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Erin: Welcome to T2A for February 6th, after Super Tuesday, the biggest day yet in the U.S. Presidential election cycle. It was the day when the most states simultaneously held their primary Presidential elections, and the single day when the most nominating delegates could be won. We’re discussing the results and their implications with Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the independent political newsletter Rothenberg Political Report, Bruce Miroff, political science professor at University At Albany, State University of New York and VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone. Our first question goes to Professor Miroff…
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Erin: So it seems likely that for one party, the uncertainty continues...how did this happen and what does it mean?
Bruce: For the Democratic party the uncertainty will certain remain after Tuesday's results are tabulated. The reason why is there are 2 extraordinary candidates unusual in their gender and race and in their different political talents and backgrounds. Each one appeals to rather different followings in the Democratic Party, followings, which seem to be of about equal size and standing at this point.
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Jim: On the Democratic race, do you see an advantage for one of the other candidate at this point?
Bruce: We’re actually in for a peculiar period that may or may not be decisive; the next set of primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side for the remainder of the month of February, pretty much all seem to favor the candidacy of Barack Obama – whereas in early March, two major events Texas and Ohio loom, both of which are now seen as favoring Hillary Clinton. So one question is, Does a rapid set of victories by Obama in the next few weeks create a sense of momentum that carries him past Hillary’s potential bulwarks in Ohio and Texas? Or do we see a kind of back and forth dynamic, in which first, Obama seems to be gaining, then Hillary Clinton, so that the stalemate kind of persists and moves forward into the later and last few final events of the campaign?
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Erin: Do we know anything about either party's presidential race that we didn't know before Tuesday?
Bruce: Much of what we learned about yesterday is about the relative vulnerabilities of the 3 major candidates standing, McCain on the Republican side, the certain nominee -- and Obama and Clinton. McCain has a problem with the core of the Republican base, the conservative and especially southern parts of the Republican party and we can see this presents a dilemma for him to the extent that he wishes to maintain what has been his greatest appeal for the general election in November election, the image he is a maverick, a moderate, not a clone of George W. Bush. His (McCain's) problem is that to conciliate the conservatives who view him with mistrust he has to sound conservative and that clashes with the moderate and independent image, which is his strongest card with that group.
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Jim: What’s the root of John McCain’s problems with conservatives and can he ever convince all of them that he is one of them?
Bruce: Conservatism since Ronald Reagan has developed an ideological core that we don’t find comparable on the Democratic side. And conservatives make many issues litmus tests for their leading politicians. McCain’s problem is that while he meets the litmus tests for conservatives for some issues on national security for example, or even on the issue of life, on the abortion issue, he has broken from the conservatives in ways that have angered many on some key issues, such as tax cuts, immigration, more recently global warming, and so conservatives expect their politicians to be in touch with orthodoxy. There’s much more of a concern with orthodoxy in the Republican Party and McCain is just too much of a heretic for many conservatives on some key issues.
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Jim: The Republican Party post-George W. Bush…. there’s no logical successor, so is there sort of a crisis within the Republican Party about its identity or is more just they haven’t found the right person to lead it?
Bruce: I think there is an identity crisis in the Republican Party. It’s not just a question of the personality isn’t there who seems to pull together all the conservative themes. But, like any political regime, the conservative regime that began with Ronald Reagan is pretty old by now. Their leading idea, which may have been vibrant and appealing, once are no longer so powerful or fresh or new and tax cuts is a prime example, so that the kind of question is not just. Do Republicans not have the appropriate standard-bearer for conservatism, but does conservatism itself need some sort of new life? And is it really in danger of sounding stale and old and out of date?
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P. Madan Mohan, India (email): Is the United States ready for a female President, like our country India?
Bruce: From the standpoint of a social scientist, it is unfortunate that we cannot have a true experiment on that question -- I mean that we have a woman candidate for the first time in America has a serious shot at winning the presidency, but she is not just any woman candidate she is a Clinton so her political identity is wrapped up in something with nothing to do with her gender... in India, Mrs. Gandhi had some parallel but given the polarization over bill and Hillary it will be hard to tell if Hillary is the Democratic nominee and hits trouble, whether it's because she is a woman or not.
Note: Mrs. Pratibha Patil, the current president, is India's first female president. She was sworn in as President of India in July 2007. Mrs. Indira Gandhi was the first woman prime minister of India for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and for a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984.
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Jim: Stu, what do you make of the Democratic race at the moment, does one of the other candidate have an advantage, and is there any way to know how long this will go on?
Stu: No, No and No. It what it is, a very tight contest with the Democratic Party divided and we’re not just talking about total number of delegates. When you get into the weeds and you look at the various constituencies in the Democratic Party, Senator Clinton has her base; older voters, women, Democrats, Democrats from less affluent families and without as much formal education, white voters and white women in particular – and Barack Obama does very well with African-Americans and higher status voters, higher education, higher income, with self-defined independents, independent voters. Now recently, Hispanics, Latinos have become very significant in yesterday’s balloting and I think will become even more significant in Texas, that seems to be a Clinton advantage – so when you look at the parties, when you look at the delegates, given proportional representation, given the strength of the candidates, it looks like a pretty close race to me and you can see in one week or another week one candidate will have an advantage depending upon which states are up, so presumably Obama’s going to have an advantage in the Washington, D.C. , the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland – but then down the road I think you can say Senator Clinton will have an advantage in possibly Ohio and Texas and then maybe later in Pennsylvania. It looks like a remarkably competitive context.
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Erin: What about the seemingly unintended consequences of these earlier-than-ever primaries...we don't have 2 nominees yet...how likely will the primary calendar be adjusted back next time around?
Stu: I would like to think it's very likely because nobody seems to think it's working we had a slew of primaries where candidates couldn't be at so many places at the same time -- some resorted to heavy TV ads and some didn't have the resources for that...it's not as if many voters saw the candidates Tuesday...it's one thing to say it's a mess it's another to say that anybody in particular can do anything about it -- it's up to the state parties. The Democratic national committee has tried to play a role and they have acted there's some talk of congress possibly trying to take a role but there's no easy answer here -- we have a very decentralized political system so hard to impose order on it -- all these situations where Michigan and Florida moved up to be relevant and they were stripped of delegates and if they had stayed where they were initially they would have been relevant
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Jim: First to Bruce and then Stu, please weigh in…The prospect that a convention might mean something…this hasn’t …people haven’t had to grapple with this in terms of actually deciding the nominee. It’s been awhile, I don’t know, 1952 maybe on both sides? Something like that…do people remember how to do this? I mean, I’m just wondering what are the prospects for some sort of brokered convention now as we look at a very close Democratic race?
Bruce: Certainly in the old days when races went to the convention, there was a different kind of delegate; they were party unit rules and party leaders who could negotiate. Now we have a very different system selecting the delegates. I think there’s a real chance that would, particularly if you have this to and fro if Obama picks up most of the late February races and then Hillary regains momentum in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania – it may be a wash and it may go into the convention with neither candidate having enough in the way of delegates to win. There I see two key things potential; one of them for the first time since the system was created, Super Delegates play the role they were supposed to play as party leaders who worry about the success of the party rather than individuals committed to a particular ideology or a particular candidate – and then I see also the potential nightmare for the Democratic party is the question of Michigan and Florida. Do you essentially disrespect those states by maintaining their lack of delegations – or if the races hinges on whether or not those people are seated, do you risk a party split by seating them? In that case I think the super delegates might play a role and may try to have to save the party from a kind of split by finding some solution that is in the best interests of all?
Stu: It’s hard to imagine a Democratic National Convention that picks the Party’s nominee for President of the United States and you have two of the biggest ten states that are not participating? Somebody has to be there representing Michigan and Florida – ideally from the Democrats point of view, there is an established frontrunner before the convention and that person organizes the convention and the platform committee and the rules committee and credentials and they decide who to seat and it’s nice and easy. But Bruce’s point is certainly reasonable – it could be chaotic there and yea, Super Delegates could play the role. Now Super Delegates have preferences but they also as Bruce points out have another role and that would be to pick the strongest nominee and to make sure things run smoothly. I think it would be interesting. It’s one thing to talk about a truly brokered convention or wide-open convention, but when was the last time we had even an interesting convention? You can think back to ’68 and reporters being carried out of the hall in Chicago by the Daley machine. That would almost be the culmination of what has been the most interesting election cycle in my memory.
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Erin: Without going into too much detail, what's the difference in the way Democrats and Republicans count delegates won in Tuesday's voting?
Bruce: we have to go back to the crisis that led to this system which is 1968 a year in which for the Democrats Humphrey ran in not a single primary was the Democratic nominees and the so the Democrats created a reform commission to create a fair mode of distribution to see more open election in which the rank and file have a voice and in which results don't hinge on narrow victories with a sense of fairness. Those rules are further complicated by such factors as gender equality
Stu: if anything the Republicans have a more complicated system because they have a wildly mixed system with a number of winner take all primaries and winner take all statewide and by congressional district and some more proportional representation so it's messy and they have different numbers of delegates the Republicans give significant bonuses to states traditionally voting Republican -- that distorts the size of the state so a small Republican-voting state has disproportionate clout in the Republican contest and that's not how it is in the Democratic contest remember these are the parties running these systems trying to run them as they so choose not the government adopting a system and imposing it on the parties so it tends to be chaotic and so far it has worked
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Jim: Stu, on the Republican race, where do you see that race right now, is McCain the odds on favorite, is he the clear frontrunner, does he still have problems with the right wing of the party, where does it stand?
Stu: He’s the clear favorite for the Republican nomination but absolutely Jim he has significant problems within the party. He has not, over the past couple of weeks, broadened that coalition that has been supporting him. He continues to do particularly well among independents, moderates, and tom some extent liberals in the Republican party where they exist, people who disapprove of the Bush Administration, people who disapprove of the war in Iraq, people who favor legal abortion – when you look at his profile, the groups that he leaves out are the strong conservatives, the religious conservatives, really the Bush supporters, so in a sense McCain continues to be what he was eight years ago, he was the alternative to George W. Bush. So you have this irony, even though he has basically supported the war in Iraq and the surge, he’s the candidate of the people who oppose the war in Iraq. When you watch this a long time you think that the base really dictates who the nominee is going to be, but here we have this strange situation where Republicans, conservatives, supporters of George W. Bush are not enthusiastic about John McCain. Now, in a three-way race, he can win and the example I’ve been using is yesterday, Senator McCain narrowly won the ultimate swing state in American politics, Missouri is often called the bellwether and he won it with 33-percent of the vote -- to 32 for McCain to 29 for Romney. Something very similar happened in George where Huckabee won with – let me go back to those Missouri numbers: 33 for McCain, 32 for Huckabee, 29 for Romney. In George, it was Huckabee 32, 30 to McCain and 28 to Romney. So here we have a couple of states, one, which Huckabee won, one, which McCain won, but the same dynamic holds. In a three-way contest, you just need plurality you don’t need a majority. Sometimes Huckabee wins those, sometimes McCain wins those…rarely, so far never, Romney wins those, and so you have this strange dynamic that so far has benefited McCain who either wins or is the runner up.
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Erin: John Dickerson in Slate says, The exit polls in the 16 primary states in which they were taken showed that the contours of the race as we've come to know them are still in place. Obama did well with African-Americans, men, the wealthy, those with college degrees, and liberal voters. Clinton continues to do well with women, older voters, Latinos, and those with less education and lower incomes. What are your thoughts on this?
Bruce: That's true --- to me an interesting wrinkle was strong pro Clinton Asian American vote in California -- people said Obama was ideal for the diverse state of California but we see historic racial tensions between non white groups in California, African Americans and Latinos and then Asian Americans versus black interests -- those issues go back awhile so we're seeing very different constituencies -- the trick for the nominee is to stitch them together
Stu: I agree and think back just a few weeks when pro Democratic liberal bloggers were crowing about how the Republican race was confused with many candidates, and how that race would drag on forever and the Republicans would be divided and it seemed right then but it's been turned on its head and now dem0crats are spending a lot of money between now and June if not all the way to end of august and maybe the Republicans at some point coalescing behind their nominee but it certainly looks like the divisions Dickerson noted are rather deep in the Democratic party they aren't inherently bitter like the ideological differences in the Republican party -- but you get a race this divided over 2-3 months, you'll have division and the Democrats have problems too even though broad environment may seem good for them.
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Jim: Bruce, one of the things that some people speculate could help unite the Republican party would be if the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton, what’s your thought on that?
Bruce: One of things that’s going to come up in the next couple of weeks or months on the Democratic side, and I don’t know how much impact it will have, is the electability question. The polls show that not that many Democrats are voting on that measure right now. But as McCain emerges as what I think is almost certainly the Republican nominee, the question of how do the two candidates, Clinton or Obama stack up against McCain is going to be raised and it’s going to be discussed and I think it’s going to be big in the blogosphere and places like that – and that’s where in a sense at least for what it’s worth Obama may have the advantage I suspect on a couple of things; one a greater appeal to independents seen less as a partisan than Hillary Clinton – obviously not having the Clinton baggage in the eyes of Republicans, but also sort of less obviously that Obama, while the inexperience problem may be there against McCain, has an age advantage, he will make McCain look pretty old and for an election in which the polls say the public wants a new direction and change is the exciting theme, I think being a candidate of youth, the kind of image that Ted Kennedy has tried to bestow on Obama, may give him an advantage in the electability race as against Hillary Clinton.
Stu: The General election ballot tests that I’ve seen over the past couple of months, when Senator McCain is matched against Senator Clinton or against Senator Obama, there’s not a huge difference but McCain runs 2, 4, 5 points better against Senator Clinton and Obama. Obama does appear; at least in the limited numbers we have not, to be a stronger Democratic candidate. Again that could change. But it might become a factor ultimately if this Democratic race is close enough and if the convention has to tip one way or the other.
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Jim: For Stu first then Bruce, is there any fear, do you think, among some Democrats that McCain will be able to depict or define Obama more easily, he’s sort of an unknown quantity and this is something Republican candidates often do?
Stu: I think Republicans would have two different strategies against Obama. It is certainly, is this person really ready to be the leader of the free world, the President of the United States of America? He hasn’t had a lot of time in Washington. Frankly Jim, most of the Obama message, aside from his relatively detailed discussion of healthcare, is up at 25-thousand feet, we have to bring everybody together and we can be one country and one America and it’s a kind of feel good, up beat thing and Americans like that but ultimately there are very controversial issues that do divide Americans and he talks about bringing people together in a way that I think Republicans will say, Come on, let’s hear the details…show some substance. Of course you could also argue that he has not had very many tough races, although he’s doing pretty well in this race and the Clintons are pretty tough. Against the Clintons, the Democrats’ problem there is that she doesn’t have a great appeal among independents, she is personally controversial, and I can see John McCain running against her as she is much of the past and another Clinton, and McCain has appeal among independents, so I think they would have some different strategies against both of them, but let’s remember this, the broad national atmospherics, the desire for change, the relative strength of the two parties in all the survey data that exists, which party do you trust on the federal deficit, which party do you trust to handle Iraq, the war in Iraq, which party do you trust to handle the economy and healthcare, all of those numbers favor the Democrats. The Republican brand is damaged and so, while Hillary Clinton may not be an ideal candidate and Barack Obama has weaknesses, they would be running in an environment very favorable to the Democratic nominee.
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D. Lokanadam, India (email): With Hillary still a possible nominee, is the United States ready for a wife and her husband to serve as President (with Bill as a former President)?
Bruce: I think the issue of a female candidate whose husband has been President of the U.S., unprecedented, cuts different ways depending on the nomination process or general election in November -- with many Democrats, particularly those who look back fondly on Bill Clinton, the fact Hillary is his wife is a plus, a thing that strengthens her among those groups we've been discussing, Democrats with moderate to low income, without college educations, senior citizens -- with those groups, having Bill in a 2 for one argument is a plus --however should Hillary become the Democratic nominee I think it will turn into a negative -- it's my view that more Americans than not will have trouble with the new situation of a former president and still obviously a very active political figure living in the White House with the president -- questions will arise, who are we really electing, Hillary or are we really putting bill back in the driver's seat and that will be a problem for Hillary in the fall if she is the Democratic nominee
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Erin: That wraps today’s T2A chat about Super Tuesday. Our thanks to Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the independent political newsletter Rothenberg Political Report, Bruce Miroff, political science professor at University At Albany, State University of New York, VOA National Correspondent Jim Malone – and to you for joining us. We hope you’ll come back for another T2A chat Wednesday, February 13th at 1800 UTC on voanews.com See you then!
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