Thursday, February 21, 2008

It's Not Over Till It's Over...   [Victor Davis Hanson]

Peter Robinson and I still have a bet about the efforts to which the Clintons will go to pull out the election.

We forget that even today, Sen. Clinton leads in both Ohio and Texas.

If she were to win both, and carry that momentum to Pennsylvania, again she will have won the key states in play in the November election — California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. It would be no small thing to end the primary season with the biggest states and the most recent victories.

And if that were so (much of course would depend on the margin of victory), there is no reason to think that free-floating delegates could not be persuaded or coerced to her candidacy.

The swooning over Obama has a shelf life, and so far, incrementally, observers are beginning to see that there is not just rhetoric, but rhetoric sometimes at odds with reality: his often referenced Ivy-League students loans on examination are not proof of any hardship or unfairness; his 'reaching across the aisle'—in the manner of a much abused McCain—has no basis in fact, at least in the sense of major bipartisan-co-authored legislation in the Senate; and nothing in his campaign so far is any more or less civil than that of his rivals. His appeal remains his vigor, sense of character, and charisma and the implicit offer that America can finally redeem its past illiberality by courageously voting for an African-American candidate that will bring us together and make people like us abroad.

But I don't think that Americans will necessarily think voting for the more experienced McCain is in any way, shape, or form a referendum on their hopes or willingness to change or their racial sensitivity, but rather reflects a reluctance to turn the country over to someone with no executive experience and who has not completed a single term as U.S. Senator.

I think this will continue to drag on, and the wounds among Democrats will deepen and fester to the extent that the real question by June is not whether McCain's base will stay with him (it probably will), but how many scarred and hurt Democrats won't cross over to a perceived moderate.

02/21 03:40 PMShare