February 6, 2008--Jump Ball

Back from the dead, John McCain last night just about sewed up the Republican nomination. That, my friends, after Super Tuesday, is the only thing that is certain.

Now everyone will be focusing on how soon Mitt Romney will drop out (to be a good sport as Ronald Reagan was in 1976) in order to live another day so he can run again four years from now. By then, since his personality, religion, and hair appear to have been the impediments to his winning the nomination, in the spirit of flip-floppery—sorry, evolving—we can expect to see him seeking out Mike Huckabee’s ministering, taking likeability lessons from Hillary Clinton, and making an appointment with John Edwards’ (remember him?) hair cutter—that wet-look has got to go.

And, there is also rampant speculation about who McCain will choose to be his running mate. If Huckabee behaves himself and doesn’t get any crazy ideas that he might actually win the nomination after his strong regional showing yesterday and thus decides to challenge McCain as opposed to sucking up to him, will McCain put a real conservative on his ticket? Though, if he feels the need to do so, he could always turn to Rush Limbaugh or, if with Hillary looming, he feels he has a gender problem, Laura Ingraham.

Have you been listening to these two lately? They have been excoriating John McCain as if his real name were Cain from the Old Testament. Which to them, along with the New, should be the Republican Party’s platform.

The biggest applause lines for all of the Republican candidates are when they talk about the “unborn,” the “sanctity of marriage,” and immigration. With the world in the miserable shape it’s in, with the economy tanking, the one thing that makes their hearts beat fast are these critical issues. I must be living on another planet.


For the Democrats, the biggest applause lines are about health care. This is truly a wonky party. Acknowledging that, to see folks getting so excited about what your definition of “universal” is or what constitutes a “mandate” brings tears to my eyes. And to Hillary Clinton’s too, though she promised n Monday that she will stop the “tearing up” on days preceding significant primaries.

One thing we know is that if this election is about the future and change, having as many Kennedys as possible standing behind you on the platform will not get the job done. Last night was a version of a dead heat largely because Obama couldn’t overcome Clinton’s early lead in Massachusetts and they certainly didn’t deliver the Latino vote in California. It would have been better to have rounded up J.Lo and Marc Anthony.

If you don’t want to appear to be building a Bridge to the Past (to turn Bill Clinton’s line against Bob Dole against Hillary Clinton) connecting to the Kennedys, who half the young folks you’re reaching out to never even heard of, though glamorous to the media, this can be counterproductive. Which it indeed might have been.

So don’t expect to see too much more of Teddy and Carolyn and Maria. Nor will you be seeing too much of Bill Clinton. Thanks to him, Mrs. Clinton had a near-death experience. And by the way, to which secret location has Al Shapton been sequestered?

As the Republicans sort things out and quickly come to realize that either Obama or Clinton are more the Antichrist than McCain, where do things stand with the Democrats?

It’s a tie game, though if one’s memory reaches back just a week or two, it could easily be argued that Hillary had a big night. She won the mega states, in total secured more popular votes, and garnered the most delegates—the real ballgame.

But if your memory extends back a month or two, Barack was the clear winner. Back then he was trailing Clinton in the national polls by at least 20 points and in some of the states that he lost yesterday by more than that. He, for example, cut his deficit in half in Massachusetts in just a few weeks. Enough to suggest that maybe there is some magic still accruing to the Kennedys. To have in effect “caught up” to Hillary looks like real progress.

And the primary and caucus calendar over the next month or two favors Obama. He may win in Washington state, Virginia, Maryland, DC, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. Effectively shutting Clinton out of mojo-type media headlines. That will then bring things to Texas and, yes, back to Florida. It could turn out to be a version of the 2000 presidential election where Florida was the decider. Actually the Renquist-Scalia-Thomas Supreme Court.

There was an uncertified primary here. The Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign, but many Florida Democrats voted anyway. And Hillary won, getting about 60 percent of the condo vote. But no delegates were officially selected. But if we have a dead heat by convention time, what ill happen with Florida? The Dems can’t disenfranchise one of the country’s largest and most diverse states.

This kind of thing has happened before with the Mississippi Freedom Party which almost succeeded in getting seated in place of a segregated delegation at the Democratic convention in 1964.

What will the Democratic Party do in 2008 when they convene in Denver? Keep an eye on the so-called Super Delegates. They are party officials and elected officeholders. The Democrats have 796 of them. This is a significant number in itself since it takes “only” 2,025 to win the nomination. But besides playing that significant role, they may very well be critical to determining what to do when it comes to Florida.

That is unless the dispute winds up in the Supreme Court.