2008 Presidential Race

In this section we provide you with commentaries and analysis of the political campaign for 2008 Presidential elections in the United States. We analyze candidates' beliefs and opinions on the most important domestic issues, their approach toward foreign policy and the role the U.S. should play in contemporary world.

BALKANIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY   BY STEPHANIE KIMBALL | June 14, 2008

The success of Obama’s presidential bid is predicated on a cohesive Democrat party structure. Republican strategists are examining whether the balkanization of the Democrat coalition is temporary or long-term and believe the answer will become apparent in the next few weeks. If Clinton supporters refuse to walk precincts, make calls, or financially bolster Obama - the junior senator from Illinois will face a daunting task in the general election. Read more

McCAIN AND THE BUSH FATIGUE   BY STEPHANIE KIMBALL | May 24, 2008

For the first time in over a decade Americans are actively engaged in the election process, informed on the issues, and eager for change. Democrats should not prematurely conclude that this translates to a new party in power. Rather, Senator McCain’s ability to transcend traditional party labeling and affiliation enables him to talk on substantive issues that are no longer owned by a particular party. Read more

HILLARY, BOSNIA AND THE BAGDAD PEACE ACCORDS   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | May 18, 2008

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Holbrooke/Clinton would be like awarding it to Henry Kissinger for stopping the war in Vietnam. Yes, it did happen in the past but afterwards everybody thought it was undeserved and the very image of the prize suffered. It is perhaps not even irony that all peace endeavors made by the Clinton Administration in the 90's, produced only one Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to Al Gore in 2007 for saving penguins and icebergs in the South Pole. Read more

THE ENDGAME?   BY RICK ROBINSON | May 12, 2008

Obama follows more or less in a tradition of insurgent reformist Democratic presidential candidates who lay a particular stress on public ethics and transforming the political culture. Prior examples have been Howard Dean in 2004, Bill Bradley in 2000, Paul Tsongas in 1992, and with a somewhat different flavor, Gary Hart in 1984. All of these candidates – none of whom won the nomination – ran well in the primaries with younger, educated, and higher income whites, but poorly with working class voters of all colors. Read more

HASTA LA VISTA, HILLARY   BY SEBASTIAN AULICH | May 8, 2008

Barack Obama pretty much terminated Hillary Clinton last Tuesday in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries (to deep dissatisfaction of my lovely wife - a devout Hillary’s supporter) [...] Regrettably, she appears to be a candidate without an exit strategy. Apparently, what Mrs. Clinton claimed that Bush did wrong in Iraq, she is now repeating in her own presidential bid. Read more

THIRTEENTH INNING STRETCH   BY RICK ROBINSON | April 30, 2008

Hillary's message received an unexpected boost when Rev. Wright appeared at the National Press Club to repeat some of the most incendiary comments that he has previously made in sermons. These were just the remarks that Obama sought to separate himself from when the Wright controversy initially erupted, a storm Obama had evidently weathered without visible damage in polling. Read more

OBAMA AND AMERICA'S ORIGINAL SIN   BY RICK ROBINSON | April 7, 2008

Obama, a generation younger is himself a creation of the Civil Rights struggle. He stands across a gulf from his mentor, separated by a bridge that Rev. Wright cannot fully cross even though he helped to build it. It speaks to a large segment of white Americans for whom electing a black president represents a triumph over the nations's Original Sin of proclaiming freedom while embracing slavery. Read more

MY HOUSE DIVIDED    BY SEBASTIAN AULICH| March 24, 2008

This week Bill Clinton made a remark in which he indirectly questioned Obama’s patriotism. I have been watching CNN and FOX where pundits were wondering what actually Clinton meant by saying that a race between McCain and his wife would be a one between two candidates, who love their country. Well, the implication for me was pretty simple. Are you ready America for the president, who has a dual citizenship? Read more

WILL FLORIDA AND MICHIGAN DETERMINE NEXT U.S. PRESIDENT?

BY MO SACIRBEY | March 12, 2008

     
That may sound like a rather far reaching proposition, but consider the following. By either an act of “re-voting” the Democratic Primary or an act of omission, Florida and Michigan will be decisive. Read more

THE CONTINUING DEMOCRATIC RACE    BY RICK ROBINSON | March 10, 2008

The latest major round of US presidential primaries, four states voting on 4 March, including the major states of Ohio and Texas, gave both parties a chance to resolve – or at least begin to resolve – their presidential nomination races. TheRepublican outcome was as expected: McCain clinched the GOP nomination by winning a majority of total delegates to the Republican convention. On the Democratic side no conclusive result was expected. What was expected was that Barack Obama would confirm his momentum by winning at least one of the day's big states. Had he done so, pressure on Hillary Clinton to bow out of the race would have become intense. Instead he fell short, and the Democratic race remains as unsettled as ever. Read more

FOREMAN vs. ALI 2    BY MO SACIRBEY | February 15, 2008    

She has the Democratic Party establishment. He has captured the imagination of young and independent voters. It is George Foreman hitting hard and Muhammad Ali countering. The contest for the Democratic Party nomination is likely to continue for at least another month, Ohio and Texas on March 4th or even Pennsylvania in April, but even if Hillary still appears to be the champion going into the fight, he has the momentum now entering the last rounds . Senator John McCain is assured of the Republican nomination, except for the unforeseen, and waits for the title bout. Read more

SUPER TUESDAY TRUTH   BY RICK ROBINSON | February 8, 2008

Who wins a tie? Each campaign has a narrative. If you compare the results on 5 February with polling in mid-January, Obama scored spectacular gains, coming from far behind to score a photo finish. Yet in spite of his enormous "mo," and an extravaganza of favorable media coverage – any candidate's dream finish – he came up no better than even. At liberal blogs (where Obama supporters predominate), the reaction as the returns came in was mild deflation for Obama supporters, who had hoped he would blast past Hillary, and enormous relief among Hillary supporters, who had feared precisely that. Read more       

INTO THE STRETCH: LANDSCAPE BEFORE FEB. 5   BY RICK ROBINSON | February 2, 2008
  

Thus, while Super Tuesday may all but end the GOP nomination race, it is very unlikely to do so for the Democratic nomination race. Nevertheless, unless the results are hairline close, the Democratic winner on Tuesday may well attain nearly unstoppable mo in the series of later primary contests that continues into early summer. Since most Democrats like both candidates, a clear Super Tuesday win may well encourage them to close ranks, the trailing candidate's supporters jumping ship in favor of a gaining rival whom they can also readily support. Read more

TURNAROUND! – THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY RESULTS BY RICK ROBINSON | January 10, 2008            

Some surprises are half-expected: outcomes that people know are plausible, but regard as unlikely. Other surprises are truly surprising – outcomes scarcely considered at all, because they did not even seem plausible. Barack Obama scored the first kind of surprise last week in Iowa, when young voters, "the college kids" so often promised and rarely delivered, turned out in droves for him. Hillary Clinton scored the second kind of surprise in New Hampshire, winning a race that polling and commentators anticipated as an Obama landslide. What happened? Read more

OUT OF THE GATE: OBAMA MAKES HISTORY   BY RICK ROBINSON | January 5, 2008

The big winner of the night was Obama, who achieved nothing less than a political miracle. Since the 1970s, Democratic candidates running insurgent campaigns have persuaded themselves that "the college kids" – younger voters, especially but by no means only college students – would come out for them in droves. It never happened, the most recent and familiar victim being Howard Dean in 2004. This time,

however, the college kids showed up in droves, along with other younger voters, giving Obama the margin that liftedhim from a tie to a solid and convincing win. Read more

MIKE HUCKABEE STORY: "FROM OUT OF NOWHERE..."   BY RICK ROBINSON | December 27, 2008

Huckabee's sudden rise in the polls has naturally brought him into collision with the other candidates – especially Mitt Romney, who has seen his previous strong lead in the opening Iowa contest evaporate, recent polling averaging to about a 9 point Huckabee lead there. Huckabee riskily, if perhaps shrewdly, injected sectarianism into the debate by asking a New York Times reporter interviewing him whether it was true that Mormons believe that Satan is the brother of Jesus. (They don't.) Read more
  

AMERICAN HEALTH CARE   BY RICK ROBINSON | December 17, 2008

In this shifting environment, the cost and availability of health care is likely to emerge as a major campaign issue next fall. [...] Among the leading Democratic contenders, John Edwards' and Hillary Clinton's health care proposals are essentially similar. Each calls for allowing people to retain their existing private health insurance – generally a plan offered by their employer, the US norm since the Second World War. This is the political rock on which Hillary Clinton's previous health care initiative foundered in the 1990s. While about one in seven Americans has no health insurance, the majority do, and most are fairly satisfied with their current plan. Their anxieties revolve around losing it. Read more
  

AT THE STARTING GATE   BY RICK ROBINSON | November 15, 2008
     

As the 2008 campaign got into gear, Hillary herself (she is habitually referred to by her first name, including by her own campaign) had never been tested in a national race. Years of attacks by Republicans made her a polarizing figure, about whom half the population had a negative impression. Combined with the burden of asking the electorate to vote for a woman president in wartime, this raised serious concerns about her prospects in the 2008 general election, even in a year that could otherwise be expected to favor Democrats. Shadowed by doubts, untested on the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton's frontrunning candidacy might well have been a dirigible heading into a thunderstorm. Read more

IOWA AND NEW HAMPSHIRE   BY RICK ROBINSON | October 4, 2008

In 2000, two serious candidates emerged in each party: an "establishment" candidate favored by party regulars, and an "insurgent" challenger. On the Republican side these were George W. Bush and John McCain respectively; on the Democratic side Al Gore and former senator Bill Bradley. On the Democratic side, Gore succeeded in holding off Bradley in New Hampshire; Bradley's challenge faded, and Gore subsequently cruised to the nomination. On the Republican side, McCain scored a New Hampshire upset, putting Bush's nomination prospects seriously in doubt. Two weeks later, Bush recovered by defeating McCain in an exceptionally hard-fought primary in South Carolina, whose Republican voters are more conservative. Read more

A FIFTY /FIFTY NATION   BY RICK ROBINSON | September 8, 2008

Democrats are looking forward to the 2008 election with slightly uneasy optimism, Republicans with nearly unrelieved dread.  The respective eagerness and dread are easy enough to understand: Republicans are burdened with an unpopular president and an unpopular war.  Not one of the major polls listed at PollingReport.com during 2007 showed President Bush's approval rating as high as 40 percent, or his disapproval as less than 50 percent.  Out of 32 polls reported since the beginning of June, more than a third (12) show less than 30 percent approval, and all but three show at least 60 percent disapproval. Read more

OBAMA: A FOREIGN POLICY VISIONARY OR NEOPHYTE?    BY NISHA CHITTAL | August 12, 2008

Obama’s willingness to talk to dictators may prove refreshing to some; his idea that we should talk to these countries even if we don’t like them is interesting and certainly a departure from the Bush administration’s approach. However, Obama has received mixed reviews for his answer. The Clinton campaign labeled him “irresponsible” and “naive” for being willing to meet with the five dictators without preconditions, and especially within the first year of his administration. Read more

DEMOCRATIC CONTENDERS   BY BRIAN M. KOSS | July 3 , 2008   

2006 was a good year for the Democratic Party.  After four years of opposing Republican policies in the minority, the Democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate.  While the experts debate the reasons for Democratic victory; an unpopular President, Iraq, Congressional scandals; the Democrats have viewed this chance to lead the country in a new direction and improve their chances for a Democratic President in 2008.  The question for the Democratic Presidential candidates is what kind of change in leadership will they offer? Read more

IMMIGRATION DEBATE    BY BRIAN M. KOSS | May 10 , 2008

As the old saying goes, politics makes strange bedfellows. We have seen an agreement between the US Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and the Catholic Church on granting amnesty and developing a guest workers program for illegal immigrants. On the opposite side, a growing movement of citizens formed a group of volunteers, known as the “Minutemen” to voluntarily patrol the borders. Read more