In one of the more interesting political essays I’ve seen in some time, Rick Moran looks at the “woulda coulda shoulda” scenario of what might have been had Chicago Bears super-coach Mike Ditka accepted the GOP’s invitation to run for the United States Senate in 2004. You may recall that Jeri Ryan’s husband Jack won the Republican primary that year, but his campaign subsequently collapsed after messy details of his divorce were made public. The GOP then drafted a carpetbagging and gaffe-prone Alan Keyes to run against Obama and he went down in flames. This set the stage for Obama to not only take the Senate seat, but to help out a number of other Democrats. His stunning win also opened the door for his convention speech and eventual presidential run. Could Ditka have beaten him? Rick says that we’ll never know.
Da Coach may very well have been a walking, talking gaffe machine whose ignorance of national issues would have made his candidacy problematic to say the least. Some of us were shuddering over the fact that every press appearance would have been white knuckle time. And make no mistake. Ditka is very, very conservative – a far cry from the usual Illinois Republican winner who tend toward the more moderate conservatism in the tradition of a Jim Thompson or Jim Edgar. Da Coach’s in your face style may have proved just too much for many people.
But stranger things have happened in politics. Ditka himself isn’t sure he could have beat Obama
Moran goes on to point out how circumstances conspired to make Obama a very popular figure in the Democratic Party, further greasing the skids. Had he run against Ditka, the picture may have looked very different, even if Obama had still won.
Because he was so far ahead, Obama was able to campaign for several Democratic Senate and House candidates around the country while doling out money from his campaign to other races. This greased the skids with several important politicians in some vital states that Obama ended up winning in his brutal primary race against Hillary Clinton.
Might he have had those politicians in his corner if he hadn’t been able to leave Illinois? If Obama had been forced to spend every dime he raised and campaign in Illinois down to the wire in order to beat Ditka, would he have been able to beat Hillary Clinton?
It’s an interesting point, but there is one more factor which I think Rick fails to explore here. The selection of Keyes completely dampened enthusiasm in his own party, not only in terms of funding, but on the ground efforts, opposition research, etc. If the state GOP had been in full warfare mode on behalf of Ditka, might they have dug up and made public a lot more of Obama’s Chicago background which instead lay dormant until nearly the end of this campaign? And would that additional ammunition of either made it possible for Hillary to win the primary or for McCain to charge ahead in the general election?
Again, we’ll never know. But it’s a fun mental exercise to engage in as we wait for these last two weeks to roll by.