But Can He Win?

For those of you who might be offended, the subject of this does not ignore Hillary, we all know she can win. The question many primary voters have to answer is “I like this guy, but I don’t want to waste my vote – can he actually win this, or should I go to my second choice?” I am going to attempt to answer this, based on polling data and my own spectacularly fallible ability to read the political entrails.

The “Not Really” Tier

Joe Biden: In a better political world, Biden would be battling for the lead in the polls, as he is far more qualified than those at the top. He is also far more experienced than the candidate in his party running on her experience. But he has little personal popularity and his unchanging poll numbers mean he has no chance. This is an indictment of our political system.

Chris Dodd: See Joe Biden, in spades.

Bill Richardson: No, but he has a great chance of being the VP nominee. He, Biden, and Dodd, would make a much stronger top tier than the one we have, but that’s the way things go.

Dennis Kucinich: Yeah, right. Won’t win but will keep cluttering up the race until the end.

Duncan Hunter: Will stick around until the first votes are counted or until his campaign funds run out.

Ron Paul: No, but he is on a mission and his supporters are marginally insane. Look for him to get a shocking number of votes in either Iowa or New Hampshire. Also look for the media to totally ignore the votes he does get.

Fred Thompson: His campaign never caught fire. While his polling numbers have put him in range of the others, he really doesn’t seem to have any sort of momentum or personal drive to get him over the top.

The Contenders - Democrats

Hillary Clinton: Hell yeah. Still the favorite to get the nomination, and still a marginal favorite to become President. The unfortunate assassination of Benazir Bhutto may actually help her...or at least the mainstream media thinks it will, and since they are on her side anyway, they will keep repeating it until the public believes it. Make no mistake, she is who the MSM wants to be President and they will do whatever they can.

Barack Obama: Yes, he can. But if his people aren’t troubled by his national poll numbers, they are fooling themselves. Has money and a national organization, but something may be missing here and a defeat in Iowa could be disastrous, depending on how big.

John Edwards: Yes, but he has to get the nomination and that’s the hard part. A win in Iowa (which I think is at least as likely as anything) and the race turns upside down. The MSM has done everything it can to marginalize him (haircuts? he’s late to rallies?) in an attempt to get a Clinton-Obama showdown, but they can’t ignore actual results. It’s not easy, but at some point Dems may focus on the big picture – he is easily the most electable Democrat.

The Contenders – Republicans

Mitt Romney – Is he the establishment candidate? Does turmoil in Pakistan hurt him (and Huckabee)? Has to be considered a genuine contender, but his plans have gone awry. It was a simple plan : win Iowa, win New Hampshire, narrow the race to himself and Rudy, then roll. Well, what if he loses Iowa and NH? They then head to South Carolina, far less hospitable for him. Has money, has organization, but without momentum, that Mormon thing could prove fatal. Even if he gets the nomination, not a great bet in November.

Rudy Giuliani – Was the leader, may still be the leader, but with everyone under 20%, leadership means little. The sleaze is starting to pile up, and much of his strength in the race comes from his electability, which, while a bit better than Mitt’s, is just not closing the deal. Failures in Iowa and New Hampshire could put him in a difficult position.

John McCain – Rudy’s worst nightmare. The single most likely winner in November, more and more of the GOP establishment are starting to realize that. His resurgent poll numbers reflect the softening of Rudy’s support base. A good third in Iowa followed by a win in NH could make him the top candidate. If Hillary seems to be the Democrats nominee, look for many to rally around the most likely winner – which is him. Will beat any Democrat except Edwards in November.

Mike Huckabee – Included in this group because he can get the nomination. He won’t get elected President. His lack of international experience, his insane tax policy, his extreme religious views, and the many weird things he has said, will overcome his likeability and crush his candidacy should he be the nominee.

No Trouble With The Nomination

Michael Bloomberg – He wants to run, a lot. But he’s not stupid and won’t spend the money without a real chance. A race where Huckabee is the GOP nominee gives him that chance. Not sure whether he would prefer Clinton or Obama on the Dems side, but against Hillary he gets the independents and maybe a third of the GOP, who would be scared by Huckabee. We’re a ways from him making his decision, and if the GOP can’t make a decision and it goes until the convention, that might kill his chances. Absolutely won’t run against McCain or Edwards.

Numbers and Notes: The Comeback Kid?

The Republican race has taken some bizarre turns in recent weeks, none more bizarre than this week’s. First was the Huckabee surge – fueled by religion and heavy doses of it, the “Christian Leader (his characterization, not mine)” surged to the lead not just in Iowa but in South Carolina, with the national lead within reach. Then, when the rocks were lifted and some unpleasant worms crawled out (pardoning rapists and condoning dog-killing by his son), suddenly Rev. Huck was not all that hot. Meanwhile Mitt “I am too a Christian” Romney started to build a little momentum nationally, while losing it in Iowa and New Hampshire. Rudy was undone by the Judith Nathan hidden security charges scandal, which combined a doubleheader of no-no’s for the GOP – infidelity and misuse of funds (either-or is the traditional GOP stance on those two). The Giuliani campaign is taking on water at an ungodly rate and could be on the verge of sinking. Fred Thompson has successfully put everyone to sleep and his numbers have drifted down.
And then there’s John McCain, who was supposed to have driven off in the old “Straight Talk Express” by now. He is closing in on Romney in New Hampshire and amazingly, while he isn’t even campaigning in Iowa, his numbers there (according to Rasmussen) have doubled since the Register endorsement. This is an incredible move up, but as with all Iowa poll numbers, it’s hard to know whether it translates into actual caucus-goers, or whether people were searching for a name that didn’t repulse them when they were asked, but don’t really have enough enthusiasm to leave their homes for. According to Rasmussen, he’s closed to within 4 points of Mitt in NH, thought to be safe for Romney. The endorsements have clearly helped him, as Republicans are confused and anyone with a firm opinion, even Joe Lieberman, may be listened to. A key to NH may be the Democrats in Iowa, as many independent voters in NH are planning on voting in the Democratic primary, but may switch if it looks like the Dems are done. Look for McCain to have his Hillary ’08 cap on while watching returns on January 3rd.
Oddly, while Romney seems extremely vulnerable at this point, his path to the nomination is the clearest of all. He’s made some peace with the religious right – “If you get down on your knees and pray, you’ll have a friend in the White House” was as clear a signal as he could give – and the business GOP would be thrilled with him. The path was simple, win Iowa (or finish a close second to Huckabee), romp in NH, eliminating Thompson and McCain, watch Rudy founder in SC against Huckabee, then turn to February 5th basically head-to-head with an underfunded and disorganized Huckabee campaign. It still could happen, but he could just as easily lose Iowa to Huckabee, then lose NH to McCain, SC to Huckabee, and then find himself going into the big states without a win and with the “can a Mormon win this?” question being the key topic of discussion.
The other question would be “if not Romney, then who?” The key again may be the Democratic nomination. If it’s Hillary, the GOP may turn to the most likely winner, who, according to polls, is no longer Rudy, it’s McCain. They would have to swallow his immigration stance, and his opposition to torture (and we can assume his strong opposition to torturing illegal aliens, also not popular among the faithful), yet he is strongly anti-abortion and pro-war and that puts him ahead of Rudy that way.
Or this could just boil down to who loves Jesus more and illegal immigrants and “Islamofascists” less – hard to say what these people are thinking.
As Elizabeth Edwards said: “Republicans scare me.”

Republicans Went to Florida and All We Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

For me, watching a Republican debate is almost an anthropological quest, observing a strange culture, similar to ours, yet with a set of values all its own. It is a culture which has child-like faith in the markets, knows its enemies (and wants to kill them), and cares more about unborn babies than small children. They like guns and Jesus, and feel they are misunderstood by minority groups. They hate taxes but, for the most part, have no problem spending money. Although they did promise to veto any bill containing “pork” – defined, I assume, as any project or program advanced by a Democrat.
Assessing these exotics isn’t easy for me, but since I figure it is important for our future to try and understand what motivates those who do not agree with us, I shall try. I do feel optimistic about my ability to grade them because I seem to have done a pretty good job of predicting the current state of affairs in my debate wrap-up of two months ago.
It was an interesting debate, reminding me more of the 20 minute fight scene at the end of John Ford’s “The Quiet Man”, than of Lincoln-Douglas. Romney attacked Rudy, Rudy attacked Romney, Thompson attacked Romney and Huckabee, McCain attacked Romney and Paul, Paul attacked pretty much everyone, and everyone ignored Tancredo and Hunter. Huckabee didn’t directly attack anyone, unless it was employees of the IRS, although his YouTube ad sort of attacked Rudy and Romney.
The YouTube ads varied between dreary and scary, with two exceptions. Rudy’s actually was funny, talking up the great job he did as Mayor, including fighting NYC’s great enemy, King Kong, and reducing snowfall. Fred Thomson used his 30 seconds to run a blatant attack ad against Romney and Huckabee, using old speeches to show how they weren’t conservative. It shocked the house and resulted in CNN allowing them to respond. This was good for Romney, as he got to assert his anti-abortion position and describe the moment of his conversion to that.
McCain was strong, forceful, authoritative, and really ripped Romney on his refusal to come out against waterboarding. He pointed out his first-hand knowledge of the world, and how, unlike the current President when he took office (and by extension, most of the others on stage), he is already prepared to deal with the tough foreign policy issues. He kept dropping the phrase “my friends” into his answers. I think his use of the phrase was less a statement of kinship than the desperate hope that those listening really were friendly toward him. Unfortunately, they aren’t – they just don’t trust him, and unlike Democrats, they aren’t nominating someone they don’t trust.
Rudy got off to a shaky start in his battle with Romney over “sanctuary cities”, but looked good the rest of the way. Oddly, I think his greatest strength is that Republicans do trust him. Even though they don’t always agree with him, they know what he’s about. Which is something they really aren’t sure of with Romney, who seems panicked over Huckabee – and rightly so. Rasmussen actually has Huckabee edging ahead of Mitt in Iowa and should he manage to upset Romney there, there is an excellent chance Mitt’s campaign falls apart.
Thompson had some moments, seems better than he was earlier in the campaign, yet his video attack on Huckabee reveals his problem – he hasn’t won the hearts of conservatives. Every position he took was very conservative and his answer to “how many guns do you own and what kind?” (seriously, this is the kind of questions Republicans consider important) was “I’m not telling you what guns I have or where I keep them”, which got a big laugh from the crowd. He hasn’t caught fire and probably is running out of time.
So what do we make of the fast-charging Huckabee? As my loyal readers might remember, I predicted this rise two months ago, when Huck was at about 7%. Now that he is poised to do something big, what do we have here? He is an odd mix – a social conservative with a man who believes government can do things to help the poor. He is a Christian in the best sense of the word, with a belief in helping those who cannot help themselves. Still, he is very pro-war, very anti-choice, very pro-gun, and wants to abolish the income tax. His charm and wit are endearing, yet he is a little scary. Folks, he is a Southern Baptist minister. Haven’t we had enough of religious fundamentalists in power? Do we really need to go this far?
I think Rudy is the favorite for the nomination, as much because there isn’t a strong enough challenger as through any strength of his own. I expect Huckabee to seriously wound Romney in Iowa, with Romney eking out a small win in NH, and Rudy winning in Florida. Someone wins an indecisive victory in SC, then Rudy rolls on February 5th, as much because there is no one opponent strong enough to go head-to-head with him as through his own popularity. Barring some scandalous revelation about him (and boy, is that a real possibility), Rudy gets the nomination by taking Huckabee as his running-mate. Now...if Hillary’s campaign nose-dives early, all bets are off.

Where Was Alan Keyes?

In a spirit of bipartisanship bordering on masochism, I watched the Republican Economic debate last night. The usual suspects were there, plus the debate debut of Fred Thompson. Missing was Alan Keyes, who made what can best be described as the ultimate token appearance by showing up at the “Urban” debate hosted by Tavis Smiley, as if to say “look, we have one too”. Of course, when Republicans talk about money, they’re talking to and for white people; mostly rich white people, with a smattering of very rich white people thrown in. So there really was no point in having Keyes show up again.
As for the debate itself, apparently, all these guys believe in the free market. Rudy spent a lot of his time attacking Hillary Clinton. Romney spent his time attacking Rudy. McCain spent his time attacking Iraq. Ron Paul attacked the war in Iraq. Tom Tancredo attacked illegal immigrants and in a mild surprise, Duncan Hunter attacked China. It’s not that Hunter wouldn’t attack the other things, but China appears to be his main target. Sam Brownback attacked single-parent families, while Mike Huckabee hates the IRS. Fred Thompson attacked insomnia, with a performance which could graciously be described as tepid.
If Mitt Romney is the happy warrior in this race – when asked the greatest threat to America’s economic future, he answered, to all intents and purposes, pessimism – then Thompson is the Grinch. It was a little hard to follow at times, through his soporific style, but either things are good and getting worse, or things are not so good and getting worse. Along with being dull and uninspiring, he looks like he hasn’t slept in a few months. He actually makes John McCain look young. This guy isn’t winning anything.
If Hillary is the Democratic nominee, look for steady attacks on any program she might suggest, with words like “socialism” and “HillaryCare” being bandied about. There may have been many changes in Republican philosophy over the last half century – from isolationism to preemptive war, from fiscal responsibility to “let’s spend the grandkids money” – but one thing that has remained fixed like a constellation above is fear of any medical help from the government. Any government medical program, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, you name it, will inevitably lead to (all together now) socialized medicine. You have to give them credit for consistency, if not intellectual depth or human decency.
The question arises, less than four months from Super Duper Tuesday, what to make of these guys? I may not be the best judge of what Republican voters will decide – but the fact is, the Republican Party has not had this kind of wide open race in anyone’s memory. I think you have to go back to Wendell Willkie to find their last nominee who wasn’t either obvious or the end result of a head-to-head battle, so no one really knows anything here. Looking at this group, it’s hard to find the clear leader. Rudy clearly has a goodly amount of popularity, but just as clearly has many problems with the base. Mitt Romney has been the Washington insider pick for months but he creeps me out and I suspect I’m not alone, even on the right. His religious problems in the South may not be transitory and while he has made some progress in the polls, at least in Rasmussen where he’s in the mid-teens, he’s spent a lot of cash to do it. Add in his horrible Gallup poll numbers (9% in the latest survey) and he looks like a far less formidable candidate than the insiders claim. Thompson, while knowledgeable, is really dull and his numbers have stalled. Ron Paul isn’t getting the nomination, but he has more money than McCain (which is why McCain isn’t winning anything) and could get a surprisingly large share of early primary votes from the outvoted but still existent libertarian wing of the party. Hunter, Brownback, and Tancredo are irrelevant. Which leaves us with Huckabee – solidly conservative, very religious, totally comfortable with himself, not a Mormon, an altogether pleasant fellow. His poll numbers are low – 6% in Rasmussen, 7% in Gallup (although Gallup posits that he could be on the verge of passing Romney) – but I would not be surprised to see him emerge in January as the real conservative standard bearer. I think the nominee comes from Rudy, Romney, or Huckabee, with Huckabee on the ticket in any case.

Karl Loves Hillary

Well, “loves” may be a strong word, but Karl Rove certainly seems obsessed with her. He talks about her constantly, writes about her, tells anyone who’ll listen what he thinks of her. Hell, maybe he even drives by her house at night, for all we know. What is all this about? Is his series of attacks on her a genuine antipathy that he can’t resist revealing? Or is there more here than meets the eye?
The LA Times got into it this week, referring back to the 2004 campaign, when Rove focused his early attacks on Kerry, to the complete exclusion of all others. This had the advantage of establishing early themes, but more important, from his perspective, was anointing Kerry as “the one”, the opponent-to-be. According to Matthew Dowd, who was part of the campaign, Kerry was the one he wanted to run against, since he felt he was most beatable, rather than the Southerner without a record to attack, John Edwards. So he never commented on Edwards, always commenting on Kerry. Did this lead the Democrats in the direction he wanted? Frankly, I think we were headed there with or without him. Still, it was his theory and plan. Now it’s Hillary he talks about on every interview show and Hillary he attacks. The Times, and Dowd, assumes this to be because she is the one he wants the Republicans to run against, thinking she will be their most beatable candidate.
While I think that is part of it, I think there is a lot more to it than that. Rove probably realizes that the Republicans may have serious trouble holding on to the White House. His hope is probably to keep everything he has built from being destroyed. Clinton is the Democrat with the best chance of keeping the GOP a force. First, Hillary will have no coattails at all. Many Congressional candidates are very unhappy about the possibility of her being the nominee, since she is incredibly unpopular in their districts and will be impossible to run with. This is a big problem for candidates, as running away from your party’s Presidential candidate is never a good thing, especially since they agree with her on most issues. Her unpopularity is mostly personal, not issue-oriented, especially in the moderate districts and conservative states where, ironically, she could do the most damage. This may have the effect of limiting the carnage in the Congressional races.
Equally important is Hillary’s polarizing nature. Nothing will hold the Republican Party together better than a Clinton Presidency. They will have no trouble uniting against her; the grass roots, spurred on by the talk show loons, loathe her and will be energized as never before. They will have no trouble raising money to fight her, which is also a key part of keeping the party from being demoralized. Rove is not a fool – he wants Hillary to be the Democratic nominee and I fear he may get her, much to the detriment of the Democratic Party and America.