McCain's presidential airs in Iraq, Hillary's dogfight with Barrack

While John McCain is taking an advance on Presidential diplomacy by visiting the war torn Iraqi countryside, the democratic race is as split as ever. McCain is in Iraq as a senator, but he's also taking some time off to spearhead one of his issues. The CNN footage of McCain walking from briefing to briefing with his coffee cup is priceless. He's not only managed to steal a march on the eventual democratic candidate in the Presidential race, but also manages to make President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" banner look like the Hollywood-style showboating it was. If you want to walk around in Iraq, you drink coffee and talk to the people on the ground. Everybody's waiting for the sniper bullet to hit him in the shoulder, so he can pull a Herzog.



Newt Gingrich has called for a saner, more realistic presidential election, he's not even thinking about committing to the race until October of this year. Statistically, it's not the money that's deciding in any election, as Gingrich is claiming, it's just the candidate's likability, which gets the votes and the money, at least eventually. Trying to find the research about this referenced in 'Freakonomics', I found this blog post where Gingrich answers questions, surprisingly eloquently and sane. But Gingrich is either going to get rudely disabused of his notions, or has the most dirty, underhanded trick in the history of the Republican party waiting or John McCain. Let's not forget that he was having an affair while trying to impeach Clinton for the Lewinsky thing, or that he was the author of that 'Contract with America' which is not half bad, i.e. I disagreed with less than half of it.

A recent poll by CNN states that Obama is the preferred candidate of Democrats in The United States. However, he only has a ten point lead in a poll that has a five point error margin, and consists of a suspect and rather small sample size. The same poll points to similar percentage of Democrats disagreeing with the superdelegate system. This is odd enough in itself, but especially in light of do-over primaries that might be needed to decide the candidate. I don't know what the point of this CNN poll was, exactly, but the message is clear, somebody needs to be a clear winner in this thing. Back room deals, bribery and caucus-rigging are going to be necessary for anyone to get the majority, but some kind of PR-blow needs to cover this effectively.

There's a good chance it'll be race-related as both sides have their problems with those issues. Bill is doing his best to nuance the calculated things he said in South Carolina, and Obama has had to make excuses for whatever that insane preacher said this time. This is not a religious disagreement, though it would probably be in Obama's interest to cast it that way. Rev. Wright is a social preacher in typical African-American tradition, except that he likes his conspiracy theories as well. Obama needed the association with the reverend when he wasn't black enough, but now he's '...like a caramel coloured Kennedy, you know some Vin Diesel, or the Rock kind of shit...' * the Reverend's speeches about the government giving everybody aids are a bit of an embarrassment.



But the real problem for everyone but McCain is the missing media coverage. Usually the National coverage of a presidential election falls into two acts. One or both of the parties declare the field open, the many candidates are on more or less equal footing, the wins and losses of the primaries weed out the nuts, then the boring, staid characters, the front runner and one or two also-rans last a bit longer, usually over some issue. The party conferences bring the candidate some new luster, rifts are healed etc. There's a short intermission, national organisations are built and re-built, the stage is set for the actual election, act two.

This first act is just lasting too long. Obama is in danger of peaking too early, handing Clinton a lot of votes that she can quietly amass in his slipstream as leader. Clinton is in danger of disappearing from the stage completely before the summer is out. The more the media tries to move on, the louder she'll have to scream about things that don't really matter. Instead of do-overs, the DNC should be thinking of moving the convention up before these things happen to either candidate.

* From an informal interview with Chad, 21, college student in an Amsterdam coffeeshop.