Stick A Fork In Her…

I just don’t see how Hillary Clinton can come back from a loss like this. If she loses Texas or Ohio, she’s toast, even with the superdelegates.

It will be a great day for the country to see the Clinton dynasty fall—except when the Obama hype meets the reality of a candidate far outside the American mainstream, all the platitudes in the world won’t account for much. And when that day comes, Hillary Clinton may ultimately be the benefactor. In some ways, if the Democrats wanted to rid themselves of Clintonism it would have been better to let her run and lose than potentially end up being able to say that she told them so…

Are The Democrats Getting The Electability Question Wrong?

Democratic pollster Mark Penn makes the case that Hillary Clinton is more electable than Barack Obama. Despite all the Obama hype, his analysis may very well be right. The dynamics of this cycle seem to be a reversal of 2004—the Democrats gave up their candidate of passion (Howard Dean) and settled for the guy that they thought could best win (John Kerry). Now, they’re doing the exact opposite, voting for the candidate they feel passionate about but also the candidate with the least experience and the most unknowns. While that’s not a foolish choice, it may still be the wrong one.

Penn argues:

[Hillary] has outperformed at the ballot box throughout her career. She will neutralize the argument on national security so the election will turn on her ability to manage our economy and reform healthcare. The GOP will not be able to increase her negatives in a way they can with an untested candidate. And Hillary’s core voters – working class, women, Latinos, Catholics – are exactly the voters that comprise the key swing voters the party has needed in the past to win.

Remember that analysis if Obama wins the primary. Obama’s appeal is with the new Democratic base—but the new Democratic base is frequently at odds with the old working-class Democratic base. If Obama wins, and it’s looking like he’s got the momentum now, the result could well be a Democratic Party that’s just as split as if Clinton wins. The new Democratic base of urban liberals and minority voters have drunk the Obama Kool-Aid, but Obama can’t win unless he truly broadens his appeal—and the big question is whether his platitudes can take him over the top. The Democrats are betting that Obama can pull it off—but that bet may not be nearly as solid as they would think.

UPDATE: As a commenter rightly points out, Mr. Penn is Clinton’s pollster, so his comments should be taken with a grain of salt. Even though he’s a biased party, there still seems to be some real substance to his analysis.

The Potomac Primaries

Tonight was a good night for John McCain and Barack Obama, and not so good for Hillary Clinton. Captain Ed live-blogged the results as they happened.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in trouble. Obama has all the momentum and is now indisputably the front-runner. Neither Clinton nor Obama have ever run a truly competitive campaign, and Obama’s natural magnetism is giving him a decisive edge. Without her air of inevitability, Clinton is in the fight of her life.

Still, I would not count Hillary out. I don’t at all think that Obama is the superstar that the Democrats have made him out to be. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Obama is in fact the more vulnerable candidate. Obama has two huge problems: he’s incredibly inexperienced, and his appeal is quite literally skin deep. Obama is painting himself as a candidate above politics, but that doesn’t work. Sooner or later Barack Obama will have to stop spouting platitudes and start getting real, and he’s not prepared for that in the slightest. Especially now that it’s clear that McCain will be the GOP nominee, this contest will be one that is about clear differences: the young liberal activist versus the elder statesman and American hero. Sorry, Obamamaniacs, but your guy is all fluff. Either candidate will give McCain a very tough run, and he could blow it, but I think that the Obama hype machine is blowing a great deal of smoke up our collective posteriors.

Still, I do take some comfort in watching the collapse of the Clinton political dynasty. For years we on the right have been excoriated for criticizing the Clintons for being a bunch of amoral hyper-political sleezebags. Our friends on the other side of the aisle are about 15 years behind in realizing it, but it’s nice to know that we’re finally vindicated in that belief. Then again, the way in which the Clintons have gone from liberal paragons to persona non grata is more than a little Orwellian…

This race is going to be quite the interesting one, and even though some conservatives are disappointed that McCain is the nominee, I’m starting to come around to the idea that he’s the best possible candidate for these times. This summer will be quite fun to watch, and hopefully we’ll see some real fireworks—although most of them will be from the intra-party civil war on the Democratic side.

Live From Super Tuesday

I’m at my local caucus site, and GOP turnout is high–even I’m surprised at how many people are here. No clue as to which candidates are ahead, but Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have the most presence here tonight. No overt support for McCain that I’ve seen yet. If my connection works, I’ll have more as things develop.

UPDATE: The precinct was packed! I’ve never seen turnout like this. The votes are being counted now. Results when they come in.

UPDATE: Looks like Romney is cleaning up. Romney 48, McCain 15, Paul 6, Huckabee 6.

UPDATE: Romney may have done well in my precinct, but nationally he’s getting creamed. He’s said that he will fight on, but it seems quite unlikely that he’ll have a path to the nomination after tonight.

The Caucus was absolutely packed. There were 75 people in my small precinct, and the auditorium with the general assembly was filled, and an equal number of people were waiting outside. American democracy is alive and well. The demographics were all over the place—young voters and old voters, men and women alike.

UPDATE: Ed Morrisey liveblogged the caucus…

As a side note, did Bill Richardson suddenly grow a beard or is it his twin from the mirror universe?

For the record, I voted for McCain. I’ll explain that later.

UPDATE: The Democratic race is as close as everyone thought it would be. I have a feeling that this could be leading to a brokered convention—which has to have Howard Dean screaming a “YEARGH!” of pain at the moment.

UPDATE: Minnesota has been called for Romney. Obama has also won convincingly against Clinton, with Obama taking 66% and Clinton 33% with 51% of the vote in. That’s a much bigger spread than I would have guessed.

UPDATE: 10:52PM CST: It’s looking more and more like Clinton will win California—but the results aren’t in yet. It’s also looking like McCain will win both Missouri (narrowly) and California (by a large margin). For once this election cycle, the pundits seem to be on track. McCain has a convincing lead with the Republicans, and Clinton is narrowly ahead of Obama.

McCain has a lot of work ahead of him in reassuring skittish conservatives. Appearing at CPAC is a good idea—but what McCain needs to do is be honest about points of disagreement and be prepared to talk about a shared conservative agenda. That means being much more reassuring about the sort of judicial appointments he’d make and standing strongly for an enforcement-first border policy. McCain needs the help of conservatives to win, and he’s got a lot of ground to cover.

Super Mega Ultra Tuesday Predictions

Today is Super Tuesday, when 24 states vote in Republican and Democratic primaries. It’s the Super Bowl of the primary season, and normally the winner on Super Tuesday is the one who sweeps the nomination.

Except for this year.

On the Democratic side, I’m predicting a race in which both Hillary and Obama come out with enough strength to keep this contest going. The dynamics of the race are such that neither Obama nor Clinton have enough dominance to decide the contest one way or another. They both have entrenched bases of political support. They both have plenty of funds. They both aren’t going anywhere. Which means that the Democratic race will go one for some time after Super Tuesday, and states that have been virtual afterthoughts in normal election cycles may suddenly become crucially important. Not only that, but the Democratic “superdelegates” who are supposed to prevent another replay of the 1968 fiasco could end up tipping the scales to Clinton since those superdelegates are part of the old Democratic machine. That would cause a great deal of rancor within the Democratic Party.

The bottom line is that the Democrats are a deeply divided party right now, and Super Tuesday is only going to make things worse. Clinton will sweep the big states like New York and California. Obama will do well in the smaller states. At the end of the day, neither one will be out, and the Democrats will be fighting this one out for a while longer. I don’t think that the race will have a clear winner until April, and perhaps not even then.

On the other side, the race is clear. John McCain has the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney is positioning himself as the conservative alternative to McCain, but by the time you’re running based on what you’re not rather than what you offer yourself, the race has already been lost. Romney will carry a few states, but McCain will have a major sweep tonight. The reason why is simple: people want to back a winner. Romney hasn’t closed the deal, which means that even if he benefits from conservative backlash to McCain he just doesn’t have the support necessary to carry him over the top. McCain now has the bandwagon effect going for him, and the sheer momentum of that is enough to put Romney out. He can run beyond today, but unless he comes very close to McCain it would be just throwing more money after bad.

At the end of tonight when the dust settles, it will be a knock-out fight between Hillary and Obama on the Democratic side while John McCain will be a virtual lock for the GOP nomination. While McCain goes to CPAC and starts rallying his base, the Democrats will be involved in a bitter feud that may not end for a long while.

UPDATE: Open Left has an interesting piece on how Democratic “superdelegates” could up deciding the Democratic nomination. If that analysis proves correct, the Democratic race could get very contentious indeed.

The Destructive Politics Of Purity

Bill Quick has an article in which he lays out the case against John McCain. He’s quite right—McCain’s record leaves a lot to be desired. He’s also dead wrong in the idea that if conservatives sit out this election they’ll do anything but hurt the country. That counter-argument is laid out by Judith Apter Klinghoffer who asks whether partisans are putting party above country in this election.

I’m not sold on McCain yet, so much so that I’m considering caucusing for Romney tomorrow—if for no other reason than to remind Sen. McCain that conservatives do care about advancing an agenda and want more than lip service from the “maverick.” At the same time, Quick’s argument just doesn’t hold much weight. As much as he wants to deny it, the result of not voting for John McCain if he’s the nominee is President Barack Obama or President Hillary Clinton—either of whom would be a disaster for this country. Even if all his arguments are true, and John McCain is a squish in key issues—and there’s plenty of evidence to back up all of his points—so what? Is Hillary Clinton really any better. Should we then take a chance that Barack Obama would be a decent President rather than the doctrinaire liberal activist he’s been all of his life? That dog won’t hunt. I’d rather go with an 80% conservative or a 60% conservative than a Fabian socialist or a liberal crusader. Ideological purity is a waste if it ends up taking this country in the wrong direction for at least four years.

The politics of purity is ultimately destructive. American politics falls along a bell curve—the only way for a party to win is to get the center. When parties end up trying to do nothing more than consolidate their “base” they end up losing. The only way to advance an agenda is to have the political power to do that. You don’t get to shape the agenda from the sidelines, and the politics of purity ensures that the liberal Democrats end up having the center all to themselves. That kind of ideological purity means that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama gets to nominate some new Supreme Court justices who will give civil rights to terrorists and further enshrine Roe v. Wade as being more important than the Constitution. That sort of ideological purity puts the regulatory state further into the hands of those who see government as the solution to every problem. That kind of ideological purity means that the center gets shifted even farther to the left as more and more people are put into a position of dependence on the state. The argument that things have to get worse before they’ll get better is an argument that the good of the country should be sacrificed for the good of one party. That argument is wrong from first principles, and doubly wrong in a time of war.

John McCain may have a laundry list of faults, and he may not be a conservative even though he’s certainly conservative on most issues. He was out there defending this war when it was politically suicidal to do so. He believes in limiting spending and preventing government waste. He’s firmly on the side of protecting human life. He’s being supported by people who are mainstream conservatives, and they will continue to provide a voice for conservative values in a McCain Administration.

For a group of people who have been constantly saying that the war is the issue that defines our times, they certainly seem all too willing to hand political power to the surrender caucus if they don’t get their way. Apparently this defining battle for Western Civilization takes a backseat to ideological purity as well.

Does anyone think that conservatives will be welcome in a Clinton or an Obama White House? That people who believe in limited government and the rule of law will even get a voice at the table? That the Republicans will stop this country from taking a huge step farther down the road to serfdom? If so, then those people are hopelessly naive.

Politics is the art of compromise. Those who aren’t willing to compromise to advance parts of their agenda don’t win in politics. Reagan is looked at as the symbol of the Republican Party not just because he was a conservative (and in many ways Reagan wasn’t the conservative that he’s viewed as today), but because he was a conservative who could win. That’s why we hearken back to Reagan and not Barry Goldwater. Reagan wasn’t perfect, but he was instrumental in not only defeating Soviet Communism, but moving this country in a better direction. He wasn’t perfect, but he advanced the agenda.

John McCain is not perfect. Far from it. But the conservative agenda is better off with John McCain in the White House than someone like Hillary or Obama. It’s as simple as that: either go half a step forward or ten steps back. It shouldn’t be that hard of a choice.

If conservatives want a voice at the table, they can’t go petulantly stomping off whenever they don’t get their way. Do that, and conservative become an electoral liability and the country shifts further and further to the left.

It’s this simple: we have to win the war. We have to control spending. We have to reform entitlements. We need judges who follow the law, not make it. Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will do that, and they’ll set up back on all three fronts. John McCain, for all his faults will stand up to Iran, will put Congress on notice in regards to spending, and will give conservatives a voice at the table in reforming entitlements and picking judges.

If not wanting to see this country end up with four years of socialism and surrender makes me a “Shit Sandwich Republican,” then so be it.

Obama’s Pyrrhic Victory?

Barack Obama trounced Hillary Clinton last night by a massive margin. However, Dick Morris, a man who worked with the Clintons for years, has an interesting contrarian view of the Clinton’s strategy:

Ultimately, the Clintons are playing a game of jujitsu with Obama, using his own strength against him.

By challenging Obama for the black vote – by promising to go door to door in South Carolina in minority neighborhoods, for example – Bill is highlighting the question: Will Obama carry the black vote? Of course, he will. He leads, 4 to 1, among African-Americans now.

But by making that the central question, Obama’s South Carolina victory will be hailed as proof that he won the African-American vote. Such block voting will trigger the white backlash Sen. Clinton needs to win.

Once whites see blacks voting en masse for a black man, they will figure that it is a racial game and line up for Hillary. Already, she carries white voters by 2 to 1.

The Clintons can well afford to lose South Carolina as long as the election is not seen as a bellwether of how the South will vote but as an indication of how African-Americans will go. It’s a small price to pay for the racial polarization they need to win.

Sure enough, the story is how Obama carried the black vote.

As often as Dick Morris gets it wrong, he seems to be on to the Clinton strategy. Right now Barack Obama has two constituencies: well-off whites and blacks. Hillary Clinton is peeling away women, low-income voters, union members and other traditional Democratic groups. It’s a simple matter of numbers: Clinton can win with the groups on her side, and Obama can’t.

This loss certainly doesn’t look good for Hillary Clinton—she got creamed by Obama—but ultimately time (and the byzantine Democratic primary process) is on her side. The Clintons are masters of political hardball, as well as divide-and-conquer politics. They know full well that all they need to do is split the vote along racial lines and they can win—and it’s not like black voters will cross over and vote Republican in the general election.

Obama won a major victory tonight—but it could end up being a Pyrrhic one. Obama must broaden his appeal beyond racial and class lines, and so far he’s been unable to do it. The demographic tide going into Super Tuesday doesn’t favor him, and while he’s dinged Clinton’s armor twice now, he’s yet to slay the beast.

Michigan Preview

Today is the Michigan primary, a race that’s been overshadowed by New Hampshire and South Carolina, but one that could have some effect on the dynamics of the race. On the Democratic side, the only candidate who counts that’s on the ballot is Hillary Clinton. Because Michigan didn’t follow DNC rules, their delegates may not be seated at the convention. The only shock would be if Democrats voted “Uncommitted” over Hillary. There are no write-ins allowed.

On the Republican side, things are more interesting. McCain and Romney are neck and neck. If I had to guess, I’d say McCain will benefit from Democratic cross-over votes and narrowly defeat Romney. If Romney wins, he remains in the game. If Romney takes second again, he’s basically out of the race. This is Romney’s last chance to remain viable, and even if he wins he’s lost so much ground elsewhere that it’s only a matter of time for him.

It all will come down to the number of cross-over and independent voters, a fact not lost on Team Romney. Turnout will be low due to weather, which may help Romney and Huckabee. However, McCain won Michigan in 2000. He still has strong appeal there. I don’t think it will be a McCain blowout, but I think Mitt Romney’s days are numbered. I’m predicting a narrow McCain win.

MoDo Says Something Interesting

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times is a terrible columnist, but every once in while she says something that transcends her normal material. Her column on Hillary’s tears is one of those columns. She observes:

There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.

That’s why I think Hillary’s tears were genuine: it was a moment when Hillary’s massive ego suddenly ran into the real chance of failure. Hillary Clinton is not a woman used to failure. The prospect of being beaten by Barack Obama and losing what is almost certainly her life’s major goal was just too much for her.

I don’t doubt for a second that Senator Clinton’s tears were real—especially not after seeing them in context. If they’re not, she deserves an Academy Award.

No, I’m convinced they were real—and what they say about the character of Hillary Clinton are in themselves more telling than the fact that she’s as human as the rest of us. Maureen Dowd is right: her tears were “weirdly narcissistic” because she honestly believes that it would be a great tragedy for the country for her not to be President. In a way, it might have been better had those tears been fakes after all.

Planting The Field

Had last night’s CNN/YouTube debate in Florida had any more planted questions there’d be a government farm subsidy involved. One of the questioners, a retired General who was openly gay, was a member of a Hillary Clinton campaign task force. Another was an activist for John Edwards. Another was a union activist. Another was an Obama supporter. CNN apparently did very little to vet the questions to make sure that real uncommitted voters got a chance to ask their questions. Even Grover Nordquist, whose question was perfectly fair, still doesn’t really belong in a “citizen” oriented debate.

CNN truly dropped the ball on this debate, and it ended up hurting them even more. Had Fox News planted Republican questioners at a similar event, the left would be out for blood. Even if you ignore the questions by the union activist and the Obama supporter on the principle that they’re voters who have a right to question the candidates, having a Clinton campaign advisor on the debate demonstrated a major lack of forethought by a network that’s already been nick-named the Clinton News Network.