Three leading candidates — all of whom have had it pretty easy

February 12, 2008

Hoping to instill doubt about Barack Obama’s general-election viability, Clinton pollster Mark Penn raised an interesting point yesterday.

The Clinton team moved on Monday to shift the spotlight off the candidate’s short-term challenges and focus instead on “the long run,” in the words of her senior strategist, Mark Penn.

“She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner,” Mr. Penn said. “Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.”

That’s certainly true. In 2000, he unsuccessfully ran in a tough primary against Rep. Bobby Rush, but Rush is a Democrat. In his various campaigns for the state Senate, Obama won fairly easily. In 2004, he ran in a tough multi-candidate Senate primary, but after securing the nomination, he ended up running against professional right-wing gadfly Alan Keyes. A “serious Republican challenger”? Hardly. Obama was supposed to face a tough campaign against Jack Ryan four years ago, but a sex scandal forced him from the race (I’d argue, unfairly).

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton’s campaigns haven’t exactly been barn-burners. Clinton’s first-ever campaign, the Senate race in 2000, was supposed to be a serious campaign against Rudy Giuliani, but she ended up facing a feckless Rick Lazio, beating him easily. In 2006, with very strong poll numbers in New York, Republicans struggled to find anyone to run against her, ultimately settling on former Yonkers mayor John Spencer. Clinton never had to break a sweat on route to her landslide victory — Spencer finished with just 31% of the vote.

But here’s a fun little twist — guess who else has never really gone up against a serious challenger from the other party? John McCain.

In 1982, McCain easily won election to the House in a heavily Republican district.

In 1984, he easily won re-election against token Democratic opposition.

In 1986, McCain launched his first Senate campaign, easily beating a young former state legislator best known for sleeping on his office floor. (Seriously.)

In 1992, McCain faced civil rights activist Claire Sargent (D), who many thought might give him a tough race in the wake of the Keating Five corruption scandal, but a former governor entered the race, made it a three-way contest, and McCain won by 24 points.

In 1998, McCain faced token Democratic opposition on route to a 42-point win.

In 2004, it was even easier for McCain, winning by 56 points.

Taken together, after a quarter-century in Congress, John McCain has faced no credible Democratic challengers ever.

November is bound to be interesting, isn’t it?

I suppose Mark Penn is doing what Mark Penn is supposed to do – gaging the horse race as if it were the fifth at Santa Anita. But rather than focus on the intangibles and make them what the campaign is all about, maybe Penn would be better at his job and better for Hillary if he focused on what is and is not succeeding about her message. Maybe, just maybe, the voters don’t want to hear about who is the biggest Washington insider and maybe they want to hear what will change in the future. Just a suggestion.

  • Great post.

    I’d thought about the Clinton cakewalks, but didn’t realize how easy McCain had had it so far.

  • You’ve hit on something I’ve been thinking of lately. For as long as McCain has been around, I don’t think Americans really know him. There’s this fuzzy idea of him being a maverick, a war hero and one of the moderate members of the GOP, but that’s it. How many folks know anything about the Keating 5? Or his conservative positions? Or his general unpleasantness? Or the fact he was the neocon choice in 2000? It’s easy to miss that by imploding in the summer, he ended up missing the kind of scrutiny rival campaigns and the press give to front runners. Right up through the Florida debate, his rivals still trained most of their fire on Romney. We may find out that the press’ love for him makes him bullet proof. But there’s also a good chance that once the inevitable scrutiny comes, he may end up a lot more tarnished than most people imagined.

  • Obama was supposed to face a tough campaign against Jack Ryan four years ago, but a sex scandal forced him from the race (I’d argue, unfairly).

    Try living through a year of news about Jeri Ryan and sex clubs! Wait…that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.

    Frankly, I think Jack was glad to have the scandal so he could drop out before the sound beating Obama was sure to deliver.

  • “She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner,” Mr. Penn said.

    Electoral resiliency? WTF is that supposed to mean? All we need to know is how naiive or politically craven she was when she said this:

    Tonight, the President gave Saddam Hussein one last chance to avoid war, and the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this ultimatum, understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly.

    HRC – March 17, 2003

    If she had bothered to read the NIE she had access to, she would have known that Iraq wasn’t much of a threat. But it’s important to remember what Bush’s “ultimatum” was…

    “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.

    For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists and inspectors, should leave Iraq immediately.”

    And of course he also said “Don’t blow up our oil wells”. He kicks out the inspectors, she says “GO TEAM”. Of course Clinton also said on October 10th, 2002

    In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda…

    …

    “I will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.”

    She repeats the lies about al Qaeda being supported by Iraq (debunked back in 2002 by the smart people). She takes Bush at his word, and then approves when he kicks out the inspectors.

    Sorry lady, you and your “electoral resiliency” suck.

  • “John McCain’s bellicose aura could allow us to achieve more of our objectives peacefully because other countries would be more afraid to mess with him than with most other potential occupants of the Oval Office — or the current one.” – Max Boot, informal advisor to McCain.

    Yeah, that was the problem. Maybe if McCain’s campaign volunteers put up a picture of Dracula, Dems will be afraid to vote for him, too.

  • I don’t mean to sound like an Obama hack, but he may have faced the toughest race of them all going up against the person with probably the second highest name recognition in the Democratic party (exceeded only by her spouse), and a head-start in cash and organization that many thought to be insurmountable.

  • For those of you Obama followers who are attacking Hillary and anyone with the nerve to stand up for her, please remember that we are all part of a bigger picture and need to keep it real because no matter who wins the nomination, we need to come together by November or else it’s 4 more years of Bush policy!

    Obama isn’t going to win ALL of the independents, just because he is getting some of them to come out of the woodwork for the Caucuses, what about all of the paranoid red state hill-billies who WILL come out in November to keep him from winning the general election for saying that he would sit down with leaders of countries such as Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Syria during his first year in office.

    Just because those people are not rallying around Clinton like some other independents are for Obama, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t rather see her in office.

    Believe it or not, most people in this country don’t want somebody that is too liberal.. don’t be taken by Caucus results where independents vote!

  • It’s not a coincidence that all of the three have a history of relative ease in their campaigns. American politics have become so corrupt and unethical that a fierce battle for election presents a politician with a choice of losing or engaging in reprehensible behavior and saying all sorts of stuff that is demonstrably untrue and which may help at the moment but ultimately damage the politician’s brand.

  • Sorry, didn’t mean to get off topic.. I got wrapped up in comments in another blog post and realized it wasn’t being commented on as much and brought the discussion here 🙂

  • Believe it or not, most people in this country don’t want somebody that is too liberal. -Greg

    Concern trolling the National Journal’s line? Sigh.

    …what about all of the paranoid red state hill-billies who WILL come out in November to keep him from winning the general election… -Greg

    Are these people who would vote for Clinton? No. Sigh.

  • You demonstrate that none of the three have had a serious challenge from someone in the other party. Great. If there was some difference between them we could stop there. But since there isn’t a difference, it might be useful to see how difficult their primary races have been. As you say, Obama has been through more than one difficult primary prior to this year. What about Clinton and McCain?

  • #7: Beep52, says it all. I think Obama is being very well tried and tested as we speak. The idea that he has not been properly vetted is ridiculous. If Clinton had anything on Obama, she would have used it by now. If we are ever to get our country out of the hands of the special interest groups, we need someone who has not sold their political favors for the chance to be the President. If Hillary wins by using her clout with the so called super delegates it will be a tragedy for America.

  • I really think the big issue isn’t that they haven’t had tough competition, but the reason why. Both Hillary and Barack were big names when they ran for the Senate and would have been a prize for anyone to knock off. They weren’t incumbents, so it shouldn’t have been as hard, but all the same, nobody serious wanted to run against them. And that’s because they saw how hopeless it was. Hillary in particular should have had Rudy to beat-up, but he clearly realized he’d lose and this would hurt his chance at becoming emperor. And while it’s arguable about Ryan dropping out, it’s obvious he didn’t think he could swing it and clearly nobody stepped up to the plate. This wouldn’t have been the case if they thought Obama was a lightweight.

    Oddly enough, Bush really did have a tough race when he went to unseat Ann Richards, and had to resort to cheap smears about her being a lesbian and whatnot (and let me tell you, those were REALLY FUN DAYS defending against that smear). Of course, the fact that they had to fight so dirty against a Democrat in Texas in the days when the state was turning bright red just shows how weak Bush really was. And then for his re-election it was just a case of finding any Democrat willing to lose. Even then, we knew the Whitehouse was the real goal. I really felt bad for the guy he beat, as it wasn’t even a real race and he was a decent guy.

  • Obama was supposed to face a tough campaign against Jack Ryan four years ago, but a sex scandal forced him from the race (I’d argue, unfairly).

    Say what? The guy made his wife go to swinger clubs with the intent to have sex in public. Multiple times. When he knew she didn’t want to.

    If she had been cool with it, I’d agree with you, none of our business. But it says something about a man that would want to humiliate his wife that way.

    I’ll agree with you that the fact that the information was released in the first place was unfair, since both parties wanted to keep it private. But once it was made public, his campaign was doomed.

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