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Where's this race headed?

By pharrell

Pennsylvania? Puerto Rico? The Convention? I think the Democratic race will be decided sometime between the final primary and the Convention itself in late August. After her wins last night Sen. Clinton has every right to keep fighting on, and, assuming she wins Pennsylvania, will have little reason to drop out before the last primaries--something that is particularly true if, as I now expect, Florida and Michigan schedule do-overs to coincide with Puerto Rico's race on June 7. But this won't come down to a floor flight in Denver in August. The super-delegates already want to wrap this contest up, and will decisively back one candidate or the other soon after the last Democrats have voted. That'll end this race by mid-June, hardly a late finish for a presidential primary by historical standards, and would give the victorious candidate a full four months to unify the party.

Are three more months of primaries bad for the party? I think not. Despite Sen. Clinton's attacks, Barack Obama improves as a candidate with each passing month--just compare his presence in the most recent debates with his lackluster performances last fall. He can't win in November if he can't fend off "red phone" style attacks, so it isn't all bad that he's having to learn to rebut them now. And his simple presence in the news, his ability to defend himself, to articulate positions, and to offer his vision for the country, helps counter attacks against his inexperience.

Sen. Clinton, obviously, is learning that she can't win offering little more than the greatest hits of the 1990s. She's also learning to show a human side, and to show that she can connect with voters like working class folks in Ohio, who I wasn't sure would ever again pull the lever for a Clinton. These are important shifts, and ones she'd have trouble making on short notice in the fall.

With four months between one of these candidates sewing up the nomination and the general election in November, we'll be unified as a party, and determined to beat Sen. McCain. The fundraising reports this spring show that we'll have plenty of money, despite the the hundred million or more we'll spend in the next three months (on top of the three hundred million we've spent to date). Most importantly, our candidate will be stronger for the journey that got him--or her--there.

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on March 05, 2008 (boomark / email).