It turns out that reports of the political deaths of Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain were greatly exaggerated. Political pundits–myself included–were tempted to write off at least one of the candidates (Hillary) after her shockingly decisive defeat in Iowa, and of course McCain was labeled a has-been long before that. Now, it appears that the Iowa debacle might have been the best thing that could have happened for last night's comeback kids.
As far as Hillary goes, up until Iowa's reality check, she had been perceived as the clear favorite to win the Democratic nomination. However, Sen. Barack Obama might have done her a huge favor with his surprise victory by recasting her as the underdog. It certainly shook up her staff and reenergized her supporters by destroying any assumptions that she could just show up and claim her rightful prize.
This is shaping up to be quite a battle in both parties. Craig Gordon of “Newsday”–with his fatigue perhaps betrayed by his hyperbolic prose this morning–did capture the renewed excitement surrounding Hillary's supposedly moribund candidacy: “Clinton survived a near-death experience–and much like the idea that what doesn't kill a politician only makes him or her stronger, she is likely to come out of last night with a Lazarus-like glow, a candidate who has stared defeat in the face and can roar back to the trail renewed.”
We'll see. With 20-20 hindsight, Hillary was certainly not nearly as crippled as she appeared to be after Iowa. But nor is she invulnerable just because she managed to take New Hampshire. We are still in the spring training of this political season, and the World Series is a long way off.
On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee's Iowa win perhaps scared the life out of the GOP's more moderate, secular wing, alarmed to see a tax-hiking, Bible-thumper seize the lead. Now, with all of Rudy Guiliani's personal baggage and liberal positions, and Mitt Romney's flip-flopping, Sen. McCain is starting to look like a reasonable compromise candidate again. The question is whether he has the money and organizational infrastructure to compete in so many big states over so short a time.
Of course, time will tell. A month from now, with Super Tuesday and more than two-dozen more primaries behind us–including major states such as Florida, New York, California and Illinois–we'll have a much clearer view of where we are heading.
In any case, with Sens. Clinton and McCain winning yesterday, I did get the sense that the adults in the room had taken control of the party from the kids who had been playing grownup for the past week.
On an insurance-related note, the Democrats won another major “primary” yesterday. In a poll taken among leading property-casaulty insurance company and association executives at the annual Joint Industry Forum in New York, nearly three out of four of the top dogs in this solidly Republican business predicted that a Democrat would take the White House on Election Day.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.