05 November 2015
Also Ran
by J.R.Thomas
Readers following the evolution of the American Presidential nomination race will be strongly of the view that the Democrats are much better organised than the Grand Old Party. On the Democrat side it might have been three candidates but, with the withdrawal of Joe Biden from a race he never started, now it is just two and it looks like a nice tidy contest between likely winner, Hillary Clinton, and well regarded but rank outsider, Bernie Sanders.
But on the Republican side, what a collection of runners. Sixteen at the last count, with the outsiders running strong – Donald Trump on about 24% and Ben Carson at around 15%, with Carly Fiorina making some progress on the outside. Everybody’s favourite, Jeb Bush, is nowhere to be seen and may soon be pulled up, and none of the mainstream candidates – nobody with any experience you might slightly cynically say – is able to jostle through to get more than five or six per cent of poll support.
So “who knows?” on the Republican side, but, against that, it ought to be a nice easy walk for Hillary. If she falls over – as she did in 2008 against Mr Obama – then Bernie Sanders will be ready and waiting to pick up the baton and be the candidate in November.
Well, you might think that; but you would be wrong. There are in fact another fourteen nationally approved Democrat runners declared – and more running at local level and hoping they might get the backing to get on the national list.
Of the fourteen, the most well-known and the most likely to start to gain more prominence in the race, is Martin O’Malley, formerly the Governor of Maryland. He has a track record in Maryland that has given him national prominence and made him very popular in his home state – a mainstream Democrat who passed same sex marriage legislation, got crime rates down and employment up. He is popular with the unions but seen as independent of them. He is 52, a lawyer, an easy going, good looking man with a sense of humour.
He has been active in politics since his early 20’s, and has a real vote winning style – and also has delivered at least part of what he promised in every political job he has held. Happily married with four children and plays guitar to a good standard – you might well wonder why he is not front runner rather than a distant third. If Hillary were not running it seems likely he would be a very strong candidate and he may well emerge to be one yet. If Mrs Clinton should falter, and Joe Biden stays out of the race, it is very likely that the Democrat machine will start to swing round behind him.
It is certainly hard to see it swinging round behind any of the other candidates. Nobody can say that the Democrat party is not a very broad church and it shelters a remarkable range of views beneath its wide roof. Hillary may not feel hugely threatened by, for instance, Willie Carter, though he is in some ways the most experienced candidate in the race – this is the eighth time he has run for the Presidency, all of them, so far, without leaving a visible presence. She might worry a bit more about Jeff Boss who believes that he knows the truth about 9/11, but is being silenced by the National Security Agency who are bugging his phone – so he can’t tell us what the truth might be.
Mr Boss may well have worries of his own about Doug Shreffler who was, Mr Shreffler says, formerly with the CIA, and is usually pictured wearing large sunglasses. He says he is not a career politician but wants to unite all the major political parties and says he has great optimism that that would make America a much finer place.
One candidate is already doing his practical bit for that. Robby Wells was a member of the Libertarian Party (which remarkably has a candidate in each party (Rand Paul in the Republicans) and is also running a national candidate for the Libertarian Party itself). Mr Wells also ran for the Constitution Party, where he finished third in its 2012 race for the nomination. He was formerly a professional football coach.
A number of the candidates are pretty much single, or in some cases, double issue politicians – Morrison Bonpasse (what a wonderful name for a President) is a campaigner for better conditions in prisons and for greater attention to a system to help the wrongly convicted. He runs Bonpasse Exoneration Services, which does just that. Brad Winslow wants the USA government to be more professionally managed. Harry Braun is an environmentalist and is concerned about bribery in government. Larry Lessig wants a constitutional reform bill – he promises to resign once it is passed, and will leave the rest of his term to his vice-President. Andy Caffrey is a Green politician but says the Green Party is not campaigning hard enough about GM modified foods. We will have a look at the other parties, Green and Libertarian included, in a later article.
There are several, as one might say, more serious, or at least mainstream, long term Democrat politicians who will no doubt feature in these pages should they start to become more serious contenders or more eccentric. But for the time being none of them seem to have any experience or following which will carry them far, nor, more importantly in US politics, any money.
At the moment Hillary Clinton is clearly the party’s best shot for retaining the Presidency, and so long as nothing nasty emerges and the unexpected event which every politician dreads and which turns everything upside down (unauthorised break-in at the Watergate Building, anybody?) does not occur, she should easily be able to make it to the starting line of the Presidential race itself. The Democrats are in the relatively lucky position that, should something trip Mrs C. up, then they do have a strong candidate marking time in the race – Mr O’Malley, who would also make an ideal Vice President for the nation’s first female President. Which is a bit hard on Bernie, who is running an unexpectedly strong race; but even if he should steal the nomination, it is hard to imagine him winning the Presidency.
But always expect the unexpected, and maybe Bernie and Jeremy Corbyn should meet soon to consider strategies for achieving the unachievable. And maybe Mrs Clinton should also reflect, that for more than forty years, the front runner at the opening of the Democrat nomination race has failed to win the nomination.
