A Rake’s Progress

Those of us who write about politics on a regular basis need to get out more. The feeble circuit that we travel tends to limit our point of view and appreciation for new voices crying in the wilderness.

I waltzed into David Schleicher’s blog today, more to check out some news about his novel, The Thief Maker, being honored by the editors Writer’s Digest, than for any subversive political reasons.

Lo and behold, David had an insightful summary of the pros and cons of the presidential candidates. I wish I had seen his posting before now. It was worth the wait. Read Falling into the Presidential Primaries.

For more about his novel, click HERE.

The news for Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign can’t get much better.

In recent weeks, polls in the Granite State have shown her in impressive leads over Obama and Edwards. Today, we’ve learned that her overall campaign fund-raising far exceeded expectations. More to the point, they far exceeded Obama’s fund-raising during the same period.

Hillary’s campaign was quick to boast about her dual front-runner status in an email to supporters.

This is my eighth presidential primary as a New Hampshire voter. The first one I remember hanging out at the old Concord Highway Hotel and watching Jesse Jackson and Jack Germond sharing an adult beverage in the hotel bar.

What I also remember watching during the past 32 years has been the contrariness of New Hampshire voters, and how quickly they turn on front-runners. As a group, we tend to take pity on underdogs and lash back at the winners who think they have things “locked up.”

My advice to Hillary and her campaign: don’t act like the winner, not around here, and certainly not yet. Front-runner status in New Hampshire is the kiss of death.

The political highway from New Hampshire down to the border we share with that Big Blue State below us is littered with the aspirations of presidential wannabes who left here thinking they had us all figured out.

Florida is a rather alluring place in the middle of January.

Compared to New Hampshire, where the snow is several feet high, the temperature rarely breaks freezing, and the north wind feels like bee stings on your face, Florida can indeed look like an oasis.

It is still September, but New Hampshire is already getting cold for Barack Obama. In the latest poll, Hillary Clinton has increased her lead, while his numbers keep shrinking. It is now Hillary leading Obama 43% to 20%.

 What’s worse, as Union Leader political reporter, John Distaso, explained it:

Geographically, it’s bad news for Obama as well. In the 1st congressional district, Clinton led 40 to 25 percent in July. Now, she leads, 49 to 20 percent.

In the more liberal 2nd District, where Obama trailed Clinton by only 33 to 29 percent in July, she now leads 38 to 21 percent.

The question for Obama becomes one of long-term strategy. He will not win New Hampshire. He will not come in second in New Hampshire. Our prediction is that Edwards will surge and replace Obama behind Hillary.

So what’s a presidential wannabe supposed to do, especially if he has a financial war chest as impressive as Obama’s?

Strategically, what makes sense is to keep a marginal presence in the Granite State and move south. . .as in Deep South. . .as in Florida.

Can’t campaign there, you say. He signed a pledge?

One rule of warfare is that there are no rules. Not when you are in danger of being blown out of the sky. And Obama is now in danger of being blown away. His best shot, literally, is to tear up his no-campaign pledge and claim Florida for himself. Hillary and Edwards would be loath to follow suit.

In marketing parlance, Obama would be following what’s called a “Blue Ocean Strategy” and claiming territory with practically no direct competition. Perhaps with no one to discuss his foreign policy gaffs, he’d have a real chance.

It could be his only chance.

I have to wonder sometimes about Hillary’s real commitment to New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status.

Certainly when she is up here, we are her favorite mensch and she is eloquent in her support for our primary role. Away from New Hampshire, it sounds like a different story. 

Regarding the renegade states of Florida and Michigan, I realize there is a lot at stake, but fudging her position on New Hampshire only feeds into her image as a cold, calculating, political opportunist with no principles worth fighting for. That’s a shame, because on issues like Iraq and health care she appears ready to take the heat for her positions because they are “the right thing to do.”

What’s my problem with Hillary and New Hampshire?

As it is currently stated, her position seems fine to me. The problem is a) it took a political eternity for her to stick up for New Hampshire and the DNC rules, and b) she and her campaign are still looking for loopholes that would de facto make New Hampshire’s primary irrelevant.

As the stories about Florida’s and Michigan’s intention to leap-frog over the other primary states began to emerge, Hillary and her campaign had nothing to say that would discourage those confederates from tearing up the DNC plan. She could have had some influence. Instead, putting her political interests ahead of the party’s and the nation’s, she let those states turn the Democratic primaries into a late-night TV joke. Don’t you think her silence was construed as a green light?

When it came to accepting the DNC pledge not to campaign in states that broke the rules, Hillary’s campaign was the LAST to sign, doing what it could to stall the inevitable. 

From an Associated Press story published in the International Herald Tribune on Friday, August 31: 

Aides to Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the two front-runners, said they were reviewing the pledge. Clinton’s aides have said that previously she is committed to competing wherever a primary or a caucus is staged.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said Clinton is committed to the “special role” that the four states play and that she will campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire whenever their dates are set.

Reviewing the pledge? How difficult is it to “just say no” to the rule-breakers? Not until her main rivals, Obama and Edwards, had signed the pledge did Hillary do likewise. That is not leadership.

As reported in the New York Times:

Hours after Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina agreed to sign a loyalty pledge put forward by party officials in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York followed suit. The decision seemed to dash any hopes of Mrs. Clinton relying on a strong showing in Florida as a springboard to the nomination.

“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.

Playing “a unique and special role” is not the same as saying, “Iowa and New Hampshire deserve to go first, Hillary supports their positions in the primary calendar, and we will not campaign in any state that does not abide by the agreed-upon DNC rules.”

Now, Hillary’s campaign is trying to find loopholes in the wording of the pledge in order to permit her to effectively campaign in Florida and Michigan.

From today’s Detroit Free Press:

Former Gov. James Blanchard, cochairman of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign in Michigan, said signing the pledge was a mistake but predicted the leading Democrats would find ways to campaign actively in the state.

All that, of course, misses the point. Although my state legislators and other New Hampshire polls are quick to shake down presidential candidates for favors, the real reason to keep New Hampshire first — in spirit and in fact — is that it creates a level playing field for all candidates.

Sad to say, the best explanation of that purpose comes from one of Hillary’s opponents, John Edwards: “the contest for the nomination for the presidency should be based on substance, real ideas and who should actually change the country, who has the personal characteristics to be president, not a fundraising contest.”

Edwards is no saint on these matters, either. As I recall, it was Edwards who lured Hillary into agreeing that those pesky second tier candidates should be dropped from the debates.

In the final analysis, parsing words about the rules, who should be first, and who should play, do not serve Hillary’s goal of showing voters that she is a principled person who will do the right thing, not the expedient thing. Yes, experience counts. But it needs to be experience doing the right thing, the right way.

Lastly, here’s Bill Schneider, political analyst for CNN, on the New Hampshire primary:

Don’t mess with Iowa and New Hampshire. They still call the shots. The whole idea of letting Iowa and New Hampshire go first is that they are small. They require face-to-face campaigning. To run in Florida and Michigan, you have to spend a lot of money on TV ads. But those poor voters may not see as many ads as they had hoped.

Seems the last New Hampshire poll by the American Research Group was an aberration. It showed Hillary and Obama in a statistical dead heat.

Perhaps helped by Obama’s careless remarks about anything related to foreign affairs, Hillary is back in the lead again in New Hampshire by a huge margin.

Hillary also has formidable leads in Iowa and South Carolina as well.

As reported on the ARG web site, the details look like this:

Among men in Iowa, Hillary Clinton is at 25%, John Edwards is at 22%, and Barack Obama is at 22%. Among women in Iowa, Clinton is at 30%, Obama is at 23%, and Edwards is at 19%. Among men in New Hampshire, Clinton is at 31%, Edwards is at 17%, and Obama is at 17%. Among women in New Hampshire, Clinton is at 43%, Obama is at 17%, and Edwards is at 11%. Among men in South Carolina, Edwards is at 33%, Obama is at 31%, and Clinton is at 19%. Among women in South Carolina, Clinton is at 43%, Edwards is at 17%, and Obama is at 13%.

Anyone who said that women will not vote for a woman for presidents needs to rethink that assessment. In moderate South Carolina, woman are heading towards Hillary in droves, by more than a 2 to 1 margin over Edwards, her nearest competitor there. Hillary also gets 43% of the women’s vote in New Hampshire.