ST. LOUIS — They are used to picking the president around here, and more than ever, it seems, they want to extend their winning streak to the primaries.
For a century, voters in Missouri have proven to be a nearly perfect gauge of the nation’s thinking on presidential candidates, swaying from Democrats to Republicans and back again, but always (besides a certain election in 1956) voting in general elections for the candidate who ultimately wins the nation.
But far more than pride over some old record can be heard in the fervor with which people here from both parties spoke this past week about the primary this Tuesday. Again and again, they told of their desire to vote for someone who is not only able to manage the country’s economic slump, its immigration policy and its war, but who is also capable of something far more immediate and pragmatic: winning the White House come November.
“I am looking for the Democrat who will actually pull that off,” Dan Shelton, 55, a federal employee, said as he ate lunch in downtown St. Louis. “I am interested in someone who is electable — now it is a matter of figuring out who that really is.”
In Democratic Party strongholds like this city, voters, grumpy after eight years with President Bush, spoke often of their passion about picking a nominee who stands the best chance in the general election.
Even Senator Claire McCaskill, who has traveled her home state in recent days pushing for Senator Barack Obama, has raised the politically thorny question of electability, to the fury of some Democratic colleagues. Ms. McCaskill has said she worries that Missouri, a state with a strong conservative base, a slew of independent-minded voters and a Midwestern distaste for rancor, might be unwilling to back Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the fall.
Ah...my old home state. I noticed our penchant to back ultimate presidential winners in general elections, but I was never sure if that meant we were good leaders or faithful followers. Either way it makes Missouri a "bellwether" in some people's eyes.
It is exactly the sort of homespun political truism I tend to be skeptical of most of the time. We are such a mobile society I find it hard to believe in the constancy of Missouri political acumen. Plus, the dynamics of primary races are so different I'm not sure whatever is helping Missouri pick general election winners translates. (I seem to remember on Super Tuesday v.1988 Missouri went for Bob Dole when most everywhere else went to George H.W. Bush.) If it does translate, then prepare for a Clinton candidacy:
The Post-Dispatch poll, this time of Democratic voters, showed Mrs. Clinton ahead with 44 percent, Mr. Obama with 31 percent and John Edwards, who has since suspended his campaign, with 18 percent. Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, was quick to point out that Missouri twice voted for Mr. Clinton and suggested that Republicans were “beating up on Senator Clinton” in part because they fear she will woo away Republican women.
The Republicans are running in a much closer contest, with Mitt Romney sitting in third:
A poll of Missouri Republicans last week for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a television station showed a tight race: Mr. McCain with 31 percent; Mr. Huckabee, 25 percent; and Mr. Romney, 21 percent. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus five percentage points.
If we are going to believe that Missouri has a knack for picking candidates that will sell nationwide then it has to be a black day indeed for campaign Romney.
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