Pennsylvania TownHall -- Where the Voice of Pennsylvania is Heard!

Guest Articles

Obama Must Face the Experience Gap

by Nathan Shrader

Despite her not-so-surprising victories in Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas, Senator Hillary Clinton is still facing a tremendous uphill climb to win the Democrat nomination. Upcoming primaries in Mississippi and Wyoming will further add to Senator Obama's delegate lead, making Clinton's quest for the nomination even more difficult.

ABC News reported on Wednesday, March 5 that "Clinton would need to win 94% of all the remaining pledged delegates to hit the magic number of 2,024." This would likely throw the nomination to the will of the convention, relying upon the votes of un-pledged super delegates to hand her the top spot on the ticket.

Clinton's massive victory in Ohio—a usual bellwether of the national political climate—has shown us that her repetitive claim of being ready to take command of the presidency on day one has obviously resonated with a relatively moderate state that represents a bona fide microcosm of the nation as a whole.

Democrat primary voters are more now than ever forced to choose between what is being broken down as Obama's nostrums of change and Clinton's claims of experienced dependability. Bearing in mind that John McCain has captured the Republican nomination, would it not be a wise path for the Democratic National Convention to nominate the candidate who can evenly match him on the experience, steadiness, and dependability card—real or imagined—which would also enable their party to put someone with security knowledge up against the Republican nominee who speaks only of this subject?

There are a number of indicators that have led this pundit to believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton may prove to be a better option for the Democrat Party to defeat John McCain in November. Bear in mind that none of these points should be construed to suggest that this writer supports any of the three conceivable presidential candidates.

First, the voting public is fickle. Plagued by chronic indecisiveness, the voters seem to change positions on candidates and issues faster than John Kerry changes his mind on the Iraq War. The voters overwhelmingly want change, but they don't really want too much of it. While "change" is the one word synonymous with the name Obama, it is unknown right now if the level of change being associated with him is more than the cautious public really desires. Exit polling data from every primary and caucus state presently supports this theory since Obama is more associated with "change" than Hillary, thus, she is seen as supporting change, but simply not as much of it.

Second, candidates who share Obama's liberalism have not been elected in years in which they have secured the nomination: Humphrey in 1968, McGovern in 1972, Mondale in 1984, Dukakis in 1988, and Kerry in 2004. One fact is exceptionally clear: the nation is much more conservative than it is liberal. According to a 2007 AP-Ipsos poll, 41 percent of Americans identify as conservative and 21 percent as liberal. Moreover, 14 percent of conservatives are "strong" conservatives while just six percent of liberals are "strong" liberals. Obama's ability to pull along a majority of the 34 percent of the moderates and a large enough slice of the 41 percent of the conservatives is debatable.

Third, McCain, as miserable of a candidate as he is, will have the upper hand in the general election. This is partly because he will simply have spent a greater amount of time raising general election money, coalition building, and campaigning against both Clinton and Obama by the time the Democrat nominee is known. Will Obama, the more liberal of the Democratic candidates, have the time necessary to moderate in order to catch McCain's lead? It would be reasonable to suggest that Clinton may have time to moderate since it is quite challenging to determine her actual positions and feelings on most issues aside from abortion on demand, gun control, higher taxes, and support for unelected international bodies.

Fourth, if Ohio is the reliable thermometer of voter temperature that it seems, one could deduce that Buckeye State voters asked themselves the usual (and somewhat valid) question: if the worst possible scenario is presented to us, who do we want making the important decisions (raised in this race as the now-infamous "if the President gets a 3:00am call that something horrible has happened, who do you want to respond" ad run by both Obama and Clinton). Right now, McCain will win this argument every single time; however, Ohio showed that Hillary seems to be the Democrat who may come close. As he argues his case on this, Obama only makes his situation worse because he doesn't have the so-called experience to legitimize his own argument.

Last and most importantly, Clinton and McCain have made much rhetorical hay out of Obama's alleged lack of experience to lead. It is my sense that the problem is not Obama's lack of policy or public service experience, but rather his lack of experience in running hard-nosed general election campaigns—dirty, nasty campaigns like the one coming this October. Don't forget that Obama's general election opponent in 2004 was the imported Alan Keyes and that his political base is the Democrat-machine run Windy City, a town that is known almost as much for lack of Republican competitiveness as it is for Michael Jordan, deep dish pizza, and the Cubs.

I rarely claim that Hillary Clinton is right about much of anything, but I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on this: the Democrat race is far from over, leaving un-pledged delegates and super delegates with much to consider.