Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Edwards and McCain

Does John Edwards want John McCain to win the Republican nomination?

He’s certainly going out of his way to promote an air of inevitability about McCain’s chances. On the campaign trail, Edwards talks frequently about how he is the Democrat best-suited to beat McCain in a general election, and during Monday night’s explosive cage-match of a debate, Edwards declared, “I think that John McCain is gonna be the Republican candidate.” That set off a breathless exchange among Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over who could take on McCain. As Trail Mix has noted before, at least one major poll suggests that Edwards would fare best.

So is Edwards rooting for McCain on the GOP side? The two men do have a number of things in common besides their first name. Both have an anti-establishment streak. Both take hard-line positions on campaign finance reform and both have railed against pharmaceutical companies. When they were in the Senate together, they collaborated on a patients’ bill of rights. And in 2004, McCain was famously courted as John Kerry’s potential running mate before the veep nod went to Edwards.

Of course, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani might have something to say about the Democrats’ apparent willingness to crown McCain.

Monday, January 21, 2008

MLK Reflections

Happy Martin Luther King Day.

At least one political candidate is spending part of the day at an MLK event in Winston-Salem: Jim Neal, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate, is marching today in a parade with the Forsyth County Democrats. Meanwhile, a couple hundred miles south, the Democratic presidential candidates have put recent squabbles over race behind them: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards were all scheduled to participate in an NAACP march to the state capitol today. (Clinton, however, missed the march when her flight got delayed.) Tonight they will face off in a debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.

Trail Mix was reflecting this morning about what it means, 40 years after King’s assassination, to have an African American seriously contending for the presidency. And then that led to thinking about African-American candidates here in North Carolina. Sixteen years ago, Ralph Campbell, Jr. became the first black candidate to be elected to North Carolina’s Council of State, a panel of the state’s top elected executive-branch positions. Campbell served two terms as state auditor.

This year — although North Carolina’s statewide elections feature a large number of women — there are suprisingly few minority candidates. Trail Mix counts two: Eddie Davis, who is running for superintendent of public instruction, and Fred Aikens, who is running for auditor. Both are Democrats, and both are black. That makes two minorities out of at least 33 announced candidates for statewide executive-branch office (although there are a couple of candidates whose race Trail Mix is unaware of). You can see the full list of candidates here.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Primary Duels

In both parties, the race for governor is heating up.

On the Democratic side, the slugfest between State Treasurer Richard Moore and Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue turned nasty early on, and the candidates show no sign of letting up. Just today, the Moore campaign criticized Perdue for declining to participate in a debate proposed by a Raleigh television station, while the Perdue campaign continued its weeks-long attack on Moore for his role in approving financing for a controversial theater in Roanoake Rapids. Trail Mix is waiting for the gloves to really come off — that is, whenever the two well-financed candidates start running negative TV ads (this week, they each began running positive spots).

The Republican race, up until this week, has been tame by comparison. But then Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory entered the race. Perhaps his status as the presumptive Republican frontrunner motivated his three opponents (Bob Orr, the jurist; Bill Graham, the insurgent; and Fred Smith, the lawyer/businessman/county commissioner/state legislator, as he’ll often remind you) to get a little more aggressive. In a debate among the four men last night, Smith especially went right after McCrory. At one point, he criticized McCrory for having too much government experience and not enough understanding of “the real world”; then, just minutes later, he offered an alternate attack, saying that McCrory actually does not understand state government. Read full coverage of last night’s debate here.

Both parties will hold a primary election on May 6. The two winners will face off in the general election to replace Gov. Mike Easley, who is barred by constitutional term limits from running for re-election.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Election Bites

Trail Mix is back home in Raleigh today and — after wading through heaps of e-mails and news stories that have accumulated over the last six days — is back to the grind of state politics.

A lot happened during my absence. Here is an overview, gorp-style:

CHARLOTTE-ANS: Two Republicans from Charlotte ramped up their long-expected candidacies for statewide office. Robert Pittenger, a state senator, formally announced yesterday that he is running for lieutenant governor. And today, Pat McCrory, the mayor of Charlotte, is announcing his run for governor in a town north of High Point. Both men have been de facto candidates for a while; perhaps they think coyness is a cure for the Charlotte curse.

ON TV: The other, long-established candidates for governor faced off last week in the first televised debates of the campaign. As usual, there was no love lost between Democrats Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue. Moore and Perdue also began running their first televised campaign ads this week.

THE MONEY GAME: Several candidates for political office have released figures showing how much money they raised in the fourth quarter of 2007. A bunch of others are holding out on releasing the figures. The formal paperwork is not due until later this month.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

An Opposing View

Laura Leslie, one of my colleagues in the Raleigh press corps, has an alternative view on the effect of the Clinton victory in New Hampshire on the Edwards campaign. Over at Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, she makes a good case that an Obama victory actually would have been less harmful to Edwards than a Clinton victory. She writes:

“Clinton’s victory may have been worse news for Edwards than his own distant third place.  It means there’s no way he can narrow this race to two by the South Carolina primary Jan. 26th, which leaves him still fighting for a foothold between two celebrity candidates.  And fighting for funders, too - had Clinton fared badly, Edwards might have seen a fundraising bump. But with both Senators still in play, that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon.”

Bottom line: If he truly intends to stay in this race until the convention, as he promised tonight, Edwards is going to need to pull off a surprise at least as big as the surprise that Clinton just pulled off in New Hampshire.

Leslie, by the way, also has a very smart analysis of the purported role of Clinton’s recent moment on the trail in which she briefly became choked up. Some commentators have already identified that moment as the thing that propelled her to the New Hampshire win. Leslie writes:

“Oh, come on.  Women aren’t that susceptible to a few tears. But as I see it, the tears (which admittedly got her the kind of network coverage money CANNOT buy) were a symptom of what DID help her.

As frontrunner, Clinton was remote, icy, and uncommunicative, more concerned about convincing voters she was tough enough to be president than connecting with them as a human being.  But frustration evidently succeeded where likability polls could not - she eased up, opened up, and started being herself, instead of the person focus groups said she ought to be.”

Mayhem in Manchester

What a night to be a political geek.

Trail Mix, which is getting a few days of R&R in snow-choked Oregon, did not have access to a TV tonight. At first, this was a cause for great alarm. How to navigate the night of the New Hampshire primary without the familiar insta-punditry of MSNBC? I was left with only my laptop, a spotty internet connection, and my index finger constantly hitting “refresh” as the results rolled in. But as it turns out, this system was more suspenseful, more dramatic, more fun than passively watching on television.

As you undoubtedly already know: Hillary Clinton shocked the pollsters (who had been predicting a 10-point win for Barack Obama) and likely shocked herself by winning New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. John McCain’s win on the Republican side was slightly more expected but no less confounding in terms of its implications for the future of the race. Political geekery alert: This is the first time in the modern primary era that the Iowa Democratic caucuses, the New Hampshire Democratic primary, the Iowa Republican caucuses and the New Hampshire Republican primary have been won by four different people. Two early states. Four different contests. Four different winners. And presidential nominating races in both parties that are still wide open and are likely to stay that way for a while longer.

On balance, that has to be a good thing for getting more states and more people involved in a process that is constantly criticized for giving undue influence to a handful of early states. Could either of these races still be unsettled by time North Carolina holds its exceedingly late primary on May 6? I wouldn’t bet money on it. But I wouldn’t have bet money six hours ago that Clinton would win New Hampshire. And I wouldn’t have bet money a month ago that McCain would emerge as the apparent Republican frontrunner.

What about former North Carolina senator John Edwards? He finished in a distant third place tonight with about 17 percent of the vote — about what the polls were expecting. He has made it clear that he intends to stay in the race for the long haul. In one sense, Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire is good for Edwards, because an Obama win would have made Obama very difficult to stop. Now the race is essentially back to where it was before Iowa, and Edwards will need to find an opening somewhere. His best chance (which is, admittedly, still a long shot) may be on Jan. 26 in South Carolina, a state Edwards won four years ago.

Stay tuned. I know I’ll be watching. And hitting that “refresh” button.

Monday, January 07, 2008

Two Types of Summits

Starting tomorrow, Trail Mix will be hitting the ski trails for the next week or so — so the blogging output here may be temporarily reduced. I won’t disappear completely, though. Assuming I can find wireless internet in the vicinity of my single favorite mountain (or, should I say, my favorite single mountain?), I’ll weigh in on Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary and anything else that comes up over the course of the week. (Word on the street is that it could be a newsy week.)

For the moment, I’ve been trying to take a night off from politics to focus on the slightly less carnal sport of football. But during halftime of LSU’s inevitable victory, I made the mistake of switching to C-SPAN, which right now is showing a replay of the bipartisan summit from Oklahoma City earlier today. The summit, headlined by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was a gathering of independents, moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, brought together to discuss how partisanship has stifled the big, creative ideas America needs. Listening to these guys talk is fascinating and — for anyone craving a more rational, temperate political discourse — even a little bit hopeful. Quite a contrast with the overtly partisan primaries. As for Bloomberg himself: notice how he keeps insisting “I am not a candidate” for president — in the present tense — but leaves the future tense unsaid.

Friday, January 04, 2008

More Metaphors: Horses and Hoops

The political metaphors never stop. Apparently, John Edwards doesn’t just generate “tidal waves of change”; he is also a horse. From Under the Dome, which has a reporter with Edwards in New Hampshire today:

Edwards was introduced by his wife, Elizabeth, who was joined by daughter Cate. Elizabeth compared her husband to the famous come-from-behind racehorse, Seabiscuit. And John Edwards liked it. ... “We are Seabiscuit,” he hollered.

Being from ACC country, perhaps Edwards should have reached for basketball instead of horseracing. Like Bill Richardson did. Matt Bai of The New York Times pokes fun at Richardson’s dubious claim, after finishing at 2 percent in Iowa, that he had “made it to the Final Four.” Bai writes:

Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense, if the Final Four consisted of Duke, North Carolina, Florida and the Maharishi University of Management.

Reminds me of something an Edwards adviser told me yesterday, describing the political saturation of ordinary life in Iowa in the days leading up the caucuses:

The best North Carolina analogy is kind of like going to the ACC tournament. And on every corner, you see a fan for a different candidate instead of a fan for a different team.

Is Mike Huckabee this year’s George Mason?

What Happens When a Tidal Wave Meets a Prairie Fire?

Trail Mix, always fascinated by political metaphors, was amused by some of the figurative language chosen by candidates in the wake of last night’s Iowa caucus results. It seems that metaphor can be used either to add flourish to a victory or mask a disappointing finish.

John Edwards, for instance, employed one of his oft-repeated aquatic images, saying in a speech to supporters that they have created a

tidal wave of change that began tonight in Iowa and will sweep across America.

Mike Huckabee, the Republican winner, preferred fire over water and opted to stay on rhetorical dry ground. In a metaphor perhaps more fitting to landlocked Iowa, he likened his victory to the start of

a new prairie fire of hope and zeal across the nation.

Mitt Romney, who is known for his management of the Salt Lake City Olympics, delved into sports imagery. Initially, his campaign downplayed Romney’s second-place finish by calling the Iowa caucuses

the first inning of a 50-inning baseball game,

but perhaps realizing that not too many baseball games last 50 innings, Romney soon switched to a more Olympian metaphor. He said in a speech:

You win the silver in one event, it doesn’t mean that you won’t come back and win the gold in the final event. And that we’re gonna do.

Gold medals all around for such creative straining to speak in clichés. Trail Mix would like to point out that Barack Obama, whose victory speech was widely regarded as the best of the night, never seemed to need a metaphorical crutch.

What Edwards Didn’t Say

Others have noticed this as well, but perhaps the most significant thing about John Edwards’ speech to supporters in Des Moines late Thursday was what he didn’t say. It’s standard, after a contest like the Iowa caucuses, for the non-winning candidates to congratulate the winner and concede that night’s battle (before offering plentiful reasons why the war isn’t over). Hillary Clinton, for instance, congratulated Obama and Edwards right at the outset of her speech.

Not so for Edwards. He offered nothing close to a concession, instead delivering a repackaged version of his stump speech in which he rails against “corporate greed.” It was almost indistinguishable from a victory speech — until the very last moment when, after Edwards seemed to have finished, his wife, Elizabeth, whispered something into his ear. That’s when Edwards stepped back to the microphone and said, “Thank you for second place.”

I asked Ed Turlington about this. Turlington, the national chairman of Edwards’ 2004 campaign who is advising the current campaign, said he hadn’t noticed it and wouldn’t conclude too much from it. But it certainly does fit with the pugnacious style of Edwards, who often brags that he will never “give in” during a fight. It also harkens back to the 2004 general election, when Edwards, as the running mate to John Kerry, urged Kerry not to concede the election to George W. Bush but to challenge the results in Ohio. Kerry did not take Edwards’ advice.