by Don Wheeler
When I was sixteen years old, there was a Presidential election posing an agent of change versus an established pro. The change agent was a sitting Senator, but in this case, the “pro” was an incumbent President. The change agent came out of nowhere, energizing young people with his vision and attitude.
I grew up in the Chicago area when major newspapers generally had their own serious political cartoonists on the payroll. In my opinion, only Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal Constitution approaches (now defunct) The Chicago Daily News’ John Fischetti.
I still have this cartoon. It shows Edmund Muskie on crutches, Hubert Humphrey pushing a broken down jalopy. And overhead? A broad-chested , caped, flying figure with “McG” emblazoned on his outfit.
George McGovern flew to the nomination, surprising nearly everyone. I was an ardent supporter and since he was facing Richard Nixon – it wasn’t hard to figure out who was the good guy in the contest.
Barack Obama will have the advantage of not facing a popular sitting President. But like McGovern, he will oppose a seasoned pro with lots of fans in the mainstream media. McGovern fought the tough fight in Congress for many years and was elected in a highly conservative state. Obama has never faced a credible Republican opponent and comes from a safe Democratic state.
This does not bode well.
Movement Progressives are left pretty unmotivated by Mr. Obama’s tepid and timid policy proposals and his conservative rhetoric in defending them. The vast majority will vote for him, but the number that will put money and effort into his campaign is certainly open to question. Cult of personality campaigns have their limits.
The Republicans will certainly rally to their guy. They won’t overlook the ties (limited as they are) to the Chicago area crime figure, or the politics as usual “present” votes in the Illinois GA. It’s possible they’ll advance the idea of how beholden Obama is to the coal and nuclear power industry. And who knows what else they’ll come up with besides the obvious and obligatory lack of experience claim.
At least with Hillary, we’d know what they’d come at us with. Bill, mostly.
It’s not exposing state secrets to mention that if you are on the McCain campaign in this setting, what you need to establish is reasonable doubt of your opponent. That strategy has won in the past and there’s no reason think it wouldn’t now.
I hope I’m selling Sen. Obama short and I’m misreading the situation, but I doubt that’s the case. This looks like a much tougher contest for Democrats than it should have been and we could lose.
Monday, March 3, 2008
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1 comments:
A comment from the Daily Kos post:
I remember the 1972 campaign
and I even remember that cartoon. It is funny how cartoons sometimes capture political reality than any polls and talking-idiotic-heads on TV.
Yes, Ed Muskie was clearly the superior candidate in those primaries, but he was not popular with the left wing of the democratic party and the anti-war crowd. He was too careful with his rhetoric and very serious non-flamboyant senator from Maine with serious foreign policy credentials. Looking at it now, he was more in tune with the majority of the American people than G. McGovern who was extremely popular on university campuses and so forth. Nixon and his campaign were terrified of Ed Muskie, but they did not show it. Of course, years later and thanks to Nixon's love and addiction of all recording apparatuses, we now know that the Nixon campaign was really terrified of Ed; they canceled his campaign rallies; they published fake Ed Muskie memos with fake campaign schedules; they planted stories about McGovern and claimed they came from Ed Muskie's campaign; they planted stories in AP as if they came from Ed Muskie's campaign...my god, they were really good actually. And of course, the cheery on top of the cake was the Canuke letter which they forged and sent it to the Manchester Union Leader, which published it and that sank Ed Muskie's campaign.
Indeed, there are troubling similarities between these primaries and the 1972 ones. The more i look at how the Republicans have behaved in these primaries, the more i feel a Nixonian tactic at play (remember Karl Rove worked in the 1972 republican campaign and he was schooled there). I don't know if this is just because i am old and that i have the luxury of time which allows me to put things in perspective, or maybe because i stopped voting for the presidential ticket a long time ago, which has made me totally de-invested from all presidential political crap in elections years.
I think McCain is going to be a formidable candidate and this thing is going to be awfully close. McCain's victory or defeat in November will hinges on his VP pick. He does not have a long list from which he can chose. If i worked in his campaign, i would tell him that he has one choice: the very popular Governor of Florida, Charlie Crest. If McCain goes with Crest, he will have one less state to worry about and 27 electoral votes in the bank. The exit polls in Florida, which no one has paid attention to, show one thing: McCain is very popular with non-Cuban Hispanics/Latinos. They voted for him with a margin of 5-1. This really spells trouble in the Western part of the country in states like Colorado, Nevada and even New Mexico if Obama is the nominee of the Democratic Party. You add to that a drop in women's turn out and we have a serious ball game that will go to the last second.
by Mutual Assured Destruction
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