Of the myriad half-truths circulating around the interminable Democratic nomination race, perhaps the most false is the notion that a protracted Obama/Clinton battle will tear the Democratic party apart.
This view is held by an increasing number of influential party elders. A couple of weeks ago Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, added his voice to the growing chorus of calls for Clinton to quit. The longer she battles on, so the logic goes, the more ammunition she supplies for McCain's attacks in November. As Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put it: the Clintonites have been "breathing the fumes of the campaign bus too long."
Bookman's comments may strike a chord with many weary of the endless Clinton roadshow, but the idea that a prolonged nomination race can only hurt the Democrats is misguided. Having recently worked on the Obama campaign in Pennsylvania (which holds its primary on 22nd April), I believe the opposite to be the case. If anything, the continuing competition is actually strengthening the party.
As I write, legions of Clinton and Obama volunteers up and down the state are feeding all the intelligence gleaned from every door knocked upon and phone call made into a single database. They are building a goldmine of addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, ages and voting preferences of hundreds of thousands of potential voters. Come November, the Democrats will have substantially more up-to-date knowledge on where and how to focus their resources than the Republicans. They will have mapped out the political make-up of every single ward and county. In the south Philadelphia precinct to which I was assigned, every door will have been knocked on at least 1.4 times by the Obama team alone before voting day—and this is a relatively under-resourced area. The value of this exercise cannot be underestimated; Pennsylvania is one of the "big three" swing states (along with Florida and Ohio) that play a key role in the outcome of national elections.
Unsurprisingly, then, both the Clinton and Obama camps have been running ruthlessly efficient voter registration campaigns in Pennsylvania, pushing the number of registered Democrats in the state to a historic 4.1m. On the last registration day alone, 33,000 first-time voters registered as Democrats, and a further 46,000 Republicans and independents crossed over to the Democratic party.
Of course, the leap in the number of registered Democrats does not automatically translate into blue votes in November. But many campaign workers believe that the publicity generated by the campaigns in this state, which is so unused to being courted by presidential nominees, is no affliction. The longer the Democratic candidates dominate the headlines, the more McCain's agenda slips from the public eye. And it never hurts to have Caroline Kennedy out on the street wooing voters.
What's more, while McCain tours the country blowing hot air and prevaricating about a vice-presidential running-mate, the Democrats are amassing reams of useful data about potential swing voters. Obama strategists have been augmenting a long list of "Obamicans": Republicans who registered as Democrats in order to vote for Obama in the primary, and who might therefore be persuaded to vote for him in November. Plus, of course, the successful Democratic candidate will go into the November election thoroughly battle-hardened; McCain will not have been seriously tested in debate for nine months or so.
And the continuing campaign is helping both candidates amass formidable war chests. Obama raised $40m in March alone, and roughly 70 per cent of his donations to date have been of $300 or less, attesting to enduring grassroots support. One career organiser recalled how, during the ill-fated Kerry campaign, his team had to resort to paying people $10 to canvass on the streets. This time there's no need. As well as an army of "weekend warriors" of all ages and ethnic backgrounds, college and high school students have been turning up in their droves every day at the cluttered Obama headquarters on Samson Street. One veteran volunteer told me she hadn't seen the sheer volume of willing helpers since John F Kennedy ran in 1960. (On that occasion, she said, the organisers were so overwhelmed they had volunteers writing thank you letters to volunteers who had come in to help out the previous day.)
Even though he is lagging six points behind in the Pennsylvania polls, Obama's prospects still look good. As in other states, he is drawing together a broad church. ("There aren't many meetings in Philadelphia that look like this," he told the rapturous crowd of volunteers I joined at the city's convention centre.) And it's accepted that Clinton cannot win on numbers. Even if she were to beat Obama by a 60-40 margin in every remaining state and the Florida and Michigan results were reinstated, Obama would still end the race with more elected delegates.
But—and this is the real point—should Clinton pull off a miraculous series of victories, or somehow win over enough superdelegates despite losing the popular vote, both she and the Democratic party as a whole would still stand to benefit from the months of legwork done by her rival. And if Obama wins, vice versa.
It would take a "considerable effort" by the Democratic party to lose this election, says Brown University presidential historian Ted Widmer—primarily because the Republicans have made so many mistakes in the last few years. But there may be another reason why he's right. As Andrew Gumbel, author of Steal This Vote, points out, America has a "long history of dogged, dirty, win-at-any-cost electioneering." The Democrats have been forced to engage in dogged, dirty electioneering for longer this time around. And perversely, it could pay off.
