Counting the days | Blogblah!!!

Only one more year until President Bush leaves the White House.

365 days.

It’s not soon enough for me.

We have a disasterous war in Iraq, Pakistan in shambles, Bush took a tin cup to the Mideast and came back with nothing but stupid photo ops, Darfur goes on, North Korea is digging in its heels, is there a single point in foreign policy where this president can claim even a tie?

At home, it seems clear we’re headed into a recession. All those years of voodoo economics are coming home to roost and the home is being foreclosed. Housing starts are disasterously down, unemployment up.

So, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009?

Well, on the Dem side, Sen. Clinton is up by about 8 points in the national polls compared to Sen. Obama and Mr. Edwards. She trails Obama by 5-10 percentage points in South Carolina right this second, but she leads him by double digits in the big states that follow on Feb. 5 Tsunami Tuesday. The Nevada caucus reporting confounds me, in a way; Sen. Clinton was up by 20 points just about three months ago and it’s a big victory for her to split the delegates in a 6 point win? Seems like Obama covered the spread to me, but then I’m not a big time New York salsa.

I think if she manages to corner Obama into being “the black candidate” in South Carolina, she’s won the war even if she loses the battle. (P.S. I’m not the only one.)

On the GOP side, Sen. McCain pulled out another “comeback” victory in South Carolina’s Republican straw poll last night while Romney made deserting the field in the South look like a win by trouncing the Quixotic Ron Paul in Nevada.

After this, however, McCain’s road goes rocky and steep, in part because there are no more “open” primaries when his independent vote can make up the difference between his party supporters and the Huckabee evangelicals and the Romney fiscal conservatives.

Just to show how f-‘d up the GOP is, Fred Thompson couldn’t figure out how to quit last night, to the laughter of MSNBC’s commentariat and backstage crew. Just how much competence does it take to lose?

Head to head, all three Democratic Party contenders beat the GOP field EXCEPT for McCain. McCain beats Clinton 4% and Obama 1.7%. Even Edwards beats Huckabee, Thompson, Guiliani and Romney by double digits.

As you know, I back Obama. Nevertheless, I think it looks like Hillary will lead a somewhat divided Democratic Party in November.

I’m even less qualified to guess about the Republicans, but I’m taking the kool aid and guessing Romney. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and he’s got it. McCain will, like the old soldier he is, fade away. Guiliani will have no choice but to take out Huckabee in Florida and he will do it by a focus on the Arkansas governor’s silly “fair tax” proposal. Guiliani’s only shot is to take out someone and Huckabee, underfinanced, is the most likely now that Thompson and Duncan Hunter are gone. Romney, meanwhile, has to take out McCain or Guiliani; in Florida, McCain is the better target. Huckabee and McCain will hang in through Feb. 5, but neither one has the stones for a national campaign in 22 states.

Bloomberg will not run an independent campaign. The New York City press needs to just get over it.

While I’m “taking out” people, I think Obama (and Clinton to a lesser degree) may think about taking out Edwards in South Carolina. Recently, Russ Feingold noted that Edwards voted for the Patriot Act and now campaigns against it; voted for the Iraq war authorization, but now campaigns against it; voted for … you get the picture: “flip and flop”. It’s a perilous gameplan. Who are the Edwards supporters going to support once he’s out? Some significant portion of those voters are ABC: Anybody But Clinton. Some significant portion of those voters are mainline, FDR Democrats who like his populist economic appeals and will go with the “establishment” liberal candidate, Clinton. Obama faces the McCain problem: no more “open” primaries where independents can jump in and give him a push over the top. He NEEDS mainline Democrats to be a success, even if more of them go to Hillary in the short run. However, the two person race is better for Obama than a three way going forward. How do you take Edwards out without looking nasty and hateful and repulsing the very voters you want to gain? About the only way I see for Obama after S.C. is if Hillary’s campaign gets greedy and goes after Edwards for that short term split of his votes in her favor, going for a take out of Obama on Feb. 5. I do not think that will happen; her campaign is too good and in too good a long term position and all she needs to do is nothing.

Obama is down 20-30 points in polls in the big states of N.Y., Calif., N.J. It won’t stay that way, he’ll make up a lot of ground between now and Feb. 5. But, it’s like being down 3 touchdowns in the fourth quarter; you can make the game look a lot closer but you can very rarely win. One small, but perhaps vital, grace note for Obama: in Nevada, he started doing something Hillary just can not do — having a laugh at politics. Responding to a red-faced and angry Bill Clinton, Obama said: “He was a lot nicer to me when I was 20 points down.” Obama did everything but a stand up comedy routine about Hillary the night before the Nevada caucus. A kind word turns away wrath and if he can keep that up, it will make Sen. Clinton look like the “bitch” her detractors insist on saying she is without sullying his mythical image in the minds of his supporters as a “new wave” movement guru. Since I’m one of the kool-aid drinking Obama “movement” supporters, it’s what I want most: a return to “cool”. The more likeable he seems, the less warm and nuturing Hillary seems. In the end, that’s how I think most voters choose: with their “guts” and not their heads.

Here, is what I think is the number one reason to vote AGAINST Sen. Clinton. (the speaker in the video is David Brooks, conservative commentator for the New York Times)

I don’t have a video, but today, Obama spoke at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The link takes you to his speech, given from King’s former pulpit. It’s my reason for supporting him this week. (If you really want to watch the 45 minute video, you can find it at cspan.org.)

Well, as Ring Lardner Jr. once remarked, “the race is not always to the swift, the fight not always to the strong, but that’s the way the smart money bets.” I like Obama, but if I had real money on the deal, it would be on Hillary. Same on the GOP side. I like McCain, but if I had to bet, it would be a bet on Romney’s money and good looks.

All that means that my look ahead a year brings me to the conclusion that as a nation we will be deeply divided next Jan. 20 and have another squeaker of an election next November between a very rich hedge fund manager and the most polarizing figure in the Democratic Party.

New Year’s Resolution:

I will not obsess about politics.

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