THE DAILY BLADE: Turbo-Charged Primary Season
Before your New Year’s resolutions have all been broken and forgotten, the presidential nominations could be a done deal, what with IA holding its primary January 3rd, followed in rapid succession by NH on January 8th , MI on January 15th and more than 20 states holding primaries or caucuses Feb. 5th. Reports the Los Angeles Times:
The contests in Iowa and New Hampshire - which have drawn the vast majority of the candidates' time and attention - are both exceedingly fluid, with the results in the first expected to heavily influence the outcome in the second.
The one certainty is that big states like California, Florida and Michigan will not carry the weight they sought by scheduling their contests earlier than in previous elections. "It's obvious that the disproportionate influence of Iowa and New Hampshire is alive and well, and will live in 2008," said Northeastern University political scientist William Mayer. …
In an effort to increase their importance in the nominating process, California and other states pushed their elections forward in hopes of enticing candidates to come and do more than raise money to spend in Iowa and New Hampshire. That, in turn, spurred additional states to move ahead on the calendar, resulting in a game of leapfrog that produced what amounts to a national primary on Feb. 5, and, unintentionally, more clout for the small states voting first.
"Given how front-loaded this process is, if any candidate is going to defeat the front-runner, the only way they can do it is by making a dent in Iowa and New Hampshire," said Mayer, who has written extensively on the presidential nominating process. "From the perspective of the front-runner, it's how do you protect your lead? You campaign heavily in Iowa and New Hampshire."
Someone spiked Ol’ Father Time’s Geritol with Jolt Cola, and now the campaign season has become hyperkinetic. The Stiletto doesn’t want events to overtake her by waiting until the first caucus and primary votes are actually cast, so here are her predictions: The Dem ticket will be Hillary Clinton-Bill Richardson, for reasons she already enumerated, and the Republican ticket will be Rudy Giuliani-Mike Huckabee.
Rudy benefits from radical Islam having more immediacy than abortion or other social issues amongst a surprisingly sizable number of conservatives; Giuliani benefits from Huckabee throwing a monkey wrench into Mitt Romney’s well-oiled IA machine; Huckabee has for the most part refrained from overly harsh criticism of Rudy, preferring to leave the dirty work to Romney; there is ideological balance (Giuliani is a social moderate but a fiscal conservative, Huckabee is a social conservative and a populist) and geographic balance (Northeast and South); having Huckabee on the ticket might persuade just a large enough percentage of conservatives who adamantly oppose abortion not to stay home on Election Day to give Rudy a fighting chance against Hillary; and both men are charismatic, and very quick on the draw in debates.
The one advantage of being an obscure pundit is that you can make the most improbable prognostications without worrying that people will point at you in the street and laugh if you are proven wrong. But if you are proven right, you earn your place amongst well-known (or, at least, less obscure) pundits.
New York, New York: A Two Nominee Town?
The Boston Globe reports that New Yorkers are harboring dreams of “the political equivalent of a subway series for the White House: a battle between two Empire State politicians.” Until now, New York was Nowheresville on the political map, The Globe explains:
Written off as a Democratic state, New York has received little attention from presidential candidates in recent general elections. … New York City has been used as an ATM for candidates seeking campaign cash, while upstaters have long complained that presidential contenders don't even bother to come through asking for votes.
But this year, New Yorkers believe they may be home to not just one, but two nominees, if Senator Hillary Clinton and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani win the Democratic and Republican nominations, respectively. …
Both parties have been re-energized in New York, officials say, as local and state politicians gear up in hope of sending a New Yorker to the White House for the first time since Franklin Delano Roosevelt won a fourth term in 1944. …
Hofstra University has been selected to hold a presidential debate next fall - the first one hosted by New York since 1960.
The match-up between Rudy and Hillary will also be a do-over of sorts, reports The New York Times:
In the course of three tumultuous weeks, Mr. Giuliani had been told by doctors that he had prostate cancer. He had announced he was leaving his wife after tabloids reported he was having an affair. And [on May 19, 2000] he had come to withdraw from the Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton, bringing a sudden end to what was arguably the most anticipated Senate campaign of modern times.
But the 12 months leading to Mr. Giuliani’s departure are as instructive today as they were riveting then: a blistering year of mental gamesmanship, piercing attacks, contrasts in personalities and positions, and blunders, played out by two outsize political figures in a super-heated atmosphere.
It was a year in which both Mr. Giuliani and Mrs. Clinton gained many of the political skills the nation is seeing now as they campaign for president. …
To this day, their aides quarrel over how the race would have ended had Mr. Giuliani not withdrawn. …
Mr. Giuliani’s advisers said he could have overcome the collapse of his marriage, assuming he was physically well enough to stay in. But they are not sure they could have overcome another obstacle: that Mr. Giuliani was running for a job that he did not seem to want.
Should their status as their parties’ national front-runners bear up under the actual voting in the primaries, Mr. Giuliani could get the fight against Mrs. Clinton he has been spoiling for. And this time, it is for a job that he by all appearances covets.
This time, pundits predict an uphill climb for Rudy in NY, which is one of the bluest states in the nation and hasn’t gone Republican since 1984, when Ronald Reagan ran for re-election.
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