Posted on 03/24/2008 2:42:18 PM PDT by SkyPilot
The New Republic
Bush's Last Laugh
The Editors: On Obama vs. Clinton, Democrats need to choose or lose.
In the recent history of presidential campaigning, April is the time when hope springs eternal. When every Democratic general election candidate--Michael Dukakis! John Kerry!--looks like he might have the stuff to pull off a landslide. It is the time to heal from the knocks and bruises suffered during the primary season. You raise money, you begin building a case for the fall, you vet vice presidential candidates, you start to knock around your opponent, and you still have time to head to Florida to work on your tan.
That's what makes the road to the Denver convention so damn frustrating. John McCain is heir to a presidency whose accomplishments now include an economy careening toward a deep recession; on issue after issue, public opinion mirrors the Democrats' policies. This should be the one election that even the party of Dukakis couldn't screw up.
Yet here we are in April, and the situation for Democrats verges on the apocalyptic. Where it once looked like Bill Clinton and Al Gore had helped purge the party of the lame identity politics that had ruined Democratic candidates for a generation, discussions of race and gender have returned with a vengeance. Supporters of Clinton and Obama compete to prove who is the bigger victim--opponents are casually tarred as sexist or racist. And, as soon as the Democrats began acting like it was 1984, that bad omen, Geraldine Ferraro, returned, as if on cue.
There are many reasons to believe that this primary season will end in tears for Democrats. On page 17, Noam Scheiber catalogues several grim scenarios. Democrats are spending millions of dollars bludgeoning one another in ways that can't help but abet McCain--while McCain does a neat job of consolidating his base and building goodwill with the rest of the electorate.
But the biggest problem isn't what's being said by the candidates; it's what's not being said. Heading into a general election, candidates need narratives that justify their claim on the White House. Bill Clinton understood this in 1992. By the time he strode to the dais at the convention in Madison Square Garden, he had spent months fine-tuning his rationale for running and, importantly, formulating compelling language about the economic plight of the country and his broad approach for reversing it.
In the current campaign, neither candidate has come close to approaching his level of clarity, especially when it comes to the issue that offers Democrats the simplest path to the presidency: the economy. They have failed to articulate a critique of the wild Bush-era deregulation that has allowed the greed of banks to run amok. When it comes to globalization, they are at such a loss to describe (let alone combat) the fallout from systemic changes that they resort to tired, dishonest trashing of NAFTA (see "Trade Secrets," page 10).
In part, this is a product of the campaign and the particular candidates. They basically agree about the state of the world, so when they disagree, even over relatively picayune matters, they do so loudly and angrily. They fall prey to the narcissism of small differences. And, in the course of their squabbling, they fail to make the case for good policies.
Take the debate over health care. Both candidates believe in universal health care, yet they are beating the hell out of each other over relatively minor differences. The conversation is a visceral wonkfest. But what gets lost in this storm of details is the broader case for reform. There is, of course, a time for this kind of debate, but that time was much earlier in the season.
When Obama or Clinton eventually claims this nomination--and it increasingly looks like that won't happen until June--he or she will have only a short time to formulate general-election narratives; the period for testing arguments and laying groundwork will be impossibly compressed. And that compression will prove especially problematic on issues, such as national security, on which Democrats must tack back to the center. When a candidate prepares policies and rhetoric for the fall, it's clearly better to do it in subtle, little nibbles rather than grotesquely large bites. But, with Clinton and Obama fighting for the allegiance of liberal-minded primary voters, they won't make these important adjustments for months.
All of which is to say that it's about time for the Democratic Party to panic. If it wants to win this election, it needs this race to end as soon as possible. Every day spent on the primaries represents an opportunity cost and diminishes the chances for ultimate victory.
Great line!
It is clear that by "prepares policies and rhetoric" the author means 'start lying so as to climb back to the Center'.
The next primary is in Pennsylvania, correct? I see Obama taking that one, but would that be enough to knock Hillary out?
I think Hillary is expected to take Penn. by a large margin.
McCain is old and not in the best of health. The animosity between differant factions in the communist party are getting worse and worse.
What if the D was assassinated and McCain died of say a heart attack both between the end of September and election day.
What happens? I have looked and looked and can only come to the conclusion that the electoral college could keep George Bush or just select someone. Or would it fall to the Speaker of the House (God forbid)?
I think Hillary is expected to take Penn. by a large margin.
Polls in PA are showing Hillary with a double-digit lead.
Polls in PA are showing Hillary with a double-digit lead.
Wouldn’t the parties simply name replacement nominees?
It’s nice to see the dims tearing each other apart limb by limb, but at the same time it sucks that the only thing we have to look forward to is John McCain.
Since when has a DemocRAT allowed something as trivial as death stop them from running - and winning - public office?
</sarc>
Rush Pearl of Wisdom: “We have the leading Democrat presidential primary contender Barack Obama campaigning on what? Hope. Change. We can all unify, blah, blah, blah. Democrats can’t even unify their own party! How are they going to unify the country? The whole thing is an illusion.”
How can a party that cannot run an election sell the idea that they can run the country!!!! Ideal question to ask all lib acquaintances.
Both parties would choose replacments, almost 99% sure to be the VP picks.
How is this “Bush’s Last Laugh”? Are they nuts enough to give credit to Bush for what’s happening in the dem party?
You have to remember - this was written by the editors of The New Republic.
They like to think of themselves as "the left's intellectual answer to National Review."
Yeah - right!
Everything about them is Bush hatred anyway. If their underwear shrank in the clothes dryer, it is Bush's fault.
So here, they see the Democrats urinating away their chances in November, and who is evil king who laughs at the end of the scene with a Dr. Evil laughter?
Why.......that nefarious President Bush again!
I agree with you.
Everything that started to go wrong with the credit market can be traced to Billy Jefferson Clinton's Fair Lending Act, which caused banks to loan millions upon millions of dollars to people who couldn't make their payments.
But hey, don't we all feel better about ourselves for trying to be fair?
I’m not a constitutional lawyer but should the nominees die before election day, the result is simple. The people are choosing a slate of electors, not the president. The slates would still be chosen on the first tuesday after the first monday in november.
Then the real election occurs, when the electoral college (a legislature that sits quadrennially for one purpose) would choose who the president would be. They would presumably choose those nominated for vice-president. However, whomever they chose, they would send their votes to the Congress to be counted. Should none receive a majority, the House would choose the president.
There is no need for panic in such a situation. The Constitution, in its brilliance, has institutional back-up plans.
In any case, Bush could not be chosen. He is ineligible as a candidate. The speaker could become president, but only temporarily in the event that the House had not decided on a president before noon on January 20th.
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