Until recently, like most liberals, I was convinced that 2008 was going to be a Democratic year. While Republicans have been listless and divided, Democrats have been passionate and enthusiastic about their candidates for president. An unpopular war, a sinking economy, a general sense of conservative exhaustion: All pointed toward a Democratic triumph in November. A lot of conservatives had come to grudgingly agree and were preparing to spend four years in political rehab.
But after the first rounds of caucuses and primaries, the prospects don’t look so rosy for the Democrats or so bleak for the Republicans. The presidential race now looks like a tossup — perhaps even with a Republican edge. If Democrats don’t stay smart, tough-minded and realistic, we could blow it yet again.
The first problem is our likely foe. Notwithstanding his loss in Michigan, Sen. John McCain has a plausible route to the GOP nomination, and he remains by far his party’s best bet for holding on to the White House. The Republican field has been so preoccupied with appealing to the party’s hard-core base that it seems that the eventual winner will have little appeal to the independent voters who can swing a general election. Even McCain started out by embracing the evangelical Christians he had once denounced. But as his seemingly dead campaign has been reborn, his initial efforts to pander to the religious right have been forgotten, and he is once again happily running as a “maverick.” Though his nomination is hardly guaranteed, the Arizona senator would provide the GOP with a powerful mix of continuity and change — continuity with the Bush administration on Iraq at a moment when it has become conventional wisdom that the “surge” is succeeding, and a sense of change and freshness from McCain’s cheerfully frank past deviations from conservative orthodoxy.
But the major reason I see trouble ahead for the Democrats is that voting patterns so far, as well as rumbling tensions over race and gender, suggest serious vulnerabilities in both of the Democratic front-runners that McCain (or another rival) could exploit.
The presidential race now looks like a tossup — perhaps even with a Republican edge. If Democrats don’t stay smart, tough-minded and realistic, we could blow it yet again. “we?”
The Democrats are self-destructing, with their sniping at each other over race and gender (two things they say they are above!), and if their ‘true’ socialist leanings are ever admitted, it may be the end for them.
Of course, many of the Republican candidates are being accused of the “RINO” syndrome — [b]R[/b]epublicans [b]I[/b]n [b]N[/b]ame [b]O[/b]nly. Where they vote and introduce bills and spending more like Democrats than Republicans. Plus McCain, with his double dealings with Democrats and forming the ‘gang of 14’ against Republican measures in Congress.
2 don’t tell me you are accusing them of being politicians! But I’d agree with your conclusions about the Democrats, especially with Bill Clinton inserting himself as a campaign issue on a daily basis.