There is an apparent impressive “surge” going on — on the political front: the continued surge of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, which is now reflected in two polls.
So the Democrats are now faced with a new twist in this campaign as (once again) the talking heads and for-certain experts have to reformulate their all-knowing pronouncements on what was going to happen. Huckabee is a new face. A fresh face. So shouldn’t the Demmies now be afraid?
The answer is apparently — for right now — NO:
While presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is surging in new polls of GOP candidates, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Tuesday shows he would lose to all three leading Democratic candidates by double digits in hypothetical contests.
In head-to-head matchups — the first to include Huckabee — the former Arkansas governor loses to Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by 10 percentage points (54 percent to 44 percent), to Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois by 15 points (55 percent to 40 percent) and to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina by 25 points (60 percent to 35 percent).
The poll comes on the heels of a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Monday that showed Huckabee doubled his support nationally among likely Republican voters in the last month and is in a statistical dead heat with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. View complete poll results
But Huckabee’s double-digit deficits with the leading Democrats likely suggest that the Arkansas Republican still lacks widespread name recognition nationally, according to Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director.
“Americans tend not to support candidates they’re not familiar with, and it’s possible Huckabee’s numbers are low in these hypothetical matchups because he is still not very well known nationally,” Holland said.
So the question becomes: as Americans get to know more about Huckabee, will the possibility that he might get the nomination be good or bad news for the Democrats?
It’d be good news if his low numbers stayed low or Americans didn’t like what the learned as they “sampled” him. It’d be bad news for the Democrats if the real story of 2008 becomes how Huckabee emerged Reagan-like, as someone who the experts “knew” didn’t have a chance but whose personality came across the boob tube in a way that he connected with Americans who might not even totally agree with him.
But note that part of Huckabee’s persona will be defined by the Democrats who will seek to “define him.”
According to Matt Drudge (who we do not usually quote on this site due to some accuracy issues in some of his past posts — but this fits in with the poll numbers), the Democrats are in no rush. Drudge quotes Democratic sources as saying a party directive essentially orders Democrats to leave Huckabee alone.
The reason: he is perceived as the “Republican’s George McGovern” — someone whose past statements can be used against him to define him as too extreme to be President.
NOTE: In the past we’ve said here that Drudge’s sources are almost all Republicans so he couldn’t be trusted on his exclusive reports that quoted unnamed Democrats. But that has changed recently with several stories noting that Drudge is now believed to have a working news relationship with some operatives in Senator Hillary Clinton’s camp. That could be the sourcing on this item.
The Drudge item ends with a quote from an unnamed Republican saying Clinton should be afraid — that Huckabee could be her worst nightmare.
And, indeed, if by the summer it’s clear that Americans in 2008 truly CRAVE a fresh face in the White House — no one connected to the past bitter political battles, or who has been on the scene forever and is trying to cultivate an existing image or erase another — who would most benefit among the leading candidates? Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee.
If voters want a change and the choice is Clinton and Huckabee, the war will be on by each camp to define the other and may the best mudslinger win. But the thirst for a change could be so big that the Democrats could find themselves with a bigger battle on their hands than they thought.
The supreme irony: both Clinton and Huckabee are candidates who are popular with their respective parties’ base but may have a tougher and more difficult sell in the general election.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.