Comebacks ignite US primaries race
By Shashi Tharoor
Weekly Column "Shashi on Sunday" in "The Times of India"
January 13, 2008

The results from the US primary elections in recent days have thrown up a fascinating contest for the Presidential nominations of both parties. In an earlier column i had observed that if other countries' elections are like a Test match, the US elections are like an entire Test series, with an ODI tournament thrown in. Both Democrats and Republicans have begun their campaigns with keenly-contested ODIs, with honours even after two unexpected results, and each no longer has a clear uncontested frontrunner.

Despite her stunning comeback —against the odds and despite the polls — in New Hampshire, where she benefited from a 57% turnout of women voters, Senator Hillary Clinton is no longer the undisputed leader of the pack of Democrats. For over a year she was Snow White leading the seven dwarves, with such a commanding lead in all the national polls that her nomination by her party as its candidate for President seemed a foregone conclusion. But Senator Barack Obama's earlier triumph in Iowa —a state 96% white, where no pundit would have given a black candidate a snowman's chance in Dindigul of winning — has ensured that there are at least two horses in the race, and that Senator Clinton will not simply canter towards an inevitable coronation at the Democratic Convention this summer.

Suddenly, the traditional place of Iowa and New Hampshire in American electoral mythology — that of the states which establish the early momentum which candidates then ride to the nomination —seems less secure. Though Senator Clinton seems to have arrested the Obama surge that followed her youthful rival's initial triumph in Iowa, she cannot take a lead for granted: the action now shifts to Nevada, which holds its contest on January 19, and where Senator Obama holds a slender advantage in the polls, and then to South Carolina, where the contest is on January 26 and where a significant minority of Democratic voters — over 30% — is black. These primaries are followed by "Super Tuesday" — simultaneous contests in a large number of significant states on February 5. These include California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Florida, which are all voting earlier than ever before and whose rich delegate slates will weigh heavily in the race for the nomination.

Unlike in Iowa and New Hampshire, where candidates routinely accost voters in their homes or in 'diners' (local restaurants), campaigning in these big states requires TV advertising, which in turn requires big money. The set of numbers that will matter in the weeks before February 5 are not the votes cast but the dollars raised. There both Clinton and Obama are evenly poised; the man struggling in third place, the party's former vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, might yet discover that the thinness of his wallet (he is the only one of the trio to accept public financing for his campaign, which places restrictions on how much he can spend) could doom his candidacy.

A few readers have written in to remind me that i am yet to keep my promise of some months back to review the Republican field. I had not forgotten; i was simply waiting for the field to be winnowed a bit. That it has since I first described the campaign on this page, with the withdrawal of a good friend of India, Senator Sam Brownback, and the evident irrelevance of two extreme right-wing Congressmen, Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter, whose candidacies barely register in the polls. But whereas the Democrats are clearly in a two-horse race (or two-and-a-half, in case Edwards still pulls a surprise, perhaps in the South from which he hails), the Republicans have no fewer than four frontrunners. There is the grizzled veteran John McCain, who triumphed in New Hampshire after trailing there for months; the social conservative (a polite way of saying "Christian fundamentalist") Mike Huckabee, who won Iowa to general astonishment and widespread disbelief (he does not, for instance, believe in evolution); the former New York mayor and anti-terrorism hawk, Rudy Giuliani, who still leads in nationwide polling and who has been conserving his energy and resources for the big states; and the former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, who still looks the most "presidential" of the pack, but whose polished smoothness and custom-tailored changes of position have raised serious doubts about his sincerity. Any of them has a plausible chance of claiming the nomination —McCain has experience on his side, Huckabee has the evangelicals and the blue-collar vote, Giuliani the national security-minded gun-toters and Romney the money.

The picture should become clearer in a month's time, when the fallout of February 5 might also witness a shakeout in the ranks of the candidates. But for true American politics buffs, the prospect that makes them salivate is that of the big states dividing their favours in the primaries evenly amongst the contenders so that no one emerges with an irresistible pile of delegates going into the party conventions. Then the world will be treated to a sight not seen since 1952, when the conventions really had to choose the candidates, instead of merely ratifying the pre-ordained results of the primaries. The delegates chosen as a result of the ongoing contests in the primaries are only bound for the first ballot at the convention; thereafter they are free to vote their consciences, and surprises can occur. There hasn't been a second ballot in either party convention for decades, but numerous rounds have taken place in the past — most memorably in 1920, when the Republicans, deadlocked over 102 ballots, finally picked Senator Warren Harding of Ohio, who had to be pulled out of a brothel to accept the nomination. The current crop of candidates is too decorous for anything quite so colourful, but a deadlocked convention could even turn to a non-candidate to break the impasse, a prospect some Democrats are wistfully contemplating. Al Gore, anyone?