See You in September

As promised, here’s the last posting of the 2007-08 academic year. With Barack Obama now the presumptive Democratic nominee, the questions floating around have no immediate answer: will the November election be close? Or will it be a blow-out? Will John McCain’s gritty tenacity and “maverick” status win over independents and anti-Obama Democrats? Will Obama make history as the first African-American president? Who will emerge from the welter of names being tossed about as running mates for McCain and Obama?

I’m going to steer away from most of these questions although I’ll take a stab at the last one at the end of this posting. Instead, let’s look briefly at how the election is likely to sort out based on past historical precedents. We know, of course, that both of the last two presidential elections were extremely close. If we assume the same pattern holds this time -- say a percentage differential between the candidates that’s no greater than 52-48% -- certain realities become immediately apparent.

First and foremost, assuming a close national popular vote, most states already can be counted for either Obama or McCain. There’s likely to be slightly more than a dozen states that will be “in play” over the course of the fall campaign. Here they are, with their electoral votes and the winning candidate last time listed in parentheses: Florida (27-Bush); Pennsylvania (21-Kerry); Ohio (20-Bush); Michigan (17-Kerry); Virginia (13-Bush); Wisconsin (10- Kerry); Washington (11-Kerry); Missouri (11-Bush); Minnesota (10-Kerry); Colorado (9-Bush); Iowa (7-Bush); Oregon (7-Kerry); Nevada (5 –Bush); New Mexico (5-Bush); New Hampshire (4 –Kerry).

In 2004, Bush beat Kerry in the Electoral College 287 to 251. That means Obama needs to pick up a net of 19 over Kerry's total. Similarly, McCain can afford a net loss of 17 and still win, 270 to 268. (We’ll avoid, at least for now, the fascinating implications of an 18 vote Obama pick up, resulting in a 269-269 Electoral College tie.) As of now, the only state listed above that seems almost certain to switch party allegiance is Iowa. That reduces Obama’s pick up requirement to 12. Watch, in particular, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. If everything else stays the same (a very big “if”), Obama would need to win three of these four; McCain only two. Three months from now we’ll see where things stand and, at the same time, look back on these numbers.

As for vice-presidential candidates, here are my suggested picks for Senators McCain and Obama. For McCain, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. She’s young (44), highly regarded, fiscally and socially conservative, and causes real problems for Obama if he doesn’t pick Hillary Clinton or another woman as a running mate (and I don’t believe he will). For Obama, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel. He’s a Republican, thereby solidifying Obama’s “post-partisan change” message. Hagel’s a decorated Vietnam combat veteran with substantial national security “gravitas” who has opposed, from the beginning, the Iraq war. For those of you who have hung in there with me on the blog, send me your VP picks over the summer and I’ll post them when we resume in September.

Finally!

Well, I’m back in the States from St. Andrews and had the chance to observe, up close, the denouement of the Democratic nominating process. And, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, it ended not with a bang but with a whimper. Maybe not even a whimper – it was more like a muddle.

Barack Obama moved past the new delegate threshold of 2118 (as a result of the Michigan/Florida rules committee compromise), Tuesday evening. Then Hillary Clinton won the South Dakota primary and followed it up with a rousing non-concession speech to her supporters in New York. Then Obama won the Montana primary and, from St. Paul Minnesota, announced that he had secured the party’s nomination. The next couple of days buzzed with questions such as: What was Clinton going to do? Would she take the vice presidential slot if it were offered? Would it in fact be offered?

Somewhat (fortunately not completely), lost in the static was the historic nature of Obama’s accomplishment. A little more than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, 40 some years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, an African-American has been nominated by a major party for the presidency of the United States. That’s the real story of this remarkable nominating process that began in Iowa back on January 3 and continued uninterrupted for the next five months. The American public now faces one of the most interesting presidential elections in years – two candidates, Obama and Senator John McCain, with very different personalities and sharply contrasting political agendas.

We’ll have one more blog, probably next week, on the way the November election looks as of now. Then I’ll be signing off for the summer and resuming in September, with my friend and colleague, Tom Murphy of the Caterham School in Surrey, England. He’ll be giving us his expert opinion and perspective from Britain before his visit to the States in mid-October. We’ll both be reporting on the fall campaign – it should be quite a show!