The prospect of Barack Obama in November
[Readers will find articles below that are more worthwhile, but here at least is short one to bridge the blog’s hiatus.]
Though Barack Obama has had a bad two weeks and Hillary Clinton has regained a little lost political ground, it sinks gradually into the conservative conscience that the U.S. presidential election of 2008 is not unlikely to match two underdogs of 2007: Barack Obama for the Democrats against John McCain for the Republicans. Mr. Obama still has much work left to do to secure his party’s nomination, but it is not too early to start thinking about Obama versus McCain toward November.
The political wind blows strongly at the Democrats’ back in 2008, a promising year for Democrats at all levels. Democrats are popular this year; Republicans are not. The U.S. Senate’s most Republican third is up for re-election and thus exposed to defeat—and the Senate, like the House of Representatives, is already majority Democratic. The year 2008 is a fine year to be a Democrat.
A conservative Republican traditionalist, this writer has already fairly well decided to support Mrs. Clinton against Mr. McCain in November, given the chance, but has not yet decided how to vote in the event that the Democrats nominate Mr. Obama. On the one hand, one would want to keep the liberal, inexperienced, obfuscating Mr. Obama from the White House, and equally to keep his judicial nominees from the federal bench. On the other hand, one would strongly prefer to keep Mr. McCain’s slightly mad finger off the nuclear trigger.
Besides Mr. McCain’s evident madness, conservatives have another, weighty reason to vote Democratic in 2008, regardless of the identity of the Republican nominee. If the great question of our day is the National Question, then it is hard seriously to suggest that the current generation of Republican politics retained the vigor to answer the Question, even had it the will. Only a spell in political opposition can cure such a lack. The cycle of two-party politics, death followed by renewal, is a natural thing. The time to let the cycle work to conservatism’s advantage may have arrived.
We live in interesting times. A conservative’s ears remain open. The seemingly mad Mr. McCain has until November to make his case. As of today, for the long-term good of the Republic, this conservative writer at least leans toward voting Obama.
HJH