Two States - Too Much

The wait is almost over; Iowa and New Hampshire vote this week and the news media have been hysterical. Adam Nagourney of the New York Times asks “What if Iowa settles nothing for Democrats?”, as though it is the role of a few thousand Iowa caucus attendees to select the nominee, before any other state has had a chance to vote. The impatience is understandable since most campaigns began in 2006 and seem to have been going on forever. For the first time in living memory there is no incumbent and no heir apparent in either party. Reporting on the nomination process as a horse race though is a distortion. If a hopeful finishes with 29% of the vote, two points ahead of the next guy, has the first place finisher really won anything besides a few delegates? How can someone be called a winner when 70% of the voters selected someone else? The goal of the nomination process is to collect delegates; it is, practically speaking, a scavenger hunt. The news media continue to mischaracterize the process because horse races are more interesting than scavenger hunts and attract more readers and viewers. Local newspapers like the Des Moines Register or the Manchester Union Leader revel in their brief moment in the national spotlight, knowing that soon they will disappear from the national stage for another four years. Beyond the news media, the campaigns themselves spin expectations in the early primaries to their advantage, setting the bar as high as possible for their opponents while setting it as low as possible for themselves.

Wyoming Republicans also vote for 28 delegates this week but nobody seems to notice.

A little perspective is in order. 37 Republican delegates are at stake in Iowa and 24 in New Hampshire (knocked down by party rules to 12 before the convention). 1034 are needed for the nomination, giving Iowa 3.6% of the needed vote, Wyoming 2.7% and N.H. 1.2%. The percentages are comparable for the Democrats. The nomination process isn’t a horse race, however, it isn’t just a scavenger hunt either. It’s also a broadway musical. Impresarios don’t always premier big budget productions in a big city. They send them on the road to smaller audiences to get the kinks worked out before exposing them to big city theater critics. Likewise, hopefuls can go door-to-door in New Hampshire; they can’t do that in California. In some cases early states are so obviously well suited to a given candidate that they become must-wins. As a Midwesterner Dick Gephardt was the obvious favorite to finish first in the Iowa caucus in 2004; when he finished fourth, he quit the race. Despite what the rival campaigns say, this year there are no obvious “must wins” in either party before Super Tuesday that would cause a candidate to drop out. However, if John McCain doesn’t finish first in New Hampshire, it’s difficult to see how he could expect to get the nomination.

In addition, while only three states will go to the polls or caucus sites this week, voters nationwide have been watching. There won’t be time for door-to-door retail politics in the coming weeks, so voters in other states may look back to what hopefuls said in Iowa or New Hampshire. What candidates say in the two early states may matter more than how they finish. 108% of the delegates needed for the nomination will be awarded on February 5.

If liberals are concerned that Iowa and New Hampshire won’t knock anybody out of the race, conservatives are disappointed that the first two states have breathed new life into two campaigns that could destroy the Republican party. There is probably no other state than Iowa where Mike Huckabee could have done so much with so little. In the past month, supporting Huckabee has been a way for social conservatives to express their frustration with a party that hasn’t delivered all that they wanted. Since his sudden rise in the polls, law-and-border activists have descended on Iowa attacking Huckabee for his support for illegal aliens. In addition, Huckabee has embarrassed himself with a clumsy article on foreign policy. Embarrassing, not because of his conclusion which criticized Bush’s policy, but because it was so poorly written that it was obvious that the author didn’t know what he was talking about. Secretary of State Rice, who normally stays out of politics, termed Huckabee’s criticism “ludicrous.” Democrats continue to lay off Huckabee, hoping he will get the nomination. Democrats don’t like Huckabee; they just know that he would be the easiest candidate to beat. Americans have elected planters, soldiers, journalists, lawyers and an MBA to the presidency but they will never elect a Baptist preacher. Democrats know this and Republicans are starting to catch on. Huckabee’s sudden double digit lead in Iowa has evaporated to where he is in a dead heat with Romney, going into caucus night.

New Hampshire, on the other hand, has revived the moribund campaign of the maverick John McCain. Like some exercise in nostalgia, some New Hampshire voters have indicated support for the winner of the 2000 primary there. Liberal news media love John McCain, precisely because so many Republicans disown him. McCain’s 2006 and 2007 illegal alien amnesty bills were unpopular with Americans in general, and infuriated the vast majority of Republicans. No other early state is farther away from the Mexican border than New Hampshire, and no other state has been more immune to the devastating effects of illegal immigration. McCain’s biggest weakness is a non-issue in New Hampshire; McCain can’t expect that to be the case in any other primary state. To be fair, McCain does have his supporters in the GOP, those who focus on foreign policy to the exclusion of all else, and those who employ illegal aliens, but, McCain’s negatives are the highest of any hopeful within his own party. CNN and The Washington Post both came to McCain’s defense when Romney ran an ad last week citing McCain’s support for amnesty but Romney was right; the ad was spot-on. Yes, McCain is an authentic hero of the VietNam war, but so was Duke Cunningham. Besides, McCain is simply too old. McCain can’t possibly get the nomination, but he can continue to complicate the race.

Demographically, Iowa and New Hampshire have never been good choices for the nation’s first primary contests, but they are roles that they have guarded jealously. New Hampshire was willing to give up half its delegates to hold its primary before February 5, pushing up their contest from March to the first week in January. They may be early but their importance is exaggerated. Estes Kefauver, Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Henry Cabot Lodge and Pat Buchanan all won the New Hampshire primary; none got the nomination. As for Iowa, in 1988 Pat Robertson came in second in Iowa in a campaign that subsequently collapsed. On the other side, no Democratic Iowa caucus winner has ever gone on to win the presidency in a contested election. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, these two states aren’t the end of the nomination process, or the beginning of the end; they are instead, merely the end of the beginning. The fact that the process has finally begun is, in itself, something to get excited about.

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