Thursday 11 December 2008

The Audacity of Huck

Mike Huckabee’s appearance on The Daily Show to talk about why he is not very “conservative” fiscally, but very conservative morally and socially, as set out in his new book, is as clear an indication as you could possibly want that he is going to be making a very serious play indeed for the Republican nomination in 2012.

Economically populist, morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists – people who voted for Obama’s economic and foreign policies while simultaneously voting to reaffirm traditional marriage in California and Florida, voting to end legal discrimination against working-class white men in Colorado, voting not to liberalise gambling in Missouri or Ohio, and being pillars of the black and Catholic churches – put Obama in. And they can just as easily put the Democrats right back out again. Several of Obama’s appointments so far, most notably that of Hillary Clinton, have been open invitations to them to do precisely that.

Indeed, they have already reacted: the jaw-dropping run-off ballot for the Senate seat in Georgia was lost really quite heavily, considering that it had ever happened at all.

On present form, the GOP’s nomination of Huckabee (or even a good showing for him before the rabid capitalists and warmongers install Palin instead) would be the death-knell of an Obama coalition which had really lasted well under a month, and then merely spent almost four years hanging around waiting to be killed off at the ballot box.

How the Senate seats in Illinois, Delaware and New York (all Catholic strongholds, and at least the first and third also black strongholds) are filled will be a key test of whether that coalition can still be salvaged. But Obama must face a very serious primary challenge in 2012. Even if that challenge does not succeed, it will be vital to ensuring that the Democratic nominee understands how the Democrats won and how they can win again. Even against a ticket with Mike Huckabee on it.

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