Election 2008

As we await Republican results in South Carolina, it’s not too soon to draw a few conclusions from today’s Nevada caucuses.

In a close race, Hillary Clinton and her supporters found ways to scramble and fight for every vote.  When the Culinary Union endorsed Obama, Clinton supporters were quick to fight back with a legal challenge to holding caucuses at some of the major casinos along the Las Vegas strip where Union workers work.  It didn’t matter that the challenge failed — it was a news story and occasioned a hot-tempered sound bite from Bill Clinton that was played again and again.  Hillary’s campaign did a much better job mobilizing Latino voters (about a quarter of the electorate).  I saw very few Spanish-speaking campaign workers for Obama.  Finally, in a tactical lapse, Obama made an innocuous but nonetheless favorable remark about Ronald Reagan two days ago that Clinton supporters quickly attacked.
The Latino vote will also be key in several primary states holding votes on February 5, including California, and Obama will need to do a much better job of reaching out to Latinos in order to be competitive.  The youth vote, as I’ve mentioned, will also be key.

Mitt Romney’s easy victory in the Republican caucuses gives him co-bragging rights for the next news cycle.  The news from South Carolina will diminish his Nevada victory.  For a while longer, the Republican race is three-man race.

Leaving Las Vegas yesterday, I gathered some of the leaflets that candidates are distributing to prospective caucus-goers.  One leaflet for Barack Obama focused squarely on foreign affairs with the following headline:

In 2008, We need a New President who can

Restore Our Standing in the World

By coincidence or design, Sen. Leahy used almost these exact words to describe his motivation in announcing today his support for Sen. Obama.  The leaflet goes on to describe how Obama was “Right on Iraq… Right on Diplomacy… Right on Pakistan… and Right on Leadership…”  This message was directed at more affluent Nevadans, concerned about the U.S. role and image in the world.  Less affluent Nevadans were more likely to get hand-outs focused on the domestic economy, mortgage crisis, health insurance and education.

Since the inception of their candidacies, both Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates have tried to recruit their party’s foreign policy elite. The candidates took a land-grab approach, seeking top foreign policy scholars and elite names to tout on the campaign trail, all because advisors matter, at least in optics if not in substance.

Among the leading Democrats, however, support from the foreign policy establishment is absolutely about substance. The Democratic foreign policy elite have split advisers between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, largely based upon of the one international issue that significantly divides the candidates: their history on the war in Iraq. As the rhetoric goes, Hillary Clinton voted in the Senate to permit George W. Bush to invade Iraq, while Obama “voted against the war”. Many specialists who were hawkish in 2003 have sided with Clinton; those opposed, with Obama, no matter whether they worked for President Bill Clinton in the 90s. Names like Brzezinkski, Daalder, Anthony Lake, and Susan Rice have taken to Obama. Clinton advisors include Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Gen. Wesley Clark, Richard Holbrooke, and Leslie Gelb. Clinton welcomed many veterans of her husband’s Administration, who ere towards the moderate, established wing of the party.

There is another element that divides the advisors to Obama and Clinton, and it is less evident in the candidates’ policy decisions than in their birth certificates. A generational gap exists between many advisors to Obama and Clinton. The younger Obama, 46, has attracted support from some of the younger generation of policy specialists. Samantha Power, for example, is a 38-year old Harvard Professor best known for her advocacy on Darfur. Also of her generation and an Obama supporter is Sarah Sewall, now a Professor at Harvard after having worked in the Defense Department and as a specialist on counterinsurgency and terrorism. While perhaps not the majority of his supporters, Obama claims a new generation of foreign policy experts to his side, many of whom are part of a post-Baby Boomer era. (more…)

Las Vegas — What best motivates voters? In both Michigan, where Romney easily beat McCain today, and in the current Democratic battlegrounds, the answer seems to be the economy. In the Republican approach, Romney’s business background gave him an opportunity to project himself as the man best able to fight for jobs in economically depressed Michigan. Meanwhile, according to the Democratic story line, the Bush Administration has led the country into recession and only the Democrats can cushion ordinary families and help the country rebound.

Immigration, energy policy and terrorism were raised by NBC’s questioners on tonight’s Democratic debate, but the three remaining Democrats dwelled most of the time on the sour economic news of late. Hillary Clinton deftly inserted references to having talked to out-of-work Nevadans and promoted an economics “Town Hall” she will hold here tomorrow. John Edwards invoked once again the specter of special interests and rapacious corporations. Barack Obama drew a line back to lobbyists who fought to create the sub-prime mortgage market, he said, and now seek protection from its consequences. All told, it was not a pretty economic picture, although the city outside is America’s premier boomtown.

One is reminded of John Kennedy’s quip after his first briefings as President that things were just as bad as he said they were. We are at a point when the forecasts are not good and a number of candidates may benefit.

At least the racially charged comments of recent days have been publicly dispensed with. Now we only have the economy (and terrorists and special interests) to worry about.

LAS VEGAS — In the closely contested race for the Democratic nomination, two vastly different votes this Saturday — in South Carolina and Nevada — are clearly critical.  Officially, South Carolina-born John Edwards is still in the race, but his comments and his support seem to moving toward Barack Obama.  Here in Nevada, holding its first-ever caucus, Obama has the same advantage he had in Iowa — caucus participants whose candidate fails to garner 15 percent support at a given caucus meeting can vote for a second choice.  Edwards supporters may end up throwing their support to Obama.  Another key advantage is that Nevada voters can register to vote — or even change their party affiliation — on caucus day.  This plays to Obama’s advantage among independents.  Meanwhile, in South Carolina, which has been holding a presidential primary since 1980, Obama’s advantage appears to be the large African-American population.
But the biggest factor may well be age — or more precisely, youth.  Some first-time voters this year were still in junior high school when Bill Clinton left the White House.  The successes and failures of the Clinton White House — and Hillary’s role in them — are only dimly perceived.  What resonates among this youthful cohort is Obama’s youth and not Hillary’s experience.   The small army of young volunteers now combing Nevada to get supporters to the caucus on Saturday — along with the Culinary Workers Union members that man the gigantic casinos downtown — are Obama’s chief organizers here.  How well they turn out the youth vote may determine the outcome of this momentous contest.

In case you missed it over the weekend, the Economist has a worthwhile read in its cover story “Up in the air”:

Everything is up in the air. That is not just because this is the most open election in America since 1928 (the last time that no incumbent president or vice-president was in the race); it is because Americans don’t really know what they want. Sure, they are desperate for “change”: with the economy reeling, politics gridlocked, young people dying in Iraq and the Bush administration a global byword for callous incompetence, huge numbers of Americans have long believed their country is on the wrong track. But what sort of change? And who can deliver it?

We have not given much air time on this blog to the campaign of Congressman Ron Paul, for better or worse. Formerly a libertarian, Ron Paul believes in strictly limited government, limited foreign policy objectives, and the reinstitution of the gold standard in the international economy. While his positions may be somewhat misaligned with the mainstream of Americans, his internet following is viral and he has raised millions of dollars. A critical mass of voters certainly share his opinions.

In last night’s debate Paul put into historical context the recent stand-off between Iranian and American naval groups at sea, a reference that stood apart from the television-ready polemic. From NPR:

Paul likened the incident to the Gulf of Tonkin engagement that was used as a justification for expanded military action in Vietnam.

“Let’s put it into perspective. We have five small speedboats attacking the U.S. Navy with a destroyer. They could take care of those speedboats in about five seconds. And here we’re ready to start World War III over this?” Paul asked.

The comparison of the war in Iraq to Vietnam has been made before, but it’s interesting to hear such a reference in a debate among prospective leaders of the Republican party, which until not long ago, lauded neoconservatism as its predominant foreign policy dogma. Whether Ron Paul’s debate performances and fundraising are enough to lead him to the nomination is quite another story.

Tonight’s Republican debate exposed the continuing dilemma facing Republicans on national security. On the one hand, many Republicans have misgivings about the conduct and cost of the U.S. military engagement in SW Asia; on the other, any candidate who offers an extended critique of the Bush Administration’s Iraq/Afghanistan/War on Terrorism policies risks being labeled a turncoat. Fred Thompson attacked Mike Huckabee on those grounds tonight in South Carolina. He charged that that Huckabee “would be a Christian leader, but he would bring about liberal economic policies and liberal foreign policies.” Huckabee’s “liberal” foreign policies presumably arose from his concerns about the prison at Guantanamo Bay and his earlier rebuke of the Bush Administration for “arrogance” in the conduct of foreign affairs. “That’s not the model of the Reagan Coalition,” Thompson charged, “that’s the model of the Democratic Party.”

Equally problematic — for Democrats — are instances when their candidates have seemed to agree with President Bush’s foreign policy, particularly re Iraq and Iran.

Neither lockstep Republican support not unflinching Democratic criticism of the current Administration is to be much admired. It’s too convenient. In foreign affairs, at least, policies are seldom static, and the way they are executed is often as important as the policies themselves.

The personalities and dispositions of the foreign policy teams behind the candidates also matter a great deal. Writing in The Nation, Ari Berman gives a thorough account of the differences between the Obama and Clinton foreign policy teams. A useful guide.

No one has convincingly explained the remarkable discrepancy between the New Hampshire polls that predicted a comfortable win for Barack Obama, and the primary results that gave Hillary Clinton a 7,000 vote victory. Some media said it was Hillary’s teary-eyed moment on election eve that garnered her added support. Robert Novak and a few others speculated that overwhelmingly white New Hampshire had second thoughts about voting for an African-American. The Economist wondered whether independents may have decided to vote in the Republican primary when it appeared that Obama had the Democratic race well in hand.

The real reason/s may never be clearly understood, but the results are unmistakable. By calculation or accident, Hillary has new momentum and money and Obama is under pressure to produce wins in Nevada and South Carolina on January 19th — the only Democratic votes before the massive, 21-state raft of primaries on February 5.

Also, the only remaining Democratic candidate with a resume emphasizing foreign policy — New Mexico Governor and former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson — has dropped out of the race. This could help Obama a bit in Nevada, where a growing Hispanic population might be expected to favor Richardson. In Iowa, Richardson allowed his caucus supporters to list Obama as their second choice. Could he again assist Obama behind the scenes?

John Edwards and Barack Obama’s fates are now linked: Obama’s best chance of beating Hillary on Super Tuesday is if Edwards does poorly in South Carolina (his birthplace) and Nevada and then decides to drop out. Edwards’ supporters would probably turn to Obama, just as Edwards himself demonstrably supported Obama against Clinton in last Saturday’s televised debate. This cannot for tactical reasons be discussed by either man or their followers. (Edwards’ defense of Obama during the last debate provoked some sympathy for Clinton.) Nonetheless, it may well become apparent in the next two weeks that the only way for Clinton not to become the Democratic candidate is for one of her two remaining opponents to drop out of the race.

A handy little graphic in the Wall Street Journal tells the primary story better than most of the analyses. We are in the end game quite early on both the Democratic and Republican sides. If, on the Republican side, Mitt Romney cannot win in Michigan on Jan. 15, he probably cannot become the Republican nominee. Ditto for Giuliani in Florida on Jan. 29. That would narrow the Republican race to McCain vs. Huckabee — a choice no one would have predicted just two weeks ago.

The state of New Hampshire delivered a shock to the pundits. How did she do it? Why were the polls wrong? Why were our predictions wrong?

In their search for an answer, some took to the “Bradley”, or “Wilder Effect” (not a reference to the former presidential candidate and basketball star Bill Bradley, but to the mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley). As the theory goes, white voters might tell pollsters they are in favor of a black candidate, but vote for someone else when in the polling booth. In short, white voters would lie–either to themselves and to the pollsters, or only to the pollsters–and racist tendencies would prove their disincentive to vote for Barack Obama, and they would turn to Hillary Clinton.

If true, the implications of such an analysis are extensive: is race among Democratic and Independent voters an intrinsically divisive issue? Will the “effect” carry to other states? Will it present itself only states with few minority voters? What does this say about race relations in America?

But level heads seem to have prevailed. Matt Yglesias had an early slam at the theory Tuesday night, with which The Economist’s blog concurred. Ben Smith at Politico has further explanations as to why the “Effect” could not have been the sole arbiter of Mrs. Clinton’s victory.

Regardless, the Democratic party looks set to nominate either its first female or black candidate for the Presidency.  It’s likely that the general election will prove a continuous challenge to conventional punditry.

For the past days the buzzword has been “change.” So pervasive was the progressive message coming out of Iowa, that the Republican dialogue in New Hampshire, too, was affected by the term.

But it was not the so-called mavericks or outsiders who seem to have triumphed in New Hampshire tonight. John McCain, the 71-year old winner of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, has won again in 2008. Hillary Clinton, a prominent political symbol of the 1990s, has scraped by her Democratic opponents and won a majority of primary votes in the important primary state.

As late as this afternoon, it seemed the pundits had called the race. David Brooks’ column this morning featured the two options for the coveted Independent voters in New Hampshire: Obama and McCain. The polls were projecting Obama would win in double-digits; Clinton won by three (at time of this writing).

In Iowa, “change won.” In New Hampshire, it was experience.

Ed. note: It’s too bad that the “experienced” candidates didn’t seem to have had more experience reviewing their speeches before accepting their victories ; both Clinton and McCain were married to their notes. They might consider adopting some of Barack Obama’s eloquence.

If only for the benefit of readers in New Hampshire, and because foreign policy has somewhat slipped away from the campaign narratives in both parties, it seems timely to review the foreign policy approaches of some of the leading candidates.

• John McCain spoke in December with the Washington Post and CFR.org on his impressions of Americans’ views of foreign policy.
• In the past, Mike Huckabee’s foreign policy prowess has been questioned. In this speech to CSIS in Washington, Huckabee said this that his Republican counterparts later called out:

This Administration’s bunker mentality has been counter-productive both at home and abroad. They have done as poor a job of communicating and consulting with other countries as they have with the American people.

As a rule, the leading Democratic candidates agree on most approaches to foreign affairs (putting past decisions aside, and with the one exception of Barack Obama’s take on military action in Pakistan.)

• A beaming, Obama-supporting Andrew Sullivan links to this foreign policy address by the candidate in August. Key quote:

By refusing to end the war in Iraq, President Bush is giving the terrorists what they really want, and what the Congress voted to give them in 2002: a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

• Patrick Healy of the New York Times reviews Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Affairs essay, which is perhaps the most comprehensive outline of her views out there.

Most of the candidates submitted essays to Foreign Affairs through the fall with their own approaches to foreign policy. You can find them each here.

Of all the televised debates in this campaign marathon, Saturday night’s double-barreled shootout in New Hampshire may have been the most important and revealing. First Republicans, then Democrats, took the stage and were questioned by ABC-TV. The questions were familiar – immigration, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, health care, education and the economy – as were the answers, for the most part.

What was different were the strategy, tactics and intensity of the exchange.

With only two days left before the New Hampshire vote, and as many as 40 per cent of likely voters saying they are still undecided, the stakes were exceedingly high.

Several candidates knew – Romney in particular – that a poor showing on Tuesday could derail their campaigns entirely.

According to Facebook, a co-sponsor of the debates, nearly half of those who commented on line said that they came away with clearer notion of whom they would vote for.

So how did the candidates do, and what was the foreign policy relevance?

On Iraq, the separate candidates’ panels sharply debated the value of last year’s “surge” of 30,000 added U.S. troops. For Republicans (except Ron Paul), the necessity and efficacy of the surge were demonstrably clear – the debate was over who had properly supported the move. For the four Democrats – Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Richardson – the surge was a failure because it had not lead to political consensus among Iraqi factions.

ABC’s moderator, Charles Gibson, also asked the Democratic panel to discuss possible nuclear terrorism. After several days’ campaigning, during which Iraq and national security issues had taken a back seat to the economy (now the most important issue for voters), this was a useful step. Obama appeared to ably defend his position that were the U.S. faced with an imminent threat from Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and were the Pakistanis unable or unwilling to take action on their own, the U.S. should act militarily. This stated willingness to use military force internationally, under certain proscribed circumstances, will be revisited later in the campaign, especially if Obama’s own “surge” – of popularity – continues.

“Change won.”

These were John Edwards’ optimistic words in the wake of his second-place finish to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses. But the real author of this phrase was Obama himself. As the dramatic Iowa results make clear, Obama not only successfully identified his campaign with “change,” but came to represent the hope of many Democratic stalwarts that he can best lead the party and achieve positive change. By inference, Hillary Clinton, with her staunchest Iowa support coming from older women, did not convince most Iowa Democrats that she represented change. Opposition to President Bush and Republican policies, yes. A hopeful agent of change, no.

We have heard and repeated many times that Iowa and New Hampshire are not typical slices of the American electorate, but the momentum generated tonight for the Obama candidacy is significant and the race has been fundamentally altered. The Democratic field has immediately shrunken with the withdrawal of Biden and Dodd. Richardson needs a strong showing — and soon — to remain viable. National polls in the immediate days ahead should show a significant change in Hillary’s national numbers. It’s a three-way race.

Examine the clips of the three Democrats’ remarks tonight to their respective supporters. It is clear that Obama is trying now to fashion a bipartisan appeal aimed at attracting independents and Republicans. His foreign policy remarks took a high road as well. I would expect favorable reviews in national and international media.

Mike Huckabee’s dominant victory on the Republican side is also momentous, but seems to be more of a protest vote than a signal of the rise of a nationally viable candidate. Here, too, “change won,” but it is not yet clear who will be the beneficiary. As Bill Bennett remarked on CNN, the Democratic field has narrowed while the Republican field expands. On to New Hampshire.

New York Times
And for a little a fun after a long night of precinct-watching, FP offers a top ten list of the top foreign policy gaffes (thus far) on the campaign trail.