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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
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 THE BEST NIGHT OF HIS LIFE
Tonight Senator Barack Obama effectively secured the Democratic presidential nomination and for this he should be congratulated. He barely pulled it off, but he managed to trump the entire establishment of his party, who had spent the last eight years lining up to anoint Hillary Rodham Clinton the next president of the United States.
Unfortunately, tonight was the best night of Obama's life. It's all downhill from here.
Actually, it's been downhill for some time now. If you believe as I do, that Obama had the nomination wrapped up in February, you realize that he's wasted four months dicking around with playing nice. Worse, he couldn't put away a woman who half the country not only dislikes, but actually loathes. That doesn't auger well for a general election.
And what happened in those four months? His defeats outnumbered his victories rather quickly. Other than in North Carolina, he couldn't score knockout punches anywhere, while Clinton pulled them off in West Virginia and Kentucky. And she did it while driving her own negatives into the stratosphere. Were it not for his early commanding lead and the strategic incompetence of the Clinton campaign, Barack Obama would not be the nominee tonight.
Back in 1960, Richard Nixon was studious about not going negative on John Kennedy and lost by one tenth of one percent of the vote. Had Nixon gone negative on Kennedy - and exploited the health issues that Lyndon Johnson brought up before Democratic convention - Nixon likely would have won.
The moral of this story is that, in politics, nice guys finish last. Hillary went negative on Obama and Obama almost immediately stopped winning. Not only that, Obama started losing by bigger margins that he ever had before. Barack Obama barely won a beauty contest against someone who was determined to get ugly.
And in campaigning the way she did, Hillary essentially set up John McCain's lines of attack for him. You'll see GOP and 527 ads painting Obama as an elitist liberal, lacking in both experience and judgement. And if you liked seeing Jeremiah Wright on TV as much as I did, you're in luck this summer and fall.
The worst part is that while Obama was trying to be everybody's best friend, large segments of Clinton's base grew to hate him. And while the hundreds of thousands of Democrats who suggest that they'd rather vote for McCain or stay home are full of shit, what if just 5% of them aren't? That could very well leave a mark in November. McCain, on the other hand, remains acceptable to almost everyone. That's why nominating him was the smartest thing the GOP could have done.
As the Clinton campaign can't stop saying, and current polling indicates, That Obama is going to have an uphill battle winning states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Michigan might be a problem, too. You see, Detroit has a hip, dynamic, young Democratic black mayor who talks about hope a lot. He'll be going on trial for perjury just as people start paying attention. By the way, Michigan was much closer in '04 than it should've been.
If Barack Obama loses West Virgina, Pennsylvania or Michigan, he'd have to make them up by winning Sweden or something. If he loses all three, there's no saving him in the Electoral College. Ohio and Florida aren't going to matter as much this year as everyone thinks they are.
There is one unlikely strategy that would fuck with the Republicans in a big way. That would be playing hard for the South. If you look at Obama's numbers in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and both Carolinas, they are impressive and they are intimidating.
The black vote that won him those states aren't going to win them in the general, but it could tighten them up enough that the McCain campaign has to spend resources there that it can't spend in states like Ohio, Florida and the aforementioned West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. And since the Republican Party has the approval rating of you're average unreconstructed pedophile, the Democrats are going to have far more resources to play around with.
But a hard drive in the South by a black candidate would be such a ballsy move that I don't think that he'd try it. If he did that and still lost Pennsylvania and Michigan, he'd be laughed out of politics forever. Plus, given his newness on the national scene, it would be an open question as to whether the DNC would cooperate with a strategy that's just crazy enough to work.
The unpopularity of the GOP can actually end up helping McCain much more than any one is currently pointing out. With the Republicans having no hope of winning back the House and facing the likely prospect of a filibuster-proof Senate, swing voters might feel safe enough to vote for McCain without allowing "Bush's third term." And Americans tend to like divided government. It keeps both sides from doing anything too crazy.
Let's forget all this nonsense about putting Hillary on the ticket right now, okay? It simply isn't going to happen. This isn't 1960 and Hillary Clinton isn't LBJ. Furthermore, after sixteen years of Al Gore and Dick Cheney, the vice presidency isn't the office it used to be. It's far too powerful to occupy it with someone you don't trust. And the Clintons would demand even more influence than even Cheney has now.
Hillary believes in her heart of hearts that Obama can't beat McCain and she's probably right. Why then would she want to go down with a sinking ship? Does she really want to be the 2012 version of John Edwards or Joe Lieberman? Would anybody?
Expect Hillary to do for Obama what Ronald Reagan did for Gerald Ford or what Ted Kennedy did for Jimmy Carter; as little as they can possibly get away with. She wants to be positioned as the "I told you so" candidate next time out and that can't happen if the two of them spend the next five months on a fucking wedding cake together.
But this is truly Barack Obama's night. He came up against almost impossible odds and prevailed, if only on points. I personally think that he's a good man and an adequate campaigner. But I don't see a scenario where he becomes the next president of the United States.
But let's let him have the best night of his life. He deserves at least that.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Loser By: Beck From: Mellow Gold
PermalinkLabels: Clusterfuck to the White House, Fun With Politics
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