A close textual reading of the pundits and a careful survey of surveys on the 2008 presidential race has yielded the following surprising realization: Nobody can win.
It turns out, says The American Spectator, that even though Mike Huckabee is winning over evangelical voters and is surging ahead in Iowa (popular word these days, "surging"), he cannot get elected elsewhere. He is attacked by Bob Novak for supposedly being a big taxer when he was governor in Arkansas, defended on the same issue by Dick Morris, but attacked again by the press in Little Rock. He faces rocky going with fiscal conservatives in New Hampshire.
Fred Thompson looked for a while like the potential GOP savior. After all, Rush Limbaugh praised him in almost endorsement terms this past week. But Kimberley Strassel in The Wall Street Journal showed that Thompson has waited too long to organize a serious campaign, even though he has developed serious issues. He has trouble even keeping a staff together. He is not moving up in the polls, at least not yet.
John McCain was an early favorite, and he is about to be endorsed by The Manchester Union-Leader, not only the leading paper in the first real primary state, New Hampshire, but one of those vestiges of political pre-history, a Republican editorial outlet. He remains the one authentic war hero in the race and a candidate with cross-partisan credibility. But McCain has been hoisted on his own campaign finance reform petard, finding himself unable to raise enough money to compete effectively, largely because of donation caps. His campaign voice, therefore, is muted, and because he has dropped behind in the polls, his often-meaty speeches are being ignored by the media this year as much as they were ballyhooed in 2000.
Mitt Romney has executive background in business, civic enterprise and state government. He has a presidential physique and manner and a fetching family. But he can't get elected because he is a Mormon or because he is a flip-flopper, depending on which critic you listen to. The Social Conservative sage and traditional Catholic, Paul Weyerich, has endorsed him, but we are told he will fail in the South and Middle West states. And he is falling behind in Iowa now, which means his lead in New Hampshire is jeopardized, and hence his prospects.
Rudy Guiliani, despite a lead in many early polls and a winning record on fighting crime and terrorists, can't win the nomination or the election because he has considerable opposition from social conservatives who don't trust him and because he has had several controversial marriages and because he has potentially embarrassing friends. Even though Rudy is a fabulous speaker and infectious campaigner, his nomination would remove the Republican case against Hillary Clinton's political cronyism. It would be hard for a rather apostate Catholic to beat a Bible carrying Methodist like Hillary in the heartland (we hear).
Never mind the rest of the Republican field. It already has been plowed under.
Therefore, one is forced to conclude that the Republicans cannot nominate anyone with a hope to win in 2008 and are just wasting their time.
So, a Democrat definitely will be elected, right? Probably Hillary the Inevitable, it would seem. She is poised, she has stamina, she is adroit, and she is more experienced than most of her opponents in either party; maybe more so. But she has the highest negative reactions from the electorate, around 45 percent. Her supporters, meanwhile, lack passion. She may be the nominee, but much of her natural base is disappointed with her wishy-washy stands on Iraq. She is compared unfavorably to her husband as a campaigner, seeming mechanical taking positions Bill would make exciting. On health care, she threatens to bore the country to death long before next November. Meanwhile, a more pressing difficulty for her is the growing Obama support in Iowa.
So Barack Obama could go all the way, correct? He has Oprah, he has campaigner pizzaz, he is smart and articulate. He is amazingly competitive in raising money. But he tends to impress less on second and third hearing and is given to egregious mistakes that suggest even to the party faithful that he is not really ready for leadership of the Free World.
Does that put former Senator John Edwards into play? If you are poor or oppressed, he doesn't just feel your pain, as someone has said, he can even diagnose it. His wife, Elizabeth, is almost more popular and persuasive than he is. But Edwards is first, last and always a rich trial lawyer who lives a life so luxurious that it threatens to make his The Grapes of Wrath routine humorous. That image may not be fair, but it may account for Edwards' weak showing in the polls. He tells Democrats that he is the one candidate they could nominate who might carry the South. But Republicans would just love to meet him there (like that great Southerner, Al Gore), or anywhere else.
And the rest of the Democratic field: Richardson, Dodd, Biden? Vice Presidential material, all.
This, by a process of elimination, brings an informed consensus to the shocking conclusion that as of one month before the Iowa caucuses and eleven months before the presidential election no one stands a chance of being elected.
George W. Bush is term limited, and couldn't get re-elected now, anyhow.
What are we going to do?