These Results Are In So Far From The 2008 Presidential Primaries: Voters Are Looking for Sensible Leaders, Not Divisive-Issue Banner Carriers

By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com

February 2, 2008

We don't yet know who will emerge with the keys to the White House. But as a result of the 2008 presidential campaign we know a lot more about the temper of the nation.

We know, for example, that the nation as a whole has a much more reasonable view of the illegal immigration problem than the minuteman-type border vigilantes had us believing a year ago. Republican voters ready to man the immigration barricades had the perfect leader: Tom Tancredo. Tancredo had the same opportunity to be the surprise come-from-behind candidate as Mike Huckabee ultimately became. But he was nowhere when the votes were counted. And immigration just doesn't seem the defining issue it was before the first primary votes were counted.

We also know that if the GOP "base" was driven by ending legal abortions Sam Brownback would have been a contender in Iowa, South Carolina and elsewhere. He positioned himself as the most rigid "pro-life" candidate in the field and didn't even make it to the starting line.

A mantra we have heard for years is that no Republican can win the party's nomination without the strong backing of the Christian Right. This year the Christian Right had one of its own as a viable candidate in Mike Huckabee. No candidate got a bigger shot of positive media out of Iowa than Huckabee. But Huckabee couldn't carry South Carolina, one of the reddest of red states. He ran fourth in conservative Florida and looks to be done after the votes are counted February 5. Even more telling, Huckabee's success in Iowa exposed deep fractures among Christian Right leaders. As a result of the 2008 primaries the monolith of the Christian Right seems more like old news than the wave of America's political future.

Immigration. Abortion. Religious hegemeny. Who a year ago would have forecast that these issues all would have been given legitimate ballot tests among Republican voters and have come up incidental to the outcome?

McCain and Romney both talk that talk, but you can hardly consider their survival in the field the result of fealty to "base" Republican issues. If anything, McCain is the anti-Tancredo. He's also highly suspect among Christian conservative voters and has never made a big deal of his opposition to abortion. Romney fell flat as a pale imitator of Tancredo, Brownback and Huckabee. He's caught wind only since the economy tanked and he reinvented himself as an experienced manager who can fix it.

Let's not forget Ron Paul in this equation. He's been campaigning on a platform of getting the GOP back to its roots of a balanced budget, lower taxes and less government intervention at home and abroad. And he's been giving those messages the best test they've had at the presidential level in many years. Paul's campaign has an active and vocal following, but he's yet to break 10% in any primary election or caucus.

It's been an article of pundit faith that during primaries Republicans run to the Right to appeal to their most conservative voters and Democrats run to the Left to appeal to their most liberal voters. Then the nominees race back to the middle during the general election so as not to be scary to independents and moderates.

The Democrat who ran hardest on Democratic populist views this year was John Edwards, promising an all out attack on big money interests on behalf of middle class workers and America's underclass. Edwards was a credible torch bearer who verbalized the 2008 campaign's most liberal message (aside from Dennis Kucinich).

Democratic Party primary voters heard that message and most of them pretty much yawned.

Edwards also had something going for him that from all of our past history should have been a winning asset. He's a white guy from the South.

He won the white guy vote in South Carolina, but not much else. This year Democratic voters have decided to shatter two past truths about politics, that America isn't ready to elect either a woman or an African American as President.

When Obama entered the race even black voters hesitated to support him. Many of them believed that voting for a black candidate had more message than meaning. The campaign trail still carried the ghosts of Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Carol Mosely-Braun. But this year white voters did not vote for the white guys. Whether Obama is the nominee, or not, whether he is elected president, or not, the race barrier has proven much less formidable than in the past. The gates will be open to more non-white candidates at all levels of government.

And the other Democratic party finalist, Hillary Clinton, is very much in the hunt to break the highest of all glass ceilings. You can't help but notice the enthusiasm so many women have for her candidacy. Especially younger women. After Hillary we will probably never again see a presidential election without a woman in either first or second place on a major party ticket.

As much as who wins and who loses, identifying and understanding the nation's will is what presidential elections are all about. We may not all agree on when and how to exit Iraq, or what solution may be best to the health care crisis, or how to repair our government after all the damage of the Bush years. But primary election voters are sending Washington a very clear message:

As a nation we're less ideological, less biased, more willing to be told the truth and work together as a community. Those who appealed to our baser instincts have been voted off the ballot. As voters we have had the longest menu of leadership choices that Americans have had in generations. What we seem to be saying is we want honesty, maturity and inspiration.

And that we know it when we see it.

Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

See all previous articles by Joe Rothstein here.