26 May 2016
Your Enemies are Behind You
by J.R.Thomas
It is said in the House of Commons that your opponents are in front of you, but the danger is always from your enemies – and they are behind you, in your own party. David Cameron must know that only too well at the moment; But, across the Atlantic, the contenders for the Presidential struggle in November must be feeling the pain and aware of that danger as well. It is hard to think of any occasion over the last hundred years when both major parties were so riven internally by dislike and dissent, and at the moment there is no sign that on either side there will be a coming together and a reuniting of the parties behind their chosen candidates.
Mr Trump has shot his fox and it will soon be in the bag, but he has much to do now if he is to achieve victory in the fall. A more conventional candidate would be making noises of reconciliation and unification, trying to bring the warring edges of his party together, forming a balanced slate of backers, sounding out complementary running mates for vice-President and cabinet members. Following the withdrawal of Messrs Cruz and Kasich, Mr Trump seemed to enter that reconciliatory mode, though how he would combine courting the Republican establishment with maintaining his rumbustious outsider rebel approach was not very clear. There is still a lot of Republican establishment opposition to Mr Trump, and a lot of the party grandees are still pondering as to whether President Hillary might be considerably more palatable than President Trump. Indeed President Hillary, if not pushed too far left by Bernie Sanders and his “socialism” (this is USA left remember, not Corbynism) could well turn out to be more politically acceptable to elements of the GOP than an interventionist corporatist Mr Trump. And even better, she might well turn out to be a one term President anyway, as indeed might Donald, given their ages. So in four years time, a reformed united GOP can run a winner…
But for now, Mr Trump does not seem to be inclined to be very polite about his own party and anyway he cares little about all these machinations in Washington’s smoke free rooms. The opinion polls are showing him neck and neck with Mrs Clinton, (Donald must be ever more gleeful about the discomfort of all those who said none of this was possible) though what may temper his approach to his party is the knowledge that he will need the Republican funding machine to pay for his presidential run.
It is estimated that around US$1bn is needed to run a proper presidential bid and The Donald, rich though he is, does not regard that amount as spare cash to be ventured on a whim. Quite apart from anything else, even if he wins, he is not going to get it back, and Donald is too much a businessman, one suspects, to just blow one billion dollars.
There is open dissent amongst his team as to how much he does need. His victory for the nomination cost him less than most of the other serious candidates, because Trump is so adept at winning free publicity. His constant outrageous remarks and saying of the unsayable got him endless free airtime, and his unpolished folksy outsider style got him the votes. But his increasingly professionalised team, which we discussed a couple of weeks ago, are united on one thing – that Hillary will be a formidable opponent. It has to be said that his team is so far not united on much, though Donald seems to have now turned his attentions to getting his guys to work together. But even if they fear Hillary, they are still not sure how to deal with her. The essence is this: could a continuing noisy cheap campaign, relying on free media attention, outgun Hillary’s huge and practised machine, with its media management and briefing capabilities, its huge spending capabilities on paid-for advertising, and most of all, its ability to get the votes out on the day? There is something Donald would do well to remember about the campaign fought by Ted Cruz. Maybe it failed, but there was a time when it looked as though Ted might become front runner, and the reason for that was that the Cruz machine was working brilliantly well at identifying Cruz voters and getting them into the polling booth.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, Mrs Clinton has not yet won. Mr Sanders is still very tight behind her; he convincingly won Oregon; he came within a percentage point of her in Kentucky, a state in which she should have romped home. The truth is that she is doing worse against Bernie in each contest and in terms of pledged delegates he is catching up all the time. What is saving her, and will almost certainly get her the nomination before the convention, is that she has the benefit of early victories and the even greater benefit of the vast majority of the super delegates – the delegates who derive their position from their roles in the Democratic Party machine. She does have a problem though, which prevents her making the breakthrough that Mr Trump has had. State contests mostly award votes on a proportionate basis -so, for example, she and Bernie got the same number of delegates out of Kentucky. Equally, Bernie cannot really catch up because he does not get the winner takes all victories that became so important to Donald and catapulted him on. So the two of them struggle on towards the convention, with California the only possibility for the fatal blow which will put Hillary over the delegate count, or put Bernie in a position where she depends on the super delegates, unknown territory procedurally and a moral quicksand. We say California, but it is another mini Super-Tuesday, June 7th, with Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and North and South Dakota all joining in; 707 delegates at stake. Hillary is 274 elected delegates ahead, so Bernie needs to win 491 delegates, against Hillary winning 216, to have a majority of elected delegates and thus stand supreme on the moral podium. Is it impossible? Probably. (And finally there is Washington DC a week later; it is a fair bet Hillary will win that strongly, so Bernie’s balancing on the moral-supremacy mountain would be pretty short lived.)
But, votes won are almost ceasing to be the point. Mrs C is not winning big enough. At this stage, with the Democrat machine working for her, the contest should be over. To Sanders supporters, many of them new to politics, the fact that she is winning is just further proof of how rotten the whole machine is. In their eyes she is winning because she has the machine stitched up, because she is spending big big big, because she will say anything to anybody to get a vote. That feeling resulted in actual pushing and shoving, and threats of worse, in the Nevada caucus, where some fancy footwork gave Hillary more delegates than she might have been entitled to under more…er…straightforward interpretations of the caucus rules. The feeling between the two camps is getting worse and the problems of uniting the party when Hillary does eventually triumph (squeeze through, if you prefer) are becoming much greater.
There is a danger that the Sanders camp will not accept a Clinton victory. Bernie almost certainly will; his mission is to push the left side of American politics towards a more socialistic, less business orientated, more European, model of social democratic politics. Whether he thinks he has done this, whether he has, what it might mean, are issues for the future. But what can a disgruntled Sanders delegate do? Hillary has the money, the delegates, and the machine. America, for all its unhappiness and disillusion with politicians, does not want a revolution. But there is one form of protest that can hurt Mrs Clinton. Voting for Donald. Mrs C may yet find her enemies are not where she expects to see them.
If you enjoyed this article please share it using the buttons above
Please click here if you would like a weekly email on publication of the Shaw Sheet
