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Friday, June 6, 2008
The Factor to Watch? Race
Where we stand as Obama wraps it up:
This post is partly in response to a comment posted on the string below. A writer suggests that the Lichtman keys are missing the intensity of the Democratic split this year. She says that intraparty wounds could, indeed, hurt Obama, even if divisions in an “out” party havn’t hurt a candidate in the past.
A response: Maybe.
But, in truth, in every election there seems to be something that has never been present before, something special that will upset the keys because of its intensity.
In the 1988, it was, among other things, “The Wimp Factor.” George H.W. Bush, having been a Uriah Heepish V.P. for so many years — having looked SO tiny compared to Reagan — was now the subject of newsweekly cover stories saying he was just too wimpy to be elected president.
But nature took its course: He started delivering Peggy Noonan’s manly lines (“Read My Lips: No Knew Taxes”), and the Republican convention featured film of him landing on an aircraft carrier as the youngest fighter pilot in WWII or something. And was that. A factor that has seemed dominant for a year disappeared in an instant. Poof.
In ‘92 it was Clinton being an adulterer and a Vietnam war protester in England and a draft dodger and having a feminist wife.
There’s always something. But so far nothing seems to have upset the keys.
Having said that, I have to also make a periodically-necessary disclaimer: The system will be wrong someday. Lichtman has never presented it as foolproof.
My own sense though is that the Democratic divisions are too close to ordinary to have any impact.
There’s nothing ideological here. I’m mean, there’s nothing about the direction of the country. By comparison, when Eisenhower beat Taft in 1952, the Republican conservatives — the base, even then — were bitterly disappointed.
Other, earlier elections saw multi-ballot conventions turning candidates who won in November: 1920, 1932.
The one factor that does give me pause (and Lichtman, too) this year is race.
We are talking, after all, about a predictive scheme that is based on historical precedents. And there is certainly no precedent for a black candidate.
You might noticed that the Lichtman keys make no mention of the demographic characteristics of the candidates. This does not mean that anybody is saying that such characteristics are irrelevant. It only means that if a given characteristic doesn’t keep a candidate from winning the nomination of a mainstream party, it is apparently not all that problematic.
This year certain characteristics would prevent an election in November: being a Muslim, certainly. Gay. Atheist. Mormon? But they would prevent a nomination first.
Being black does not seem to be in that category. However, one can’t help but notice that the Democratic nomination came down to TWO candidates of unprecedented demographic characteristics. So maybe the fact that one won isn’t so meaningful.
Not that I’m hedging. The prediction is in. I’m just making another prediction: If the prediction is wrong — which it won’t be — race will be the reason.
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