The huge momentums of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump on Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries in New Hampshire have respectively generated uncommon challenges to professional politicians and brought new perspectives to the presidential race. History shows that winning Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have been the key to finally winning party nomination. But winners in New Hampshire were usually not winners in South Carolina. Results, so far, have made it more difficult to predict the final winners.
Shortly after results came out in New Hampshire, The Washington Post published a graphical analysis on the past primary elections and how candidates did in each one. In 2008’s race, Republican senator John McCain ignored Iowa but took decisive victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and eventually obtained the Republican nomination. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee pocketed the Iowa primary and finished second place in both New Hampshire and South Carolina; however, he did not get nominated in the end.
From the Democrats’ side, John Kerry had sweeping victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, finishing second in South Carolina. He was eventually nominated. Obama held the nomination by winning Iowa and South Carolina and finishing second in New Hampshire.
These statistics seem to show that the winner of the final nomination of the presidential election needs championship in at least two out of the three states, and to finish second in the remaining one. Mitt Romney in 2012 was an exception. He was first place in New Hampshire and second in the other two states. This happened because his opponents were weak; that year, Santorum won Iowa but placed fourth in New Hampshire and third in South Carolina.
Based on the current results, if Trump and Sanders were able to win South Carolina, it is likely that these two gentlemen would enter the final battle for the world’s most powerful position. These two, however, have been dubbed “outsiders” by the media, which means “not electable.”
This is the contradictory nature of democracy, where a candidate who people are in favor of is not necessarily who a political party wants to represent the group. In this presidential race, many of those who were predicted to be frontrunners are not the favorites to win their party’s nomination.
Trump is by no means a conservative, nor a candidate that evangelical Christians should pursue. John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, wrote an article in CNN politics advocating that evangelical Christians challenge Trump’s past, his moral standing and personal values before voting for him. For example, if Trump were elected, he would be the first president to marry three times, leaving each for the next woman. And Trump is also proud of his sexual openness, stating in his book that he had sex with some of the “top women in the world.” Doing these things as a businessman is fine because it is private, but as a leader of the U.S., this would be considered scandalous. In addition, his immigration policy is so far right that people have compared him to the Nazis. His speeches have shown little traditional American values: individualism, respect, equality of rights, openness and tolerance.
Sanders is another extreme. He openly claims to be a socialist who wants to transform the U.S. into a country like Denmark. His far-left policies have even made him isolated in the Democratic Party to a certain degree. Like Trump, Sanders also ignores some of the core values in America: federalism, states’ rights, limited government, the idea of no “free lunch,” etc. He might be able to bring many of Denmark’s public policies to his home state of Vermont, but he would never succeed in getting the Southern states to conform to the road of socialism. Even if he were not elected, his campaign and ideas about a welfare society and socialism are very dangerous to the next generation, because these ideas have proven to fail in history.
Precise predictions will be clearer as the Super Tuesday passes at the end of February. If Trump and Sanders eventually win the nominations, Americans might expect another four years of “doing nothing” in Washington.
