11 February 2016
Flying West
by J.R.Thomas
Mrs Clinton took a very dangerous flight on Saturday. Not in a small plane; it was her campaign jet. And not in bad weather, though snow storms are blanketing the north east of the United States. She flew from New Hampshire and headed west, into the frozen state of Michigan. There she spoke at a town meeting in Flint, an industrial, working class, and predominately black town which has just suffered a public health disaster.
Exceptionally high levels of lead got into the town water supply last year and were not spotted for over six months. Now the long term effects of that, particularly on the town’s children, are causing much anxiety and anger. There are 8,000 children under 6 years old in Flint – below age 6 is the most dangerous age for lead ingestation as potentially causing brain damage. Mrs Clinton went, she said, to support a town in trouble and to attack funding cuts which had indirectly caused the disaster.
What made it dangerous (you may substitute “brave,” “compassionate,” or “foolhardy” at this point) was twofold. One was that Mrs C abandoned her efforts on the stump in the Granite State and went out of state to make her speech. New Hampshire is an old fashioned, largely rural state, and likes candidates to address town meetings in person. It is not a good idea to campaign in New Hampshire by big rallies or on TV. Still less, you may think, from Michigan. But the truth is, that Hillary had given up on New Hampshire. Bernie Sanders has always been way ahead of her there; now she was trying to reposition for a future major strategic advantage to try and derail his bandwagon (can you derail a bandwagon? Tip it over, any which way.) So she is looking at Super Tuesday (1st March) when ten states run their primaries, and how she might score a resounding victory then. She has lost support among the young and among women, but she has one loyal group of voters left, she hopes. The Clintons have always been popular amongst black voters in the south, so now she has turned to court those loyal supporters.
Which is the second fold of her dangerous (brave/compassionate/foolhardy) twofold strategy and flight west. She was cheered at the Flint meeting for being there and supporting a community in its distress. But outside, there was talk of opportunism and cheap vote catching tricks.
Will this recoil on her and lead to even more support for Bernie? Hillary’s great problem is that in polls of the public perception of her she scores exceptionally badly under “trust”. Whatever her motives for her support of the folk of Flint, there are a lot of people out there assuming the lowest motive. If that includes potential supporters, Hillary could be digging an ever deeper hole.
The New Hampshire result was always likely to be a victory for Bernie – he is effectively a local, being Senator for Vermont next door. Even so, the scale of it was pretty stunning, with Sanders capturing over 60% of the Democrat vote. That bandwagon is rolling. Next test will be Nevada on the 20th February; this could also be a fertile land for Sanders. After that, Super Tuesday could be tougher, but if he can continue to capture the enthusiasm that his candidacy is now generating maybe anything is possible.
On the red side of the polling station, it was a great night for Mr Trump. A clear clean victory with 35% of the vote. In his bouffant wake trailed a bunch of contenders for runner up and potential challenger. No doubt, after Iowa, loyalist Republicans looked for the name “Marco Rubio”. They had to look a way down to find it. He came in at 5th, with 10%, beaten by John Kasich, Governor of Ohio, (who did not run in Iowa) on 16%, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush on 11% plus each. Immediately pundits started to talk a Bush recovery, forgetting it seems, that Bush is almost a local boy, like Sanders. His family, though dispersed for political and business reasons, hail from Kennebunkport, Maine, and Bush made much of his family connections – even getting his mother out to campaign for him.
So could Kasich now be the mainstream man to bring down Trump and pick up the official party mantle – or whatever it is that Presidential candidates have to wear? Rubio, who had sustained major personal attacks over the last ten days, and Cruz, who had not done much in New Hampshire and has been strongly smeared with Tea (as in “Tea Party”), did not do at all well, whilst the old fashioned avuncular and hard working (hand shaking, addressing town meetings, kissing babies) Kasich was the perfect man in NH. It seems to be a poisoned chalice to be the “official” establishment approved candidate in this extraordinary Presidential run, and if Kasich is wise he will shrug off mantles and avoid chalices all he can at this stage. But if the revolutionary fervour blasting through the GPO voters should blow itself out, then Kasich might yet be the man.
Even before New Hampshire, the Republican field had started to thin. Lack of funding or input of reality; or, more cynically, knowledge that they have done enough to stake a claim for a future Administration job, has caused the withdrawal of Messrs Paul, Santorum, Huckabee, Pataki, Graham, and Jindal. So that leaves nine in contention; how many will make it to South Carolina on 20th February? (There is no Democrat primary in South Carolina that day; it is a week later, and the Nebraska Democrat caucus is on the 20th February but the Republican one three days later.). Cruz has not put much into the next two contests but has concentrated everything on Super Tuesday, so the rumour has it, but if Trump wins big in Nebraska and South Carolina he may cause Cruz big problems in what should be his best territory – Super Tuesday is mainly southern states.
And finally, time to play the wild card. The wild card comes in the unlikely figure of a New York billionaire – another one. This one is Michael Bloomberg, former Mayor of New York, head of the international information giant Bloomberg, who says he is disappointed by the standard of the debate in the primaries and is contemplating running as an independent. He has hinted that he is prepared to spend up to a billion dollars in the effort from his own pocket. That is some cost of disappointment, but he can afford it – he is said to be worth over thirty billion dollars.
Bloomberg has wide ranging political exposure – he was a registered Democrat for many years; then switched to the Republicans to run, successfully, as Mayor of New York, then left them mid second term to run for his third and final term as an independent. No independent has ever won a Presidential election, or even made a significant showing, so even an operator as serious as Bloomberg (and popular – he was a highly successful, much missed, Mayor of the Big Apple) faces an uphill struggle. (For those who like this sort of thing, if the main Presidential candidates turn out to be Bloomberg, Trump, and Sanders, they all originate from New York!) But Bloomberg’s wild card may turn out to be the joker (he can hardly turn out to be trumps); if Hillary really begins to stumble and fall, and given his middle of the road past, there might be a Democrat vacancy opening up this spring.
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