So Super Tuesday has come and gone and what do we have. Democrats are in a hoss race. The Clinton Delegate strategy is keeping them in front of the Obama revolution in the sparsely settled zones. Romney bowed out just when the fight was getting good on the republican side but Huckabee and Paul are soldiering on. I do say there are four at the expense of Dr. Paul because realistically there are now only 4 in the running for the nominations. This does not mean there are only 4 possible candidates for the presidency. I hope to see Ron Paul on the election circut... if he gets a fair shake he might stir some things up. But on to the the current real show... the donkey race between Hillary and Obama.
Well last post I said with a hoss race the odds were 50/50 on a party split. I might be smoking crack rock but I think I will stick to them odds. Of course now that the race is polling this closely a lot of folks are talking about a Clinton/Obama ticket. Never say never and there is a lot to say for this one happening. Obama has an obvious 'uniting' theme to get folks behind a Clinton running mate... but the weirdness factor and fox in the hen house element tells me this isn't likely. I really like the idea of Obama departing from politics as usual when it comes to considering potential running mates. The Republicans are going to have a problem with McCain and if Obama chooses wisely and pulls someone in from outside the party, perhaps even from the Republican camp, he could change the rules of the game and split off a chunk of the republican herd... not that he is there by any stretch of the imagination... but its nice to think about what if.
Don't let the close delegate count fool you. For the most part Clinton is still in the drivers seat. Most bobble heads agree that a Convention nomination favors Hillary... all that backlog of dirty behind the scenes politickin of all the Clinton years will pull a LOT of weight when the doors shut on the convention. Obama needs a clear enough mandate from the party to neutralize the super delegate vote otherwise it is likely he will get oh so close... and yet so far from a front running nomination. The scary thing will be if Obama rolls in an eyelash in front of Clinton, and the super delegates toss it to Hillary. It is anyones guess what happens then. Obmama can't go rogue. His message is of uniting and going rogue is the ultimate divisive move. However... the party can split in a less spectacular fashion. Simply dividing the vote will likely knock the democrats out of the running. If Obama pulls ~5% through write ins etc... he hands the election to the Republicans, even if he is no longer a candidate. His fans CAN go rogue.
Talks of a split aside, if you are a Democrat then watching what is evolving has got to be painful. Having a democratic nomination come down to the convention is going to make it very tough on whoever gets it. The mud is slinging and the more it flies the more divided the party will be. This will put enormous pressure on the democrats to scramble immediately just to collect the pieces of their typically scattered party before really focusing on their opponent. Meanwhile the more archaic, less democratic nomination scheme of the Republicans is already doing its thing. Despites the problems McCain has in his own party the writing is on the wall and the healing process begins NOW barring some kind of last mile surge by Mike Huckabee, the issue facing the republicans from here on out will be about getting behind McCain. And after the Republican convention they will come out swinging for the undecideds while the Democrats will be fighting for their own party votes.
A Hillary Nomination is going to throw those undecideds up for much harder contention because the break thus far has been overwhelmingly for Obama. Gen X and Y is starting to throw their weight around and for the most part they will not be happy with a Clinton nod.
**** Update ******
Since I wrote all the above Obama has swept the Potomac primaries and the race is taking on a decidedly different air. A while back I said for Barak to aspire to anything more than a VP nod he would have to string together a solid campaign in a similar manner to the early Dean run in the last election. I did not think it was very likely he could do that and if I wasn't watching it with my own eyes now I would find it hard to believe, yet here he is looking like he has the momentum with a rapidly deflating Hillary striving hard to grasp the crown she thought was fated for her. When Hillary and Bill played the dirty card in South Carolina I said he had to redefine the game or they would out politick him... and damn if he hasn't. Obama has done something no candidate has accomplished since Regan, he has captured the imagination of the American people. He has consistently refused to play the game on his opponents terms and instead has stuck to his ideals and lofty approach to political discourse. The Clinton's held out the bait and it looked like the only responses Barak made would only paint him in a tighter and tighter corner... and he has all but ignored it. Instead he has kept his eye on the prize and refused to get sidetracked with an momentum sucking quagmire of racial posturing. In short he has been a grownup in what has long since degraded into an immature childish dirty game of name calling that we call our national elections of late. Instead he has walked the straight and narrow and come through a very dangerous period in his campaign smelling like roses and looking like he has the hole shot to the convention.
I sincerely hope that I have misjudged the american people and overestimated the Clinton's. I don't agree with all that Obama wants to do. I still think he is long on vision and short on plans if you know what I mean. But at the same time I am the absolute first person to say that the president is the figurehead... the office is the bully pulpit and it is not exactly required that he have it all planned to the 5th significant digit. I don't expect his message to change between now and the convention. I think he has committed to his campaign what and who he is and that change in the sense of choosing different ways of presenting himself just is not a change he is interested in.
My only word of caution to those who see an inevitable Obama coronation at this point is to remember that the Clinton's have been on the ropes numerous times in their long storied careers. True the outlook is bleak... but they have a habit of pulling off the unexpected turn around when least expected. Right now is when they are most dangerous. Do NOT count them out, do NOT take your eyes off of them, they will bite. On the other hand I think they have made one tragic miscalculation. They are now 'the man'. Hillary did such a fine job of establishing herself as a good capable senator that she planted herself in the establishment and it is rankling her to no end. She has fought and fought and fought and finaly has accidentally clawed her way right into the kind of position many of her opponents have found to their disadvantage over the years. It took a freshman senator with a clear element of newness to clearly outline this facet of her for the general public... but the longer this election goes on the more apparent it becomes that she has embraced being the person in power to folks who never could see past the personae to the raw calculated ambition underneath. She thought she could meld the two elements into a final crowning achievement by taking her 'revolution' all the way to the highest office in the land... only here she is so close, only to be getting pushed out by someone with more 'street cred' when it comes to being the radical person fighting for change.
If you wanted to put this in sports parlance here is how I call it right now. Obama has finally taken the ball and it is now his nomination to loose. But he has GOT to put Clinton away. Rolling into the convention without a decisive delegate count in his favor strong enough to rule out the possibility of a brokered convention puts it all back up for grabs. He is now the Patriots on their way to their last score in this years super bowl. Just keep in mind who actually won that game. Put plain... he needs Texas and Ohio the same way he swept the Potomac. It is the next to last hill to climb for the Cinderella man. My hats off to him. If he has done nothing else, I think he has managed to somewhat elevate the level of the game in the world of politics this election... of course their was no where to go but up. But improvement is improvement and I grant him his due.
