I have a couple of thoughts about the impact of yesterday’s blowout by Barack Obama over, primarily, Hillary Clinton. The Nutroots, who hate Clinton anyways, are already touting Obama’s win as a "new generation tak[ing] charge". And there’s some logic to that. As if to emphasize that point, Hillary was standing there with Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, and Wesley Clark, all Dem leaders from the 90s, almost a decade ago. The Dems picked generational change, and Hillary is touting "back to the future." The establishment wants their power, and they are going to fight for it. Both the length and the brutality of the fight help the GOP in November.
This morning I talked to Danny Diaz, the RNC’s Communications Director and he correctly pointed out that there aren’t that many differences between the Democrat candidates on the major issues. They are "all for higher taxes, a huge government healthcare plan, surrendering in the War on Terror, and defunding our troops."
The upshot is that the Dems are going to have a long primary with two very well funded candidates. The Clintonistas will only give up their power when it is taken from their cold, dead hands. I mean, can you imagine her losing one more race and dropping out? They will tear up Obama, and he will respond tearing her up. And everything that they do will reinforce why Democrats and independents don’t like her. At the same time, both are going to have to run to the left. As Danny pointed out, "the longer it goes on and more liberal positions that they are forced to embrace, the better for us in the general."
Regardless of the question of who we face, our chances in the general just got a lot better. In all cases, the Democratic base will be more split up, and the candidates will be damaged by the nastiness.
3 Comments
neil · January 4, 2008 at 5:13 PM
The results from yesterday are pretty grim for the GOP, you must admit. Not only did the Republican caucus have less than half as many participants as the Democratic caucus, check out the exit polls — under-30s made up 22% of the Dem caucusers but only 11% of the Republican caucusers. So that means 1 in 5 under-30 voters in Iowa yesterday was a Republican.
But wait, it gets worse! Among those under-30 Republicans, the dreaded Ron Paul had his strongest showing — 21%. I’m going to hazard a guess that what they like about the doctor is his position on Iraq, and that few of them will be willing to shift to a pro-war Republican candidate for that reason. Adding it up, we’ve got 16 out of 100 under-30s in Iowa voting for a pro-war candidate. And to think that you guys once thought that the war was a winning issue!
neil · January 4, 2008 at 5:16 PM
I forgot to mention that, as the good Mr. Diaz observes, there’s not actually a lot of difference between the Democratic candidates at the end of the day. This gives me some hope that the coming nastiness, which you’ve ably forecasted, is not going to end up doing much long-term damage, not enough to counteract the terrible state of the Republicans this year.
ADAM J SCHMIDT · January 4, 2008 at 1:43 PM
[…] On the Democratic side Hillary’s third place finish clearly puts her on the defensive and destroys any aura of ‘inevitability’ she had remaining. However, with the sheer amount of money she has collected and favors she’s undoubtedly called in from her years in Washington this is going to be a competitive race for quite some time. Its also expected to get nasty as Soren Dayton explains. […]
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