I'm thrilled about what Obama is coming to represent. But I think a lot of people are missing the big story on the other side: What will happen to the Republican Party in the wake of an Obama landslide?
I believe Mike Huckabee answers this question, and is the best possible GOP nominee the United States can hope for this year. And let me be clear:
I think Huckabee would probably be a lousy president. But I think he should be the Republican nominee.
Update for Monday: All the smartest people I know keep telling me I'm crazy, and that my Huckabee talk is wishful thinking.
All the wisest people I know agree with me that Huckabee is inevitable.
Go with the smart money? Or stick with the wise men, and return home by a different route? You tell me.
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The media need to start NOW on rewriting their McCain Comeback Kid headline, because the McCain fanciers will be staying home in droves in NH tomorrow. Or, they will come out to the polls and decide to vote for Obama instead.
Here's how I started to get interested in Huckabee.
The most important problem I was having last week is that I couldn't decide which Democrat to vote for. I wondered if I should be creative, and developed a full-fledged theory centering on the idea that voting for a lovable clown -- a mistake a lot of people made in recent years -- is the best thing a non-Democrat New Hampshirite can do tomorrow.
The Democrats (see footnote)*
Democrats are getting unified! Republicans are in disarray. We're through the looking glass here, people.
What Huckabee stands for
*As many others have said, Mike Huckabee looks like a human self-destruct button for the three-legged Republican Party coalition of the last thirty years.
The big money hates Huckabee. The financial support he would have would be the worst of any Republican.
The rank-and-file voters of the religious right love Huckabee, and for good reason: he's a Baptist minister who seems to have lived a clean life. This is why he's running so strong despite general media disdain for everything he's done and said on the campaign trail. Lack of money and organization won't hurt him much going forward, because churches are so good at GOTV already. As long as he survives until the South Carolina primary I don't see how he can lose the South (check out the most recent numbers from there -- remarkable that this guy isn't being treated as the front-runner! yet).
The neocons, with their think tanks and their army of talking heads, can neither help Huckabee with their praise nor hurt him with their criticism. His ignorance about important foreign policy matters means they can't endorse him, but he's proven that he will go along with the conventional wisdom they spout in that area if he thinks it will help him win.
(Update: There are actually three other pieces to this coalition that I initially forgot: libertarians (they go to Ron Paul and the new Free State Project), Wall Street (they can look to the ridiculous Bloomberg candidacy that everyone loves so much inside the Beltway), and lazy people who can't be bothered to follow politics but hope it might be entertaining TV (Fred Thompson from Law and Order is their dream candidate). And then there's the media, who laughed out loud at Huckabee the other day cause they misinterpreted his press conference about the negative Romney ad.)
*Huckabee has almost all of Bill Clinton's weaknesses (and none of his real strengths)
In many ways Huckabee is the anti-Clinton. He has lots of ideas about domestic policy, but hasn't worked with experts on refining or implementing them. He has an attention-getting scandal on his record from his governorship of Arkansas -- the DuMond affair -- and although he seems to have made it in good faith, it was a very real mistake with very real consequences. He is from the same home town and has many of the same mockable Southern idiosyncrasies as Pres. Clinton did.
As a bonus, there is attached to his family (though not to him personally) an anecdote about the same kind of senseless cruelty to animals shown in the underexamined anecdotes about Romney and Bush. (Please keep in mind that the junior Huckabee in question might not have actually done this thing, and that he was young enough that he might not have known any better.)
Moreover, Huckabee has terrible political instincts that offer outstanding parodies of the most cynical GOP tactics of the last twenty-five years. The press seems to get the joke and treats it with the disdain it deserves -- even when, as in the case of the anti-debut of the anti-Romney ad, the candidate is at his most sincere. I think he really did decide on New Year's Eve that going negative just wasn't his thing. Then he started his press conference and didn't know what to do, so he said, ok, if you're curious you can see the ad....
*Huckabee seems like a good man who would do his best to learn what he needs to learn if, by some freakish series of events, he accidentally gets elected President.
In other words, he's the anti-Bush.
Note that NONE of the other Republican candidates can be fairly described this way.
Huckabee is a beautiful way to express that spite you've been saving up.
There's one more element that might be a plus for those of you who savor a little irony in your political accountability. Karl Rove and all his cynical minions, who packaged Bush falsely as a tenacious, brave man of faith, might get saddled this time around with just such a guy to carry on their legacy, and it would serve them right.
*What does voting for Mike Huckabee in the New Hampshire primary say about the future of the Republican Party?
It says that the GOP has a legitimate role to play in the future of the country: as the loyal opposition. People of faith, sincerity, humility, and tenacity -- people, that is, like Mike Huckabee (edit: and indeed, all the Democrats in the field) -- will always have important work to do. They can be great American patriots in the right context.
Why independents should go so far as to vote for Huckabee! if they can
New Hampshire is small enough that a few voters who vote for Huckabee for the above reasons can make a real impact. The media, which has been ignoring the Huckabee surge for a long time, will have to pay attention to it if he outperforms expectations here, where Romney is strongest. They can ignore it in Iowa, since they don't respect the opinions of Midwestern Christians. And if Huckabee survives New Hampshire he stands an excellent chance of keeping the Iowa momentum into South Carolina, Florida, and so on.
Small vote swings can have a very real effect in a state this size. Low Republican turnout, due to general discouragement, can mean many more things are possible, since the Law of Large Numbers doesn't apply so well.
Remember, Huckabee only needs to beat (low) expectations here to become the story, as long as McCain disappoints. Moreover, as Josh Marshall points out, "There's some evidence that Obama is pulling independent voters out of the Republican column (they can vote in either primary) and thus holding down McCain's potential post-Iowa bounce." This is just one of many New Hampshire idiosyncrasies that the media and the pollsters have not been capturing.
Why Democrats cannot vote for Huckabee, and get to vote for Obama instead
Apparently you can't change your party affiliation at the polls in New Hampshire.
(Money quote for New Hampshirites: "If you are unsure of your party affiliation, you should contact your town or city clerk, as they have the records of party membership.")
That's my thinking at the moment, for what it's worth. Remember: when Huckabee becomes the story tomorrow, this is NOT A BAD THING. It gives us a nominee we can count on beating; delivers the Republican Party fully to the evangelicals, who are ineffective on their own; and allows Obama to begin focusing on his policy agenda with confidence that he will have a mandate.
God bless America!
Jim von der Heydt
-Edit from Wednesday: I might be deciding that if I can't change my affiliation at the polls that I'll vote for Chris Dodd. He's been doing outstanding legislative work for the country even while campaigning, including an incredibly underreported, heroic, and effective one-man filibuster of the pernicious bipartisan telecom-immunity bill. See Glenn Greenwald for more on the importance of Dodd's recent work.-
Update for Thursday: It is becoming clear that the real winner in New Hampshire, if it is not Mike Huckabee, will be John McCain. Romney cannot win the state because expectations are so high; even if he wins it's a wash for him. And none of the other GOP candidates has a real shot at achieving anything by winning the state. Giuliani is, thank God, toast.
A McCain victory in NH is dangerous. If his candidacy is revived, he stands a decent chance of becoming the press's darling Comeback Kid and avalanching to the nomination. And in the general he would be a very dangerous opponent for the democrats, because as benighted as he is on most policy matters, he is a grownup with a distinguished record unlike all the other GOP candidates. New Hampshirites' job, I believe, is to prevent this outcome.
Update for a pretty good Friday: McCain's gaffe last night, about spending a hundred years in Iraq, spells the beginning of the end of his candidacy. So I guess I don't know what New Hampshirites' job is after all. (Update Sunday: McCain is still having a small uptick, which the media loves, but I think it won't matter. The kind of people who love him in New Hampshire are precisely the ones who hate the Iraq War -- independent-minded folks. ) Watch the footage again and watch the New Hampshirites' jaws drop as McCain cheerfully describes another 100 years in Iraq. It's just not an idea they're all that keen on! And you can tell they're thinking, "So that's what it's like when someone commits political suicide!"
Update for Saturday: I'm voting for Obama.
* Big footnote about the quandary I was in, which got me thinking about Huckabee and how good he would be for the Democrats and for the country.
Each of the three leading Democrats has an important flaw. This is why I'm having I had trouble deciding which one to vote for. (Update: I now believe Obama's flaw is not that important.)
Remedial reminder for civics students: I only have one vote in the primary, so I can't vote for all three. I get to keep for now the vote that I intend to cast for President of the United States. I will use that vote in November, on a Democrat. The Presidency is not on the ballot in New Hampshire next week; we are choosing nominees up here at the moment. I believe we learned in Florida in 2000 that if you don't know who you should vote for, you should not just pick somebody and vote for them. So unless someone can win me over to one camp or the other until Obama won me over I am was torn among the three candidates. {/end of snarky defensivess} {/end of indecisiveness -- I'm voting for Obama}
Atrios did a good job summarizing the Democratic front-runners' stances:
Shorter Candidates
Obama: The system sucks, but I'm so awesome that it'll melt away before me.
Edwards: The system sucks, and we're gonna have to fight like hell to destroy it.
Clinton: The system sucks, and I know how to work within it more than anyone.
edit: I think Atrios intends these summaries fondly, and I know that I do.
Obama
* Krugman and Kos are right about Obama's tactics.
I was shaken by Obama's choice to demagogue Social Security, however mildly, in order to distinguish himself from Clinton when it looked as if she was locking the nomination up. Social Security is so incredibly important, and while Obama told no lies he showed a lack of political foresight in focusing on its weakness rather than its strength. As Krugman says, "He’s attacking his Democratic opponents from the right — and in so doing giving aid and comfort to the enemies of reform." Update for Monday: Just watched Obama's Iowa speech and wonder if maybe his lack of foresight is counterbalanced by an MLK-like flair for prophecy.
I believe that if he can learn from this mistake, Obama will probably make the best president of the current field. {Update for Sunday: I believe he is capable of learning from mistakes of the sort that got him in trouble with Krugman. So I have decided to vote for Obama and work for his campaign.}
Edwards
*Of the three major candidates, Edwards is the most vulnerable to fresh media ridicule.
Anyone who pays attention if Edwards wins the nomination will be treated to a zillion jokes about his hair, his accent, and his supposed hypocrisy. He's got Carter's mild sanctimony, Dukakis's wonkiness, Gore's lovable pedantic streak, and Kerry's wealth. He gets on a lot of people's nerves, for no good reason. This is by no means his fault, but I worry about how he would do in the general election.
Edwards's focus on poverty makes him the best choice, for my money, of the three, in terms of policy priorities.
Clinton
*Clinton has -- well, let's call it a very unfortunate reputation among low-information voters that could poison her candidacy.
She's proven that she can beat the media's tendency to run indefinitely with nonsense stories about her. But they still run with things that make her look bad, and as we saw on Monday are not above a little gender-baiting. And I don't see how she can become a unity candidate, and overcome the unfavorable opinion of her held by lots of Americans who don't pay attention to politics, but are still mobilized by church-based or other GOTV efforts. The right wing has proven that it does not get tired of attacking her with lies and sexist innuendo, and I'm afraid of what their tenacity means for her chances in the general. Also I think Iowa proved that her GOTV is not what it should be.
Clinton's experience with the nitty-gritty of politics, policy and practicalities makes her the best choice pragmatically for those who believe we should vote for the candidate who can get the most done as President.
Updated Sunday to reflect my belief that the Obama/Edwards ticket is our best possible outcome. Clinton and Richardson are perfectly poised to offer advice and support, Clinton on domestic policy practicalities and Richardson on practicalities of diplomacy. Sound like a plan?