The US elections of 2012
Letter to America

I was in my fourth year of secondary school when in the snows of New Hampshire in March 1968 Lyndon Johnson almost lost the Democratic Party Primary to Senator Eugene McCarthy…the rest as they say is history…

The 1968 campaign was the first US election I really remember clearly although my love affair with the US and all things American can be traced back into the lost mists of my early childhood. We had American relations and I had an American godmother…and through the hard times of my early childhood they sent my mother money and parcels of clothes and such…that kept us all well dressed.

I hope I’ve never forgotten my debt of gratitude to those who never forgot us even when their times were good and their lives easy enough to forget their poor relations in Ireland and later in England.

But back to the US election…since those days of 1968 American politics has moved essentially to a process of contests by caucus or primary to settle the nominations of both main US parties….Democrats and RepublicansRepublicans…

Since the election of 1976 the people of Iowa speak in the first caucus…and this year that voice will be heard on 2nd January. The season of elections and primaries picks up pace thereafter. New Hampshire remains the first primary and then the caravans of the candidates and reporters moves quickly on to the south… to the Carolinas until Florida registers the first votes from a big state at the end of January. By then we should at least know who won’t be the Republican nominee.

Some primaries and caucuses are grouped together…though their precise timing may yet still move. Texas was due to vote in the Super-Tuesday ballots in early March but because the issue over redistricting has been referred to the Supreme Court the vote has been put back until April.

The general election takes place in the first week of November and really until then the politics of politics will govern most of what’s done. The House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Republicans…and the Senate is just controlled by the Democrats. Conventional wisdom says that with 23 of the 33 Senators up for election that the Republicans will most likely wrest the Senate from the Democrats and although the entire House is up for election every two years, given their current margin in the House, it seems more than likely, all things being equal, that the Republicans will control both houses of congress at the end of this election.

So much for the conventional wisdom and all things being equal…this election is interesting on a number of counts…and on all those counts and recounts it will test the conventional wisdom to destruction.

President Obama is not popular…from where we stand or watch that will surprise but then Obama was always phenomenally more popular in the world outside America than he was within it. He won last time by a tidy margin…the first Democrat to win more than 50% of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter squeaked by Gerald Ford in 1976.

But Obama won big where it mattered…the Electoral College that actually elects the President. We will have time a-plenty to luxuriate in the details of the arcane functions of the Electoral College later on in this process. For now suffice to say that Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico. Indiana and Virginia and North Carolina were amongst the states Obama carried in 2008 which might more usually belong in the Republican column…states that were beyond the so called swing states like Ohio and Florida that usually and sometimes, as in 2000 with Gore and Bush, notoriously, decide US Presidential elections.

If Obama starts from the disadvantage of low poll ratings two things qualify his weakness. First, unlike 1980 when Jimmy Carter was an unpopular incumbent…and before that as I’ve noted in 1968…the Democrats are not divided. Secondly, there’s no viable candidate running against the President for the Democratic nomination. That gives the President two huge advantages…he will spend little money before his re-nomination next summer and his party will not be riven by an internecine conflict rolling over the airwaves and blogosphere…

These indeed may be advantages that already account for the fact that whilst his ratings are on the poor side for an incumbent running for re-election…lower on some polls than G.W Bush in 2004 or G.H Bush in 1992 or Jimmy Carter in 1980….Obama polls ahead of most of his rivals in a head to head poll….enjoying leads of 3-5% over Romney 10% over Gingrich and more than 10% over Ron Paul…in the states that will settle the election…as opposed to the National polls which tend to show a closer result.

If Obama’s fortunes rise…and there are straws in the electoral winds that point in that direction…he may be much more difficult to defeat than currently seems likely…looking purely at the electoral math and early popularity ratings…indeed if Obama can win big…say with a 10% clear margin…it may be that the hopeless situation in the Congress will be overturned by his re-election since Americans increasingly tend not to split ballots but vote the party slate when they do vote…

Against this weak President and with their firm advantage in the congress in theory 2012 could be a Republican year. Indeed the recent history of American elections points to weak incumbents being ousted by unexpectedly strong candidates…Carter by Regan in 1980…and G.H. Bush by Clinton in 1992. And in both the case of Clinton and Regan from this perspective…eleven months out from the general election neither successful candidate looked a likely victor for their respective parties.

That said…the Republican field has been at best a slow burn with the public. Despite more debates than any rational voter might know what to make of…none of the Republican candidates has shone brightly. Indeed they all have obvious disadvantages…Mitt Romney a former Massachusetts governor is a Mormon…and has championed and enacted a Health Care Reform in Masachusetts not a million miles from what Obama recently managed. Whilst that might seem an advantage…in the nominating process Romney is like poison to right wing Republicans who dominate the southern states and the fundamentalist Christians who play well elsewhere in the party’s heartlands…and above all Romney has the charisma of a torch with no battery. Romney is also seen by the Tea Party insurgents in the Republican Party as a collaborator…just the sort of politician that got American into this mess in the first place.

And so throughout the last six months or so…one candidate from the ‘right’ of the Republican Party has risen without trace and disappeared by the same magic…some like Governor Perry have shot themselves in the foot they normally keep in their mouth..others like Herman Cain have been undone by their own doings in the privacy of a hotel room…others like Michelle Bachman have simply seemed out of their depth… a concept that assumes that there were ever any depths in the political shallows they inhabit. Speaker Gingrich was an early victim of this rout of the candidates from the right…but once Herman Cain went the way of all flesh new life came to Gingrich…but his second coming has already faltered and now he enters the final phase before the Iowa caucuses on 2nd January behind the Ron Paul in Iowa and Mitt Romney in New Hampshire and whether his poorly resourced campaign can survive those two shocks has to be seen.

There seems no doubt that Romney would be the strongest Republican candidate…but as recent history shows…the favourite often misses the coronation…Mrs Clinton seemed to have the nomination in her pocket until the early November 2007… and Senator Kerry’s unexpected victory in Iowa secured him a nomination for which experience had groomed him but which the charismatic Governor of Vermont had in his grasp until the notorious scream ended the viability of Howard Dean’s candidacy….

If Ron Paul wins Iowa or is clearly ahead of the other candidates from the right…then Gingrich will be in deep trouble and may not have enough funds to fight on…the question then will be…will those voters on the right turn to Ron Paul or hold their noses and vote for Mitt Romney. Romney seems bound to do well in New Hampshire…but the Granite State will not determine this nomination…Romney will need to win big in Florida if he’s to see his campaign safely home…and on present predictions and the polls that seems as yet a very big ask. This nomination process could, like that of Ford and Regan in 1976 and Obama and Clinton in 2004, go the whole distance…