Post-Iowa and New Hampshire/Look for the Return of the Adults.
The Iowa Caucus and the New Hampshire Primary have a special place in the American political psyche.
They have a carnival-like atmosphere that can boost a small market candidate from a statistical unknown into something larger and some have emerged from the pack to run away with the nomination process. However, there is a difference between myths of the past and he realities of the present.
Adult Supervision. With that in mind, look for the “Adults” to retake control of the nomination process over the next month. Those are the political “Ides of March.”
Who are these “Adults?” They represent senior political operatives and officeholders who, in a post-Citizens United world, drive the fundraising which underwrites these sprawling national campaigns.
To win this rare Nixon for Governor button from 1962, answer the “Big Question” at the end of the post. Have fun.
Ted Cruz and Donald Trump split Iowa and New Hampshire respectively for the Republicans. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders split Iowa and New Hampshire for the Democrats. However, the tenor of the nomination race will dramatically change in the next few weeks.
If Iowa and New Hampshire offered voters a long courtship, the upcoming “Super Tuesday” (March 1) and “Super Saturday” (March 5) will look more like speed dating with Nevada and South Carolina acting as a final tune up.
“Super Tuesday” and “Super Saturday” are places where campaigns go to die and candidates who are “playing way above their heads” get a crashing dose of reality.
Candidates who put all of their eggs into Iowa and New Hampshire soon realize a strong regional finish means nothing in Louisiana or Texas. A winning political organization will not create itself over night and they will quietly remove themselves from the playing field.
On “Super Tuesday” March 1st, Alabama Arkansas American Samoa, Colorado, Georgia Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia go to the polls. Somewhere in some far away living room, Democrats Aboard will caucus too. On “Super Saturday” March 5th, Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, and Maine will make their decision.
Why does this matter?
Unless you have the logistics to tackle these multi-state primaries and caucuses, you’re toast. This is something that Bernie Sanders will discover as the nomination process heads south and west. Sanders will crash hard in first week of March. He will be seen as a hothouse flower that was unable to emerge from a regional sensation.
At best, Sa
nders will win Vermont, probably Maine, and maybe Massachusetts (with an outside shot a
t Minnesota) but the rest of the field will belong to Clinton, who has been tilling the soil with spreadsheets and rolodexes that are two generations deep. This is not to say that Sanders won’t pull 35%-45% in these contests but Clinton will deliver numbers north of 50% and 60% on Super Tuesday and Super Saturday to drive a new narrative that will define the rest of the nomination process.
Sanders will quickly discover that he is no George McGovern and Hillary Clinton is no Ed Muskie. This will not be a repeat of the trench warfare from between Obama and Clinton threatened to divide Democrats in the fall. While Clinton does not have the excitement of Obama, or for that matter the compelling nature of her husband, she is no Walter Mondale either.
For Sanders, like Paul Tsongas before him, his New Hampshire win is the result of serving as a Senator from an adjacent state, being somebody well known within the Boston media market, which extends itself into New Hampshire thanks to basic cable.
Even with the strong showing of Sanders in both states, no Clinton super delegates have left the fold. The “Adults” are going nowhere and once we get past Super Tuesday, hand wringing aside, Hillary will have looked into the abyss but emerged as a winner.
On the other hand, Bernie Sanders does not have the campaign depth to win 16 primaries and caucuses in the span of one week. He will have to win a lion’s share of the delegates in order to remain alive. However, he will find that passion has its limitations and as the race moves to the south and to the west, voters will return to Clinton as the consensus favorite.
I said earlier that a Sanders run would be good for Clinton in the long haul and I still agree with that statement.
On the Republican side, there is a real question if the “Adults” can coalesce around a candidate who can win in the fall. Since 1992, the Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last 5 out of 6 presidential elections. George Bush won the disputed election in 2000 but was 600,000 votes behind Gore’s popular total.
GOP “Adults” still wonder if somebody can emerge with crossover appeal from the current selection of ideologues and motor mouths. Until the Saturday debate, it appeared that Marco Rubio might emerge but he stumbled badly and might have hurt his chances far beyond New Hampshire.
Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and Ben Carson will bow to the inevitable as soon as the dust clears, with only Bush moving south and west on political life support.
What about Kasich? That leaves John Kasich, a conservative Governor from Ohio, as somebody that the ”Adults” of the GOP can rally around, so long as he can withstand the white hot media glare. He has offered a number of comments that stand in contrast to the daily conveyor belt of Cruz and Trump, but it remains to be seen if the rank and file will see things the same way. He opposes Obamacare but expanded Medicaid. In a field that veered far to the right, Kasich is what passes for moderate-conservative in the modern Republican Party. However, he lacks the support of the movement conservatives who are critical to winning the South Carolina Primary (February 23), let alone the nomination.
While Trump and Cruz have damaged each other far too much to win in the fall, Kasich has thus far eluded their verbal attacks. However, that will probably change in the next 24-48 hours. Kasich also has an advantage that comes with being the Governor of Ohio. Winning Ohio is the gateway to winning the White House, something that Richard Nixon realized in 1968 and everybody since has long understood. John Kasich has won Ohio twice as Governor and that could give him a leg up in the fall, but most voters don’t think like beltway insiders.
Jimmy Carter and the myths of New Hampshire. There is more myth than reality when it comes to the power of Iowa and New Hampshire and everybody points to Jimmy Carter’s campaign in 1976. However, people forget that the political calendar was very different and a candidate could pace themselves back then.
In 1976, there were five weeks between Iowa and New Hampshire. The Massachusetts and Vermont primaries took place in early March. Florida came a week later and Illinois, where Carter emerged as the front runner thanks to a Daley endorsement, came a week after that. Carter could focus on one state at a time to retail his message about post-Watergate politics and governance.
Back in 1976, there were no Super Tuesdays. Today’s political calendar is so frontloaded that anybody like a Carter would have run into a brick wall on Super Tuesday, even after a surprising New Hampshire win.
So the “Adults,” who are sitting on the GOP sidelines or Democrats aligned with Hillary will have the last word. That’s why I still think it’s going to be a very close election between Hillary Clinton and John Kasich in the fall.
Of course, it assumes that the “Adults” on either side reassert themselves and come to their senses.
The Big Question
Had Watergate taken place in this modern and current 24-7 basic cable media carnival, would Richard Nixon have survived Watergate scandal? How would Fox and MSNBC framed the debate? Send your answers to Bob.Mcbarton@comcast.net
The Entrepreneurial Liberal 
A thoughtful and well-written analysis, Bob. Wish we had more of this and less of what we see and hear on what passes for political analysis on the major news stations. I shared this on Twitter!
thanks sweetie