A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

It comes as no surprise that in the wake of Barack Obama's impressive win in Iowa--and Hillary Clinton's attendant stunning loss--that many pundits are now talking of an Obama nomination with the same tone of inevitability that they reserved for Hillary Clinton's once-certain nomination. There can be no doubt that the Clinton campaign has suffered a tremendous blow. But nothing on the Democratic side has been settled and while Obama has gone a long way towards getting the nomination, he likely still faces what is very much an uphill fight.

First of all, the contest between Clinton and Obama is in keeping with a very familiar pattern to Democratic nominating contests. These contests almost invariably come down to a struggle for the nomination between (a) The Machine Candidate and (b) The Idealistic Insurgent. Equally invariably, The Machine Candidate wins.

Consider the following Democratic nomination contests:

1980. Machine Candidate: Incumbent President Jimmy Carter. Idealistic Insurgent: Senator Edward Kennedy (former California Governor Jerry Brown was also a candidate for the nomination, it should be noted). Despite tremendous excitement over the fact that another Kennedy was seeking the Presidency, Carter crushed Kennedy using the powers of his office and his control over the Democratic Party to ruthlessly out-organize Kennedy in primaries and caucuses.

1984. Machine Candidate: Former Vice President Walter Mondale. Idealistic Insurgent: Senator Gary Hart. Despite Hart's "new ideas" theme--a theme that did lead him to some surprising victories over Mondale--Mondale was ultimately able to take the Democratic Presidential nomination in relatively decisive fashion.

(1988 was an outlier nomination contest, as there was no major Machine Candidate. Hart may have played that role, but he was forced out early thanks to rumors of an extramarital relationship between him and Donna Rice.)

1992. Machine Candidate: Governor Bill Clinton. Idealistic Insurgent: Former Senator Paul Tsongas. According to The Quest For The Presidency, Clinton was angry over the fact that Tsongas was the "new ideas" candidate who was the favorite of the NPR crowd and he sought in some way to be the Idealistic Insurgent because it played to his self-conception as a candidate of fresh and bold initiatives. His advisers warned him off that route. While the "New Democrat" theme pursued by Clinton was a break with tradition, it nevertheless represented a Machine reaction to Tsongas's calls for fiscal restraint and his derision of Clinton as a "pander bear" for his (according to Tsongas) dramatically large spending priorities. The Clinton campaign accused Tsongas of not wanting to provide for Democratic spending priorities sufficiently (deficit hawkism did not permeate the  Clinton inner circle until after the 1992 election).

2000. Machine Candidate: Vice President Al Gore. Idealistic Insurgent: Former Senator Bill Bradley. Bradley had Gore worried for a little bit but Gore decisively won the Iowa Caucus and then defeated Bradley in New Hampshire. Bradley dropped out immediately thereafter.

In 2008, The Machine Candidate is quite clearly Hillary Clinton. The Idealistic Insurgent is Obama. Indeed, Clinton and Obama may be said to be archetypes of The Machine Candidate and The Idealistic Insurgent, respectively. The past is not always prologue, but if the past is any guide, Obama still has a lot to worry about.

Even if we put the past aside, we ought to consider that Clinton has a lot of staying power. Her war chest remains huge. Her Establishment backing is impressive and intimidating, and of course, the Establishment has no vested interest whatsoever in seeing its preferred candidate losing the nomination contest, for that loss may signify the need of the Establishment to give way to Obama's movement. The compressed primary/caucus season means that there are fewer and more compressed breaks between contests that would allow for a decent and reasonable interval for a candidate with Clinton's stature to fall on her sword and surrender the nomination to Obama. The 42nd President of the United States is, of course, heavily invested in this fight and as the first Democratic President since FDR to win re-election, Bill Clinton is not going to want to see the voters give his wife the thumbs-down in what amounts, in many ways, to a referendum on his Presidency. Add to all of this the fact that the words "Clintons" and "give up power without a fight" really don't belong in the same sentence, and you begin to understand the enormity of the task still facing Obama.

I don't underestimate the impact of Iowa. Not one little bit. It represents the most catastrophic defeat any of the Clintons have suffered in an election cycle that had them on the ballot. At the same time, there is no death rattle emanating from the Clinton campaign. The Clintons have only begun to fight, and it is far from inconceivable that at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton will achieve the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Whether that nomination is worth having after a long and protracted struggle is another question. But Barack Obama shouldn't be writing his acceptance speech just yet. His task may well remain far more Sisyphean than Hillary Clinton's is.