Common Sense University

Even though there are officially still sixteen contenders in the Presidential race, eight on each side, a sense of reality allows us to reduce the field somewhat.  There are slightly more than seven weeks before the first votes will be cast in the early primaries in January 2008. This, our method of eliminating the real contenders from the wanna-bees, is by no means scientific nor is it based on insightful knowledge or our other-worldly sixth sense. No, it is simply based on common sense which is our foundation and the objective on this website.

Therefore, we will not keep you in suspense much longer and happily share our forecast with you:
         

·                    There are still four members of the House of Representatives in the race, Dennis Kucinich on the Democrat side and Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo on the Republican side, we consider each of them without a chance to win the nominations in their respective parties, leaving twelve candidates.

·                    There are still eight current and former members of the United States Senate in the running. They are on the Democrat side Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Christopher Dodd and former Senators John Edwards and Mike Gravel, while John McCain and former Senator Fred Thompson are the Republican Senators remaining. At this point, we consider Senators Biden, Dodd and Gravel without a chance to win the Democrat Party’s nomination, nine candidates remaining.

·                    Outside the above mentioned candidates, there are three governors, current New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson on the Democrat side and former Governors Mike Huckabee from Arkansas and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts on the Republican side as well as former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani. So, who is left: There are five current and former Senators, three current and former Governors and one former Mayor.

·                    When one considers that no U.S. Senator has won the nomination on either side since John F. Kennedy in 1960 (48 years ago), one is tempted to think that the candidates receiving their respective party nominations are either the governors or the former Mayor of New York. But that would be too easy and is probably not applicable in this particular Presidential election.

·                    Now then: Who of the nine remaining candidates do we think will be left standing after the primaries and who will get the nomination of their Party? In our unscientifically arrived at opinion, the candidate for President on the Democrat side will be either

•   Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama

While on the Republican side, the nomination will go to either

• Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson

With this prognosis, we have thrown historical precedent out and base our prediction solely on what we have seen and heard so far from each candidate. Every one of the above five candidates has positive and negative considerations and it remains to be seen who can present their views, philosophies, beliefs and programs for the future in such a way that the candidate will get the most votes in the primaries in order to get the nomination at next summer’s party conventions.

For now, we will leave it here without going to make more predictions. By reducing the field from 16 to 5, we have exhausted our willingness to go out this early and make the predictions we have made. While there is a chance that we could be wrong (on the Republican side, only Governor Huckabee and Senator John McCain might have a very minor chance to surprise us), we do not believe it. However, if we are wrong, we will apologize at the proper time.

But the primary election period will be relatively short early next year and by mid February the winners on each side should have emerged victorious and will then focus on winning the general election in November.

 This article and others on Back to Common Sense are designed to provoke further thought and investigation.   It is not the intent for the articles to be politically biased. Sources are referenced in each article to encourage readers to delve into the supporting material.  We welcome all readers to participate with their point of view either in support or contrary with additional information sources.