before Super Tuesday, it appears likely, judging by the polls, that John McCain will have an insurmountable lead over Romney, Huckabee, and Paul, after the Republican voting. In contrast, the polls also suggest that neither Clinton nor Obama will be anywhere near a majority on February 6. Whether selecting the nominee first is an advantage is the subject of an earlier blog. The question I will take up here is how long the Democrats may have to struggle.

In theory, the nomination process for the Democrats could last until their convention late in the summer. In recent posts I have pointed out that the Edwards delegates and the super delegates would then hold the balance of power. Together, these unpledged votes constitute one fifth of what either Obama or Clinton needs to reach the magic total of 2025. They might be fighting to get those votes all summer, culminating on the floor of the convention. This happened to the Republicans in 1976, when Ford and Reagan battled all the way to the last possible day, with Ford winning by a small margin. The same thing happened to the Democrats in 1960, and there are other examples from earlier decades.

In practice, convention cliffhangers are rare. Usually, the candidates have been chosen through the primary process, and the convention is scripted as a display of unity. That is what any nominee would prefer. However, there are simply not enough delegates being chosen on Super Tuesday to declare a winner to this contest, so, let us look at the contests after 5 February. Seen from a candidate's perspective, what lies ahead is going to be exhausting. It will be long and it will require a great deal of travel, because the states holding primaries on the same day are often far apart. It will also be ferociously expensive.

Here is a summary of what comes after Super Tuesday. Note particularly 4 March when more than 10% of all the delegates will be selected. This might close out the process, but even at this point there will be 650 more delegates to choose in the remaining primaries, plus the uncommitted super delegates. Should Clinton and Obama keep running neck and neck, this race could go all the way into June and still not have a certain winner.

One hopes, however, that either Obama or Clinton will manage to build a majority by 22 April (Pennsylvania) or 6 May (North Carolina and Indiana). By that time, conceivably, one of them will admit defeat and gracefully withdraw. But it might go all the way to the Convention.

Primaries after "Super Tuesday"

9 February, 194 delegates at stake in widely separated Washington, Louisiana, and Nebraska.

10 February, 34 delegates at stake in Maine, up on the Canadian border, as far from the previous three states as it is possible to get.

12 February, 238 delegates at stake in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC. Note that for once the three elections are in contiguous locations.

19 February, 121 delegates at stake in Wisconsin and Hawaii

4 March, perhaps a decisive day with 444 delegates at stake in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

8 March, just 48 delegates, in the widely separated Wyoming and Mississippi.

22 April. If the decision still has not been reached, the primary in Pennsylvania might well be the most important of the entire election, with 188 delegates at stake. The candidates will have ample time to campaign here - six weeks!

6 May. Two weeks later, even more delegates are at stake, 218 in North Carolina and Indiana.

13 May. If the candidate has not been chosen by this point, West Virginia may become an unlikely battleground for just 39 delegates.

20 May. With 125 delegates in Oregon and Kentucky, this is the last time a substantial number of delegates can be won

3 June, the end of the process, with just 47 delegates at stake, in the neighboring states of Montana and South Dakota.

Does the First Nominee Have the Advantage?

After the American Century

There is a myth floating around in conversations I have heard in the US, that the party which decides on its candidate first has a decisive advantage. In other words, the party that unifies first behind one candidate can then consolidates its troops, while the other side is still fighting amongst themselves. It seems plausible. If true, then the Republicans might have an advantage, because their primaries are often winner-take-all contests, like Florida, where Romney got 31% of the votes but no delegates.

In contrast, the Democrats divide up the delegates from a primary roughly in proportion to the votes each candidate received. I say roughly, because the division is made at the local level, and can lead to small anomalies. For example, Clinton got the most personal votes in Nevada, but Obama got one more delegate (13) than she did (12), because of the way the vote broke down in particular districts. In other words, McCain (or conceivably Romney) might assemble the needed delegates in the next few weeks much more quickly than Clinton or Obama can. The Democratic race could easily take several months after Super Tuesday. If it is really close, then the decision might be made in balloting at the Democratic national convention in the summer. In other words, possibly neither Hillary nor Obama will get a majority, even when the primaries are over. In that case, the delegates who are pledged to Edwards would become crucial. He could be the power broker, deciding who gets to be the nominee, in exchange for something he wants - such as being the Vice Presidential nominee (again).

With that sort of scenario a possibility, the myth of early consolidation sounds appealing, but it is simplistic. The myth may be true if a party's candidates broadly agree on policy and are only fighting for the right to be the nominee. But what if the candidates fundamentally disagree about policy, as they do in the Republican Party right now? McCain is the front-runner, but I have met people who are furious at him, for example because he has a liberal approach to immigration policy. One angry woman told me that all the illegal immigrants should be thrown out, that they should have gotten in line for a green card and not entered the country before then. In her view, and that of millions of other conservative Republicans, McCain is completely unacceptable on that point. They will not much feel like rallying behind him, even if he does sew up the nomination. The question asked on a CNN Poll today was, "Can McCain Bring the Republicans Together"? Three out of four did not think so. There are too many fundamental issues that divide them. In addition to immigration, they disagree on what for them are fundamental moral questions: the theory of evolution, abortion, and gay marriage. Nor do they agree on how to deal with Iraq. Ron Paul's vocal minority wants withdrawal, but McCain will stay as long as it takes. I do not expect to see Huckabee or Paul supporters put much energy into a McCain candidacy. Or, if the candidate is Romney, many McCain supporters will sit on their hands, because he is too conservative for them.

In short, either Romney, or more likely McCain, might get the nomination early, only to find that party support is lukewarm. Weak enthusiasm from the Republican base would not stand up well to either the Clinton machine or the Obama wave. Moreover, the media are not going to give as much attention to an already-selected Republican as they will to a dramatic battle between the two exciting candidates on the Democratic side. And note that Obama and Hillary do not have radically different policy statements. Supporters of either one could in good conscience go out and work for the other.

An interesting historical comparison makes the same point. In 1960, Richard Nixon was the clear, early front-runner and early got the Republican nomination. On the Democratic side a fierce battle for the nomination went all the way to the convention and was only decided on the third ballot. In other words, the Republicans had unified early and, according to the myth, should have won, because the Democrats were fighting each other all summer. Moreover, Nixon could claim far more experience than his younger but less well-known rival. The winner? Jack Kennedy, a charismatic candidate demanding change. His vice-presidentail running mate? Lyndon Johnson, a Southern Senator who had the delegates needed for a majority. It might be "deja-vu all over again."

Florida: Mac is (Still) Back

After the American Century


The results are in, and McCain has won Florida with 36%, with Romney at 31%. It seems that McCain has found what Ponce de Leon was looking for: rejuvenation. He was the Spaniard who discovered Florida, looking for the the fountain of youth, which he had heard lay in that region. McCain may be the oldest candidate, but he's looking a bit younger after winning Florida. Giuliani, in contrast, found out that he is old news. Finishing third, the press is reporting that he will drop out of the race and endorse McCain. That means the Republican moderates will no longer be split, while Huckabee and Romney will continue to divide the more conservative Republicans.

The state where the Republican field was reduced to three is not like the rest of the South. Almost exactly 400 years after Ponce de Leon's futile search, old people from the Northern US began to retire to the warmth of Florida, which has had a land boom and bust cycle for 90 years. This influx of Northerners, many from New York City, makes the State less "southern" on the political map than it appears to be geographically. If the rest of the South is reliably conservative in Presidential elections, Florida is not. There are acres of retired Jewish voters on the beaches near Miami, who tend to go for McCain. There is the large Cuban community, still fighting the Cold War against Castro. They also voted on the whole for McCain. Then there is the large gay community on the chain of islands leading down to Key West. Some of them are conservative enough to vote Republican, but they will not like Huckabee, who wants a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage, or Romney, who is almost as hostile.

Huckabee gave up on Florida, and he got only 13% of the vote. Perhaps he hoped that Romney could beat McCain if he were not there to divide the vote. Meanwhile, Giuliani put all his eggs in the Florida basket, but has now proven the pundits were right: campaigning only in one state was a bad strategy, though it gave him a chance to work on his tan. All the polls indicate that in the last days before balloting, it became a two day race, and now we have the results.

Florida is diverse enough to resemble the nation as a whole, certainly more so than South Carolina. So it is important who wins there, not just for the delegates to the convention, but because the Republicans usually need to win this state to win the Presidency. That was obviously true in 2000 (though they may not have really won), and it was also the case in 2004. If they lose Florida (as they did 1996), then they likely will lose the general election. It is the biggest swing state.

The Republican Party contenders, like Ponce de Leon, have been looking for rejuvenation in Florida. The explorer not only failed but soon died. The same has now happened to Giuliani, and perhaps Huckabee. Now the questions are: Will the battle between Romney and McCain get nasty? Will Huckabee drop out in time to help Romney, creating a political debt? Can McCain win over the conservative wing of the party, many of whom still publicly say they do not want him? We will get an idea in six days, on Super Tuesday.

Politics or Football?

After several days of random conversations and taking the general pulse, I have the strong impression that Americans are not quite as excited about this election process as I had imagined. On television, of course, one sees excited crowds, emotional appeals, and other signs of intensity. But an old friend, recently retired who is well read and always up on the news, and who has time to engage in whatever excites him, told me over coffee that a bit of political fatigue had set in. There have been too many debates between the candidates, too many sound-bites on the news, and worse, none of the candidates on either side seems quite satisfactory.  

I spoke to a women I know well who runs a  small store in central Massachusetts. She has also been an elected official, and her husband won a seat as a town selectman in their last local election. So I assumed she would be excited about one of the candidates, but I was wrong. She has followed the candidates carefully, but now is looking forward to the Green Party's convention, and hopes that they run a strong candidate! And she told me that many people in this little New England town of hers are giving money to Ron Paul. 

When polls tell us in state after state that one third of the people have not made up their minds, perhaps it is not a sign that these voters are equally attracted to two candidates. Rather, quite a few voters seem unhappy with the candidates on offer. This is only an impression based on an arbitrary sample and an unscientific method. But it seemed confirmed by another thing I noticed. Few people seem to be wearing buttons proclaiming their support for a candidate. I was in a large store with many middle-class Black customers outside of Hartford Connecticut. I was hoping to see some Obama buttons. I did not see any, worn by anyone, regardless of race. Nor did I hear anyone talking about politics, either.

So what are people talking about? Football, American style. The Super Bowl is February 3. And it pits the New York Giants against the New England Patriots. And for the majority of readers of this blog who live outside the US, I should say that the Patriots have won every single game of the season, including one at the end against the Giants, and have the longest winning streak in the whole history of football. But that was a close game against the Giants a few weeks ago, even though it meant little to the Giants, because they were going to the playoffs whether they won or lost. And that game was played on the Patriot's home field, whereas the Super Bowl will be played in good weather in Arizona on a neutral field. The game is everywhere in the media, and the sporting public is betting heavily on it. Las Vegas bookmakers think this could be the first time that a single football game will generate bets of more than $100,000,000 dollars. Some tickets are still available to the game on the Internet, but the prices are from $3950 up to $7000. That is for one ticket. A parking space is $125. Plus a flight, a hotel, meals, drinks, and souvenirs.  Total cost at least $5000 per person.

Two days before Super Tuesday, almost the entire male population and many women as well will ignore politics completely to watch the Super Bowl. I expect that John McCain, from Arizona, will manage to be in the stands for the game. If Obama is smart, he will be there too. And Bill and Hillary surely have realized the value of being there. Because most of the nation will be watching, and they will like a candidate who takes an interest in moving that bloated bit of pigskin up and down a 100-yard field.   Politics or Football? For many, this is a silly question.

Republicans Struggle to Find a Candidate

Here in Boston, where I had my hair cut this morning, Mitt Romney does not seem popular. He once was governor of the state, and he also ran the Olympics, and normally such things make one respected. But my barber assured me that Romney was "a two-faced liar" who told every audience whatever they wanted to hear, and who did not stand for anything. This was the most direct expression of what many others also have said to me. Furthermore, rumors float about that some Democrats dislike Romney so much that they have changed their voter registration to "Independent." This will give them the right to vote in the Republican primary in Massachusetts - voting against Romney in his home state. In other words, they want to embarrass him. It may be that few people are actually going to do this, but the rumor itself suggests an unusually active dislike.

Nevertheless, on the national scene, Romney has begun to look like McCain's most serious Republican rival. Fred Thompson has dropped out of the campaign, and Huckabee is so short of money that he cannot afford to give journalists free transportation. He has decided to cut back his appearances in Florida and concentrate on more evangelical places, notably Georgia, where polls put him in first place. Still, cutting back on travel for the press is one of the last things any contender will do, because the press are vital to keeping your name and opinions before the public. In Florida's primary, coming up on Saturday, that leaves McCain and Romney as the main contenders, which Giuliani a potential spoiler. At the moment Romney is leading in the Rasmussen polls, with 27%. McCain is close behind at 23%, and the former Mayor of New York at 20%. [Update Friday 25th: since writing this I have seen several other polls that put McCain slightly ahead, but the margin of error is 5%, which means they are in a tie. But these polls also show Giuliani falling back to about 15%, in a tie with Huckabee.] Since Giuliani has spent far more time and money in Florida than the other two men combined, he seems to be fading out of the race. But note that slightly more than one third of the Republicans say they have not entirely made up their minds yet. In other words, "undecided" is winning just at the moment.

And what the Republicans cannot decide upon is not just which candidate to support, but what policies they stand for. Each of these men stands for something quite different. McCain comes from a military family, in which four generations have now gone to the Naval Academy. He is a maverick on social issues, and does not appeal to the Huckabee backers. The religious Right only likes Huckabee, in fact, as Giuliani has been married too many times and does not get angry about abortion or praise Jesus. Worse yet is Romney, whom the largely Southern Evangelicals do not like because he is a Mormon and in any case a Northerner. So this numerically important, if intellectually stunted fundamentalist rump of the Republican Party is in a crisis. There is even talk of running a third party candidate if an unacceptable candidate wins the nomination. For more sensible Republicans, Romney represents the business wing of the party, the employer class. Before serving as governor he was a successful capitalist.

For those readers who know their Protestant theology, the differences between these candidates can be explained in the theological terms. Ever since European Protestants came to the New World, they have struggled with two incompatible ideas about how one achieves salvation: the doctrine of grace vs. the doctrine of works. Huckabee is all about grace, the word of God, and the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit. There are millions of people in the United States who believe in the reality of Angels, who refuse to accept the theory of evolution, and who see nothing wrong with "speaking in tongues" in a church service. Huckabee is their man, and he represents the idea that the only way to salvation is through grace raining down on the unworhty sinner. Romney may be a Mormon, but his career is all about hard work and achievement, or the doctrine of works. A man earns his way into heaven. By prospering in this world he shows that he will be one of "the elect" in the next world. Ever since the seventeenth century, Protestants have disagreed about whether grace or works is the correct doctrine. Churches have broken into warring sects over these matters.

For those immersed in the doctrine of grace, Giuliani, with his Italian background, is the worst thing imaginable. For he is a very secular man. He is not just a Catholic, which for several hundred years was thought a terrible thing. He appears to be something even worse, he is a lapsed Catholic, with three divorces and liberal positions on abortion and other family value issues. A man like that, to the religious right is Godless, liberal, and clearly untrustworthy.

McCain is another matter, representing the warrior class. A potential slayer of infidels and defender of the American faith, he is more acceptable to the religious right in the sense that he stands for some moral absolutes. They respect that. But McCain has also been a maverick on social issues. He too seems secular, certainly neither a Creationist nor Bible-thumper. So the religious right is uncomfortable with all the candidates except Huckabee. However, the non-evangelical Republicans, the ones who went to real universities, gag when they hear Huckabee pontificate.

To sum it up, not only is the Republican Party struggling to find a candidate, it is struggling with its own identity. Bush could win over Evangelicals with a bit of coded rhetoric now and again - which was also the old Reagan tactic. Both gave fundamentalists the sense that their values were honored in the White House. Reagan and Bush II were mostly rhetoric, however, and they did not use too much political capital actually trying to stop the spread of gay marriage, prevent the teaching of evolution, or get prayer back into the classroom. It seems that neither Romney nor McCain nor Giuliani will play that game. The Reagan coalition seems to be dead.

Yet politics makes strange bedfellows. What if Huckabee became the vice-presidential nominee? Surely not Giuliani and Huckabee. But Romney and Huckabee? McCain and Huckabee? Then the Evangelicals would rejoice in their temples, gird up their loins, and march out on the campaign trail to do the Lord's work. It is a frightening prospect.

Clinton Gambles for Nevada Votes

Whenever I get to Nevada I feel as though I ought to be given a free hotel room. After all, the first governor of the Nevada Territory, at the time of the Civil War, was James Nye (1815-1876. See the photo on the right). I admit he was a distant relative, but they did name a county after him (population 32,000), and he was the first senator elected to represent Nevada when it became a state. We have some rather friendly remarks about James Nye from the pen of Mark Twain, whose brother was the governor's secretary. Twain declared,

The Government of the new Territory of Nevada was an interesting
menagerie. Governor Nye was an old and seasoned politician from New
York--politician, not statesman. He had white hair; he was in fine
physical condition; he had a winningly friendly face and deep lustrous
brown eyes that could talk as a native language the tongue of every
feeling, every passion, every emotion. His eyes could outtalk his
tongue, and this is saying a good deal, for he was a very remarkable
talker, both in private and on the stump. He was a shrewd man; he
generally saw through surfaces and perceived what was going on inside
without being suspected of having an eye on the matter.

In any case, since my family has been associated with Nevada for almost 150 years, I have always taken a little extra interest in its affairs, including the caucuses going on there later today.

First of all, despite being a large western state, Nevada's 1.9 million people are mostly urban, with Las Vegas and vicinity concentrating 1.3 million of them, followed by Reno and nearby Carson City. As Las Vegas and Reno have grown, they have become more like other American cities. They have universities and high schools, supermarkets and malls, suburban housing areas, and all the other features you might find in Omaha or Denver. The majority of the land areas in these cities bears little resemblance to the glamorous "strip" of gigantic casinos that figure so prominently on CSI or in films.

A politician need not visit 95% of the state to reach the majority of voters, but can focus almost entirely on these two urban areas. The racial composition of this largely urban population is not much like that in New Hampshire or Iowa. One fifth of the entire population is Hispanic, and polls indicate they lean toward Clinton. Obama can expect strong support from the Black population, but they are less numerous (7%).

Economically speaking, Nevada is not like the rest of the country, or much of anywhere else, because its economy has such a large element of gambling and tourism. The gambling revenues are so large that the tax paid on them covers most of the state's expenses. There is no state income tax in Nevada. So it has been a liability for Obama that in the past he has been critical of gambling. I happen to think he was right to say that gambling was not a good thing for poor people, taken all around. In his words, it can have a "devastating effect" on communities. As a state senator in Illinois, Obama did not always want to see gambling spread to more and more places. But Las Vegas is not the ideal place for a politician to get known as a critic of gambling, even if we do know that gambling in effect is a regressive tax that hits the poor harder than the rich.

The Clinton campaign has kindly made a point of letting Nevada know Obama's views, while Hillary has posed for photographs with casino owners. She has stressed her support of their operations. Meanwhile, Obama has the endorsement of the casino and restaurant workers, which makes for an interesting contrast. Who would have thought that the Hillary of New Hampshire who identified herself with mill workers could so quickly become a buddy of the high rollers? For her, gambling apparently is just good economic development, and she has been endorsed by leading figures at MGM Mirage and Harrah's. Clinton's new position potentially could mean she will support on-line gambling, which has large implications for the election as a whole. Gambling is a hot issue in California, where there are several referendums about it. Furthermore, John McCain is not friendly to on-line betting and gambling. So, is Hillary really intent on widening the reach of gambling? Is this what "change" means to her? Or is she just willing to use anything to get an advantage against Obama in Nevada? She has already run into trouble with the Methodist Church. She claims to be a good Methodist, but apparently the church has somewhat stricter views on gambling than she does. One suspects she will return to the church fold soon, perhaps as soon as the voting is over. Tomorrow is Sunday, after all.

Meanwhile, I am still hoping to get that free hotel room, though perhaps I will have to go to bone dry Nye County to get it.