The state of the race

Richard Baehr looks at the state of the Democratic race now that we are 11 months out from the primaries. And he makes a good point that one strong basis for Hillary Clinton's support is the idea that she is the inevitable candidate so the rest of us should roll over and accept it. She has the money and the name recognition and in such a front-loaded campaign season as we're seeing, money and fame are the all important factors.

However, now that Barack Obama has entered the race, all bets are off. He has the fame and his fame isn't tarnished by her high negatives. And he'll be able to raise the money. As his poll numbers rise, she will lose her biggest strength - the myth that she will be the ultimate candidate so why bother with anyone else?

And, as she starts sinking and Obama starts rising, look out for the vision of a desperate Hillary. It won't be pretty. She's been waiting for this moment for so long and she and her husband are not about to go down without a fight.

If Hillary's campaign collapses, it will be one of the least pretty sights in American political history. This is a woman wound up very tight, and always controlled, but completely unprepared for failure in her Presidential quest.


Given that Obama has come close to pulling even with Hillary already, I think there is a very good chance that at some point this year he will pass her, since he has room to expand his base of support, and she is desperately trying to hold on to what she has. If Obama becomes the frontrunner, I think Hillary is finished. While a new face frontrunner would normally get tough critical reviews from the press, the major media is in full swoon mode over Obama.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, there seems to be a yearning for what cannot be: another Ronald Reagan. Hey, I liked Reagan as much as the next conservative, but I am old enough to remember conservative criticisms of Reagan while he was president from the size of his budgets to his less than enthusiastic support for the pro-life movement. People tend to idealize their memories of the political situation in the 1980s. Such memories are colored by the knowledge that the Cold War ended on Reagan's watch, or right after, and by sorrow at his sad last years. Democrats like to pretend that they were all friends of Reagan in the 1980s and politics was so much more genteel back then. Don't you believe it!

But Reagan is dead and we have to look forward to 2008 and conservatives find fault with the three front-runners: McCain, Giuliani, and Romney. The CPAC gathering this past weekend seems a perfect opportunity for discontents among conservatives to talk about their dissatisfaction with the current nominees. See here and here. I'm rather tired of conservative activists lamenting that no one out there from Bush to any of the current candidates is their perfect leader. Let me break it to them: no one will be your perfect leader. Find the guy with whom you most agree with on the issues most important to you and learn to live with the parts that you don't like. There are parts of each of the leading candidates which I don't like, but facing an alternative of a President Clinton or President Obama, I can live with the conservative with whom I disagree on some issues better than with the liberal with whom I have nothing in common. For example, John McCain is my least favorite of the Republicans running for the presidency, but I support him in a shot over Clinton or Obama. So stop focusing on whatever bothers you about the present candidates have made in the past whether it is Romney's movement on abortion or Giuliani's present position on social issues. There is no perfect candidate out there, so look for the next best thing. Reagan isn't coming back. So let's move on.