Senator Joe Biden, seasoned and tenured Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made an appearance on "Countdown with Keith Olberman" on MSNBC tonight. I have a few observations regarding his appearance, and they each have at least something to do with the current status of the presidential race.
First of all, even with Iowa's somewhat antiquated 15% threshold rule on caucus night (any given candidate must receive 15% of the votes during the first few rounds of haggling at any given caucus site, or else he/she is declared illegitimate at that site), how in the world did Biden receive only 1% of the votes in that crucial opening caucus state? The experienced and whip-smart triumvirate of Biden, Senator Chris Dodd, and Governor Bill Richardson wound up accumulating a paltry 4% (or thereabouts) of the vote. Something seems very wrong....
I'm already digressing. So, more to the point, tonight Biden made a crucial comment that reaffirms my somewhat faltering notion that the two final Democratic contenders for their party's nomination, Senators Clinton and Obama, should both stay in the race until the initial voting is done on June 3, when the final states of Montana and South Dakota vote. He told Olberman that Senators Clinton and Obama are "understandably preoccupied with each other" at this point in time, and he insinuated that such a mindset might continue for several weeks. Yet he went on to say that "...by the time the primaries [and caucuses] are over, it will be clear who the nominee is." I assume he means that by the time the final ballots are counted on June 3, it will be clear which candidate the Democratic Superdelegates should support in order to ensure that said candidate--who will already be leading in the delegate count--will officially become the Democratic nominee.
I agree. And since Biden went on to suggest that the summer months will provide enough opportunity to fire-up Democratic and independent support for the presumptive Democratic nominee prior to the convention, his is essentially the argument I made on this blog last week. And yet, and yet....
The last month or so has been anything but impressive for the two Democratic candidates. Senator Obama has followed the Reverend Wright scandal (for which I do not blame Obama, as it was his friend's words, and not his, that people found objectionable; the media obsession with the issue was somewhat inappropriate, given the source) with his clumsy comments regarding the "bitterness" of rural and small-town voters (again, I agree with his assertions; his problem was in his wording). Then (here's the real problem) came his campaign's rather petulant-yet-also-aloof initial reaction to the way in which those comments were taken, which seemed to reinforce the "elitist" notion being tossed in his direction by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.
Speaking of the Clinton campaign...wow, has this initially-impressive candidate lost stock with me over the past month or so. I put up with her overly-aggressive debate tactics followed immediately by overly-friendly debate tactics followed immediately by creepily-insinuation-filled debate tactics...etc...because her policy experience suggests that she is indeed an impressive candidate for the White House. But what has followed in the wake of such multiple-personality moments has been too superficially insidious to accept, particularly her beating endlessly the "elitism" drum as applied to Senator Obama, to the point where she has reached a new nadir by this week releasing a commercial in Pennsylvania in which "average Pennsylvanians" complain about Senator Obama's statement. Her areas of strength deal with policy experience, intelligent organizational skills, and straight-forward, plain-spoken discussions regarding the direction she wants to take America both at home and abroad. Yet what she's done lately suggests little more than desperate electoral pettiness, and her speeches are far too pandering and patronizing to her audience to take seriously.
This can be rectified, at least to a solid extent, if it stops now and the tone elevates in the days prior to the Pennsylvania primary (to be held next Tuesday), but as these things go this will most likely not be the case, as a desperate Clinton and a defensive Obama try to find purchase at the edge of the potential electoral precipice that is Pennsylvania. It calls into question whether or not they are presently capable of regaining the impressively layered discussion that they found at times prior to and just after Super Tuesday in early February, given that gravity has a tendency to take over when campaigns devolve enough to tug each other over the edge into open air. This in turn calls into question whether or not they can make it, in a two-horse race capacity, to June 3 without badly damaging the eventual nominee's chances in November.
I say this in such stark terms because Senator McCain is--I will say it again as I've said it before--proving to be a strong Republican candidate for president, particularly given the currently putrid status of the national Republican party. If another of the original Republican contenders for the nomination had slipped into the #1 position in the race, the silliness on the Democratic side might not seem as dire, but with McCain heading the ticket come November, the challenge for the Democratic candidates to shift gears quickly has become urgent.
You say you don't believe me? Well, let's look at the evidence. For instance, Senator McCain had another in a series of increasingly-impressive days today (gone, at least for now, are his embarrassing Iran/al-Qaeda mix-ups and the like). This morning, he received a hearty round of applause for a slightly boring but measured speech to economics students and teachers at Carnegie Mellon University, and followed that up with a performance in front of undergraduate students at Villanova University on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" that was, to be honest, quite impressive in that he seems to have sharpened his ability to offset conservative proposals with independent-sounding/moderate ones in a textured manner.
For instance, he began the session (which will be repeated on MSNBC ad nauseam, I'm sure) by rejecting the Bush Administration's ideas regarding global warming and torture (he went so far as to suggest that he would close down the Guantanamo Bay military facility), but he offset that with full support for the president's current strategy in Iraq. Though the latter aspect of foreign policy didn't get much support from the student crowd, he did garner applause for his criticism of the original Rumsfeld-run policy, and by reminding the attendees that he was a vocal opponent of that policy from the beginning, he reinforced the notion that he has a nose for what to do in Iraq, even if his proposals aren't as popular at present as he might hope.
He was hawkish on Iran (he did not rule out airstrikes or other forms of military intervention) but doveish and cooperative about if and when such hawkish tactics would be applied (he would vastly prefer a robust push in the "diplomatic, trade, and financial" realms that would isolate Iran without forcing them to lose too much face, and in order to do so he suggests that our allies must play integral, important roles, which would allow for more international cooperation in such areas than we've seen of late). He also suggests that Congress would have a far larger role to play in the overall Middle East debate.
Even his comments on Senator Obama's so-called "elitism" were balanced: he now says that Obama is not an elitist, though his comments were elite in nature. If that sounds too cute and tidy (and even a little too-balanced to be "real"), his delivery was straight-forward and oddly compelling.
When he left the gymnasium setting, he did so to thunderous applause from the students (though it's doubtless the case that Senators Clinton and Obama would receive similar levels of enthusiastic applause, if simply because such a production is a very big deal for any given university).
Given many of Senator McCain's statements today, it seems obvious that the Democrats have avenues of political attack that can be exploited. For example, McCain's assertion that political, economic, military, and in some ways cultural stability need to be in place in Iraq before we can call the war "over," at which point our forces can continue to draw down while we simultaneously provide a stabilizing force, beg the question of how in the world we get from the current situation to the one he suggests, which would require massive movement on the political and cultural fronts that seems to be a bit of a shot in the dark to many people right now; he was fuzzy on the details of how to get there. Also, his suggestion that shutting down Guantanamo and the like would be helpful to curb the radicalization process in the Middle East seems to clash a bit with his proposal to stay in Iraq and potentially take on Iran in an aggressive (if not necessarily military) manner, given that western occupation in the Middle East has been one factor (admittedly amongst many) in that same radicalization process. And so forth.
But the Democratic candidates, who are very capable of conducting a robust debate with Senator McCain, seem stuck in a superficial rut. If they were arguing policy proposals in a more statesmanlike, "presidential" manner, the continuing race to the Democratic nomination could be a good thing in that it would help sharpen the eventual nominee for his or her upcoming duel with Senator McCain. Instead, both Democratic candidates and their campaigns have gone intellectually flabby of late. As a result, McCain's statesmanlike speeches are being received by more and more open minds. He's becoming a stronger and stronger candidate as each week slips by, so the Democrats have to start acting like the strong candidates they are, as well, and they need to do it now, whether or not they both stay in the race until the early summer.
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