After the Oscars, I am on a prediction-making hot streak.
The Departed winning best picture? I called it.
Al Gore taking home a trophy? Got that one.
Host Ellen DeGeneres making-out with Bruce Willis? Well, two out of three isn’t bad.
Picking the Oscars, however, is relatively easy. Today I try my hand at politics.
A year from today we will almost certainly know the Democratic and Republican nominees for President. But why wait to know the results? Here is what we can expect.
Democrats: Last week, Zogby International released a national poll showing New York senator Hillary Clinton with 33 percent of the Democratic vote, with Illinois senator Barack Obama taking 25 percent and former North Carolina senator John Edwards 12 percent. These numbers should not mean anything. After all, primary voting does not begin until 2008, and relatively few voters have begun to focus on the race. However, early polling matters to the media that shape the campaign’s narrative.
Currently, Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner with Barack Obama a near second. Given that Clinton and Obama will attract an enormous amount of money and media attention, John Edwards is probably the only other viable Democrat.
Do not expect Clinton to remain the frontrunner. Her initial support for the Iraq war is toxic to many Democratic voters. And Iraq is only the beginning of Clinton’s problems. Fair or not, a Clinton administration sounds like a return to the past; and after the ugly politics of the last 15 years, voters will desire a clean break. Finally, there is a general perception among Democrats that Clinton is so polarizing that she may be less electable than other candidates. Of course, many of these same Democrats chose John Kerry because of his perceived electability – so their judgment is suspect.
For these reasons, expect Obama to pass Clinton in the polls by summer, at which point, Obama will be the frontrunner. An Obama candidacy will excite many Democrats. He is a charming man with a compelling personal history. After nominating Al Gore and John Kerry, Democrats will be delighted by the prospect of a more charismatic spokesman. Yet charm and eloquence can only take a candidate so far. Once Obama becomes the frontrunner he will also become a target. As a politician, Obama has yet to face serious criticism or scrutiny. This will change once Clinton and Edwards realize that in order to win the nomination, they must first bring down Obama.
Obama is appealing because he of what he represents – a new, positive approach to politics. But this appeal will fade once the campaign gets nasty, and it will. I predict that Clinton will benefit from losing her frontrunner status. No longer the favorite, she will loosen up her style and remind Democrats of why they liked her husband’s administration. She will be the nominee.
Republicans: While the Democratic field is almost entirely set, the Republican side is still in flux. Currently, the three leading candidates are former New York city mayor Rudy Giuliani, Arizona senator John McCain and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. All three are charming fellows who appeal to conservatives in different ways, but all three have a serious defect: They are not social conservatives.
Giuliani supports abortion rights as well as gay civil unions. He is currently in his third marriage, and ended the previous one during a press conference – even before alerting his wife.
Fortunately for McCain, he has a strong record of opposing legalized abortion. But he also has his flaws. For one, he opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have constitutionally prohibited gay marriage. And although McCain is working hard to win over social conservatives, he will struggle to explain why in his 2000 campaign for the Republican nomination he called conservative Christian leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell “agents of intolerance.”
Mitt Romney is still relatively unknown nationally. But he has gained traction in Republican circles as a more conservative alternative to McCain and Giuliani. Or so people thought. It turns out that Romney has swerved from left to right on issues of concern to social conservatives. In 1994 he promised “full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens.” As recently as 2002, Romney identified himself as pro-choice on abortion. Further complicating his attempts to reach Evangelical and Catholic voters, Romney is a Mormon.
Although Republican voters are overwhelmingly conservative on social issues, the three leading candidates for the nomination are not. Something has got to give. One of the leading candidates will need to convince social conservatives that he can be trusted. Romney has already changed his political philosophy to please social conservatives. But Republicans will not want to nominate a “flip-flopper” from Massachusetts.
That leaves McCain and Giuliani. Although McCain is more conservative, he is also more principled. Giuliani is both unprincipled enough to shift his views, and electable enough to beat the Democrat. Republicans will choose the former mayor.
Clinton vs. Giuliani. The hot streak will continue.
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