NOW IT’S OUR TURN!
January 11, 2008
by Charles Bierbauer
The presidential campaigns arrived in South Carolina this week in a muddle and a hurry. Thank you Iowa and New Hampshire.
It would have been a shame had those two idiosyncratic states pushed a pair of snowballing races our way with any notion of inevitability in deciding the two candidates who will face off for the presidency in November. Fortunately, our votes will matter. As will Florida’s and those cast in more than 20 states on Super Duper Tuesday, as we are now calling February 5.
Quirky Iowa surprised us with victories by Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama. Crusty New Hampshire turned nearly conventional with wins for the once putative front-runners John McCain and Hillary Clinton. Good thing.
The founding fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution with the intent of ensuring that small states would not be obscured in the electoral process. But the framers of the Constitution could not have envisioned that by the time the neighborly voters of the 30th largest state had caucused and the bundled electorate of the 41st state in size had held its primary, that the pundits and pollsters would call the race and dismiss the rest of us. Hey, we’re the 25th largest state! Thank you Iowa and New Hampshire for your decisively indecisive handoff.
Of course, this does mean South Carolinians now have two weeks of bombardment by the candidates’ multimedia ads, two more televised debates, even more lawn signs and all those annoying campaign phone calls. But only two weeks. It will go quickly, and then we’ll likely not see another candidate the rest of the year.
I’ve started getting several calls a day from political reporters in other parts of the country or just across town. They ask how South Carolina’s African-Americans will vote. Will black women vote for Hillary or Obama? Will whites vote for Obama? They certainly did in Iowa and New Hampshire. Can John Edwards win his home state? Will religious conservatives vote for Huckabee, Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney? My answers range from “I don’t know” to “it depends.” Then we do nuance.
Nothing is as simple as black or white voters, red or blue states. South Carolina may be a red state in November, but in January it’s got two primary colors and a significant number of magenta independents who could be tempted by Obama to vote Democratic or lured by McCain or Rudy Giuliani to vote Republican. Independents will have to decide whether to vote on the 19th for a Republican or on the 26th for a Democrat. Let’s see, which day am I in town? We don’t make it convenient, do we?
Is an African-American woman more likely to vote for Clinton because she’s a woman or Obama because he’s black? Would it make a difference if the voter were a younger or older woman?
John Edwards won the South Carolina primary in 2004, but that’s no reason to think he will win in 2008. It’s a different cast of competitors, not the distant John Kerry of 2004, but the accessible Barack Obama and the familiar—thanks to Bill—Hillary Clinton. Edwards may have been born here, but he didn’t grow up here, didn’t make his millions here, didn’t get elected to the Senate here. How many votes is the coincidence of birth worth?
Republican candidates, in contrast, have courted religious and social conservatives. Last year we witnessed the paradox of the president of Bob Jones University endorsing Romney, even while denouncing Romney’s Mormon faith. Many conservatives held their breath waiting for Thompson to give up “Law and Order” for the campaign trail, then wondered why they hadn’t taken a deeper breath. Enter Baptist preacher Huckabee to a chorus of Hallelujahs. Who will get those votes on the 19th?
McCain, like Edwards, has been here before. Unlike Edwards, McCain was treated harshly and slanderously through Bush campaign dirty tricks in 2000. Might South Carolinians think they owe McCain a fairer shake?
The good news is we’ve still got choices. And now it’s our turn.
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Charles Bierbauer covered five presidential campaigns for CNN from 1984 to 2000.
Some of them brought him to South Carolina. He is now dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina, though the opinions here are his own and not those of the university. Bierbauer is senior contributing editor and a consultant to SCHotline.com
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January 11, 2008 at 1:58 am
Recent interviews with our South Carolinian black female voter would indicate a vote for Hillary while I find it hard to believe that once behind the curtain you could do anything but pull the lever for the first black presidential hope if your skin happened to be black, mine is not.
~Jeffrey Sewell
January 11, 2008 at 2:19 am
Hillary, Obama, Edwards. IF I were a Democrat, I would forget it and vote for Ron Paul. Conservative Christians should vote for him, But then many so called Conservatives are going to be fooled by Mike Huckabee. If you want a lap full of illegals, Huckabee is your man. When in God’s name are people going to look into the backgrounds and past voting records of any candidate. Paul may not win but then when the favorites get in and bring the one world government and absorb America then you’ll have to look at my bumper sticker: “DON’T BLAME ME, I VOTED FOR RON PAUL.
January 11, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Charles: Just learned about your deer incident. Hope you recover soon and will be in contact with you about our arrangements for you to speak at Post-15 American Legion on Monday 7 April 08.Best Regards CWM
January 14, 2008 at 4:17 pm
After reviewing Charles Bierbauer’s comments about the border fence on C-SPAN comparing it to the Berlin Wall, all I have to say is that for Mr. Bierbauer to draw his conclusions show that he is either ignorant of the history of the Cold War, has a political “axe to grind”, or just plain stupid. Which is it?
In any event, Mr. Bierbauer’s creditablity has no standing with citizen’s who actually know the history of our nation and the importance of “fences”, common sense and can comprehend the Constitution.
Please keep up your rant however, because the more you speak the more you and your movement is exposed to the light of day.
Thank you for doing your part that is allowing American’s to regain contol our country from the fascist Democratic Party and its leadership.
grant wieler
milpitas, ca
January 14, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Mr. Bierbauer, the Berlin Wall was built to lock people into a Marxist dictatorship. We need a border fence to keep people OUT who want to come in and help you and your fellow Democrats establish a Marxist dictatorship. And if we don’t agree to do it your way your are going to resort to this:
http://www.therealcuba.com/elian_gonzalez.htm
http://www.wizardsofaz.com/waco/waco2.html
January 15, 2008 at 3:05 am
Since I raised this in a different venue (C-SPAN), let me respond to Mr.Wieler and devan95.
I believe I said the Berlin Wall analogy was imperfect. Both writers’comments are correct. The Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans in and to end the brain drain–like the Mexicans, the East Germans were seeking economic opportunity, in addition to escaping communism. It was not built to keep people out.
We could throw in the walls that Israel is building to keep out Palestinians. Or the Great Wall of China, now a tourist attraction. As a military strategy, France’s Maginot Line did not work, either. The Germans went around it.
Both as ideological and practical matters, walls don’t work. People risk their lives to get out. People risk their lives to get in. Obstacles are surmounted–over, under, or around–if the desire is great enough.
I know the story of the Berlin Wall well, having crossed it often under the cold eyes of the Vopos, East Germany’s guards. (By the way, do we want to create a Vopo-like shoot to kill culture on our border?) I spent years living in Germany and working as a journalist talking with Germans on both sides of the wall. I was in Berlin when Ronald Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
Our open border with Canada is a tribute to a shared sense of security. Our troubled yet porous border with Mexico is a reflection of insecurity, ours and theirs.
We will invest tens of billions of dollars building hundreds of miles of wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the California coast, policing it and maintaining it.
Put the billions and the miles of concrete into fixing our crumbling roads and bridges, instead. We’d all benefit from that.
Then create an effective, workable immigration policy.
Rudy Giuliani,who wants the border wall, also talks about a virtual wall that takes advantage of technologies available to us and is a darn sight more esthetically pleasing. Mike Huckabee poses the intriguing question: If Amazon or UPS can tell you exactly where your package is, how can our government say it doesn’t know where 12 million illegal immigrants are?
The solution lies in a new immigration policy more than on the parapets overlooking reinforced concrete and barbed wire.
By the way, the Germans in the days of their economic boom relied heavily on the Gastarbeitern, guest workers from Turkey, Yugoslavia and other less developed countries. It’s another imperfect analogy, but suggests there are solutions to our labor requirements and the desire of others for economic opportunity. While many eventually settled in Germany, a greater portion served as temporary labor. When the German economy tapered off, the Gastarbeitern returned home, often in their Mercedes and BMWs.
Thanks for raising this point of discussion.
Charles Bierbauer