RALEIGH – North Carolina voters didn’t participate in Super-Duper Tuesday – a fact that gives me no pain – but the results are likely to affect North Carolina politics significantly in the coming months.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton did better than Barack Obama, but not enough to put the nomination fight to bed (he won more contests, but she won more of the delegate-rich ones). While the public bitterness leading up to Nevada and South Carolina seems to have abated a bit, make no mistake: the Clinton-Obama division within the Democratic Party is wide, persistent, and painful for many voters. Long ago, I predicted that Clinton would end up with the nod after a spirited battle, and I guess I still feel that way. But it’s been closer than I expected, and more bruising to the eventual nominee.
I’ve talked to a number of North Carolina Democrats who have long feared that a Clinton candidacy would rob their state and local candidates of several percentage points on Election Day. That’s not enough to swing the races for, say, governor or state treasurer if the margins would otherwise be similar to the 2004 cycle, when the Democratic ticket in North Carolina won most statewide races by double-digit margins. But the effect might well be enough to yield Republican wins if the margins would otherwise be similar to the more-competitive 2000 cycle.
Now, assume that Clinton still ends up being the nominee, but after a process that leaves two key political constituencies cold: black voters and liberal donors. Each group has gravitated towards Obama in the past couple of months. North Carolina Democrats need a solid African-American turnout to win statewide races. They also need the turnout, energy, and donations of urban liberals, many of whom remain suspicious of Clinton on Iraq and other issues.
I don’t want to oversell the point. The national drag on the North Carolina ticket isn’t likely to be double-digits. Republicans who think so are fooling themselves, and Democrats who think so are psyching themselves out. Clinton obviously has great appeal not just to many base Democratic voters but also to the largest bloc of independents, working moms. But this emerging scenario does create some opportunities for North Carolina Republicans.
But is the party up to the task? Talk about intra-party dissension. The conservative backlash against the likely nomination of John McCain is very real, very heartfelt, and very bad news for Republican cohesion in the fall. Those who think the prospect of a Clinton presidency will be sufficient to motivate the vast majority of GOP conservatives to give, make phone calls, and head out to the polls may be underestimating the significance of issue politics for Republican voters this year (Democrats seem fixated on identity politics). I know some Republicans so upset with McCain on key issues – immigration, business regulation, taxes, even judicial appointment – that they consider it more important to keep McCain from redefining the GOP than it is to keep the Clintons from serving four more years in the White House.
That’s saying a lot.
In a sense, it’s grossly unfairly to talented and accomplished people such as Bev Perdue, Richard Moore, Fred Smith, Pat McCrory, Bill Graham, and Bob Orr to suggest that national political trends will matter as much if not more than their own stances, stature, and campaign strategies in determining this year’s electoral outcomes. But that’s the reality. Republicans have won an open seat for governor only twice in modern times, in 1972 and in 1984. In both cases, they benefited from a strong Republican surge for presidential candidates (Nixon and Reagan). In the other direction, John Edwards won his Senate seat in 1998 in part because North Carolinians participated in a national backlash against the Republican Congress.
As for the presidential races themselves, I’ll just repeat what I wrote last night for National Review: one prediction I can confidently make is that if we end up with a McCain-Clinton race, grassroots activists, bloggers, and political elites in both major parties will passionately resent it, at least for a time. Both candidates are disliked as mushy moderates and dishonest pols by those folks. The Internet equivalent of fists shaken in furious frustration will be much in evidence.
It ought to be great fun to watch. But if you are looking for morally uplifting politics, you might want to read some history (or fiction) instead.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.