Somewhere, there should be a Hall of Fame honoring profoundly
stupid Democratic Party campaign ideas. Among the featured exhibits
would be Michael Dukakis's 1988 tank ride and John Kerry's 2004
Ohio duck-hunting trip. ("Can I get me a hunting
license here?")
The important thing to remember about such classic campaign
blunders, however, is that Democrats didn't realize their
disastrous potential until it was too late to prevent them.
Whether it's George McGovern's choice of Thomas Eagleton as his
1972 running mate or Fritz Mondale's promise to raise taxes in
1984, for some reason there's never anybody around Democrat HQ with
the foresight to shout an advance warning.
If Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign melts down this
year, however, the Democrats won't have that excuse. This time,
there was plenty of warning:
* Writing at the Huffington Post, Hillary Clinton supporter
Larry Johnson declared on Feb. 16 that Obama's association
with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers "will be
Barack Obama's Willie Horton."
* On March 13, ABC News was the first major media outlet to
report on the anti-American rants of Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama's Trinty Church in Chicago,
igniting a controversy that continued to make headlines for
weeks.
* On April 7, Christopher Hitchens noted that
Obama had named a radical Catholic priest, the Rev. Michael
Pfleger, among his religious "mentors," and that Pfleger had
defended Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. On May 25, Pfleger
preached a bizarre sermon at Trinity church, mocking Hillary as an
advocate of "white entitlement," resulting in a YouTube
video clip that quickly went viral -- like the plague -- on the
Internet.
* Obama's connection to corrupt Chicago Democratic fund-raiser
Tony Rezko was widely reported by major media. In January, for
example, ABC News reported that Rezko and his associates had "contributed
more than $120,000 to Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate,
much of it at a time when Rezko was the target of an FBI
investigation."
His scandalous associations didn't stop Obama from squeaking
past Hillary to clinch the Democratic nomination, but his responses
to these controversies so far -- such as first "distancing" himself
from Wright, then finally quitting the Trinity congregation -- are
unlikely to immunize him from further scrutiny in the
general-election campaign.
ONLY ONCE DURING a Democratic debate, in Philadelphia on April 16,
was Obama asked to respond to questions about these controversies.
His staunchest supporters admitted that Obama fared very poorly in
that debate, and he then refused subsequent debate invitations --
an option he won't have this fall.
Even the manner in which Obama won the nomination suggests that
he may prove an unusually weak candidate in the general
election.
Because of the front-loaded primary schedule, more than half of the Democratic delegates were
chosen by the time the "Super Duper Tuesday" primaries were
concluded on Feb. 5. Moreover, Obama's advantage in pledged
delegates was won in caucus states -- where organization among
party activists is the key -- rather than in primaries, which test
a candidate's appeal to ordinary voters.
As the primary schedule continued beyond Super Tuesday, Hillary
won every major "swing state" (including Ohio, Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and Kentucky) and exit polls consistently showed her the
stronger candidate among the blue-collar
constituency that is crucial to any Democratic victory.
When the primary campaign ended, Obama's lead among the more
than 3,400 pledged delegates was a scant 120, and he was 300 delegates short of a nominating majority.
Thus, with the help of the May 31
ruling that limited the Michigan and Florida delegations to 50
percent representation at the convention, the Democratic
"superdelegates" ultimately picked the nominee, infuriating
Hillary's
female supporters.
ALL OF OBAMA'S problems would be enough to worry Democrats if he
were a veteran politician, but he's not. He's a 46-year-old former
state legislator who was only elected to the Senate in 2004 and
whose presidential candidacy got an artificial boost from media
enthusiasts like Oprah Winfrey and Chris Matthews.
Obama's nomination is part of a pattern of Democrats preferring
"fresh new faces" as their presidential candidates. McGovern, Jimmy
Carter, Dukakis and Bill Clinton all won the nomination on their
first attempts.
By contrast, Republicans have tended toward the "it's his turn"
approach to their White House candidates. Excluding only vice
president Richard Nixon's 1960 campaign and the historical anomaly
of Gerald Ford, George W. Bush was the first GOP presidential
candidate since Dwight Eisenhower to get the Republican nomination
on his first try.
Strong opposition from conservatives was not enough to stop Sen.
John McCain from becoming the GOP's latest "it's his turn"
candidate -- worrying many Republicans who see similarities to Sen.
Bob Dole's weak 1996 campaign.
In addition to his shaky standing with conservatives (Tom
DeLay's wife recently declared she'll vote for Libertarian candidate
Bob Barr), McCain has other obvious weaknesses. He's 71 years old,
short and bald, and seems a poor match for Obama's charismatic
personal presence.
However, the "it's his turn" approach means that McCain is
already a familiar character to independent swing voters, who
typically pay less attention to politics than do avid partisans of
either party. Such scandals as his membership in the "Keating Five"
are all old news, and it's unlikely the fall campaign will produce
any shocking revelations about the Republican. Democrats can't say
the same about the untested Obama.
Beyond McCain's shortcomings as a candidate, however, Democrats
are encouraged by numerous harbingers of an anti-Republican trend
in November. The GOP trails in fundraising, the economy is
stagnant, gas is now over $4 a gallon, more than 100,000 U.S.
troops are still in Iraq, and the potentially poisonous "wrong
direction" poll numbers are disastrously high.
YET THESE ILL omens for Republicans may have inspired in Democrats
an overconfidence that made Obama's weaknesses too easy to overlook
-- again, repeating the pattern of their previous disasters.
In August 1972, Hunter S. Thompson recalled a conversation with
McGovern campaign manager Gary Hart: "One of his central beliefs
for the past two years had been that winning the Democratic
nomination would be much harder than beating Nixon.... So
any Democratic candidate could beat Nixon, and all the
candidates knew it."
The Democrats' confidence in Obama may yet be vindicated. If
not, on Nov. 5, they'll have a new exhibit when they finally decide
to break ground on their campaign blunder Hall of Fame.
topics:
Taxes, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Islam, Iraq
