Great Googly Moogly! Primaries in Full Swing.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

It's been more than a month since I have updated this blog. What a month it has been! I hope you all have been following the developments in the presidential race up to this point. Since the Iowa caucus earlier this month, it seems like we've already had five, even six presidential elections. In one sense, this is true. Every primary or caucus entails its own miniature campaign, thanks in part to news cycles that get faster and faster. The smallest incident on the campaign trail can become a "defining moment" that serves as the basis for every bit of "analysis" the press can offer during the following, oh, twelve hours or so. The few short days between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary made my head spin. I'll try to briefly recap the happenings thus far and point you to some newfound sources where you can keep yourselves up-to-date as things progress.

The real action began in Iowa. Barack Obama won the caucus by a generous margin and Hillary Clinton came in third place. Obama's victory was not a surprise, but Hillary's finish behind John Edwards certainly was. The press was ready for Obama's coronation. There is always much talk about "momentum" during primary season. This is the idea that a victory in one primary will give the winning candidate a significant advantage in the following primary. If a candidate can muster several consecutive victories, his/her eventual nomination begins to seem inevitable.

"Momentum" and its influence on the race has been accepted political wisdom for some time, but it has suffered a severe challenge this year in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Obama won in Iowa and the polls predicted a huge victory for him in New Hampshire, whose primary was to be held just a few days later. Between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary however, Obama's "momentum" apparently disappeared. Clinton won in New Hampshire! One of those "defining moments" seemed to be a small meet-the-voters event that Clinton had at a diner in NH. While answering a question, she took on a more personal tone and even seemed to "get a little misty-eyed." Clinton is often criticized for being "unlikable" and "calculating." In the eyes of some pundits, this emotional exchange humanized her and changed voters' perception of her. It's not clear to me that Clinton's invisible tears had such a great impact. Some of these stories seem to take on lives of their own, simply because reporters recycle them so frequently. Clinton's victory in New Hampshire may also be interpreted as a sign of defects in the polling system. Almost all of the major polls predicted a 13% victory for Obama and they were, obviously, dead wrong. Interesting.

After New Hampshire, several candidates dropped out of the race. Since 1972, the winner of the nomination in both parties has won either Iowa or New Hampshire. If a marginal candidate doesn't do well in one of those states, his/her chances of winning the nomination shrink considerably. The next big event for the Democrats was the Nevada primary, where the only real contenders left were Obama, Edwards, and Clinton. The campaign took a turn toward more direct attacks at this stage, as both Obama and Clinton tried to point out the weaknesses of their opponent more aggressively than they ever had before. Obama had the support of the largest labor union in Nevada, but Clinton emerged victorious. However, it's important to note that Nevada's special system of allotment awarded Obama more delegates than Clinton, even though Clinton won the popular vote. This is because the rural districts in Nevada are more heavily represented than the urban ones. Obama did better in the rural areas than Clinton, so he left Nevada with one more delegate than his chief rival. This can become very important if there is no clear frontrunner heading into the nominating convention this summer. In that case, there will be a "brokered convention" where the party will select its nominee through an election held among the delegates from all of the states in the Union (except Michigan and Florida, whose delegates have been removed because those two states moved their primaries to earlier dates against the wishes of the party.) ....

The campaigns continued to get nasty as they headed to South Carolina, especially once the "race card" came out. The "race card" is the name given to the issue of race whenever it is brought up in a context that need not necessarily involve it. Clinton made a comment about the importance of President Johnson signing civil rights legislation into law, which some people (wrongly, I think) interpreted as a slight to Martin Luther King. Some questioned the importance of an Obama victory in South Carolina, a state with a large proportion of black voters. In the week leading up to the South Carolina primary, Bill Clinton also became a much more vocal presence, offering frequent, harsh attacks of Barack Obama. In the end, Obama won South Carolina by a landslide. He took a true majority of the vote (55%), while Clinton received just under 27%. John Edwards was a distant third with about 18%. This was a critical blow for his campaign - he was born in South Carolina and he won the primary there in 2004. As a result, he will pull out of the race today. This means it's only Obama and Clinton the rest of the way. Expect it to be a rough battle, with both sides making their sharpest attacks yet on one another.

Both candidates have to strategize very well now. SUPER TUESDAY is next week: February 5. 22 states all have primaries on the same day. The results of SUPER TUESDAY will tell us a lot about the future of the race. Stay tuned.

As for the Republicans, their race has been even crazier than the one for the Democrats. In Iowa, underdog Mike Huckabee won, despite the fact that he had raised and spent only a fraction of the money that the Romney campaign, for example, had poured into the small midwestern state. I agree with a lot of the analysts who claimed that Huckabee succeeded largely thanks to the support of evangelical voters. This theory seems to have been confirmed in the subsequent primaries in states with fewer evangelicals, where Huckabee has had much less success. Huckabee's sudden stardom meant that there were FOUR different candidates who had serious chances to take the Republican nomination: Huckabee, Senator John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani. The unpredictability of the Republican contest became clear when John McCain won in New Hampshire. This was seen as a resurrection of his campaign, which had run out of money in the summer and been assumed totally dead at several points. Romney came in second in NH, and Huckabee made a respectable third place finish, but my question was, "Where's Giuliani?" The former mayor of New York City seemed to have abandoned the early primary states and focused all of his attention on Florida. His hope was that the chaos in the early primaries would continue, giving him the chance for a big victory in Florida that would make him seem like a frontrunner at the best moment - right before Super Tuesday.

After New Hampshire, the Republicans went to Michigan, Mitt Romney's home state. A third Republican primary, a third winner. This time Mitt Romney came out on top and validated his status as a serious contender. The Republicans also went to South Carolina, and the strong evangelical presence there helped Huckabee nab a second place finish. McCain won again, and Romney came in third. The latest event for the Republicans was yesterday in Florida, where Rudy Giuliani's hopes were crushed. McCain eked out a narrow victory over Romney, and now appears to be the frontrunner. Giuliani is likely to drop out, and he will endorse McCain. For the Republicans, it seems that the race has also narrowed to two candidates, despite the presence of Huckabee. McCain and Romney are the only two with the resources necessary to have success on Super Tuesday, so now it's down to the two of them. Expect this race to be even nastier than the Democratic one. These two men seem to dislike each other on a personal as well as political level, and their criticisms are likely to be very sharp. As I wrap up the Republican re-cap, I'd like to point out that Romney also scored victories in Wyoming and Nevada, but these results received almost no media attention. Wyoming had its caucus on January 5th, right between Iowa and New Hampshire. It's a real state, with a real caucus, awarding real delegates, yet almost no one mentioned it! Crazy. Props to Larry J. Sabato and his Crystal Ball for bringing this up.

Before I let you all go, I want to offer you two places to go for a good overview of political commentary. Politico and RealClearPolitics do a nice job of collecting articles and opinion pieces on the latest events. They both update several times daily. You can look at the latest poll numbers and get results on the primaries as they come in. Another place I like to go for interesting insight is KausFiles at Slate.com. Mickey Kaus is a Democrat who has been a journalist for years. Most of his posts make thought-provoking suggestions about media phenomena or campaign strategy. Definitely worth a look.

AND! How could I forget! President Bush gave his last State of the Union address last night. This is the yearly speech that the sitting President gives to Congress. You can find the full text of the speech here. (the link to the full transcript is at the bottom of the page.)

Finally, there are several media organizations and celebrities that try to encourage young people to vote during the presidential elections. One such organization is MTV (Music Television) which has sponsored such programs as Rock the Vote in the past. This time around, they have a site, a lot like YouTube, where young political reporters from each state post new stories each week. A close friend of mine who lives in New Orleans is the reporter for the state of Louisiana. New videos are posted every Thursday and it also has a BLOG which is sure to be smart, entertaining, and incisive as a laser, just like it's author. I encourage you to visit the site. You'll get an inside look at New Orleans and Southern politics that will be hard to find at other news sources. (You're also welcome to visit the sites of the other states, just know that they won't be as excellent.)

Can't wait to see you all in class next week!

Primarily yours,

Eric