Village Journals
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
In Obama's Successful Run, Timing Was Everything
online.wsj.com
In Obama's Successful Run, Timing Was Everything
June 5, 2008; Page A16
Presidential candidates often prevail because they happen to arrive just as the country is ready to receive them. Sen. Barack Obama is such a candidate.
Sen. Obama, who now has secured the support needed to be the Democratic nominee, is an unconventional presidential contender, almost a revolutionary one. He also is a candidate who simply never could have been nominated before 2008. It was his luck, or his fate, to arrive just as a whole series of forces coalesced to afford him the chance to make history:
Without the war in Iraq, there would have been no way to make his early mark -- the one that first allowed him to distinguish himself from prohibitive favorite Sen. Hillary Clinton -- by being the earliest and purest opponent of an increasingly unpopular conflict.
Without the full flowering of the Internet, there would have been no way for him to marshal the financial wherewithal of almost 1.5 million citizens, who collectively made him the richest candidate in the race by far and turned the history of campaign fund raising on its head.
Without the arrival of today's generation of new, young voters, who see a biracial candidate as nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the America they have grown up knowing, there wouldn't have been the same kind of historic outpouring of registrations and votes from newly minted Democrats under the age of 30.
Perhaps most important, without the collapse of President Bush's popularity, which has helped drive two-thirds of Americans to say the country has gone off on the wrong track, there wouldn't have been the same inclination to take a chance on a presidential contender of any race whose national experience amounts to 3? years as the junior senator from Illinois. Despite all the rhetorical flourishes about race in the campaign, the single most important factor may be that the desire for change has trumped the soothing reassurance of experience.
Combined, all those factors explain Barack Obama the nominee. But they also raise what now becomes the big question: While this is a year in which one party was prepared to nominate such an unconventional figure, is it also a year in which the whole country is prepared to elect him?
The task won't be simple -- and Sen. Obama will have to remain unconventional to prevail.
The problem now is that Sen. Obama has staggered, more than dashed, across the primary finish line, losing six of the last nine primaries to Sen. Clinton. He has shown some weaknesses among prime demographic targets -- principally working-class whites -- that Democrats covet. And he faces an Electoral College map that favors Republican presidential candidates in some ways.
His biggest decision, of course, will be whether to ask Sen. Clinton to be his running mate, hoping that will heal party wounds and help him draw in some of those working-class whites and older women he lost to her. Or whether the bruised relations between the two candidates and the accumulated Clinton baggage are too much to carry forward.
But whatever his decision on that front, he will need to continue to do things differently from other candidates to succeed. He will need, for example, to continue to use the Internet effectively, both to organize untapped voters and to press the financial advantage he will have over Sen. McCain in the months before the late-summer conventions.
That unusual Democratic money advantage, in fact, is substantial enough that it leads to a big decision now facing Sen. Obama: Will he choose to accept public financing for his fall general-election campaign, sticking with a system that Democrats have long espoused, and that no previous presidential candidate has rejected? Or will he choose instead to finance his own fall campaign, banking on his ability to keep pulling in millions over the Internet?
Most of all, though, he will need to redraw the electoral map to overcome built-in advantages Republicans enjoy. Put simply, the swing states Republicans have held onto in recent years carry more Electoral College votes than those Democrats have been able to win. That is the equation that Sen. Obama must change to win.
Here's the picture: There were a dozen states in the last presidential election in which the winning candidate got 52% or less of the popular vote. Those states, all close enough to have gone either way, were split evenly between President Bush and the Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
President Bush took six: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Florida. Sen. Kerry took six: Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Yet the Republican wins in their swing states were enough to give President Bush an Electoral College victory of 286 electoral votes to 251 for Sen. Kerry.
Sen. Obama's best bet at winning over swing states that went to Republicans last time probably lies in Colorado, Nevada and Iowa. Those states would give him 21 more electoral votes, and take 21 away from the Republicans -- a 42-vote swing that would be sufficient to win the election.
But that's true only if he holds onto all the swing states Democrats won last time. And his weakness with working-class white voters suggests he may have problems holding onto states such as Pennsylvania. Also, New Hampshire has been a strong state for Sen. McCain, so Democrats can't count on that one.
The safest course for Sen. Obama is to win over some states not normally in the Democratic column.
Look for Florida and Ohio to be giant battlegrounds in the fall, as they always are, but also look for a big Obama push to win, for example, the state of Virginia. That's a traditionally Republican state that has been tending Democratic, and where a huge black turnout in favor of Sen. Obama might tip the balance. Other states likely to be high on the Obama "turn" list: Missouri and North Carolina.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at [email protected]
In Obama's Successful Run, Timing Was Everything
June 5, 2008; Page A16
Presidential candidates often prevail because they happen to arrive just as the country is ready to receive them. Sen. Barack Obama is such a candidate.
Sen. Obama, who now has secured the support needed to be the Democratic nominee, is an unconventional presidential contender, almost a revolutionary one. He also is a candidate who simply never could have been nominated before 2008. It was his luck, or his fate, to arrive just as a whole series of forces coalesced to afford him the chance to make history:
Without the war in Iraq, there would have been no way to make his early mark -- the one that first allowed him to distinguish himself from prohibitive favorite Sen. Hillary Clinton -- by being the earliest and purest opponent of an increasingly unpopular conflict.
Without the full flowering of the Internet, there would have been no way for him to marshal the financial wherewithal of almost 1.5 million citizens, who collectively made him the richest candidate in the race by far and turned the history of campaign fund raising on its head.
Without the arrival of today's generation of new, young voters, who see a biracial candidate as nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the America they have grown up knowing, there wouldn't have been the same kind of historic outpouring of registrations and votes from newly minted Democrats under the age of 30.
Perhaps most important, without the collapse of President Bush's popularity, which has helped drive two-thirds of Americans to say the country has gone off on the wrong track, there wouldn't have been the same inclination to take a chance on a presidential contender of any race whose national experience amounts to 3? years as the junior senator from Illinois. Despite all the rhetorical flourishes about race in the campaign, the single most important factor may be that the desire for change has trumped the soothing reassurance of experience.
Combined, all those factors explain Barack Obama the nominee. But they also raise what now becomes the big question: While this is a year in which one party was prepared to nominate such an unconventional figure, is it also a year in which the whole country is prepared to elect him?
The task won't be simple -- and Sen. Obama will have to remain unconventional to prevail.
The problem now is that Sen. Obama has staggered, more than dashed, across the primary finish line, losing six of the last nine primaries to Sen. Clinton. He has shown some weaknesses among prime demographic targets -- principally working-class whites -- that Democrats covet. And he faces an Electoral College map that favors Republican presidential candidates in some ways.
His biggest decision, of course, will be whether to ask Sen. Clinton to be his running mate, hoping that will heal party wounds and help him draw in some of those working-class whites and older women he lost to her. Or whether the bruised relations between the two candidates and the accumulated Clinton baggage are too much to carry forward.
But whatever his decision on that front, he will need to continue to do things differently from other candidates to succeed. He will need, for example, to continue to use the Internet effectively, both to organize untapped voters and to press the financial advantage he will have over Sen. McCain in the months before the late-summer conventions.
That unusual Democratic money advantage, in fact, is substantial enough that it leads to a big decision now facing Sen. Obama: Will he choose to accept public financing for his fall general-election campaign, sticking with a system that Democrats have long espoused, and that no previous presidential candidate has rejected? Or will he choose instead to finance his own fall campaign, banking on his ability to keep pulling in millions over the Internet?
Most of all, though, he will need to redraw the electoral map to overcome built-in advantages Republicans enjoy. Put simply, the swing states Republicans have held onto in recent years carry more Electoral College votes than those Democrats have been able to win. That is the equation that Sen. Obama must change to win.
Here's the picture: There were a dozen states in the last presidential election in which the winning candidate got 52% or less of the popular vote. Those states, all close enough to have gone either way, were split evenly between President Bush and the Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry.
President Bush took six: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Florida. Sen. Kerry took six: Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Yet the Republican wins in their swing states were enough to give President Bush an Electoral College victory of 286 electoral votes to 251 for Sen. Kerry.
Sen. Obama's best bet at winning over swing states that went to Republicans last time probably lies in Colorado, Nevada and Iowa. Those states would give him 21 more electoral votes, and take 21 away from the Republicans -- a 42-vote swing that would be sufficient to win the election.
But that's true only if he holds onto all the swing states Democrats won last time. And his weakness with working-class white voters suggests he may have problems holding onto states such as Pennsylvania. Also, New Hampshire has been a strong state for Sen. McCain, so Democrats can't count on that one.
The safest course for Sen. Obama is to win over some states not normally in the Democratic column.
Look for Florida and Ohio to be giant battlegrounds in the fall, as they always are, but also look for a big Obama push to win, for example, the state of Virginia. That's a traditionally Republican state that has been tending Democratic, and where a huge black turnout in favor of Sen. Obama might tip the balance. Other states likely to be high on the Obama "turn" list: Missouri and North Carolina.
Write to Gerald F. Seib at [email protected]