John McCain is back, and I gotta say whodathunkit and that guy is tough. No money and a smashed up organization are generally not a recipe for victory. Nor, is it clear that McCain can pull off New Hampshire. According to the latest Bloomberg/LA Times poll, McCain still lags. Yet, McCain may do it.
Today, New York is the Island at the center of the political universe. The headlines in the hometown newspapers say it all. Three New Yorkers stand on top of the heap of would-be presidents.
The proximity between the first hardball dustup of the 2008 campaign (Clinton - Obama - Geffen) and the sixteenth anniversary of Lee Atwater’s death crystallizes something. Former President Bill Clinton is the Democrat’s incarnation of the GOP’s master of smash mouth politics, Lee Atwater. Clinton’s observation that “Your opponent can’t talk when he has your fist in his mouth” could have been uttered by Atwater himself.
2007 is here and so is the presidential cattle show. Already, the weakest of knee and bladder have departed from the field — Frist, Feingold, Bayh. And yet there is still enough beef on the hoof, boundless ambition, and tabloid tales to make 2008 a standout cycle in the making.
On election night there will be multiple stories. The Democrats win the House. The Democrats win the Senate (maybe). Tennessee elects Harold Ford to the U.S. Senate (maybe). Hillary Clinton wins big, but Eliot Spitzer does even better. Ned Lamont loses, and Geoerge Soros and Moveon.Org are reminded that culture counts. Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana emerges as a leading choice for House Minority Leader.
