A Long March
Tuesday's primary results extend the Democratic campaign -- and add time for needed clarification.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

THIS IS the primary campaign that does not want to end -- a phenomenon that's not optimal for the Democratic Party but that could be healthy for the democratic process. With Tuesday's victories by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, it seems unlikely that either Sen. Barack Obama or Ms. Clinton will be able to win enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination. Ms. Clinton, who trails in the delegate count, has said that she will stay in the race, which means the path ahead may stretch to Pennsylvania in April, Indiana and North Carolina in May, and even Puerto Rico in June. It could feature a fight to the finish for superdelegates and a convention contest over seating the Florida and Michigan delegations.

So why are we so chipper about the prospect? Other than the excitement of the most contested nomination battle in decades, we think there's a lot left for the two candidates to discuss and for voters to consider.

What could be left after so many months and 20 debates? How the candidates will restore fiscal discipline, for one. Both say that they would roll back the portion of the Bush tax cuts that goes to the wealthiest Americans but would keep the rest. All this would cost some $900 billion over the next decade -- and Mr. Obama has proposed another $80 billion a year in tax cuts for the middle class and seniors. Moreover, the "savings" from scaling back tax cuts wouldn't go to dealing with the deficit but to pay for new spending. Both candidates have proposed billions more in such spending -- on health care, on energy, on education. Is this really affordable? Similarly, both candidates would like to avoid getting into specifics about how to rein in entitlement spending, even though that is the central budgetary challenge that will face the next president.

There is much more to say about foreign policy. Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama have repeatedly discussed the positions they held on the war in Iraq before it began and their pledges to withdraw most American troops, but neither has explained how the dramatic improvement in security in Iraq during the past year would be preserved if their proposed withdrawals went forward. They've promised to improve U.S. relations with the rest of the world, but they haven't said what that would mean in such regions as Africa and Latin America. They haven't said what they would do with critical Bush administration initiatives, such as the Israeli-Palestinian peace process or negotiations with North Korea, that are unlikely to be wrapped up by January.

Lastly, though the prospect of a Pennsylvania primary may be no more conducive to a rational discussion of trade policy than Ohio's was, perhaps the imminence of a general election matchup can restore some responsibility to the Democrats' positioning. In the past few weeks, the trade argument between Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama has descended to the level of "I hate NAFTA more than you do," "I hated it first," and "You are lying when you claim you hate it." We can only hope that both candidates will draw back from their unilateralist threats of withdrawing from a deal that has clearly benefited the United States and its closest neighbors and begin to talk about how the unstoppable forces of globalization can best be managed.