Feb 3, 2008, 19:15 GMT
Washington - They must withstand bone-wearying travel from coast-to-coast, razor sharp attacks and voice-dulling campaign rallies.
Yet the bitter and suspenseful rivalry for their parties' respective presidential nominations seems to have energized US candidates as they face on Tuesday the toughest scramble of its kind in US history.
Voters are following the historic duel between the black Democratic candidate Barack Obama, 46, and his chief rival, former first lady Hillary Clinton, 60, with the attention normally saved for high-stake basketball playoffs.
Similar drama dominates on the centre-right side of things, with Republican Vietnam war veteran John McCain, 71, and multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, 60, tossing nasty barbs at one another while former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 52, quietly holds third place as a possible alternative or power broker.
After the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars, a year of jockeying and a month of single-state votes, Tuesday will bring the showdown in more than 20 states, the largest number of states ever to hold primary elections on one day.
But whether the day produces two clear candidates who will face off in general elections in November is highly questionable - at least for the Democrats.
That's because under Democratic rules, convention delegates are shared according to percentage of the vote, and with the two neck and neck, the contest could continue through primary voting from March to June in the remaining states and possibly into a contest at the August convention in Denver, Colorado, for uncommitted delegates.
Senator McCain has the label of frontrunner firmly emblazoned on his chest for the Republican nomination - a title that will be easier for him to nail down on Tuesday because Republican party rules give the winner all the delegates in most cases.
To the surprise of many watching the election, McCain could also win the general elections in November against both Clinton and Obama, according to recent polls.
An average of eight major opinion samplers since early January gives McCain a 1.9 per cent lead over Clinton in the would-be general elections, but only a 0.6 per cent lead over Obama, according to RealClearPolitics.com. That would tip the scales toward Obama, who is famous for his ability to inspire with comments like: 'We are not conservative states and liberal states, we are the United States of America.'
Democratic voters can be expected to factor this into their decisions on Tuesday after five years of the unpopular war in Iraq and inattention to the devastating financial subprime mortgage crisis. Despite the hoopla surrounding the Democratic contenders and the assumption abroad that the centre-left candidate will succeed, the polls say a Republican could well win.
Such a turn would echo the passion-fraught year of 1968, when liberal protestors against the war in Vietnam built enough public sentiment for change to force president Lyndon Johnson to drop out of the race.
That year also saw the assassination of liberal civil rights hero Martin Luther King and progressive Democratic presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy in a country anguished over slow progress in civil rights and the Vietnam war. In the end, the badly-splintered Democratic Party went with the establishment candidate of Senator Hubert Humphrey, who lost to Republican Richard Nixon - a comparison to Clinton's possible fate not lost on political veterans.
In the comparisons of Obama to slain president John F Kennedy, who was 43 when elected, most analysts point out that both young men were able to whip up the crowds. Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist, Sunday pointed out that the two men also shared weak points. Neither was terribly experienced, each was criticized as 'fairy tale' contenders - yet each had strong wind in their backs for change.
'Kennedy needed two things. He needed poetry, and he needed a country with some desire, however vague, for change,' Rich wrote.
Clinton has railed against Obama's inexperience, making the point repeatedly that she has 35 years in government and will be able to rule from Day One in the White House.
The two have split the Kennedy family for endorsements - with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy, brother and daughter to JFK, on Obama's side. Robert Kennedy's children on Clinton's side have written that even the 'loftiest poetry' won't solve America's crisis, but only a president 'willing to engage in a fistfight' can do so.
With these stark differences, Obama has increasing appeal even for some Republicans, wrote guest columnist Peter Wehner, a former aide to US President George W Bush, in Sunday's Washington Post. He cited not only Obama's 'eloquence and uplift of his speeches' and his ability for bipartisan collaboration in getting things done.
He also cited the hate and contempt that so many Republicans hold for the Clinton family after the bitter partisanship of the 1990s, former president Bill Clinton's affair with Monika Lewinsky and their overall representation of traditional liberalism.
'Among the effects of the Obama-Clinton race is that it is forcing Democrats to come to grips with the mendacity and ruthlessness of the Clinton machine,' Wehner wrote.
There are months left before the nominations in August by the Democrats and September by the Republicans. The course of the war in Iraq is uncertain. Clinton vowed on a Sunday morning talk show that she would bring US troops home from Iraq within 60 days of taking office. McCain has said he would keep troops there for 100 years if need be.
For now however, American voters have the financial crisis and plummeting economy uppermost in their minds, factors which could be more decisive than the war or electability on Tuesday.
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NoharnessFeb 4th, 2008 - 00:00:50
It's even steven: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/03/opinion/polls/main3783743.shtml I think he's got Clinton Clan flanked.
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