After Super Tuesday, Long Haul Remains for '08 Hopefuls

MARK SHIELDS: We're 35 days since Iowa. That's all. I mean, everything we've been through, this race is only 35 days.

JIM LEHRER: Think about that, 35 days.

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, it will be five weeks tomorrow. I mean, so all that has happened.

I think what has emerged and what's going to set the table for what lies ahead is that defined constituencies each candidate has.

I mean, Hillary Clinton does have women, especially women of a certain age, I mean, older women very much. Three out of 10 voters yesterday for her were over 60. I mean, she's a big draw there.

She's a big draw with the base of the Democratic Party. She won the foundation of the Democratic Party yesterday. She won New York, California, Massachusetts. Those are states that the Democrats have to carry. And, obviously, Latino voters were crucial.

I mean, I think it's entirely possible that Barack Obama won both white voters and African-American voters in California and lost the state. That has to be a first in American major politics.

By contrast, Obama has put together a coalition which is the mirror opposite of that. It's younger voters; it's independents; it's more upscale; and it's not the traditional base of the Democratic Party. It's African-American, as well, and it's male.

So you've got a gender difference. You've got a racial component. You've got an economic component, and you've got a partisan component. She has the more partisan Democrats. He has Democrats, as well, but also those who are independents.

JIM LEHRER: Of the two camps now, where they are tonight, David, where do you see the most room for movement by each one of them?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I would rather be in the Clinton camp, slightly. It is very close. But as Mark said, if she's winning the downscale voters, a lot of the big states that are sitting out there in March and April -- importantly, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin -- they're more her kind of states than his kind of states, so I think she has some advantage.

But as we've said, it's 75 days. And so they can't just repeat the same shtick they've been doing. They've got to both come up with second acts. They've got to go into each other's territory.

And things will happen. And there will be unexpected turns in this thing.

JIM LEHRER: And each has to go after the others' strengths, right?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, without getting nasty, because I think they've both learned that getting nasty hurts them both. There will be intense pressure from the super-delegates, who may end up deciding this thing, not to ruin the party.

I think the Clintons have learned the negative effect that Bill Clinton has on the race. They'll keep him silent, if they're smart.

And so they'll just have to respond to events in ways that somehow shifts the momentum. But it will take a significant shift for one or the other to get this thing without those super-delegates.

MARK SHIELDS: The worst two weeks of the campaign for the Clintons were the week leading up to South Carolina, and that's when they did unleash Bill Clinton.

MARK SHIELDS: I say, if they're interested in winning, it will. I do disagree with David. I think the immediate future, the immigration landscape is good. We have the crab cake primary here next Tuesday, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

JIM LEHRER: It's called the Potomac.

MARK SHIELDS: I call it the crab cake primary.

JIM LEHRER: All right, OK, OK, all right.

MARK SHIELDS: I think it gives it a certain Julia Child effect.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, right.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. But I think, Jim, it's important to remember Jesse Jackson did carry Virginia in 1988. It was the state he got the highest percentage in the country, and it had the lowest percentage of African-Americans that he carried, the governor there.

If Obama wins all three of those and wins the caucuses leading up to them, Nebraska, where Ben Nelson, the Democratic senator, former governor has endorsed him, the state of Washington, he has demonstrated, the Obama campaign has mastered the caucus. They've won every caucus except Nevada. If he wins Louisi --

JIM LEHRER: That's because he's good hands-on, good organization?

MARK SHIELDS: They're good. I mean, they've got good, young people on the ground. They go in. They go in against the party establishment. They find their own people, and they turn them out. That's part of the youth appeal. These are people who are willing to do that sort of thing.

But if he wins that string of caucuses -- including Maine on Sunday, Louisiana and Nebraska and Washington on Saturday -- and then follows up with victories against Senator Clinton here in the Washington, D.C., area, those three jurisdictions, I think that gives him a certain momentum.

JIM LEHRER: A movement?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: All right, let's talk about the Republicans. I'm sorry. You wanted to...

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I just don't he's shown no ability to go into the downscale market or with olders and show he can win.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, certainly he has with men, he's done a lot better with men.

DAVID BROOKS: It's over. I just don't see how Mitt Romney has any chance.

JIM LEHRER: It's over?

DAVID BROOKS: In the South, he came in third. If he was going to mount a campaign on the basis of a conservative resurgence, he would have not come in third in the South, and he would have been close in California.

He wasn't close in California. Mitt Romney won three counties in all of California. He won Fresno and a couple counties in the northeast of the state.

So you just can't mount a conservative resurgence without Orange County, San Diego, some of those areas. It's just not happening for him.

JIM LEHRER: There was the wire story, an A.P. story today, Mark, that said that Romney has also -- he has a business background, and he knows cost-risk ratios and all of that. And does he want to spend another few million dollars on something that doesn't look like he has a good chance? He may even make that decision in the next 24 hours or so.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, the decision to run and to spend your own money sometimes doesn't fit the model business plan. I mean, there is something feverish about it.

But I do agree with David. I think that both Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee -- and Mike Huckabee is the more interesting of the two, I think, politically right now -- Mike Huckabee has done something that no other cultural values conservative in the history of the Republican Party, modern Republican Party has done. He has won a series of states.

I mean, Pat Buchanan didn't do it. Pat Robertson didn't do it. He has the chance right now to emerge as the leader, as the youngest candidate in the field on the Republican side, to emerge as the leader of that cultural values wing of the party.

JIM LEHRER: No matter what happens? Even if he doesn't get the nomination?

MARK SHIELDS: I thought last night in his statement in Little Rock that that may have been -- because it was essentially emphasizing his credentials there.

So he comes out of this campaign not as a nominee, not as a running mate, but as the de facto political leader of a very important wing of the party.

I think Romney has to face that moment of truth, as well. Does he want to try and become the economic leader of the conservative movement and fold his tent? The idea -- Ronald Reagan ran in '68. He ran in '76. And then he finally was nominated in 1980.