#8 The Senators, Part 1

In post #5 I talked about the Super Delegates, and how they could contribute to a major split in the Democratic party. It’s beginning to appear that they won’t. Over the past two weeks, several of the SDs previously committed to Senator Clinton have quietly (and in some recent cases not so quietly) shifted to uncommitted or directly to Senator Obama. If this movement continues, Obama could have enough pledged delegates from the primaries, caucuses, and Super Delegates to win the nomination on the first vote at the convention. Some ugly statements or actions may occur while this happens, and after (during?) the convention, but I think the scene won’t be as ugly as it would be if one candidate won most of the primaries and caucuses and the other candidate won the nomination because of Super Delegate support.

A Few of the Senators
Iowa is up for grabs in November’s election. That’s one of the reasons in post #7 that I mentioned Chet Culver, the current Democratic governor. Culver isn’t very well known, but the Democratic senator, Tom Harkin, is. The state’s seven electoral votes went Republican in 2004 by a narrow margin. If he were the VP nominee, Harkin might be able to swing the state to the Democrats this year. To my way of thinking, Harkin is a total good guy: author and chief sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990; favoring legalized abortion (while supporting education and contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies); supporting embryonic stem cell research; and, my personal favorite, rated “F” by the NRA and the Gun Owners of America.

While he is 68 years old, I don’t see age as a factor. He is still three years younger than the putative Republican nominee for president.

I do see three problems, however, with his being the VP candidate:
(1) in an election focusing on “change” (Obama has been emphasizing this particular discussion, and Clinton has embraced the word), Harkin represents the entrenched insider. Look at the length of his public service, with an excellent record to be sure, but hardly reflecting the idea of change: elected to the House of Representatives in 1974; re-elected in ’76, ’78, ’80, ’82; elected to the Senate in 1984, re-elected in ’90, ’96, and 2002.
(2) his senate term is up this year, and the current smart money is on his running for re-election. If he does run for VP, he will not run for senate, the Democrats could lose that seat and, depending on other senatorial contests, they could lose their majority in the Senate.
(3) OMYGOD is he “liberal.” As VP nominee to either BO or HRC, Harkin would provide no balance on the ticket. In an ideal world that would be wonderful. However, in the real world, the Democrats will need to convince some of the centrists to vote blue. An Obama/Harkin or Clinton/Harkin ticket would just about abandon the center of the political spectrum to John McCain and whichever Irving Pell he selects as his running mate, unless he chooses Mike Huckabee, in which case McCain will have ceded the center.

Although I would love to see Tom Harkin as Vice President, even as President, he isn’t a magician, and thus likely cannot change red into blue on the national level.

--sigh--

Pennsylvania, however much we view it as a blue state, was just barely blue in 2004. Kerry beat dubya by fewer than 145,000 votes out of the nearly six million votes cast. Although Robert Casey Jr is the Democratic senator, and the state has a Democratic governor, I would hope that with either BO or HRC heading the ticket, Pennsylvania would go Democratic without using the VP position to solidify it.

Minnesota is a strange state right now. Hubert Humprey, Walter Mondale, and the late Paul Wellstone notwithstanding, its governor and one senator, Norm Coleman, are Republicans. Amy Klobuchar is the Democratic senator, having taken office in January 2007. And the state went for Kerry pretty narrowly four years ago, by fewer than 100,000 votes. This is not a definite blue state this year, and will need some serious campaigning. But Sen. Klobuchar is not a likely VP candidate.

Next post: five states whose Senators are “lookin’ good, Mr. Kottaire!” (quoted from Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington, from the long-ago TV sitcom, “Welcome Back, Kotter”—this blog is eclectic, if nothing else.)

triton