The American Mind

There’s talk around the blogosphere that the Sens. Obama and Clinton have put a wrench into the Democrats’ chances for taking the White House. Last night, Sen. John McCain sealed the deal and won enough delegates to be the Republican nominee, but Obama’s and Clinton’s slugfest wasn’t decided with Texas and Ohio. There are a few small contests before the Pennsylvania primary next month.

James Joyner gathered plenty of discussion from the netroots asking Clinton drop out. The worry is while Obama and Clinton hammer on each other McCain gets off relatively scot-free.

While the Obama-Clinton battle trudges on towards a potential convention battle McCain will be out of sight and out of mind. Judging by what happened to Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson that’s not a good thing. For whatever reasons there were significant stretches where both Republican candidates didn’t make news and stay in the public’s view. Remember last fall when Giuliani was taking on MoveOn.org one week and Clinton the next? He was the front runner then. Similarly Thompson’s high point was when he announced with the help of Jay Leno. But when each candidate failed to make news their lack of mindshare pulled their poll numbers down.

Voters were aligning with candidates who remained active. Mike Huckabee had an endless supply of energy along with memorable debate moments. Mitt Romney had enough money to keep his name on voters’ minds. McCain worked and worked and worked New Hampshire. He made the Granite State his last stand and voters knew it.

During this next stretch of contests Obama and Clinton will get MSM and blogosphere attention because that’s the last race remaining. McCain will need to make news and contrast himself with both Democrats, and he has to do that while building a national campaign organization and fundraise (that latter would be easier if they implemented the number one eCampaign innovation this cycle).

As for the Democrats’ continue Presidential fight Kevin Drum is right [via memeorandum],

So I say: chill out. Like a lot of people, I’m not very happy about the direction the Democratic campaign has taken, but the idea that it’s going to wreck the eventual winner’s chances in the fall seems pretty far fetched. It takes more than a few nasty exchanges to do that. And who knows? By keeping Dems in the spotlight, it might even help them. Stranger things have happened.

If Obama makes it through this he will have received some much-needed battle testing. That will be useful in the fall against McCain’s stubborn relentlessness.

This is one of the rare times when Megan McArdle is wrong. So is Tom Maguire. And Brendan Nyhan links to a poli-sci study seeing little negative effects of a divisive primary.