Election 2008: Weekly Scorecard (1/20)

This week saw the candidates draw sharper lines between them as the voters drew lines of their own in more early primaries, on the eve of the possibly decisive Super Tuesday on February 5th. For the Democrats, they had a primary in Michigan (sort of) before their contentious battle in the Nevada primary. For the GOP candidates, it was a busier week, with the Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina primaries.

Let’s get to the week’s grades (in order of most likely to succeed):

THE REPUBLICANS

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McCain

McCain lost to Romney in Michigan and Nevada but won in South Carolina. From an MSM expectations game, that was about as good a week as you can expect from going 1 for 3, largely because Romney was expected to win in Michigan and Nevada, and South Carolina was considered to be a tough battle with Huckabee. The South Carolina victory also carried the redemption story that the press loves, arising from his loss to Bush there in 2000, that caused him to drop out of the presidential contest. By the end of this week, McCain was leading in the national polls over Romney, Huckabee and Giuliani.

Many pundits in the media argue McCain now has the momentum and should be the most likely candidate to succeed in the general election due to his success with independents and some Democrats. But he has some lingering weaknesses. He continues to do relatively poorly among Republicans for someone who seeks to be the GOP’s nominee. I can’t think of any recent GOP nominee who didn’t have the strong support of the GOP establishment. Most of the GOP establishment view his so-called “maverick” voting on issues like immigration, campaign finance reform and tax cuts as preening for the MSM at the party’s expense. They also dislike his angry temperament that he flashes from time-to-time in the senate cloak room. McCain won’t be able to rely on independents in the upcoming closed GOP primaries on Super Tuesday.

The strength of his victory in South Carolina is weaker than it may appear when you factor in the help he got from Fred Thompson in siphoning away votes from Huckabee. Thompson, who had been a blip in the polls until his surprise 16% showing in South Carolina, spent all his time campaigning in South Carolina attacking Huckabee from the right. This was a bit odd given that when Thompson was in the Senate he was far more moderate that he purports to be now as he attacks Huckabee as a liberal. McCain lost to Bush in South Carolina in 2000 because he lost the evangelical vote to Bush. Huckabee, therefore, presented a huge threat to McCain in South Carolina. Enter Thompson’s suddenly speaking of God and country and Huckabee’s liberal betrayal of Reagan’s legacy. It worked. Thompson was most successful in the state’s conservative, rural parts where Huckabee should have won by large margins over McCain. Instead, Thompson snagged votes from Huckabee’s base, and this was enough to give McCain his relatively modest margin of victory over Huckabee. Thompson will likely stay in the race through Florida to serve the same water-carrier role for McCain before dropping out and endorsing his old senate friend from Arizona. Mission accomplished.

Here’s Thompson’s South Carolina ad selling his God & country bona fides:

So while McCain’s victory has cracks in its foundation, it still was very damaging to Romney and Huckabee. McCain’s overall success has also rendered Giuliani irrelevant, as McCain now owns the national security message. McCain now seems to be overtaking Giuliani even in his home state of New York.

McCain hopes to take out Huckabee with a victory in Florida, and then find himself in a two-way battle with Romney. Despite Romney’s victories in Nevada and Michigan this week, the MSM discounted their significance and continues to fawn over the McCain story. McCain hopes to position himself as the genuine article, in terms of experience and “straight talk” against Romney’s chameleon-like pandering. In that one-on-one contest, McCain thinks GOP voters will hold their noses and make the pragmatic decision that he is more likely to succeed against Hillary or Obama in the general election.

He’s right.

Grade: A-

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Romney

Romney’s pandering to economically distressed Michigan voters helped him out-maneuver McCain in Michigan. McCain had made the accurate point that many of Michigan’s manufacturing jobs are simply not coming back in a global economy. Romney seized on this and promised to win those jobs back by fighting fuel efficiency standards and throwing in more federal money to prop up the industry. So much for his fiscal conservatism. It was also little ironic that he touted his dad’s leadership of the unsuccessful American Motor Company and bragged about his old Rambler. How anyone could brag about a Rambler is beyond me.

But Romney’s home state advantage in Michigan also caused the MSM to discount the significance of the victory, and did not create momentum for Romney in the subsequent primary in South Carolina. Similarly, Romney’s victory in Nevada, which has a large Mormon population (including Senator Harry Reid) was discounted when the other candidates effectively conceded it to Romney in advance. Romney withdrew from South Carolina mid-week to minimize the consequences of his expected loss there and to focus on Nevada, where he knew he would win.

With Huckabee weakened, Romney will have nobody on his right flank appealing to social conservatives. This will allow Romney to move to his comfort zone of being the pragmatic business leader who knows how to fix things. This would be a stronger position from which to fight McCain and to prepare for the general election. Romney already enjoys more support than McCain from the GOP establishment which he can use to increase doubts about McCain’s “inevitability.” The problem is Romney simply isn’t as likable or well known as McCain and doesn’t have his “American hero” status among voters. His angry argument with a reporter over the participation of lobbyists in his campaign fed two negative narratives about Romney that could be his undoing: that he’s a phony and a jerk.

Here’s Romney’s latest ad, trying to position himself as an agent of change.

Grade: B

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Huckabee

Huckabee was completely outmaneuvered in South Carolina by the tag-team approach from McCain and Thompson. He also contributed to his own demise with his coddling of confederate flag-lovers, his tribute to fried squirrel and outlandish pandering to evangelicals by arguing that the constitution should be amended to conform to the word of God. Some argued that many voters found his effusive pandering to be insulting — that South Carolinians don’t care to be thought of as sitting around a camp fire burning crosses and frying squirrel. (Although if it hadn’t been for Thompson, Huckabee would have beaten McCain anyway).

For Huckabee, it all comes down to Florida. If he can’t win there, he’s out. It’s hard to see where he can make a convincing comeback if he can’t win there. Even if he wins Arkansas or a few other deep South states on Super Tuesday, that won’t be enough if McCain takes the more delegate-rich states.

Grade: D

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Giuliani

Giuliani has now become a caricature of his own carefully cultivated image as a hero of 9/11. He has also presided over quite possibly the most disastrous collapse in modern presidential campaign history. As late as December, he was still leading in all of the major national polls and in many key large states. Now, having finished horribly below expectations in the voting to date, it appears likely he will lose in Florida and may even lose his home state of New York on Super Tuesday.

Perhaps more damaging for the GOP, his constant exploitation of 9/11 for personal political gain has damaged the political utility of fear-mongering terrorism rhetoric in the general election (Democrats, rejoice!). His most recent television ad is a new low point for Giuliani on this point. Note the over-the-top rhetoric of the voice-over, the exploitation of actual 9/11 footage, and the outrageous implication that those who fled the falling towers in the chaos of that horrible morning in NYC were cowards, while only he had courage. I know Giuliani loves opera, and only someone with operatic sensibilities could possibly approve of a campaign ad that is so obscenely over-dramatic. At this point, he seems to have ruined his chances to be a VP, which was his for the taking under a McCain or Romney ticket.

Here’s Giuliani’s campaign ad:

Grade: F

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THE DEMOCRATS

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Hillary

The week began with the country’s most successful African American businessman, Bob Johnson, speaking critically of Obama at a Clinton campaign event. This fed the flames of controversy that the cable news networks and press jumped on with joy. But in their Nevada debate, Clinton and Obama seemed to bury the hatchet and even agreed to work together on new Iraq-related legislation. As tensions eased, most in the press seemed to blame Hillary for the controversy, which arose from her comments about how President Johnson’s support was critical in getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Martin Luther King and his supporters had risked their lives fighting for. It was a ham-handed effort by her to illustrate the notion that experience matters.

On Tuesday, she won Michigan in a largely uncontested race that will not award delegates due to a dispute between the state and the DNC. She took her more open campaign style to Nevada and California to build on her success in New Hampshire. Most pundits assumed Obama would win in Nevada given his strong support among the powerful unions in the state. But in the end, she won Nevada, including the majority of precincts in the union-dominated Las Vegas strip.

In Nevada, she won among women, men and Hispanic voters. She lost the African American vote decisively. She also lost the 18-29 demographic, but the turn-out of young Obama supporters was far smaller than in Iowa. Indeed, Hillary’s turn-out operation in Nevada was a critical part of her success, catching her rivals by surprise.

Next, she faces a tough fight in South Carolina, which has a much larger percentage of African American voters than Nevada. From an expectations management perspective, however, the MSM seem to be expecting an Obama victory in South Carolina. This should help her in the likely event she loses there. Indeed, Hillary looks well positioned to do very well on Super Tuesday given her recent victories and the fact that many of the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries will be limited to registered Democrats (to the exclusion of independents).

But a number of questions remain. Can she continue to battle with Obama for the nomination without worsening the racial rift that has already arisen and seemingly divided Democrats? At what point do things pass the line where post-nomination healing is no longer possible, should she win the nomination over Obama? Clearly both the MSM and the GOP have their own motivations to fan the flames of a racial division — is it already too late?

Grade: B

Obama

This was an odd week for Obama. He chose the week preceding the Martin Luther King holiday to cite Reagan as his political inspiration while speaking critically of President Clinton’s presidency. Reagan, of course, strongly opposed Democratic efforts to adopt a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther King and only relented in 1983 when Congress passed legislation for it with veto-proof majorities. I suspect that Obama made his remarks with an eye towards the California primary on Super Tuesday. Reagan is still fondly remembered by many voters in his home state. He may have assumed that his union support in Nevada assured him victory, so he could afford to look past that contest and make a tactical move that might help him in California. This made Nevada, to use a sports term, a “trap game” for Obama, i.e., when you take your focus off your next game that you are expected to win in order to focus on the following game that presents a greater challenge, and you end up losing the first game you should have won. Okay, maybe I’m over-analyzing this, but it’s hard to come up with any other rational explanation for his praise of Reagan’s presidency and criticism of President Clinton’s presidency in the same breath, while running for the Democratic Party nomination.

The trick for Obama is this: the strength of his campaign is his perceived “non-politician” status — that he’s above them in some moral sense – so voters hold him to a higher standard. If he engages in crass political calculations and negative campaigning (as other politicians do everyday), I believe it hurts him by making him “just another politician.” And if he is simply just another politician, suddenly his comparatively sparse political experience is more troubling. That was the harm of his Reagan remark and will be his personal challenge as the contest continues.

This week Obama’s campaign also under-estimated the turn-out necessary for victory in Nevada and was out-hustled by the Clinton campaign in that state. This follows his similar mismanagement of his Iowa victory momentum that led to his loss in New Hampshire. Whether Obama’s campaign chief, David Axelrod, or Obama is responsible for these missteps remains to be seen.

For Obama, it all comes down to South Carolina. He is expected to win, and in fact he must win it. If he fails, the MSM will begin to speak of his campaign in more critical terms and he will lose momentum just as he heads into Super Tuesday. I think he will win it, although I find it unwise to bet against a Clinton in a tough campaign.

Grade: C

Edwards

Edwards had a horrible week. His campaign surrogates promoted the notion that he might win Nevada due to his economic message and support among union workers (although he failed to get critical endorsements). In fact, he finished a surprisingly distant third in Nevada, which must have devastated his campaign and his donors. South Carolina was the only primary he won in 2004. If he can’t win it on January 29th, he is finished. In fact, he has no chance of winning it. As a result, if he doesn’t drop out soon, his eventual endorsement value will drain to the point of irrelevancy, such as an after shut-out on Super Tuesday. His best move would be to drop out before Super Tuesday and endorse Obama or Hillary.

If he stays in as he promised, it’s hard to say who he helps more by doing so — Hillary or Obama. On the one hand, he hurts Hillary (and therefore helps Obama) more by staying in by simply remaining an alternative to voting for her. On the other hand, those who vote for Edwards may be “anti-Hillary” Democrats that might otherwise be inclined to vote for Obama. I’m think overall, Edwards continued presence in the race hurts Obama and helps Hillary. Given that Edwards doesn’t seem to have enormous affection for Hillary, this is another reason for him to drop out before Super Tuesday if he is inclined to support Obama.

Grade: F