Eighteen months ago, we thought McCain would be the nominee on the GOP side and Hillary would be the nominee on the Dem side. These would be the usual, boring, standard choices we’ve come to expect from our two political parties.

Back in October of last year as I was getting ready to launch this strip, I thought that in February of ‘08, during Black History Month, kids in school would be learning who Barack Obama used to be.

That was supposed to be the case. Only a few of us political junkie types were supposed to care about politics. Most of us were supposed to stay asleep, not give a damn and in the end, not vote. But here we are - two weeks after Super Tuesday and Obama is ahead in pledged and Super Delegates, contests (23 wins to Clinton’s 11) and in the popular vote (even if you factor in the Michigan and Florida non-contests).

My state of Virginia - where I even found myself handing out Obama campaign literature at the local Metro stops - overwhelmingly supported Barack.

Clinton canned key people, gave her cash-strapped campaign five million dollars in January and every firewall state of hers has been unable to stop Obama’s Fired-Up momentum.

This should all bode well for Obama.

So why am I worried? It’s the skeptic in me. Looking at a few points:

• The Wisonsin primary polls close in a few hours
• Hillary is running some very well-produced attack ads on TV there (though Barack outspent her on TV 4 to 1) and her latest hate mail is very tough - and another one just hit. I think these mail pieces are very effective and underestimated. I think one of her hate mail pieces in the days before New Hampshire probably had a bigger effect than anything in her win there.
• The latest ARG poll puts Clinton up a few points in the state but the polling is generally close - like New Hampshire was.
• The GOP side is basically wrapped up and while this means the independents can vote for Barack in the “open” Wisconsin primary it also means the media organizations need a narrative. There are a LOT of TV hours to fill between now and the conventions and they would love to stretch the Clinton-Obama battle out.
• Hillary will not give up of her own accord. She makes Jason from the Halloween movies look like a quitter. She and her husband have shown they’re willing to pour their fortune into the campaign. The Clinton legacy is on the line.
• Wisconsin demographics have been said to favor Hillary though the state borders Obama’s Illinois

All those add up to worry. If Hillary wins - as she was supposed to in almost every state in the union if you look back to just three months ago - it means the whole narrative gets to be rewritten by the pundits. It’s a “comeback.” Some bonehead pundit is absolutely bound to say, “greatest comeback in American political history.”

If Barack wins, the media will yawn and say, “let’s move on and look at Ohio and Texas.”

Like Virginia, DC and Maryland, he can win - even sweep - but he practically can not win the day. Even Hillary’s what-should-have-been-crushing 29% defeat in Virginia was brushed away. Has there ever been such an candidacy of inevitability with such a terrible performance and with such low expectations? Her plan seems to be to underwhelm us all the way to the nomination.

A couple of months back, Hillary literally said that the race would be over on February 5. Not even close.

Now her campaign wants to take the fight all the way to the floor of the convention even going so far as to poach Obama’s pledged delegates if need be and they still contend everything is going great. When the campaign announced the recent firing of staffers, it was in the context of what great jobs they had done.

After witnessing Reagan’s Iran Contra-dictions, reading George H.W. Bush’s lips, finding myself appalled by Bill Clinton’s asking America to question the meaning of the word “is” and George W.’s politicized justice department hirings and firings…

I’ve seen that all the optimism in the world can’t win a rigged game. There’s no winning if one side thinks the rules don’t apply to them.

This might seem like a non sequitur but it’s not. The biggest and worst lie of this campaign season (and there have been so many) is not one of Romney’s whoppers or McCain’s pro-torture vote or Hillary’s inane justification for authorization of the Iraq war… it’s the Clinton campaign’s contention that all of Obama supporters will rally behind the Democratic nominee whoever she may be.

Hillary’s campaign keeps repeating it and Obama’s campaign is too positive to state the very negative fact that it’s simply not true. The real nature of the Obama-Clinton conflict isn’t Change vs. Experience or even Past vs. Future, it’s Positive vs. Negative. There’s little crossover there.

If the game goes back to appearing rigged, a lot of people will stop playing.

And that would be the greatest shame because there haven’t been this many people involved in a very long time.

– Steve

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.