Following up on my note from yesterday about how exceptional this campaign will be, I should probably put my observation in the context in which it came to me. Which is this: a majority of Republicans still tell pollsters that they think Our Only President is doing a good job. If they, in fact, still think that Our Only President is doing a good job (and not just stubbornly putting a brave face on things for pollsters, which is certainly possible), then it will be very difficult for a candidate to win that Party’s nomination whilst criticizing Our Only President. However, since a substantial majority of the nation thinks that Our Only President has been disastrously bad, it will be very difficult for a candidate to win the general election in November of 2008 without criticizing Our Only President.
Now, the early primaries do allow a candidate to have the Party in his pocket by, say, late February or early March of 2008, giving him six full months, say, to begin to criticize the President without risk. It will be somewhat tricky to pull off without looking cynical, but then I don’t think we (the voting populace) mind that kind of cynical stuff in a candidate if we like the fellow otherwise. And as I understand it, the people who haven’t already made up their minds which Party’s candidate to vote for in the general election won’t know anything at all about the candidates until they are actually nominated at the conventions late in the summer. Or even later. So it may not be as tricky as it looks from this end.
But it occurred to me that the candidates are in an unusual position, and it turns out that they are in an unusual position, in fact, a position unique in the handful of cycles since we started choosing the nominee mostly in primaries, around 1972 or so.
This might also work out badly for the Democratic nominee, who will win the primary largely by running against Our Only President effectively, and who will have to win the election against someone else who is also running against Our Only President. You see the candidates already attempting to tie the Mayor, the Senator and the Governor to Our Only President and his policies, but of course this won’t work in the public eye because (a) it’s too early for people to be paying attention, and (2) the Mayor, the Senator and the Governor are very clearly not the President, and each have a substantial history of opposing Our Only President on both substantial issues and general principles in the past. Oh, they’re obscuring it now, somewhat, but it’s there. Remember that the Senator was discussed as a potential vice-Presidential nominee for the Democrats four years ago, voted against the President on several budget and tax issues, and led a bipartisan (vaddevah dat means) effort to, well, get Our Only President’s unbelievably bad judge nominations through the Senate. But it was a maverick move, everybody said so. As for the pro-gay, pro-choice, pro-immigrant New Yorker, he didn’t support Our Only President in 2000, nor did he show anything but contempt for the national Republican Party up until sometime late in 2001. Mid-September, I think it was. And the Governor ran against the national Republican Party twice in Massachusetts.
I think if one of those white men wins the nomination, it will be very hard indeed for my party to persuade people that he will just be another four years of the same. Which is what makes it so hard for any of them to win the nomination.
Wouldn’t it be easier if they just put Dick Cheney in charge of a committee to choose the nominee? It worked so well the last time.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.