OBAMA VS CLINTON-WHERE ARE THEY TAKING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

Apr 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

How much more of this can the Democrats take?

AFP

ALL democratic systems have their quirks, and America's is the electoral college, an 18th-century oddity whose principal effect is to ensure that the president is chosen not by the overall popular vote, but by the outcome in a handful of big “swing states”. These swing states now mean that Barack Obama, who has recently seemed to be cruising towards the Democratic nomination, may have a problem.

Hillary Clinton's nine-point win on April 22nd (see article) means she has bested Mr Obama in Florida, Ohio and now Pennsylvania—the three most important swing states. Electoral-college votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis, and America's politics are so finely balanced that whoever wins two of these three is more or less guaranteed the presidency. If the Democrats cannot hold Pennsylvania and move Ohio from the Republican column into their own, they can kiss the election goodbye. And the polls suggest that success in both these states would be more likely if Mrs Clinton were the nominee than if Mr Obama were. Her more solid appeal to the working-class vote is the main reason. Blue-collar workers are the crucial swing voters in the swing states, and Mr Obama, with his ranting anti-American preacher and his snooty attitude towards their guns and their God, has not yet won them over. John McCain, war hero and scourge of Washington waste, might please them more. Mrs Clinton is a polarising candidate; but Mr Obama is polarising too, in different ways.

That, at any rate, is the case that Mrs Clinton is now making to the “superdelegates”. This group of 800 senior party members must decide the nomination, since the primaries have so far given Mr Obama an inconclusive edge of only around 150 among the 3,250 elected delegates. But Mr Obama has a strong case of his own to make. For a start, he can claim victory on most metrics: he has won more delegates, more states and (just barely) more of the popular vote than Mrs Clinton, and none of these is likely to change as the primaries wind down. He is much better at raising money (her campaign is nearly broke, but he has oodles of cash on hand) and much better at appealing to independents than she is. His electioneering talents are truly exceptional, and he has not yet started to apply them against Mr McCain. Once he does so, he may well be able to shrink the Republican's ratings as surely as he shrank Mrs Clinton's, over and over again.

Take a deep breath

What all this means is that the contest will not end soon. And that is a prospect that is terrifying many senior Democrats. The longer the rivals spend explaining why the other is unelectable, the greater the chance that neither will be elected. History recounts that bitterly contested nominations usually produce losing nominees.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Yes, the candidates are being rude about each other, and some of the mud will stick. And yes, the party will need to swallow hard if it is to unite around its eventual nominee. But the prolonged race does have some compensations. It has forced the rivals to build up machinery for raising cash and mobilising voters that will stand the Democrats in good stead in November. It has given them a chance to get their messages, which are actually pretty similar, across. But by turning viciously negative (she more than he) about each other, they are now in great danger of abusing all that free publicity. Delaying a decision until the Democratic convention at the end of August therefore carries great risks. The Democrats should wait until the last primaries are held on June 3rd; then the superdelegates should declare themselves, and the matter should be settled.

Mr McCain, for his part, is starved of money and has failed to use his period of grace to put forward much in the way of convincing economic policy, his area of greatest weakness. But he has been doing a good job of persuading the Republicans—ideologically far more divided than the Democrats are—to rally behind him. If the Democrats are unable or unwilling to do the same once their long battle is over, they don't deserve the White House.