Nebraska voters in 2008 are going to have a chance to do something they haven’t done since 1968… matter in a Presidential Nomination.
Last Saturday, the Democratic Party of Nebraska (NDP) voted to move to a presidential caucus system. Nebraska’s caucus will be held on February 9th, the Saturday after “Super Tuesday.
While technically the way to win the nomination for President is to win the largest number of “delegates” to the national convention in Denver… the reality is that it’s all about creating the right media narrative, which then convinces people to vote for you. Remember ’04 when Dean was ahead for like 6 months- then Kerry won Iowa and Edwards got 2nd, and suddenly it was the Kerry / Edwards show? By the time of Nebraska’s May Primary, the nomination was all wrapped up.
Well, ’08 is going to be similar in a lot of ways, but this time Nebraska is going to play a starring roll.
Here’s how the media calendar is looking like it will play out:
(as well as my current predictions on how the race itself will go)
- 2007- January ’08:
-Half the stories will be about “frontrunners” Hillary, Edwards, and Obama. The other half will be about “dark-horse” candidates, as they announce, build steam, loose steam, make big mistakes, and at least one or two drop out.
- January 1st – January 14th (01/14 is the day of the Iowa Caucus)
-the stories will focus on the “horse-race” aspect of the election. That is to say, they’ll talk almost exclusively about the big 3 (Hillary, Edwards, Obama), with a few stories about the Dark-Horses, and what kinds of numbers those candidates will need to even stay in the race.
- January 14th- Feb. 5th
-The Iowa Caucus, followed quickly by the New Hampshire primary, then the Nevada caucus & South Carolina primary will lead to all the candidates dropping out besides the big 3, the vanity candidates (Gravel and Kucinich), and perhaps 1 dark-horse candidate who did surprisingly well in an early state (I’m betting on Clark or Richardson to fill this role, now that my man Warner is out). For the record: my prediction is that Vilsak will do so poorly in Iowa that he’ll drop out soon thereafter. I think Edwards will pick up steam after IA, NV, and SC, but I’m not sure if it will be enough… and Hillary will do so badly in all of those states that she’ll go on a massive spending spree in super-Tuesday states, blowing through 25 million dollars.
- Then comes Super Tuesday, February 5th. Florida, California, perhaps New York, and lots of other big states will all go on the same day. After this there will be only one story: the horse race. There will be 2 major candidates left, and I don’t know who they will be.
- Where does the media attention go next? Nebraska.
It’s the first contest after Super-Tuesday, and it’s going to be watched as a key indicator for how the rest of the horse-race will play out.
I’m going to use the only comparison I know how: baseball.
Think of the primary calendar as the play-offs. When all the dust settles, no matter how promising or long-shot your team was to start with, in the end you end up with only 2 teams.
Maybe it’s the White-Sox (Obama) or the Yankees (Clinton) or the Cubs (Gravel….because hell would have to freeze over for him to win). The point is, after Super-Tuesday, the rest of the primary calendar will be a lot like the World Series: 2 teams, an extended series of contests on different home-turfs and with different handicaps, pitching staffs, etc. And where does Nebraska fit into it?
Because NE doesn’t have enough electoral votes to count as a real “game” in the series, the Nebraska caucus will be sort of like if the World-Series had an exhibition match before it officially started.
But the wonderful thing about exhibition games, just like the pre-season and spring training, is that they usually get more media-hype than actual games do.
Action is great, but speculation is twice as fun when you’re a media-mogul.
So when super Tuesday is over, expect to see Hillary, or Obama, or Edwards, or…whoever, stop off in Nebraska (probably Omaha, where all the primary voters are). Winning here will be a crucial ‘first-blood’ test of how the final 2 candidates will do against each other. Also, with its centrist cred, and farmer/middle-America persona, winning Nebraska will allow campaigns to talk about how well their message plays in “the heartland” and to paint themselves as “electable” versus their “unelectable opponents.”
There’s a lot more that can, and will, happen between now and then. But it’s good to know that no matter what happens, the Democrats in Nebraska will have some say in the whole process.
(and if you don’t know how a caucus works… don’t worry, I’ll try to post a good explanation sometime soon. It’ll be fun, I promise.)
Great stuff, John. It’s quite incredible to think that we’re already in campaign mode, but I breathe this stuff, so I’m loving it.
The “big three” are going to have to operate under the assumption that they’ll be in it after Super Tuesday. So, during some of these trips to Iowa, or before they go out west, the candidates should make a stop here in Nebraska. That’s something we haven’t had in a very long time.
Having a voice in the process, having candidates come speak to us, will help to energize our party. And - who knows - maybe we get enough people to see the eventual nominee that the 2nd District gives it’s vote to a Democrat?
So could I participate in the caucus and then switch parties and vote in the Republican presidential primary in May?
Not that I’d want to do that, I’m just wondering.
You know that I love baseball analogies.
“Anything can be explained in baseball analogies. Just give me something to analogize.”
Thats some pretty prescient educated guesswork, there are a million possible variables that could throw a wrench in any number of candidates between now and then. Just a few off the top of my head:
-Someone finds out that Hillary and/or Bill have gotten themselves caught in another weird mistake, some random intern says Bill sexually harassed her, whitewater type thing, etc.
-Edwards loses more support, money and staff to Obama and completely loses his status as ‘the other candidate’… and either vies for the VP slot again or just pushes through and hopes for a lucky break.
-Obama (I’ll try to be fair here, I’m a huge supporter) something comes out about him that makes people think his folksiness is an act, or he isn’t able to convince enough people he’s got the chops to run the country yet.
-The war miraculously takes a turn for the better… would probably help Hillary in the primary, but would also make John McCain nearly impossible to beat in the general.
-The Democrats in Congress aren’t able to really get much of anything done and piss the moderates and independents off, possibly enough to throw their support in with a group like Unity ‘08 (a group trying to get one centrist Dem and one centrist Rep to be a separate independent ticket in ‘08). In which case the election could be decided by whether the presidential candidate for this group is a Democrat or a Republican… meaning which party it would steal the most votes from. This is essentially what happened to the Reps in ‘92, Bill Clinton almost assuredly would have lost had it not been for Perot stealing so many votes from Daddy Bush. Think of how hard to beat a Giuliani/Clark, Clark/Giuliani , Hagel/Clark, Clark/Powell or even McCain/Clark if McCain loses the Rep primary and is pissed off enough to jump ship… its happened before in history when so many people were so disaffected. If the Dems lose the centrist independents and some of the moderates by pandering too much to the left this becomes more and more a possibility.
-Some other Third Party, Greenies, Libertarians, another random billionaire with a massive ego, joins the fray and tips the scale in the direction away from the party they siphen the most votes from.
-Another terrorist attack hits the US… would help people like John McCain, Giuliani, Joe Biden & (shudders) Newt Gingrich, as well as hurt people percieved as less experienced &/or soft like Obama, Edwards, Hagel, etc… not sure what it would do to Hillary.
Blah blah blah
I agree with all those possible things Sol… but while I have awful luck picking candidates to support (I chose Warner, then Feingold…just to have them both drop out), I’m pretty good at seeing trends. So if no big changes happen, I think this scenario has a decent shot at playing out.
There’s also a level of: this is the scenario we want to see play out (because it would be good for nebraska) and it’s playing-out-potential depends on how much people believe NE will really matter (ie believe in it). Therefore, the more we talk about Nebraska as the Exhibition Match before the World Series… or some other much better metaphore someone else thinks of to explain it, the more likely we are to get Presidential Candidates to pay attention.
I think if a big-three candidate did try to use Nebraska as a pivatol caucus, they could really get a lot of millage out of doing so.
I should’ve said this in my last post, but I didnt mean to say that I dont think Nebraska will get some good action, I was just saying that I wouldnt necessarily count on just the current big three being the only contenders by then. There are just plain too many variables, time for things to change, people to make mistakes, candidates to grow, etc. You said,”So if no big changes happen…”, well big changes WILL happen. Its not a matter of IF, its a matter of when, what kind and who is positioned to benefit from those changes.
I’ve never been wrong as far as who I thought would win the general, ever since Reagan when I was a little kid, heheh, but I have a history of choosing to side with underdogs, who often lose, in the primary. I think I’m so able to pick the winner in the general so accurately because I am a prototypical swing voter and its my type that win general elections for candidates… and am not able to accurately pick primary winners so well because I dont so much grasp the mentality of those that make up the biggest voting blocks there.
By the time we get to Nebraska, I very much doubt that there will be any more than two legitimate candidates left. Whether or not Nebraska will be a pivotal contest will largely depend on Edwards’ performance in Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina. If he doesn’t win at least one of those states, he will have to drop out and endorse one of the other candidates. These are supposed to be Edwards’ strongest states, and if he can’t win one of them, his electoral strategy is shot going into Super Tuesday. He probably wouldn’t win a single state on February 5.
If Edwards does win one or more of the early states, then he’ll have some momentum going into Super Tuesday. I can’t see more than one major candidate dropping out after Super Tuesday if there are three candidates remaining (remember, Democratic Primaries are not winner-take-all).
The fact that we are only four days after Super Tuesday also means that a candidate facing pressure to drop out of the race could still rebound in Nebraska and point to it as a sign of life and a reason to keep going.