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Fine. Let’s just get it out of the way now shall we?

I can’t stand the fact that its 2006 and people are already blabbering about the 2008 Presidential election. It’s like being around sports fans in the off-season. It’s pointless and it doesn’t reflect reality even a little bit, but that doesn’t stop them from talking about it anyway. Blah, blah, blah, blah, fricken blah.

So its in that spirit that I do a little ‘Self-Q&A’ ala Dean Barnett.

1. Let’s start with the big one first – Hillary! Will she run? And if she runs, will she win?

Hmmm. That’s a tough one. “Is Hillary running for President”? Gosh, it’s really hard to tell. She’s never really shown any interest.

Of course she’s running you ninny. She’s been running for President since 1968, her alarm clock plays “Hail to the chief” as wake-up music, her pee-chee folders are covered with doodles that say “Madame President” and “Mrs. President” and “Command-HER in Chief” over and over in obsessive teenage girl scribe with big frilly hearts and ponies. So on to the next question:

Will she win?

In my opinion – no, and most decidedly no. Since 1989, its been Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, so I think the last thing that people are interested in is tacking on another 8 years of Clinton to the end of that chain. I think that’s why we saw the ‘trial balloon’ last week saying she would be “President Rodham”. My biggest reason for thinking that she cant win is fundamentally based on this simple fact that “She” is not “Him”. People hear “Clinton” and they think “Bill”, and they usually don’t think about her one way or the other. She gets a lot of movement in the polls until she opens her mouth and reminds people once again that “She” is not “Him”. She’s “Hillary”, he’s “Bill” and they are decidedly different people and there is no getting around that. “He” – Polished practiced politician of the highest order. “He” - can walk into a room of people carrying pitchforks who want to ‘tar and feather’ him and inside of a half hour those same people will be shaking his hand and asking for his autograph. “She” - gives solemn illustration to the term “harpy” and so effectively denigrates the term with her rather scary visage that the “International Working Coalition of Harpys and Crones (local 142)” have gotten together a legal fund to sue her campaign for stealing their act. “He” - has a nice relaxing way of talking that makes you want to listen, even if you don’t like him and you think he’s a fraud (as I do) . “She” - has that practiced, pinched, politician speech cadence that most nervous politicians pull out for the cameras because they think in their vanity that what they are about to say is going to be captured for posterity and they want it to sound really, really important, even if what they are saying is just “ I want a ham sandwich”, it comes out like “IIIIIII WWAAAAANNT AAAA HAMMSSANNNDWIIICCHH…(wait for applause to die down, pound on countertop with fist, point at audience with thumb on top of fist, look at notes, check microphone, get misty eyed…). This might have worked in the age of the “newsreel” but it doesn’t work at all in the age of the ipod. She needs to lighten up more than she can safely afford to do or is willing or capable of doing. She’s as uncomfortably awkward in public as that picture of Nixon on the beach in formal dress shoes.

The third reason is that I think we live in a 48/48 electorate. 48% of the electorate will vote for whomever the Democrats put up there, and the other 48% of voting Republicans will not. It’s the other in-between, uncertain group, who I call the “Heisenberg” bloc of about 4% of the electorate that throws the election one way or another. This is not a third party, this is not the 'rise of the libertarians', but the roughly 4% of the voting electorate that is impossible to measure or gage and you just can never tell one way or the other which way they are going to vote until its over, and even then its hard to get a sense of what is going on. I suspect that’s because even they don’t know until they actually vote. I think Hillary08! has about 42% of the Democrats locked up and the funny thing is she doesn’t need to spend a dime to get their votes, but she will anyway. I think she will have to claw for the other 6% but I think the ‘Heisenberg bloc’ is not having any of it. They saw her goods in 1992 and when they did, they gave Congress to the Republicans in 1994.

In the end, she will be the single biggest fundraiser for the Republicans since Lincoln or Eisenhower, but she will not win the general election for President. For a lifetime of effort she will note only an asterisk next to her name. In the words of Zathras; “she is not the one”.

2. Barack Obama. Big deal? Or flash in the pan?

Ok, I’ve said that Hillary is going to run, but not win, so what about Obama? I think that the one thing I see in this election is a sort of 1976 vibe going on. People are really,really,REALLY interested in anything “new”, no matter how silly it might be. I think the Obama ‘boom-let’ is a serious indication that the real thing that a candidate needs to win this election is the ability to say "that they haven’t been around, and that they aren’t quite sure what all the fuss is about because its such a sunny day and why don’t we all go down to the beach and throw the Frisbee and drink lemonade for the day and forget all this fussin’ and fighting..."

The “Obama-phenama” we see going on comes out of that vibe. He is a nice man with a big smile and a reassuring demeanor and rather than potentially being called a racist by asking him big “meenie” questions, everyone is going to be very nice to him in public and don’t want to go making the nice man upset with any sort of well you know “impolite political questions” like we ask everyone else. However, his biggest supporters will drive their cars with OBAMA bumper stickers to the polling places, and vote for Hillary. Don’t think that will happen? Ask all those Democrat folks with the goofy Orange “DEAN” knit caps who it was that they voted for in 2003 in Ohio. They loved Dean, worked for his campaign, and then voted for Kerry - Big time. They feel good about Obama, but they aren’t stupid and just as they did with Howard Dean, they will say one thing and do another. Obama makes people feel better, but he hasn’t closed the deal and frankly he will have to put together a real “A-class” team on the ground to even get close to doing that. It’s my guess at this point that pulling that off is going to cost more in time and strategy than he can effectively do in this particular run. He’s a good, safe VP choice if he doesn’t pull a real boner out on the campaign. If he survives this process, doesn’t embarrass himself, and gets a few more fencing scars, maybe next time, but certainly not this time.

3. What about the Republicans? McCain? Newt? Giuliani? Romney? Rice?

McCain? No chance. Well ok, there’s always a chance, but no matter how well it goes for him, at the end of the day, you have McCain to step right in and ruin it for him. He’s like the cranky uncle that you like but you don’t sit next to at Thanksgiving because he will start talking to you and then forget to shut the hell up once the food is served and no matter how much you try to get him to stop talking about having his colon polyps removed, he will just keep getting louder and louder because he just cant take the hint. I submit the idea that Senators almost always make really, really bad candidates for President. McCain doesn’t smile, is cranky, and frankly I don’t think he’s a particularly good campaigner. He tends to be very unlucky, and luck comes in real handy on a campaign. McCain is perpetually walking across a nicely mowed lawn, only to step on a rake and getting the handle violently slammed into his face.

Newt? Oh good lord. Get the hook already. Listen, I like the guy, but you talk about people who are walking-talking “Bullet Magnets”, there’s no better version of that in politics than Newt Gingrich. I doubt Newt could win a Senate Seat in Georgia much less the Presidency. Move along folks, there’s nothing to see here. Go get your jollies somewhere else, this isn’t going to happen.

Giuliani…Hmmmm… Well I like him. If there’s anyone left who still has there “halo” from 9/11 its Rudy. He also has the smile, and yes dear cynical reader, it does count. I can’t exactly tell if he really is running or what his intentions are, but I think he could be a very serious contender for President. He can get a good solid percentage of the Republicans and frankly a solid block of the Democrats and I believe that “Heisenberg bloc” would look favorably on him as well.

Rice? VP maybe, but I think she’s probably finished with this line of business. This period of history has been a real meatgrinder for anyone but for the Bush administration, its been a real long road; to expect that she would want to step right back into this at the top level is just too much to expect. She also fails one of my fundamental tests, that being a successfully campaign and term in office somewhere before the Presidency.

Romney. If being a successful Republican Governor of “Kennedy Country” doesn’t qualify you to run for President, I don’t know what does. I don’t think the “Mormon question” will be anything at all to worry about, but the press wont shut up about it no matter how much we fail to react. I’m watching and listening, so far, I haven’t seen anything that pulls him away from the pack.

4. What are the Republican chances to keep the Presidency this time?

If the Democrats in this legislature are complete clods as I expect that they will be, I think the chances are very good. The 2006 election served as sort of a pressure release valve for the Republicans, now the pressure to deliver is on the Democrats and frankly their black beasts are going to be hard to feed while ‘making nice’ across the table to the Republicans who flipped in this last election. They can’t win if we don’t let them. If the Republicans give into the sort of “my turn” mentality with McCain that they did with Dole in 1996, then their chances are not very good. If they read the electorate correctly, if they manage to speak clearly their intent, and for heavens sake, hold the Democrats accountable to their record over the next two years, they will do fine in all three branches in the next election. There is no better case for Republicans in charge than watching the Democrats at work.

5. What are the Democrats best chances to win?

Hillary-Obama. This is a good package for the Democrats. Obama insulates Hillary from the sort of assault that Lieberman just underwent from the far left. I think that is his best value to the Democrats at this point. Where she is a deep space gravity well of anti-charismatic particles he manages to counteract those forces with his own charisma, so you end up with nothing offensively negative or positive, just a sort of nice how-ya-doin middle of the road power couple out to run the most powerful office in history of mankind. that’s all, no big. It’s very a very daring paring of policy and PR, and its very fresh and new, but its doomed before it starts.

Oh, and John F. Kerry? Like the Titanic before him, that ship has sailed. I hear he’s doing Dinner Theater out on Cape Cod as the Ghost of Jacob Marley in the Narragansett Housewife Players’ production of “Scrooge”. He gives a monotone, yet Dr. Seuss-like rhyming 2-hour lecture to Ebenezer Scrooge on the role of the Supreme Court in determining the price of corn in Nebraska while playing a slide show of his tour in Vietnam in the background; which Scrooge and the audience considers to be a fate that is “worse than death”. 9 out of 10 performances of Scrooge by the Narragansett Housewife Players results in the actor playing Scrooge running from the stage in sheer terror. "John Kerry IS the new Max Schrek", says the playbill. You just can’t buy that kind of publicity.

6. Anything else?

Yeah. I can’t stand this modern obsession with politics. Can we get back to following sports for entertainment instead of watching the lifetime careers of the kids who couldn’t cut it in drama class in high school? I wished we followed the world of science with as much interest as this crap.

Posted @ December 12, 2006 05:52 PM | Current Affairs