Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Barbara Lee, Richard Berkowitz on MA Primary Results
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Thank goodness for the web. If it wasn’t for web news, political blogs and online magazines like Misstropolis, all the trees in North America would be cut down by now, needed for paper to hold the floods of stories written about the primary election season thus far.
From Iowa to Florida the primaries have been as dramatic as High School Musical spring musicaal auditions. Even the lack of a Golden Globes award show this year thanks to the writers’ strike didn’t seem to bother people, as they anticipated (and were assaulted by coverage of) a juicy primary contest.
On Super Tuesday, Massachusetts proved to be as significant results-wise as other coast states, and analysis has become an integral part of remaining candidates’ platforms in the days since. MA Primary results according to MSNBC have Romney winning 51% to McCains’ 41% and Clinton beating Obama 56% to 41% of the votes.
Contrary to Romney’s good showing here, (and despite a ”“barrage of political obituaries” this summer) John McCain has become the clear front runner on the Republican side. McCain currently has 801 delgates to Romney’s 282 and Huckabee’s 240 according to MSNBC. Washington Post.com political writer Chris Cillizza wrote shortly before the final GOP debate before Super Tuesday, “Most Republican strategists—aligned and unaligned—agree that if McCain makes no big mistakes between now and Super Tuesday he will almost certainly be the GOP nominee.”
Things are not as clear on the Democratic side. In order to get a fresh perspective, Misstropolis spoke to two local political insiders.
Barbara Lee is a local force on the political landscape, a woman whose name comes up whenever a major national event for the Democratic party takes place in or around Boston. Her Barbara Lee Family Foundation works to empower women in the political process and promote women’s full political participation. She has endowed political programs at both Simmons College (her alma mater) and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the lead agent in planning the successful fund raiser for Hillary Clinton at Boston’s Symphony Hall on October 10, as well as Hillary stops in Boston since then.
Lee points to the breadth and depth of support for Clinton in Massachusetts as signs that she is making continued gains over Barak Obama. “Hillary has strong support from women who are 40 and over,” she says. “People who need government to work for them.” Seductive rhetoric is a campaign given, she promises, but Hillary likes to say that candidates may “run on poetry,” she will “govern on prose.”
Richard Berkowitz is a political and public policy analyst who most recently ran the exploratory presidential campaign of Senator Joseph Biden. In 2004 he worked on the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry. Formerly a reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer, (and an occasional contributor to Misstropolis) he now also consults clients such as the the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Security Project. While working with Biden, Berkowitz says their entire campaign was centered around a plan to get out of Iraq in an orderly fashion by partitioning Iraq into three semiautonomous regions. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was positioned as the foreign policy candidate.
Both Lee and Berkowitz see foreign relations as a key differentiator which will continue to grow in importance over the coming months. Berkowitz notes that “Even though the war has receded as an issue in the primaries, it promises to play a greater role in the general election. 66% of independents, the key swing vote, want us out of Iraq within the next 12 months. McCain’s comment that we could be in Iraq for the next 100 years will surely make its way into attack ads this fall.”
Lee points to Clinton’s 30+ years of experience with foreign policy and her popularity all over the world. As First Lady she visited 82 countries and insisted on meeting with women leaders, Lee says.
Still, Berkowitz points out that for voters, the war in Iraq is tied to the domestic economy. “With the war costing over $2 billion a week, many voters believe our domestic priorities are being neglected.” On the domestic front, Lee supports Clinton’s health care reform policy and her proposal for tax breaks for college students. The centerpiece of the senator’s plan is a proposal to more than double an existing tax credit for students and their families from $1,650 to $3,500. Taxpayers would be able to claim 100 percent of the first $1,000 of college expenses and 50 percent of the next $5,000 according to a report in the Boston Globe. She knows how to accomplish her goals Lee insists, stating that Clinton’s “lifetime of commitment to public service” is proof of that.
I asked Berkowitz what Biden sees as the biggest challenges facing the country over the next four years. He responded that long before the assassination of Benezir Bhutto, Biden said that Pakistan is the most dangerous nation on the planet and is one of the most critical foreign policy issues facing the next president. This was a very important point for Biden who came down hard on Clinton when she mischaracterized Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf ‘s role while speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
Both Democratic candidates (sorry John Edwards, but we are counting you out) say Change is what the country needs. (Speaking of change, have you seen will.i.am’s Obama video “Yes We Can”?) According to Berkowitz, only about 25% of people believe the country is on the right track. That is a key determinant of the national mood he believes and “at 72, it is hard for McCain to be perceived as the necessary agent of change.”
We’ll see, won’t we! What do you believe? How do you feel about the candidates still in the running, and what are the most important issues to you?
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