Primary instincts
Profs’ thoughts on the candidates and issues after Super Tuesday and Potomac primary
Posted on February 14, 2008
The presidential election continues to heat up as Super Tuesday yielded no clear Democratic frontrunner and the race remains open.
“I think it was certainly the big surprise that Super Tuesday was designed to give us two nominees and it did not,” political science professor Marty Cohen said. “I think in many ways it reaffirmed the status quo going into Super Tuesday.”
Although Sen. Barack Obama, D – Ill., currently has a slight delegate advantage over Sen. Hillary Clinton, D - N.Y., due to his victories in the Potomac Primaries, his lead remains tenuous.
“But the question is if Obama is continually tending up, the longer he goes, the better he’ll do, but there’s a point where he may peak, and maybe he has peaked,” Cohen said. “Maybe he’ll peak next week, maybe he’ll win before he peaks but that’s hard to say and a lot of it will depend on the types of states that are coming up.”
Political analysts are currently looking at future contests that are usually rendered inconsequential due to the fact that there is a clear frontrunner by the time the actual voting occurs.
“If you look ahead to March, when big states like Ohio and Texas have primaries, Clinton would figure to do well in Texas based on the Latino vote,” Cohen said. “And then, assuming it’s not over, you have basically six or seven weeks of no-contests and then Pennsylvania on April 22.”
While the Democratic Party is still concerned with picking a nominee, the Republican Party seems to have found their man in Sen. John McCain, R - Ariz. However, despite the fact that he has emerged as the Republican frontrunner, he still faces remaining challenges in gaining a supportive conservative base while focusing on the national election.
“He’s ultimately going to get the nomination, but normally when that happens the momentum is such that you seal the deal on a day like Super Tuesday, and that didn’t happen,” political science professor David Jones said, adding that after Super Tuesday analysis of McCain focuses on his problems with conservatives.
At this point, Jones thinks that issues like immigration,
for which McCain sponsored legislation last summer, might come to the forefront with the economic decline. Although in recent months many students on campus have called the war in Iraq an important issue, Jones thinks that the war is becoming less important with the general public.
“I think Iraq is fading in the general public, from some of the military successes, it’s not as tragic and is less prominent in the news,” Jones said. “The campaigns have moved away from it and to some extent, the news outlets just passively mirror what the campaigns are talking about.”
In terms of media coverage, Cohen focused on the intangibility of being able to understand what drives the media and its consumers.
“They don’t focus on the issues very much at all, and politics is a game and contest for people,” he said. “Whether that’s the chicken or the egg: it’s what we want or that’s what they give us or whether they give it to us and we all take it, that’s very hard to say.”
Cohen also spoke about the youth vote and the positive effect that Obama could have.
“I don’t think you can count on the youth vote, but Obama may be better suited than any candidate since Kennedy to bring out the youth vote” he said. “So if anyone can do it, it would be him. However, what do they call the candidate that relies on the youth vote? The loser, because it generally doesn’t happen. “
Jones also cautioned against counting out election factors that many voters often dismiss as superficial.
“Leadership, style and personality always matter and it’s going to be important because the differences between people like Obama and Clinton are vast,” Jones said. “I think that’s a big part of the Democratic race because they are so similar on many issues.”
This article is the third in a four-part series that will examine how members of the JMU community feel about the issues raised in the upcoming presidential election. Check back in the middle of March for the next installment.
