CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER
Two clean sweeps but no clear winners
By Muhammad Cohen

HONG KONG - Make yourself comfortable. We're going to be here for a while.

Barack Obama's big wins in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC, primaries leave him slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton in the overall delegate count for the Democratic presidential nomination. The contest looks likely to continue until the Democratic convention in Denver in August.

John McCain's trifecta in those Potomac contests confirms the math that he will be the Republican nominee. But the tight contest in Virginia underlined his trouble sealing the deal.

Neither party contest is done yet, although the races are at very



different stages, for very different reasons.

Republican holdouts say McCain isn't conservative enough, citing a list of grievances from gay marriage to bipartisanism. Red meat rightwingers could make a list twice as long against Mitt Romney, whom they'd adopted as their conservative standard bearer before he quit the race. The real problem isn't the Arizona senator's positions, it's his personality.

Gipper's playbook
His win in South Carolina three weeks ago established McCain as frontrunner, giving him a chance to be gracious and rise about the fray. At the Ronald Reagan Library debate days later, the senior senator from Arizona could have taken a page from The Gipper's playbook and acted congenially aloof while following Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not attack fellow Republicans.

Instead, McCain chose to repeat the trumped up charge that Romney supported a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. The tussle highlighted McCain's extreme position on Iraq and undermined his reputation for straight talk; it also made him look unpresidentially petty and small.

Voters may respect McCain, but they don't particularly like him. All along, Mike Huckabee has been the nice guy in the Republican race. Now that the nomination is virtually settled, Republicans can comfortably cast a mild protest vote for Huckabee. It's safe to support a guy who doesn't believe in evolution as long as he can't become the nominee.

Unlike many Republican, most Democrats indicate they'd be willing vote for either one of their remaining candidates in November. But the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is nowhere near finished. The Democrats will battle into March, possibly through multiple roll calls at their convention.

Conventional wisdom says a party benefits from early selection of its nominee. Settling on a candidate gives the party a chance to coalesce around the nominee and to concentrate on fundraising for the November election. As has been the case throughout this primary season, the conventional wisdom doesn't apply.

Right stuff
For the Republicans, the challenge to McCain from Huckabee on the right is a double bonus. First, it forces McCain to reach out to portions of the conservative base prepared to reconcile with the presumptive nominee. That will help McCain with fundraising and enthusiasm, neither one a strong suit to date. More importantly, every time a Republican knuckle-walker denounces McCain, it's a net gain in general election votes from independents. Similarly, every time Bill Clinton makes a headline, it's probably a net general election loss for Democrats, no matter who gets the nomination.

The overall calculus is more complex for the Democrats and less stable. As long as it remains civil - as the Republican contest has become - competition is good for Democrats, keeping them at the top of the newscasts. Exposure was more crucial in the 2004 election, when the Democrats faced an incumbent who set the daily news agenda. But free media is welcome as long as it doesn't show anything embarrassing.

Since South Carolina, Obama and the Clintons have largely backed off on personal attacks, saving their venom for the Republicans. But the Clinton camp has persisted in playing its losing race card. Hillary Clinton tried to explain away her loss in Louisiana last weekend citing "a very strong and very proud African-American electorate" that favored Obama.

American tribal
In the divide and conquer world of the Clinton political war room, the New York senator's path to the nomination means writing off the black vote - once seen as a Clinton birthright - focusing on whites and especially women.

Viewed from the other side of the world, these tribal politics make America look familiarly like large democracies in Asia. No matter where it's practiced, these identity politics are toxic. The good news for Democrats is that Tuesday's results went against tribal splits.

In Virginia, Obama maintained his strong lead among African American voters. But Clinton and Obama split the white vote almost evenly. For the first time, Obama won a majority of white men's votes in a southern state. The Illinois senator also won nearly six of 10 women's votes in Virginia. The numbers were similar in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Sending a chill through Hillaryland, Obama won among the region's small Latino population, a key to her hopes in the Texas primary on March 4.

While the Clinton campaign is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic - deputy campaign manager Mike Henry followed campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle out the door Tuesday - it needs to rearrange strategy. Enough of trying to slice and dice demographics. Enough of touting electability in the midst of an eight state losing streak, a streak likely to reach ten in Wisconsin and Hawaii next week. Once again, it's time to let Hillary be Hillary, whatever that means.

The problem is that after more than a quarter century in public life and, like McCain, holding the mantel of presumptive party presidential nominee since the morning after the 2004 presidential vote, how many new tricks can Clinton learn? And how does she explain why she’s been saving these tricks during eight years in the White House and seven in the Senate?

Losing numbers game
While Obama is racking up the states, it's about delegates. The tight delegate count is a time bomb for Democrats in November. It's possible, though unlikely, that one candidate will lose every remaining primary and caucus yet assemble enough delegates to win the nomination. Under the rules that award delegates proportionately by state vote, it's likely that neither candidate will accumulate enough pledged delegates before the Denver convention.

That will leave the nomination to be decided behind the scenes by party insiders. That's potential suicide for the Democrats.

So-called superdelegates - elected party and public officials - will have the decision tossed into their laps. Their decision will follow a fight at the convention over seating delegates from Michigan and Florida, states that forfeited delegates for moving their primary dates against party orders. Hillary Clinton won the votes in those two states and is claiming them as victories; in Denver, she'll claim delegates.

Many assume the Clintons would dominate backroom battling, but Obama's caucus successes indicate sharp elbows on his side. The problem with a fight that hinges on delegation credentials and superdelegates isn't who will win but how they'll win. A nomination decided behind closed doors will be a poisoned chalice, no matter who gets it.

Many Democrats say they'll be put off if a candidate is chosen by superdelegates, particularly if that nominee got fewer primary and caucus votes. Republicans will have a field day chiding the backroom special interest politics of the Democrats, another example of the party's "trust me, I know better" philosophy John McCain denounced Tuesday night.

Four years ago, Democratic party chairman Howard Dean famously proved he knows how to raise his voice to change the dynamics of a nominating contest with his rant after finishing third in Iowa. Dean needs to get loud again. Whatever the rationale for superdelegates, it doesn't apply to this election. The party needs to assure voters that its nomination method won't become a handicap in a very winnable general election. They need to solve the Florida and Michigan delegation and superdelegate questions now, rather than letting the fuse burn.

The best method for apportioning the superdelegates would be to assign them based on the same proportional formula used for primary or caucus votes. Coincidentally, that's the formula favored by the Obama camp. Maybe, for the good of the party, Dean can convince the Clintons join with Obama and embrace democracy. Or they can all settle in for four years of President John McCain.

Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the world as a US Information Agency diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com), a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance and cheap lingerie.

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