The presidential campaign, now on the eve of the caucus and primary season, has reached (to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill) "the end of the beginning." During the just completed year, the would-be successors to President Obama have announced their availability, held rallies and shook hands, spent a lot of energy courting wealthy donors and key interest groups and participated in several debates.
Reality, in the form of poll numbers and
cash-on-hand, has forced several of the contenders to withdraw before any
actual decision making has taken place. After the upcoming Iowa Caucus on Feb.
1 and the New Hampshire Primary on Feb. 9, the field will presumably be
whittled down even further.
The political media, the wealthy donors, and
the interest groups prefer a horse race to a cavalry charge, so many of the
fringe candidates have had only a small window of opportunity during this
warm-up period to capture attention, gain support, and propel themselves to the
forefront. Failing to do so, which most of them have, their campaigns have
quickly become an exercise in futility, forcing each of them, one by one, to
pull out of the race.
As for those still in the race, having
survived this sorting out period, their fate will now be determined by actual voters,
casting ballots in a primary or at a caucus. That verdict, and how it’s judged
by the media and the party faithful, will further narrow the field.
The
rule of thumb (or is it conventional wisdom?) tells us that a candidate holding
the lead after this initial stage of the campaign has been completed, or who
finds him or herself in a respectable second or third place, is now well positioned
for possible success in those early primaries and caucuses. If that advantage can
be translated into actual wins or significant gains in the delegate count, then
he or she will likely become the nominee. All of that can happen pretty fast,
just like the races involving actual horses.
Which is why initial perception is nowadays
so important, why polls matter, and why Iowa and New Hampshire attract so much
attention. And it’s why other states, including Michigan, keep leap frogging
each other to hold their primaries in the winter rather than in the spring. If
a state waits too long, then the outcome is often determined before their turn
arrives.
But there are (thankfully) exceptions to
this rule.
Eight years
ago the race for the Democratic Party nomination turned out to be an endurance match-up between then
Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, with late primaries in Pennsylvania
and Ohio becoming relevant.
Four years ago, we witnessed the Republican
frontrunner, Gov. Mitt Romney—perceived by many GOPers as a suspect
conservative—stave off assorted non-Romney challengers, with the last hope and
most potent challenger being former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. Because
of this opposition, it took Romney longer than expected to emerge victorious.
Michigan, my Michigan has sought to be
relevant in these nomination processes by holding an early primary. Our impact,
however, have proven a mixed bag.
In the 2000 campaign, Republican Senator
John McCain of Arizona, given up for dead early on, caught fire in New
Hampshire and suddenly became a viable alternative to the frontrunner, Gov.
George W. Bush of Texas.
Michigan had scheduled its primary for Feb.
22, right on the heels of the New Hampshire date, so the in-state campaign was
over and done in a matter of days. My wife and I happened to arrive in Traverse
City, ready to enjoy one of our three-day mini-vacations, when we learned that
McCain would be appearing the next day (Monday) at a rally. We walked over to
the event, found a bench along the back of the room to stand on—the place was
packed—and heard the speech and town-hall style question and answer session.
McCain won by over 100,000 votes in
Michigan, an outcome the Bush faithful blamed on Democrats and Independents
participating in the balloting. (How dare citizens vote in a taxpayer-funded
election that might determine the next president!)
This early surge was quickly stemmed,
though. McCain, who at the time was perceived an independent maverick and more
moderate than Bush, got his nose bloodied in South Carolina. A stealth campaign
accused him of being a Manchurian Candidate, implying that the Communists had
brainwashed him during his captivity as a prisoner-of-war in Hotel Hanoi, and
of fathering a child out of wedlock with a black prostitute. These “wild-eyed”
accusations would, at first glance, seem bizarre, but apparently a lot of
people either believed them or decided McCain’s was a little too independent.
Bush,
of course, having sidelined his opponent, went on to claim the nomination and
then win the presidency, the later victory coming, in part, compliments of
resilient paper ballots in Florida that left numerous chads partially intact,
defying the intent of the designer was who assumed that, once punched, the tiny
pieces of paper would float earthward.
In
1980, the state backed another Republican candidate who ended up finishing
second in the nomination process. That year George H. Bush won the primary over
Gov. Ronald Reagan, one of the few bumps Reagan suffered on his road to the
White House.
Eight
years before that, in 1972, the Democratic field at one time or other had 16
declared candidates, although several of
them withdrew the preceding year before the delegate selection began.
Leading contenders in that field included Senator Edmund Muskie (the early
frontrunner), former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator George McGovern, Senator
Henry Jackson, New York Mayor John Lindsay, and Governor George Wallace.
Michigan held its primary on May 16, the
same day as Maryland. At that point the outcome of the nomination was still up
for grabs. Wallace had won in Florida earlier in the year, not a surprising
outcome, but was also showing strength in these more northern states. The day
before the vote, Wallace was shot five times at a rally in Maryland by Arthur
Bremer. The next day he won both of those primaries.
The party establishment in Michigan was
upset with the outcome, wondering how this had happened? They suggested a
sympathy vote had occurred and also accused Republicans of skewering the result
by voting in the primary. As you may recall, Richard Nixon was running for
re-election unopposed, so there wasn’t a GOP contest.
While those explanations, no doubt, had
validity, the unpleasant truth for the Democratic establishment was that
Wallace’s divisive and distaining rhetoric, aimed at the federal government and
the elites, found a receptive audience. This segment of the electorate---categorized
as mainly white and blue collar--was angry and resentful about what was then
happening in the country, including the opposition to the Vietnam War, the
civil rights push that evolved into busing, demonstrations on college campuses,
and all the trappings of the counter-culture. A favorite line of Wallace’s that
year, one filled with innuendo, was (remember?) the pointy-headed intellectuals
who were running and ruining the country. Back then what happened was called a
“back lash.”
The assassination attempt left Wallace
paralyzed and effectively ended his campaign. Wallace ran again in 1976, but
with much less support. Near the end of his political career, after being
elected governor again for a third non-consecutive stint, he renounced his
“Segregation Forever” stance and apologized to African-Americans.
Eight years ago, in 2008, attempting to leap
frog far ahead of the other states by scheduling a Jan. 15 primary, the state
ran afoul with the Democratic Party hierarchy. Obama and most of the other
candidates, honoring a request from the Democratic National Committee, pledged
not to campaign in the state and had their names removed from the ballot.
Clinton chose to keep her name on it and won the vote. However, the DNC stripped
the state of all its delegates.
In 2012, the party reverted to the caucus
and awarded its delegates to President Obama.
The Michigan
Presidential Primary this time around is set for March 8, and, on the Republican side of the ballot, our
decision might help determine the outcome.
A news article by Detroit Free Press reporter Todd Spangler pointed out that our vote
will come “a week after a largely southern Super Tuesday on March 1, when a
dozen states will be voting, and a week before a handful of particularly
consequential states go to the polls…”
Spangler noted that Michigan, as the first
state in the industrial Midwest to have a primary, “could help determine if the
establishment wing of the GOP can successfully rally around a single candidate.”
He also reported that some national
columnists are interested in how Michigan Republicans vote, feeling that the
state “could be a revealing battleground for the cultural divides within the party,
with those voting blocs nearly evenly split in the state.”
As for the Democratic Party (Michigan
Democrats decided to have a primary this time around), former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton at present appears to have decent lead over Senator
Bernie Sanders. Should Clinton, as expected, widen her advantage over the next
few weeks, then our March primary will likely be a rubber stamp for her. If, on
the other hand, Sanders finds electoral success in the earlier primaries,
thereby tightening that race, then Michigan might prove influential in helping
determine this party nomination as well.
In either case, for a few days Michigan will
be the center of the political universe.
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