Hillary and Rudy could wrap it up this year

[Flabbergasted]

The nominees for the 2008 presidential race will be selected in 2007. The tempo of the new political process, driven by 24-hour cable news, Internet bloggers, conservative talk radio, and liberal NPR is so rapid that the nomination race cannot exist in stasis waiting for Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina to get around to holding their votes in early 2008. Well before they open their caucuses or polling places, this nomination, in each party, will have been decided by the national media coverage during 2007.

snip

The importance of the front-runner

The key for the candidates is to become the early front-runner and hold the position for the first three quarters of 2007. Once that is accomplished, the nomination is probably in the bag. No clear front-runner, except for Rockefeller in 1964, has ever failed to win the nomination since the primary process became pivotal in party nominations in 1960.

Among Democrats, Kennedy in ’60, Humphrey, once he entered the race, in ’68, McGovern in ’72, Carter in ’76 and ’80, Mondale in ’84, Dukakis in ’88, Clinton in ’92, Gore in ’00 and Kerry in ’04 were front-runners who held their leads. Mondale, Clinton, Gore, and Kerry were front-runners who were briefly shaken by challengers (Hart, Tsongas, Bradley and Dean) but held on to win their nominations

Among Republicans, Nixon in ’60 and ’68, Ford in ’76, Reagan in ’80, Bush in ’88, Dole in ’96, and Bush in ’00 were all front-runners going in and the nominee coming out. Only Goldwater can be said to have pulled off an upset in 1964 by toppling Rockefeller.

So once there is a clear front-runner, he or she is likely to go all the way. This is especially true since he or she will have won front-runner status by intensive national media exposure rather than just insider chatter. With the process giving him or her so much face-time so early, the front-runner is unlikely to fade once the real primaries start.


Rudy and Hillary: tentative leaders

Already the process seems to be congealing around Hillary and Rudy as tentative front-runners.

Hillary re-established the dominance she had back in the spring of 2006 by moving out to a 43 percent vote share among Democrats in the presidential primaries in the Fox News poll of January 30-31. Obama is second at 15 percent, Edwards at 12 percent and Gore at 11 percent. Hillary had been at 43 percent in a previous Fox News poll in March 2006, but slipped to 32 percent in August with most of her previous support going to either Gore or undecided. By December 5-6 of last year, she stayed at 32 percent with Obama at 12 percent, Gore at 11 percent and Edwards at 8 percent. But now, even with Obama and Gore in the trial heat, she has regained her robust 43 percent vote share again. Even though media coverage of her announcement and Iowa tour was mixed, the electorate is obviously thrilled at the prospect of a woman candidate and rallied to her banner last month.

There is still time for Obama to recapture the charisma he seemed to have going for him over Christmas through his book, his articulateness, his moderation and his novelty; or for Edwards’s tough antiwar and healthcare positions to eat away at Hillary’s base. But they had better get it untracked pretty soon.

Among Republicans, Rudy Giuliani is eclipsing John McCain for front-runner status. In the most recent Fox News poll among GOP voters, Rudy had a convincing 34-22 lead over McCain, with Gingrich in third place at 15 percent. McCain has been hovering in the low 20s all along. In March ’06, he was at 22 percent, in August at 25 percent and in December at 23 percent. But Giuliani has shown steady progress from 27 percent of the vote in August to 30 percent in December to 34 percent at the end of January.

This poll finding — combined with McCain’s dismal financial report for the fourth quarter of 2006 ($1.7 million raised and less than $500,000 on hand) — put him in a convincing second place after a year of sharing front-runner status with Giuliani. Do McCain’s fundraisers think he is running for Congress or president?

In the battle among second-tier GOP candidates, Gingrich is moving up and Romney is fading badly. The Fox News poll has Newt moving up from 9 percent in December to 15 percent at the end of January while Romney has dropped from 8 percent in December to only 3 percent on Jan. 30-31. In the wake of George Allen’s and Bill Frist’s withdrawals, conservatives seem to be moving away from the former Massachusetts governor and toward the former Speaker.

http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020707.html

[sam sarrha]

1. Rudy is insane.. he has a temper worse than Cheney.. and cheney shot a friend in the face who pissed

him off

[bigdarryl]

2. Bullshit they both aren't wrapping shit up. this campaign is not over

a year is a life time in politics. and from what i saw of Obama on his announcement speech he CONNECTS with people. Hillary on the other hand sound scripted and is FLIP FLOPPING all over the place on Iraq. her negatives are higher than any other candidate running on either side. 48% negative rating thats high for anyone running for President.sorry Hillary just doesn't inspire a lot of people.so in my opinion she doesn't have the nomination wrapped up.

[Bullet1987]

6. Wow...I didn't know the campaign was already over!!

A year from now, the writer or that article may feel like an idiot or a genius...my money is on the former.

[fuzzyball]

10. HRC will paint B. Obama as a far left wing liberal citing his voting record

in Illinois senate and his do nothing role of a back bencher in the
US senate and that will finish him off.

[FrenchieCat]

3. !

[peacetalksforall]

4. The Hill doesn't have credibility with me.

edited to add

I should explain -

the source of this article is
http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickM...

Hill is not meant as Hillary in my message.

[villager]

5. so Dick Morris pronounceth, eh?

n/t

[adamisaliberal]

7. Nah

Neither Hillary nor Rudy should be in a position of comfort. As the campaign draws closer, when the ads begin to fly, and the camps kick into over drive...both of these individuals will be in for a rude awakening. These are name recognition polls that we see now, if I remember correctly...didn't Lieberman lead in the 04' polls at this time in the race? In 1992, wasn't Clinton running in 11th at this point? It's much to early to tell what will happen.

I am still predicting big things out of Edwards (my candidate of choice), who has the highest approval ratings among current democratic hopefuls. I think Richardson could be a factor too, but I doubt that he has the charisma to fire up a large base. We'll just have to see. On the Republican side, I don't see any of the big three (Rudy, McCain, Romney) getting the nomination. Rudy is too liberal, McCain is an old, angry, senile, idiot...and Romney flip-flops way, WAY to much.

2008 is a ways from now...let's wait and see what happens.

[AtomicKitten]

8. Don't count on it.

Traditionally the front-runner gets knocked out of the race.

[regnaD kciN]

9. Kerry was the front-runner for a year before 2004...???

Strange...I must have been watching some other planet's election process during that time. :eyes: According to that planet's conventional wisdom, throughout 2003 Dean was close to sewing it up, and Kerry was dead in the water.

ON EDIT: The following line...

Among Democrats, Kennedy in ’60, Humphrey, once he entered the race, in ’68, McGovern in ’72, Carter in ’76 and ’80, Mondale in ’84, Dukakis in ’88, Clinton in ’92, Gore in ’00 and Kerry in ’04 were front-runners who held their leads.

...makes me think I must have been on a different planet all my life. Humphrey in '68 only became the front-runner after RFK was murdered in June of that year. McGovern in '72? Until the latter did astonishingly well in the New Hampshire primary, it was generally conceded that Muskie had the Democratic nomination locked up. There was no clear front-runner going into the '76 campaign; most observers were expecting Humphrey to make a late entrance into the campaign and thought he had a good chance to sweep away the entire unimpressive field of Democratic candidates that year. There was no clear front-runner in '88, where pundits wrote off the Democratic field as the "seven dwarves." Clinton may well have been the front runner in the year before '91, but only because virtually every prominent Democrat, leery of Bush's Desert Storm-driven popularity, had taken themselves out of the race that year; even so, going into New Hampshire, pundits were speculating that the Clinton campaign had been fatally torpedoed by Gennifer Flowers's accusations. And, as I noted before, Dean was thought to be the clear front-runner throughout '03, until he got tripped up as the '04 primary season began.

Or maybe it's the writer of that article who's on another planet.