This election year

As we go to press the primary election season is coming to a head in America with the so-called February 5 string of over 20 “Super Tuesday” primaries and what seems pretty certain is that this election cycle—nothing is very certain in the presidential field.

John McCain seems to be predominating among the Republicans, his resurgence (after being pronounced dead only months ago by pollsters) driven by the independents (even evangelicals are straying) who can’t seem to find any candidate to their liking. Mitt Romney has said all the right things to the conservatives, and lately is spending liberally from his own fortune, but his campaign refuses to catch fire. Maybe he’s too slick, maybe he’s too ingratiating, maybe he changed his views too diametrically from the views he held on abortion and health insurance coverage while he was a pragmatic and energetic governor of Massachusetts and die-hard conservatives just don’t trust him. Mike Huckabee was the alternative to Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican field for the conservative evangelicals who until recently were the bedrock of the Republican Party. But it’s became plain he can’t win the national election and so he has become an also-ran (Romney recently urged him to drop out). That leaves John McCain, who has the defense credentials, hero status—and the support of the mercurial independents—to give any of the Democrats a fight.

That leaves the Democrats themselves—who this election are equally unsettled because they face a historical dilemma: do they make history and nominate a woman or do they make history and nominate an African American? The Clintons (at this stage of the campaign Hillary and Bill have become inseparable in the public mind) are trying hard to portray themselves as the champions of the disenfranchised—women, blacks, the poor—and maybe trying too hard. Their campaign has become a juggernaut and turned ruthless and monolithic when Obama became the hope of a new generation and champion of “Change” and the Clintons became the old guard. Their hard-edged response backfired, and there were missteps when race was injected into the campaign and Senator Clinton said it had taken Lyndon Johnson to pass the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s historical reforms—which the black community took as a major slight.

The Democrats have now settled into civility again, but the bitterness lingers, and it seems likely that there will be delegate head-hunting up until the convention and Mrs. Clinton will have her work cut out for her to restore harmony in the party and get everybody under the fold if she becomes the nominee. The political dynasty that represents the glamour of politics for many Americans still (the Kennedys) are fractured in this election and they seem to reflect the restless nature of the American electorate itself.