The Hindu

The mother of all American elections

For true fans of politics as a spectator sport, the American presidential elections of 2008 have already emerged as a classic.

Photos: Agencies

Who will it be? The Democratic nomination is a close call. For anyone who is a true fan of politics as a spectator sport — the sheer pleasure of watching the democratic process, with all its dramas and unpredictabilities, unfold — the American presidential elections of 2008 have already emerged a s a classic. The spectacle of the world’s oldest democracy engaged in the quadrennial act of electing its chief executive offers virtually unlimited fodder for political junkies, but this time it has been truly special.

The great elections of history are always watersheds — in India’s case, the 1952 elections, because they were the first; the 1977 elections, because they ended the era of Congress Party dominance; and arguably the 1989 elections, since they established the pattern of governmental alternance and coalition rule that have come to define our national politics ever since. In the last century, the U.S. can point to its 1932 election, which ushered in the FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] Revolution and the “New Deal”; the 1960 election, which brought, with JFK [John Fitzgerald Kennedy], the handing over of the torch to a new generation of Americans; and perhaps the 2000 elections, the first to be settled by the Supreme Court, which launched the U.S. on a radically different path at home and abroad. But the 2008 elections promise to be a watershed irrespective of the governmental policies that will follow its outcome, for the contest itself marks the first time that one of the two major parties looks likely to nominate a candidate from a group that has never had a nominee before. The Democratic candidate will almost certainly be either a woman, HillaryClinton, or a black American, Barack Obama — in a country where in 220 years of elections, the world’s oldest democracy has never elected a President or a Vice-President who isn’t white, male and Christian.

Prolonged Test series

And what a contest it has already been! This was the first election since 1952 in which there wasn’t a candidate in the fray who was either an incumbent or former President or Vice-President. I once observed that if other countries’ elections are like a Test match, the U.S. elections are like an entire Test series, with an ODI tournament thrown in. The multiple exercises in balloting — primary elections, caucuses, conventions, the actual elections, then the Electoral College — mean that the electoral process takes longer than any other democracy, produces far more candidates and gives you almost unlimited opportunities to enjoy the roller-coaster ride. This electoral cycle, to extend the cricketing metaphor, has been more like a World Cup, with 10 Republicans and eight Democrats actively contesting the State-by-State caucuses and primaries that lead to their parties’ nominations. At the beginning no one would have predicted the semi-finalists who have emerged. Six months ago, the Democratic race seemed to be between Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, with HillaryClinton holding a commanding lead in all the polls. Today, she is locked in a neck-and-neck contest with a youthful, first-term black Senator whose chances had been written off by every pundit. On the Republican side, six months ago JohnMcCain ’s campaign was in such disarray that there were reports that he would pull out altogether. The contest seemed to be between the former New York Mayor and anti-terrorism hawk, Rudy Giuliani, who for months led in nationwide polling and who seemingly had a lock on the national security-minded gun-toters who are so influential in the Republican Party, and the former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, who looked the most “Presidential” of the pack and had the most money. Today both are gone,McCain is virtually certain to claim the nomination — and his only remaining challenger is a folksy former Arkansas Governor from a town called Hope (the same town as Bill Clinton), Mike Huckabee, who has the strong backing of Christian evangelicals, social conservatives and blue-collar Republicans.

Head to head

Huckabee, though, is running out of steam (and money), though he continues to win primaries in southern States, it is a reasonably safe assumption thatMcCain will be the Republican nominee, though he is detested by the party’s far-Right wing for his maverick independence and his willingness to work with Democrats. On the Democrat side, there are no safe assumptions. A candidate must win 2,205 delegates to capture the Democratic nomination. According to the Associated Press’ tally as of Sunday night,Clinton has 1,125 delegates pledged to her and Obama has 1,087. By the time this article appears in print, these numbers will have changed, with Tuesday’s primaries expected to putObama ahead. Hillary has already replaced her campaign manager with a black woman, but this does not necessarily signal last-ditch desperation: if she does well in the big States that have yet to vote (Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania), she could still win the nomination. In Texas, with a large number of Hispanic voters (who have historically tended to see themselves in competition with blacks), Hillary is far ahead;Obama will have to fight hard in the other two big States, though the momentum in February is clearly with him. Even that doesn’t tell the whole story: their semi-final could still end in a tie, since there is a risk that neither of them might emerge from the remaining primaries with a majority of delegates. In that case the nominee will have to be chosen by the party convention in Denver in August. This has not happened within living memory: for half a century now the conventions have merely ratified the pre-ordained results of the primaries. No wonder the political junkies are licking their chops. 2008 is already proving to be a landmark contest — as Saddam might have said, the mother of all American elections.

Michelle Obama Interview by Soledad O'Brien
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSkd0xrhcQ8)

The Daily Telegraph

Clinton, Obama close; McCain ahead
Article from: Reuters

By John Whitesides in Washington

February 06, 2008 06:20pm

DEMOCRAT Barack Obama and rival Hillary Clinton split key Super Tuesday victories and Republican John McCain won nine states but failed to knock out his rivals in presidential nominating contests in 24 US states.

In their hard-fought duel for the Democratic nomination, Obama won 12 states and Clinton took eight but that included the two biggest prizes of the night - California and New York - on the biggest day of US presidential voting ahead of November's election.

“There is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know: Our time has come,” Obama told cheering supporters in Chicago. “Our movement is real, and change is coming to America.”

McCain had hoped to nail down the nomination with a big night and his nine wins included California and several big Northeastern states.

But rival Mitt Romney took six states and Mike Huckabee won five, in what commentators are saying is a remarkable comeback that has left Romney's camp nervous.

“Tonight, I think we must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party frontrunner for the nomination,” McCain said in Scottsdale, Arizona. “And I don't really mind it one bit.”

The biggest prize of the night was California, which offers the country's biggest haul of delegates to party conventions that choose the parties' presidential candidates for the November 4 election to succeed President George W.Bush.
US media had predicted Clinton and McCain would win.

The mixed outcome in the coast-to-coast voting, with all contenders in both parties scoring at least five wins, appeared certain to prolong the hard-fought nominating races in both parties. More contests in a half-dozen states are slated in the coming week.

The Clinton and Obama camps said they expected the count of delegates for the night to be relatively even
.
“This is not going to be decided tonight,” Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said.

National exit polls showed more than half of Democratic voters ranked the ability to bring change as the top attribute for a candidate. Nearly one-quarter of Democrats voting in the party's 22 contests ranked experience, Clinton's selling card, as the most important attribute.

About 44 per cent of Republican voters preferred a candidate who shared their values, while one-quarter wanted a candidate with experience.

More than half the total delegates to the Democratic convention in August and about 40 per cent of the delegates to the Republican convention in September will be apportioned in the Super Tuesday voting.

Economic worries - plunging housing values, rising energy and food prices, jittery financial markets and new data showing a big contraction in the service sector - eclipsed the Iraq war as voters' top concern in both parties, exit polls showed.

The Hindu

A week is a long time in politics Ramesh Thakur

Barack Obama has reframed the contest in terms of the past versus the future and the choice between status quo and change.

The American election is the gift that keeps on giving. Normal may be just a cycle in the washing machine; there is nothing normal about this election cycle. Received wisdom is being upended as routinely as public opinion polls are. For Indians, the politics of vote banks is starting to find a disturbing echo in the primary campaign. It all makes for a riveting spectator sport.

Having listened to the folks of New Hampshire in the week before the primary, Hillary Clinton famously found her own voice. In South Carolina that voice was drowned by her husband’s. The voters recoiled but it does not as yet make her history. The election of a woman or an African-American as the Democratic candidate is history-in-the-making. That sense of destiny, reinforced by the iconic Kennedy clan’s endorsement of BarackObama, has captured the international imagination as well. In an article in Sunday’s New York Times evocatively titled “A president like my father,” Caroline Kennedy wrote that in Mr. Obama she saw an echo of the force of inspiration that people told her they had felt with her father but she herself had never experienced. She was supporting Mr.Obama for a mix of “patriotic, political and personal” reasons that are intertwined. Touchingly, it was her children who first made her realise that Mr.Obama “is the president we need”.

The “dog whistle” style of politics refers to the use of coded language addressed to a voting constituency. Like dogs who can hear a whistle too high-pitched for the human ear, they grasp the message that cannot be pinpointed in the actual text by critics. The Clintons’ strategy has been to appear to be seeking the black vote in South Carolina where Africa-Americans make up half the Democratic constituency, lose it, and then benefit from the white and Latino backlash in the rest of the country. The more that BillClinton appealed to black voters to back his wife and the more they spurned her, the more he hoped to succeed in turning the election into one on race, to Mr.Obama’s ultimate loss. For example, Sergio Bendixen from the Clinton campaign was quoted as saying “The Hispanic voter has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” In the debate on January 15, Tim Russert of the NBC read out the quote toClinton who, rather than repudiate it, responded that Mr. Bendixen “was making a historical statement.”

But the decisive 55:27 per cent margin of victory in South Carolina undercut this strategy of marginalising Mr. Obama as merely a candidate of black America. Unlike Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, Mr. Obama has successfully transcended racial identity to appeal to all Americans. He lost to Hillary among white women; he held his own with her among white men; and he outpolled her among white youth. She lost the black male and female vote decisively. Hence Mr.Obama’s tribute to the diversity of his coalition.

The tawdry final week of South Carolina brought too many painful reminders of how the Clintons soil almost everything they touch. For the first time, with vintageClinton tactics turned against one of their own, many Democrats began to “get” why the Clintons provoke so much hatred from the Republicans. Thus said William Greider in The Nation — the bastion of left-liberal journalism in America: “The Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened ... High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area” (January 23). Many others have picked up on the theme of the Clintons as self-pitying narcissists who will try every trick to destroy anyone impertinent enough to stand between them and the White House.

The good that Bill Clinton did was real — as his admirers ask, which part of his double legacy do you not understand, “peace” or prosperity” — but belongs to the 1990s. The damage that he might cause from this point on is considerable. He has belittled and denigrated Mr.Obama , brushing aside the early, principled and consistent opposition to the Iraq war as a fairytale. He warned the people of Iowa against rolling the dice by choosing Mr.Obama . If that was a gamble on the unknown, columnist Maureen Dowd commented caustically, voting for Hillary would guarantee an endless rerun of theClinton soap opera in the White House. Bill Clinton has snarled and wagged his fingers angrily at reporters, thereby ensuring a hostile press.

Most tellingly, he delivered his wife’s concession speech in South Carolina to underline the reality of a co-candidacy. This too has had several deleterious consequences for the Hillary campaign, starting with seeking to garner the women’s vote by relying on her husband. Why would an avowed feminist be accompanied by her husband during the selection process? Is he taking directions from her or out of control — an attack dog that has jumped the leash? Uncomfortable pundits are debating the constitutional nuances of a co-presidency. Bill’s active and very visible intrusion into the campaign reopens, legitimately, all the old unanswered questions about past scandals and raises fresh ones about his activities and financial links since he left office. A double-headedClinton candidacy would energise the Republican base while demotivating the Democrats.

When Mr. Clinton came on the giant TV screens to make the concession speech, the Obama crowd started booing. This would have been unthinkable a month ago against an icon of the Democratic Party. At worst they would have applauded politely. His roll of the dice risks diminishing his reputation in the party and nation, damaging his wife’s primary campaign, destroying his party’s electoral prospects, and fracturing the country along racial lines. Some legacy.

Mr. Obama’s victory speech was another rousing oration that dipped deep into the wellsprings of hope, optimism and unity. There were also flashes of hard-edged anger, condemning those who will say and do anything to win, denouncing those who are so partisan that they will demonise any crediting of ideas to a Republican, and rejecting all attempts to file candidates and voters into ethnic and gender boxes. He has emerged a stronger and tougher candidate after the ructions of South Carolina.

Parts of the Democratic establishment have begun to challenge Mr. Clinton for playing fast and loose with the truth and engaging in wedge politics based on ethnicity. Senator John Kerry, the original victim of “swiftboating” in the last election, has sharply criticised the Clintons for their fear and smear tactics, saying “being an ex-President does not give you licence to abuse the truth.” Others have bemoaned conduct unbecoming a former President. Senator Edward Kennedy was so incensed that he had an angry exchange with Mr.Clinton on the phone. Abandoning his customary neutrality among Democratic primary contestants, on Monday, in a poignant passing of the torch, he endorsed Mr.Obama and promised to campaign aggressively for him.

Delivered among several thousand screaming supporters at the American University in the nation’s capital, the endorsement packed a powerful rhetorical and emotional one-two punch of its own. Introduced by his niece Caroline and joined by his son Representative Patrick, who too endorsed Mr.Obama, the patriarch affirmed the centrepiece of the Obama campaign: it was time to embrace the vision of an America united in hope and bonded in a common dream by a person who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past, will unify the nation and heal its wounds.

The Kennedy endorsement

This wraps Mr. Obama in the aura and mystique of the Kennedy legend, opens doors and brings connections. The weight of the Kennedy endorsement will resonate in the Democratic base, among liberals, unionised workers, blacks and Hispanics. It is a powerful repudiation of the coreClinton theme of Mr. Obama ’s unreliability based on inexperience. The Kennedys are the ultimate metaphors for change, vitality, youthful excitement and Democratic legitimacy. The national press will run the story for days leading to Super Tuesday. The Kennedy entourage will ensure fevered local press coverage wherever he campaigns for Mr.Obama. It may also tip other would-be supporters into endorsing Mr. Obama openly without worrying about retaliation from the feared Clinton machine.

Sustaining the momentum, also on Monday Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, who in 1998 memorably described Bill Clinton as “our first black president,” endorsed Mr. Obama as “the man for this time”.

Mr. Obama has reframed the contest in terms of the past versus the future and the choice between status quo and change. He has caught the momentum and the surge makes it prudent to discount her significant national lead in the polls. We may get a decisive outcome on February 5 when 22 States, including the biggest, hold their primary. Or we may have to wait until the convention in Denver in late August as it becomes a delegate-by-delegate dogfight.

In the meantime, the incumbent struggles to make his final State of the Union address heard above the din of the primaries. To all intents and purposes, the American people have already turned the page on his presidency and are eager to begin a new chapter.

Amen.