When Bill Clinton beat contender George H.W. Bush in 1992 and entered the White House, he had everything going for him. He won many ‘Red States’, giving him a solid mandate and a lot of political capital, and he had a Democratic Congress and Senate to boot. Nothing could stop him from rolling out a true Democratic political programme.

Boy, was he wrong.

Guess who stopped him? That’s right: his friends, the Democrats in Congress. When Hillary Clinton went straight for the Holy Grail of Democratism, namely the establishment of Universal Health Care, she behaved like a wild elephant in a porcelain cabinet, crashing and thrashing everything inside. The Republicans managed to sell her plans as being ‘Socialist’ or even ‘Communist’, in the states where incumbent Democratic Senators and Representatives had to defend their seats.

So when majorities of voters in those states came out against Clinton’s health care plans, incumbent Democrats made an about-turn. They wanted changes to the plans. When Hillary Clinton refused, those Democrats – fearful of losing their well-paid daytime job in Washington, D.C. – voted down the plans.

By then, the midterm elections of 1994 were upon them, and the health care debacle was used by the Republicans as paint to colour the Democrats as closet Socialists. That, combined with scandals surrounding some Democrats and a highly effective Republican propaganda campaign, resulted in a ‘Republican Revolution’ that swept away Democratic rule from Capitol Hill for 20 years.

Faced with a hostile Congress, Bill Clinton had to abandon his strategic plans and focus on tactical gains instead. He could no longer win the war for Democratic causes, but could at least try to win some public battles, in order to be re-elected and save his presidency, and thus his legacy. He succeeded for a while — until Monica Lewinsky showed her appetite for cigars, of course.

Fast-forward to 2009. Barack Obama will enter the White House as a Democratic president, very likely backed up by a strong Democratic majority in Congress. Like Clinton, Obama also wants to finally establish Universal Health Care and he will need Congress to sign off on it, too.

The question is: will it?

So far, the similarities between now and 1992 are striking. Just like in those days, there already are so-called ‘Blue Dog Democrats’ in Congress, Democrats hailing from solid Republican ‘Red States’ who will have a hard time convincing their constituencies that a collective public, government programme is not ‘Socialist cockamamie’.

And those are just the incumbent ones. Many more, from even more ‘Red States’, are set to join their ranks on November 4, when Republicans seem set to be ousted in large numbers, in favour of conservative Democrats.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton made introduction of Universal Health Care one of his priorities in his campaign, he failed to get many Representatives and Senators to publicly back that cause before his election. So when he was inaugurated, few members of Congress felt obliged to sign up for his health care plans.

Barack Obama has so far held several meetings with incumbent members of Congress on matters like national security, social security and the economy, but he has thus far failed to get a public commitment from them on his health care plans. He also hasn’t asked first-time contenders in the Red States, who seem to be sailing to victory, to sign up.

That could spell trouble. It would be very wise for Obama to get those public commitments now, also from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, before the election is held. It is very important that at least those plans finally get turned into law, because the financial crisis, the deep recession and the enormous damage done by the criminal Republican administation, will already put a strain on Obama’s treasury.

He will have to make some tough choices, ditching some plans to save others. But it could very well be that ditching his universal health care plans – one way or the other – will force him to make the same decision Clinton made: abandoning the war in favour of winning some battles.

Napoleon Bonaparte made that decision during the difficult years of 1813 and 1814, and he lost the war. Just like Bill Clinton did. Let’s hope that Obama is the smarter one.

Observing the media coverage of the primary war for the Democratic nomination, I can’t help but watch in amazement how the collective mainstream media press has apparently decided to dance around candidate Barack Obama, singing ‘Kumbaya’ loudly and farting in the general direction of the Clintons and John Edwards in the process. Amazement, because it won’t last.

Right now, any attack by the Clintons (or Edwards, or anybody else for that matter) is either completely ignored, or berated as something close to Pure Evil by the MSM. Whatever Bill Clinton says, it is now ‘racist’ or meant to ‘damage Obama’. Even when Clinton calls Obama’s candidacy so far “a fairy tale”, by which Clinton obviously means the non-critical, out-of-this-world aura the MSM has bestowed upon the Senator from Illinois, Clinton is attacked by hissing snakes. The Obama campaign doesn’t have to do squat.

Sure, now you’re thinking that I believe that Bill Clinton isn’t purposely throwing in the race-thing. Of course he is, but get this: that’s not my point. The point is that if/when Obama (or one of his surrogates) throws in some coded sentence that could be interpreted as racially tinged, but also could not, Obama is left alone.

But whenever Clinton says something that could be racially tinged, oh boy – there comes the Cavalry of the 1st Hypocrites Regiment, stormin’ out Fortress Moral Outrage!

Yet what I want to know is: will the press corps still defend Obama against the attack of Republican X during the general election campaign? Will the same press people hiss and harr-umph against a Republican campaign surrogate if/when he says that Obama may have a hidden agenda? Will the same press corps storm out of the fortress again to bash the GOP candidate?

Of course they won’t. As with every long-winded campaign, the dynamics in this campaign will have changed as well within three months or so. Why? Because journalists are human, believe it or not.

Right now just about every journalist who has seen Obama on the stump is impressed by the man’s oratory and rhetorical skills. That is very understandable because he has that gift. I’ve read stories and snippets in the past weeks where editors have said that they’ve had to take junior reporters off the Obama beat because they were clearly on Obama’s side, after visiting just one of the Senator’s campaign events. Veteran journalists come out of an Obama event completely puzzled and confused, asking themselves how in hell they are supposed to write an objective, possibly even critical article about the man.

But give it three months. Like with Bill Clinton in 1992, who was equally able to mesmerize journalists while on the stump, the effects of Obamania will wear off. So will the present knee-jerk reaction towards anything Clinton. Remember, dear Old Timers, how you and your buddies tried to tear down Clinton from the moment he hit the White House? Sure, he may have had the wrong approach towards the press once he sat down behind his desk in the Oval Office but the MSM didn’t exactly give him the time of day either.

So what I’m going to say now is what Bill Clinton has basically argued already – and he should know, because he’s been there, right in the middle of it.

To the Democratic voter who doesn’t want another Republican in the White House: if Barack Obama is nominated as the Democratic candidate, the press will no longer give him quarter. As soon as the ticker tape falls on the Convention in Denver, the very same press corps that danced Kumbaya around Obama will switch to a very different set of priorities.

It will be somewhat like this, straight out of a George Romero movie. The lights will be on and Obama will be looking at the MSM representatives, smiling as they smile back. Then the lights will fail for a second, and when they’re turned back on, he’s suddenly facing a bunch of evil vampires. And they will be out for blood – any blood.

Because political, thick, scandallous blood is the colour of the ink that sells newspapers. It is the drug that powers TV broadcasts, pays salaries, and is the only kind of blood that makes a sound: that of falling coins. Dollar bills will no longer be a grayish-green but rather printed in blood ink, and the owners and shareholders of the media companies can’t wait to rake in the piles.

The very same journalists that are now slamming the Clintons in a fit of fake moral outrage will cry out for racial slurs, and they’ll claw at the target candidate to get even more pungent ones. News must sell, not inform; elections are big moneymakers for advertising departments. All bets will be off, today’s sheep will be wolves, and unlike most Democrats, most Republicans won’t be wagging their moral fingers at their candidate. On the contrary.

Suddenly, Obama will find that he can no longer rely on the vampires to sing Kumbaya, keeping his enemies at bay. Instead, he will find that he’s in dire need of a thick skin and a really good War Room for some heavy duty fast responses. He will find that his one-time friends are not keeping the lions away from him, but are actually pushing him towards the GOP werewolves.

Mark Halperin and John F. Harris got many things right in their book ‘The Way To Win’, which is about campaigning, but they were really right on the money with this advice to any aspiring political campaigner:

“Journalists are never your friends.”

Halperin and Harris should know. They’re vampires.

So forget Iowa, the Clintons are going after New Hampshire. Bill Clinton in the past few days has within the campaign thumped on the importance of New Hampshire for everything Clinton ever since his second-place ending in the state in the 1992 Democratic nomination campaign. That pivotal feat revived his campaign and kick-started his succesful run for the presidency.

As Alex MacGill of the Washington Post pointed out in this excellent report, the Clintons have cultivated their ties to the state ever since, so much so that New Hampshire is seen as almost synonymous to Clinton’s destiny and political standing among pundits, commentators and — yes — national media journalists. Because of the state’s importance and the significance the Clintons themselves always attributed to it, losing that state in the primary would make Hillary Clinton’s star fade faster than you can say “implosion”.

And so the game that is being played for New Hampshire is one of expectations. Since Bill Clinton’s succesful run for the presidency, New Hampshire has always been high up the political expectations ladder, whilst Iowa — where he never campaigned — was mostly off the pundits’ radar screen when it came to the political fortunes of the Clintons.

In 1992, Iowa senator Tom Harkin had such a strong local following for his nomination campaign that Clinton was smart enough to not even bother trying to get caucus votes there, and in 1996 he didn’t need Iowa. But unfortunately for Bill Clinton, whose reputation is pretty much on the line now that his wife is campaigning for the presidency, the Hillary campaign has put considerable importance on Iowa, so much so that expectations are running high.

And if there is one thing Bill Clinton dislikes, for all his political mastery, it is uncertainty, and Iowa has become a huge question mark. The campaign has realised that all the extra efforts in Iowa of late have been too little, and definitely too late. Hillary Clinton has simply been unable to stem the Obama tide in the unpredictable midwestern state. And even though Hillary’s team pounces on each individual Iowa poll that shows Hillary one or two percent ahead of Obama, the campaign knows full well that the majority of polls are showing the reverse picture.

And so the new strategy will be as follows. Bill Clinton is still probably the single, most popular politician in New Hampshire. Thus, the coming weeks shall see Bill and Hillary — but especially Bill — tour New Hampshire while ensuring as much local media coverage as possible. Hillary will be projected as a Clinton once again bringing the message of ‘change’, much like her husband succesfully did in 1992. Realising the mistake made in Iowa, where there was a big disconnect between Hillary and Iowans, the campaign will get down to the good old nitty-gritty of traditional campaigning, including having her go door-to-door, which she has already started doing.

Meanwhile, the campaign will start what the Russians would call a ‘maskirovska’-campaign, or masking; having everybody believe that they’re still going full-steam for a win in Iowa, while in reality they aren’t. The goal is no longer to win in Iowa but to force Obama to concentrate most of his resources there while the secondary goal is to try to come in second, above Edwards. Look for Bill Clinton and other surrogates to start talking down the importance of Iowa in the last week or so before the caucus there takes place, while at the same time becoming New Hampshire cheerleaders.

As I write this, pundits seem to be missing that Edwards’s star appears to be fading, blinded as they are by focusing entirely on the brutal violence of the Clinton-Obama battles, which obviously makes for good headlines. By doing so, they are missing out on the one factor that is likely to decide the Democratic Party’s nomination: the approximately 10 to 15% of the Democratic primary and caucus Edwards-votes that would be up for grabs by either Clinton or Obama, should the former Senator from North Carolina decide to give in.

His campaign will deny it until the very last second of the Iowa caucus, but as January 3 comes closer the issue will slowly but surely be pushed to the forefront. There’s a big chance that Edwards will come in not second but third in Iowa, and the polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina do not look very good either. There’s an equally big chance he will lose in those two states as well, and since his campaign was obviously based on coming in on top in Iowa, where he has been campaigning virtually non-stop since 2004, the loss in Iowa is likely to destroy his entire nomination campaign.

When that happens, Edwards has two choices. Either stay in the campaign, knowing that after losing in Iowa, the press will ignore him completely as they focus even more on ‘Clinton versus Obama’. In fact, chances are that he will move to the back pages of the newspapers, amid the Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse freakshow. His ego won’t be able to stand much of that ridicule, which will also virtually guarantee that he stands no chance of getting the vice-president nod from whoever wins the nomination. (Edwards isn’t coveting that position anyway.)

So the second, only rational and face-saving choice would be to throw the hat into the ring almost immediately after the Iowa caucus results come in (providing, of course, that he finishes third) and thus before the New Hampshire primary, which is held 2 days after the Iowa caucus. And if he does, then the question is whether Edwards will endorse another candidate. As Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Christopher Dodd are seen dropping out quite quickly after their Iowa loss as well, it stands to reason that Edwards will have to choose between Obama and Clinton. Who of the two is he likely to endorse?

It is no secret that the Clintons have always held somewhat of a special place in their calculating hearts for Edwards; if anything, they were closer to him than to Obama. Bill Clinton has at times hinted that he backed John Edwards more than he did John Kerry during the presidential campaign of 2004 and there is no reason to think that Edwards has forgotten about that support. Naturally the Edwards and Clinton campaigns have traded barbs every now and then in the run-up to the nomination campaign of this cycle, but these were more superficial than anything hard-hitting.

However, despite those warm feelings for each other, one of Edwards’s nomination campaign themes has been ‘change’, not ‘continuity’ in the shape and form of extending the Clinton dynasty. So in that respect, and when purely looking at Edwards’s platform, perhaps a choice for Obama instead of Clinton would be more logical for Edwards. But then Edwards’s platform places much more emphasis on the ‘One America’ theme, invoking the image of an increasingly deeper rift between the rich and the poor, which (until recently) wasn’t one of Obama’s main platform themes.

Perhaps the answer lies in the kind of voters Edwards is popular with. Edwards has always been trying to reach out to unions and voters in the lower to lower-midde-class income brackets. His target audience therefore has a lot of overlap with Clinton’s, whose campaign has also been reaching out to unions and other representative organisations. Another target audience is women, which are quite obviously also a Clinton target. Another main overlapping theme that recently attracted voters to the Edwards camp was his plan for a national health insurance, which looks more like Clinton’s plan than Obama’s. Edwards has also criticised Obama’s plan more than he has Clinton’s.

But even though there is a lot of overlap, there is also a reason why so many people have been rooting for Edwards ever since Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy: a lot of Edwards voters simply don’t like Clinton. More often than not, Edwards voters are disgusted at the idea of having to vote for Clinton during the national election. Still, though, if they don’t want a Republican taking the White House again, they know they’ll have to as regardless of what polls and pundits are saying now, chances are that the presidential election is going to be very, very close again, just like in 2000 and 2004. If Edwards himself then implores them to vote for Clinton durong the nomination process, it might just be enough to decisively tilt the balance in her favour.

However, regardless of all these rational parameters, the decision lies entirely with Edwards personally. It is the second time that he is seeking presidential office, first as the Democratic vice-president nominee and now as a candidate for the top job. Losing out once is painful, losing twice is a disaster in political terms, not just because of the loss of face in the public arena (resulting in a lot less support should he ever try to run for president again), but perhaps even more because of the sense of personal failure.

If and when he gets to take a decision, he will know from private polls provided by his campaign that some of his voters in the last weeks of the Iowa campaign moved to the Obama-camp because of the ‘Anybody But Clinton’-vote that holds sway among the more leftist Democratic activists, and the inevitable ‘Oprah-mojo’ of the Obama campaign. Yet some of his voters will also have crossed the bridge (back) to the Clinton camp — the voters that are afraid that Obama is indeed too unexperienced to stand up to the Republican Character Assassination Machine in a national election.

And when deciding whether he should take a decision at all, there is another factor that will certainly be on his mind, which is: securing an important role in the Democratic party in the future. Edwards is someone who thrives in the spotlight; it’s a gene he seems to share with Bill Clinton. By simply accepting defeat and walking away, he will also walk out of many people’s minds, forever tainted as a loser.

The mere thought is anathema to Edwards. He understands that making a choice for one of the two candidates will at least ensure him a spot in the Democratic pantheon and who knows, perhaps he will be invited for an important position in Obama’s or Clinton’s administration. If not that, then White House support while running for governor of North Carolina would certainly help.

With all that in mind, and looking at the national polls in which Clinton still has a double-digit lead over Barack Obama in the nomination process and also leads possible Republican opponents in most polls, Edwards would be hard-pressed to give the nod to Obama instead of Clinton.