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Random thoughts the big day after Thursday, Feb 7, 2008 By John Brummett Political activity was so vast and intense Tuesday night that the best way to cover it at this point is with quick random hits. It feels vaguely as if Hillary Clinton has cemented her front-runner status in the Democratic presidential race by winning the big states - California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, where she trounced Ted Kennedy, for goodness sake. But a cursory study doesn't bear that out. Barack Obama won more states, 13-to-8, including, narrowly, that bellwether of middle America, Missouri. He lost that whole state except for St. Louis and Kansas City, but the cities were enough. Clinton has a delegate lead nationwide of only approximately 80, and that's solely provided by so-called superdelegates, meaning the elected politicians, who could always break the other way if the mood shifts. Now the race goes to potentially favorable turf for the better-funded Obama, meaning Louisiana on Saturday and the "Beltway Primary" on Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. That is to say this thing seems wholly up in the air. I suppose Clinton will win, because Clintons always do somehow, but I can't quite construct the scenario. Perhaps she'll lock it up in Texas and Ohio on March 4. At this point, my best bet to be the next president: Hillary, I guess. I say that even though you could make a decent argument she's about to lose the Democratic primary to Obama. It's a wild, fascinating political season in America, I tell you. The deep division in the Democratic primary is not so much black-white as this: Wealthy and better-educated for Obama, poor and less-educated for Clinton; white women for Clinton, white men for Obama; older voters for Clinton, younger votes for Obama; black voters for Obama, Latino and Asian for Clinton; urban voters for Obama, rural voters for Clinton. Clinton won Arkansas overwhelmingly, with about 69 percent. But did anyone notice the Pulaski County vote? She bested Obama there by much less, something on the order of 56-44. Clearly, her margin in Arkansas was enhanced by a low turnout of black voters in the Delta, presuming, as I do, that Obama would have received more of them. On the Republican side, the early evening Southern flurry for Our Boy Mike Huckabee was trumped by midnight by John McCain's wins in Missouri and California. McCain now has about 600 delegates, twice as many as Mitt Romney and three times as many as Huckabee. McCain seems on his rocky, implausible way - an aging maverick centrist and war hawk in his 70s - to lead the Republican Party because the old Reagan conservative coalition has come apart at the seams. Huckabee did well to win Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, yes, but getting nipped at the wire in Missouri and losing Oklahoma to McCain hurt. He remains through it all a niche candidate - Southern, rural, evangelical. Still, he is, at this writing, a more serious running-mate contender than he was the day before. Again, though, I wonder: How can a man without economic conservative credentials, meaning McCain, choose to run with another man without economic conservative credentials, meaning Huckabee? Rush Limbaugh and Wall Street might revolt. Huckabee also remains ideologically marginalized with all that religion business. McCain's choice might come down to whether he plays for a big swing state with his running mate selection or fears so much erosion in the GOP's vital Southern base that he has to take the rural Bible-thumper. That was a bravura record turnout for Republicans in Arkansas. They drew about 200,000 voters, about 40 percent of the overall state turnout in the half-million range. Obviously, Huckabee's emergence drew independents to the Republican side. He gets more general love in Arkansas than I had given him credit for. My worst prediction on election eve was that Ron Paul might get up to second in the Arkansas Republican primary on account of an anemic Republican turnout that would allow the extreme libertarian strain of Arkansas Republicanism to flex a little proportional muscle. What happened quite to the contrary was that a robust independent turnout buried him and that extreme libertarian strain. My apologies to Arkansas Republicans. They're not as odd or extreme as I thought. ------- John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699. |
