John McCain, the consumptive Republican nominee is making history, too, just like Clinton and Obama. Should the unspeakable come to pass and McCain be elected president, he would, at age 72, be the oldest president to assume office.
So add to the historic 2008 US presidential election and the first black nominee of a major party, and the first woman to seriously compete for a major party’s nomination, McCain’s age, even if it is frequently the subject of quite a bit of mirth from the late night talk show hosts and considered a disadvantage by most politicians and pundits.
McCain obviously is worried about his age, too, frequently trotting out his 94-year-old mother to feature his good bloodlines and his own relative youth. On at least one occasion, he has spoken about the importance of choosing a vice president qualified to assume the presidency, even hinting at the possibility McCain might be a one-term president. And, of course, there are few Democrats who don’t relish the idea of contrasting the slim and youthful Obama with the ghastly complexioned, hoary-headed McCain.
But in reality McCain’s age may not be such a drawback. Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became president and, despite the fact he was probably senile some of the time, served two terms and currently enjoys a major place in the Republican party’s hagiography. Remember when Reagan famously said in a debate with Mondale in the ’84 election that he would not “exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience”? McCain isn’t that clever but he is certain to showcase his years of experience while mercilessly attacking Obama’s lack of the same. And if the Iraq war goes sideways anymore than it has already, security becomes a more prominent issue through new terrorist attacks, or Iran spins out of control, McCain’s experience and even if his age could become an advantage.
And consider this: the US Census Bureau in its latest published report on population projections for the U.S, projected that post-World War II baby boomers in their 50s would increase 12 million from 1996-2006, to about 38 million, a figure that represents more than half of the country’s total population growth over this period (the latest Census Bureau figures from 1995-2006 show an actual increase of a little more than 13 million over this period). See http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/reports.html.
And the 85 and over crowd? According to the report, this group is expected to double in size from 1996-2025, and increase a whopping fivefold by 2050. With figures like these McCain’s mom could run and have a chance.
This is all a little tongue-in-cheek and the explosive growth in especially the 85 and older crowd will occur after McCain’s presidential fate is decided and, despite the increases, there still won't be that many octogenarians. That said, McCain's age isn’t much of a liability. We are aging as a population as the Census Bureau numbers attest and boomers especially will by their sheer numbers, education and all the other things that make boomers boomers, already are expanding our notion of what older people can do. It isn’t for nothing that all of the nightly news programs have advertisements for denture cleaners, adult diapers, drugs for ED and the like. McCain isn't himself a boomer but close enough that especially old voters--boomers born just after the war and those closer to McCain's age--may identify more with McCain than a younger candiate.
And with blacks and women able to pour their hopes and dreams into Obama and Clinton, why shouldn’t the Geritol crowd or the soon-to-be Geritol crowd, too, have someone they can look to?
So if McCain will just stop acting like an old poop—grimacing at the cameras, using terms like “my friends,” over and over again when addressing crowds, and winking lasciviously in the glare of the media lights—he could even be seen as part of the Zeitgeist, embodying the spirit of this rapidly aging time, or at least making a potential liability into something else.
McCain’s got a lot of friends or potential friends, at any rate. All he has to do now is make sure he doesn’t put them to sleep.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Courting Women or Courting Disaster: Obama and the General Election
The Democratic primary contests ended last night with a little bit of a surprise when Hillary Clinton won South Dakota, a state that most people didn’t think she was likely to win. Obama, though, won Montana, as expected, and, more important, became the Democrats' presumptive nominee when about 30 uncommitted superdelegates declared for him after the close of both primaries. This is an exciting time for any Democrat but especially for black voters who helped elect Obama as the first black nominee of any major party in the history of this country.
As exciting and meaningful as this is, it has become patently clear over the last month or so of the campaign that another group of voters has poured their hopes and dreams into Hillary Clinton with the same passion, urgency, and sense of expectation that blacks have done with Obama.
They are women, of course, and especially older women. They’ve made their presence felt throughout the campaign as the largest bloc of voters and many have supported Clinton from the beginning of the campaign. But they have become particularly energized in recent weeks, not only turning out in droves to hear Clinton speak but to vote in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and, last night, South Dakota. The crowds have been huge, raucous, and there has been, late in the campaign, an energy that wasn’t there in the past. Increasingly, women voters also appear to be furious at the perception that Obama, the media, and the Democratic National Committee are conspiring to prevent Clinton from getting the Party’s nomination.
A lot of people, me included, have largely overlooked this phenomenon or at least the extent of women’s passion for Clinton and what it means for the general election, focusing more on a race, working class voters, Keith Olbermann’s hairpiece or something other than gender.
A recent example of Clinton supporters’ passion was on display at last Saturday’s meeting of the Democratic Party’s rules committee that seemed to me, at the time, just kind of curious and even silly.
As the committee heard arguments on seating the Florida and Michigan delegates that the DNC had stripped from each state’s slate as punishment for flouting the DNC’s primary calendar, many of Clinton’s supporters inside the DC hotel where the committee met frequently shouted and tried to interrupt when representatives for Obama argued against seating all delegates at full strength or said anything that did not recognize fully, or “fairly reflect,” in the apportioning of delegates HC’s vote totals in each state. Many others protested outside.
There was, thus, much hue and cry when the rules committee not only gave the “uncommitted” Michigan vote to Obama, who was not on the ballot in state, and, even worse, gave him an additional four delegates that were seemingly conjured out of the thin air of advance polls, eye of newt, and lord knows what else. During the day-long meeting there was at least one scuffle when a woman supporting Clinton pushed an Obama supporter. Others were led from the building when they became particularly loud and disruptive.
As I said, I didn’t give the hullabaloo much thought at the time. But not much later, when my wife, with whom I talk about all kinds of things and probably politics more than anything, became herself so furious at Hillary Clinton’s fate that she threw a plate of pasta across the room, shattering it in a million pieces, I took notice. Like many other women I have spoken with recently, my wife looks at Clinton as someone who had not only had to fight to be taken seriously because of her gender, or is frequently critiqued on her appearance, emotion or just about anything other than her abilities, but as someone who would both symbolically break through the glass ceiling thereby aiding others in getting through it as well. And, with the plate as testament, she, like a lot of other women, feels passionately about Clinton and what she represents, and to an extent that not even I was aware.
In other words, women’s reactions to Clinton’s candidacy are just as strong as many blacks’ feelings for Obama’s and based on similarly deep-seated experiences of discrimination, humiliation, and the knowledge that many avenues in life may be narrowed or closed altogether simply because of one’s race or gender . These two camps, while not at war exactly, have an awful lot vested in this election, aside from the specific political policies and changes each candidate would bring to Washington. They also have lot in common.
Because Obama is for all intents and purposes the nominee now, it is he, though, who will have to deal with the passion of women voters scorned and it is he who will have to make clear how much Democrats have in common, whether they are Clinton or Obama supporters. He certainly seems exactly the man to get people to step out of their own skins some and, indeed, the foundation of his campaign is all about bringing disparate groups together. So where better to start than the Democratic party?
More concretely, Obama simply cannot afford to lose especially those women voters over 40. If he does he will have no chance of winning the election. Because I believe that Obama is keenly aware of this and, more important, very aware of both his strengths and weaknesses with voters in other demographic groups he will have to acquire in the general election, I think he will move very soon to make Hillary Clinton his choice for vice president.
It won’t be a popular move for most Clinton supporters or Obama supporters at first, but just as Obama was way ahead of the curve in assessing both potential voters and the ins and outs of the Democratic primary obstacle course, it will be the right move, and the one most likely to draw together the powerful but fractured constituencies that are so crucial to a Democratic victory in November.
Consider it one of his first tests of the general election.
As exciting and meaningful as this is, it has become patently clear over the last month or so of the campaign that another group of voters has poured their hopes and dreams into Hillary Clinton with the same passion, urgency, and sense of expectation that blacks have done with Obama.
They are women, of course, and especially older women. They’ve made their presence felt throughout the campaign as the largest bloc of voters and many have supported Clinton from the beginning of the campaign. But they have become particularly energized in recent weeks, not only turning out in droves to hear Clinton speak but to vote in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and, last night, South Dakota. The crowds have been huge, raucous, and there has been, late in the campaign, an energy that wasn’t there in the past. Increasingly, women voters also appear to be furious at the perception that Obama, the media, and the Democratic National Committee are conspiring to prevent Clinton from getting the Party’s nomination.
A lot of people, me included, have largely overlooked this phenomenon or at least the extent of women’s passion for Clinton and what it means for the general election, focusing more on a race, working class voters, Keith Olbermann’s hairpiece or something other than gender.
A recent example of Clinton supporters’ passion was on display at last Saturday’s meeting of the Democratic Party’s rules committee that seemed to me, at the time, just kind of curious and even silly.
As the committee heard arguments on seating the Florida and Michigan delegates that the DNC had stripped from each state’s slate as punishment for flouting the DNC’s primary calendar, many of Clinton’s supporters inside the DC hotel where the committee met frequently shouted and tried to interrupt when representatives for Obama argued against seating all delegates at full strength or said anything that did not recognize fully, or “fairly reflect,” in the apportioning of delegates HC’s vote totals in each state. Many others protested outside.
There was, thus, much hue and cry when the rules committee not only gave the “uncommitted” Michigan vote to Obama, who was not on the ballot in state, and, even worse, gave him an additional four delegates that were seemingly conjured out of the thin air of advance polls, eye of newt, and lord knows what else. During the day-long meeting there was at least one scuffle when a woman supporting Clinton pushed an Obama supporter. Others were led from the building when they became particularly loud and disruptive.
As I said, I didn’t give the hullabaloo much thought at the time. But not much later, when my wife, with whom I talk about all kinds of things and probably politics more than anything, became herself so furious at Hillary Clinton’s fate that she threw a plate of pasta across the room, shattering it in a million pieces, I took notice. Like many other women I have spoken with recently, my wife looks at Clinton as someone who had not only had to fight to be taken seriously because of her gender, or is frequently critiqued on her appearance, emotion or just about anything other than her abilities, but as someone who would both symbolically break through the glass ceiling thereby aiding others in getting through it as well. And, with the plate as testament, she, like a lot of other women, feels passionately about Clinton and what she represents, and to an extent that not even I was aware.
In other words, women’s reactions to Clinton’s candidacy are just as strong as many blacks’ feelings for Obama’s and based on similarly deep-seated experiences of discrimination, humiliation, and the knowledge that many avenues in life may be narrowed or closed altogether simply because of one’s race or gender . These two camps, while not at war exactly, have an awful lot vested in this election, aside from the specific political policies and changes each candidate would bring to Washington. They also have lot in common.
Because Obama is for all intents and purposes the nominee now, it is he, though, who will have to deal with the passion of women voters scorned and it is he who will have to make clear how much Democrats have in common, whether they are Clinton or Obama supporters. He certainly seems exactly the man to get people to step out of their own skins some and, indeed, the foundation of his campaign is all about bringing disparate groups together. So where better to start than the Democratic party?
More concretely, Obama simply cannot afford to lose especially those women voters over 40. If he does he will have no chance of winning the election. Because I believe that Obama is keenly aware of this and, more important, very aware of both his strengths and weaknesses with voters in other demographic groups he will have to acquire in the general election, I think he will move very soon to make Hillary Clinton his choice for vice president.
It won’t be a popular move for most Clinton supporters or Obama supporters at first, but just as Obama was way ahead of the curve in assessing both potential voters and the ins and outs of the Democratic primary obstacle course, it will be the right move, and the one most likely to draw together the powerful but fractured constituencies that are so crucial to a Democratic victory in November.
Consider it one of his first tests of the general election.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Democratic Campaign 2008: More on the Rules Committee’s Decisions
On the day of the Democratic rules committee decision to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates I wrote that despite the arbitrary way they dealt with especially Michigan, each candidate got something—Obama an end to the last real obstacles to his nomination and Clinton more support for the argument that she has won nearly all the big states and the swing states, and, thus is more electible in November and, for any superdelegate who may still be listening, a legitimate claim that she is ahead in the popular vote.
I want to look a little closer at Hillary Clinton’s victory, such as it is, and explain what I meant, especially with respect to including Michigan as part of the popular vote.
Leave aside the fact that only Chris Dodd’s name was on the Michigan ballot in addition to Clinton’s and that Clinton ended up with 55 percent of the votes and 40 percent went to “uncommitted.”
Disregard that in awarding 69 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama (Both these figures must be halved because the rules committee docked them this much as punishment for each state’s ignoring the DNC’s primary calendar),the Democratic witches and warlocks threw into the bubbling cauldron a rough approximation based on Clinton’s vote, advance polls indicating how many votes each candidate would receive, and, more than likely, the eye of a toad in order to conjure the supernatural delegate totals.
Forget that the rules committee’s treatment of Michigan makes a mockery of the notion that every vote should be counted.
Because, despite the fuzzy math and the paranormal tricks, thanks to the rules committee, Clinton can claim victory not only in these states, but legitimately count the popular vote in each, something heretofore thought pretty much inconceivable, given the fact that the DNC itself, with the agreement of both Clinton and Obama, had taken these states off the table.
In a way only Clinton can do, she is slicing and dicing this measure in extraordinary ways though to what end, as she has almost no chance of winning at this point, is unclear. As of Saturday, Clinton was saying with a face made nearly straight by the rules committee’s decisions that day that she was beating Obama in the popular vote although almost no one in the media or anywhere other than the Clinton campaign was saying this.
How did she get there? She included the votes she received in both Florida and Michigan, tossed out several of the caucuses Obama won because no official vote tallies were kept and, despite the rules committee’s awarding him nearly half the delegates in Michigan, gave zero popular votes in Michigan to Obama because, she said, he wasn’t on the ballot. All of which could be considered at once technically correct, ham-handed, duplicitous, and vintage Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s ads in Montana and South Dakota, the final primaries, in this long strange trip, tout the popular vote lead, and her advisor, Howard Ickes, was all over the news on Sunday telling Meet the Press’ Tim Russert and anyone else who would listen that Clinton was ahead in the popular vote.
Clinton’s manipulations and self-serving representations of the popular vote totals is pretty preposterous even by her standards given that she at least tacitly agreed, along with many others, with the DNC’s asinine penalty to strip Florida and Michigan of all delegates when she signed a pledge with the states of Iowa and New Hampshire not to campaign in the upstart states. However, you can’t blame her for doing this any more than you can blame Obama for essentially blackmailing the superdelegates to vote for him and not overturn the will of the people, or that is, anyway, the will of the people as represented by the number of pledged delegates even though the number separating him and Clinton could be around 100 or so when the final primaries come to an end tomorrow. Obama’s argument is given teeth that it wouldn’t otherwise have because so many of his supporters are black and the party cannot risk alienating such a stalwart and important element of its base.
The DNC, its rules committee, and leaders such as DNC Chair, Howard Dean, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, have encouraged these shenanigans. It was bad enough that they only too happily disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan—two states that are crucial to Democrats chances in the general election—or for Pelosi to say, as she and nearly every other Democratic leader has done, that the superdelegates should not overturn the pledged delegates, no matter how thin the margin separating the candidates. But for the DNC to come up with the hare-brained apportionment of delegates in Michigan based on partial votes and the will of the rules committee instead of Michigan primary voters has too many echoes of rigged elections and the nightmarish incompetence in Florida in the 2000 general election.
The DNC has one hell of a lot to answer for this time around but to paraphrase Keith Olbermann of MSNBC who used the phrase to excoriate Hillary Clinton for her RFK assassination comments recently, there is one thing for which we cannot forgive the DNC. We cannot forgive that after this primary election, just like Bush’s infamous victory over Gore in 2000, an awful lot of people will have reason to believe that the 2008 Democratic election process was unfair and that the nominee of the Party, whether Clinton, or as is likely the case, Obama, may be illegitimate.
It just doesn’t get any worse than this when it comes to elections and the result, as it frequently is in such situations, is likely to be as disastrous for Democrats as it was in 2000.
I want to look a little closer at Hillary Clinton’s victory, such as it is, and explain what I meant, especially with respect to including Michigan as part of the popular vote.
Leave aside the fact that only Chris Dodd’s name was on the Michigan ballot in addition to Clinton’s and that Clinton ended up with 55 percent of the votes and 40 percent went to “uncommitted.”
Disregard that in awarding 69 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama (Both these figures must be halved because the rules committee docked them this much as punishment for each state’s ignoring the DNC’s primary calendar),the Democratic witches and warlocks threw into the bubbling cauldron a rough approximation based on Clinton’s vote, advance polls indicating how many votes each candidate would receive, and, more than likely, the eye of a toad in order to conjure the supernatural delegate totals.
Forget that the rules committee’s treatment of Michigan makes a mockery of the notion that every vote should be counted.
Because, despite the fuzzy math and the paranormal tricks, thanks to the rules committee, Clinton can claim victory not only in these states, but legitimately count the popular vote in each, something heretofore thought pretty much inconceivable, given the fact that the DNC itself, with the agreement of both Clinton and Obama, had taken these states off the table.
In a way only Clinton can do, she is slicing and dicing this measure in extraordinary ways though to what end, as she has almost no chance of winning at this point, is unclear. As of Saturday, Clinton was saying with a face made nearly straight by the rules committee’s decisions that day that she was beating Obama in the popular vote although almost no one in the media or anywhere other than the Clinton campaign was saying this.
How did she get there? She included the votes she received in both Florida and Michigan, tossed out several of the caucuses Obama won because no official vote tallies were kept and, despite the rules committee’s awarding him nearly half the delegates in Michigan, gave zero popular votes in Michigan to Obama because, she said, he wasn’t on the ballot. All of which could be considered at once technically correct, ham-handed, duplicitous, and vintage Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s ads in Montana and South Dakota, the final primaries, in this long strange trip, tout the popular vote lead, and her advisor, Howard Ickes, was all over the news on Sunday telling Meet the Press’ Tim Russert and anyone else who would listen that Clinton was ahead in the popular vote.
Clinton’s manipulations and self-serving representations of the popular vote totals is pretty preposterous even by her standards given that she at least tacitly agreed, along with many others, with the DNC’s asinine penalty to strip Florida and Michigan of all delegates when she signed a pledge with the states of Iowa and New Hampshire not to campaign in the upstart states. However, you can’t blame her for doing this any more than you can blame Obama for essentially blackmailing the superdelegates to vote for him and not overturn the will of the people, or that is, anyway, the will of the people as represented by the number of pledged delegates even though the number separating him and Clinton could be around 100 or so when the final primaries come to an end tomorrow. Obama’s argument is given teeth that it wouldn’t otherwise have because so many of his supporters are black and the party cannot risk alienating such a stalwart and important element of its base.
The DNC, its rules committee, and leaders such as DNC Chair, Howard Dean, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, have encouraged these shenanigans. It was bad enough that they only too happily disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan—two states that are crucial to Democrats chances in the general election—or for Pelosi to say, as she and nearly every other Democratic leader has done, that the superdelegates should not overturn the pledged delegates, no matter how thin the margin separating the candidates. But for the DNC to come up with the hare-brained apportionment of delegates in Michigan based on partial votes and the will of the rules committee instead of Michigan primary voters has too many echoes of rigged elections and the nightmarish incompetence in Florida in the 2000 general election.
The DNC has one hell of a lot to answer for this time around but to paraphrase Keith Olbermann of MSNBC who used the phrase to excoriate Hillary Clinton for her RFK assassination comments recently, there is one thing for which we cannot forgive the DNC. We cannot forgive that after this primary election, just like Bush’s infamous victory over Gore in 2000, an awful lot of people will have reason to believe that the 2008 Democratic election process was unfair and that the nominee of the Party, whether Clinton, or as is likely the case, Obama, may be illegitimate.
It just doesn’t get any worse than this when it comes to elections and the result, as it frequently is in such situations, is likely to be as disastrous for Democrats as it was in 2000.
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