Democratic primary fight is like no other

The 2008 Democratic primary battle between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, which concludes today with contests in Montana and South Dakota, has developed such a reliable story line that pundits can recite it in their sleep.

The first black and first woman with solid chances to win the White House have split the Democratic Party nearly in half, with his coalition of young voters, affluent liberals and blacks against her coalition of women, older voters, Hispanics and working-class whites. Obama appears on track to a narrow nomination victory if he can win over just a small fraction of the roughly 200 superdelegates who remain undecided.

But that numbing familiarity cannot obscure what makes this nomination fight so singular. In its cost, duration, competitiveness and breadth of citizen involvement, it stands alone in the history of American presidential politics.

"We've had higher rates of participation, not just by voting but by volunteering and giving, than any other," said Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute and a onetime congressional aide to Dick Cheney. "And there's nothing that's remotely close."

A springtime gantlet of primaries became part of the presidential nominating process a century ago as progressive-era reformers sought to give voters, rather than party bosses, a greater voice. That voice was initially muted; even as recently as 1968, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey won the Democratic nomination without entering any of that year's 15 primaries.

But in the Obama-Clinton contest, voters have shouted louder and longer than ever, beginning with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. The primary calendar is two months longer than in 1968.

Shattering records, the two leading Democrats raised nearly $500 million through April to finance their rival armies. Clinton's $214 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, exceeds money raised by all candidates in both parties in the hard-fought 1988 contests that nominated George Bush and Michael Dukakis. Obama raised $50 million more than Clinton did, relying heavily on the Internet and creating a new model for financial supremacy.

"The scale of this thing is just extraordinary," said Tony Corrado, a professor at Colby College and a leading authority on campaign fundraising. What makes their performance all the more striking, he said, is one argument used in the past to explain the dominance of white male candidates. Women and minority politicians, skeptics once asserted, "didn't have the sort of social-business networks" needed to compete.

Moreover, each top Democrat has proved resilient enough to defy the normal laws of political gravity. In nominating fights over the last two decades, such formidable challengers as Bob Dole, Richard A. Gephardt, John McCain, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean have faded after early defeats the way John Edwards, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani did this year.

But Clinton has finished robustly despite a costly string of February losses. Even after this weekend's disappointment of failing to gain all the Michigan and Florida delegates she had sought before the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic Party, Clinton commands 45 percent of convention delegates to Obama's 49 percent.

Just as remarkable, the intensity of competition has been inversely proportional to the ideological stakes. In the feisty Democratic battle of 1968, Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy challenged Humphrey and Lyndon B. Johnson over the Vietnam War; in 1976, Ronald Reagan carried the banner of ascendant Republican conservatism against incumbent President Gerald Ford; in 1980, Edward Kennedy fought the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, in defense of traditional liberalism.

This year, Obama assailed Clinton for her vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. But both now vow to end the war. Above all, their contest has pitted different styles of leadership toward highly similar policy ends.

The more than 17 million popular votes Obama has received exceed the total for Kennedy and Carter combined in 1980.

By counting the disputed primary results from Michigan and Florida, Clinton insists she has collected even more popular votes. In her against-the-odds attempt to win over enough superdelegates for the nomination, she cites victories over Obama in significant states like California, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Even if that argument gives pragmatic Democrats pause, here is where they can find consolation and Republicans angst. In each of those states, Obama received more votes in losing the Democratic primary than McCain did in winning the Republican contest.

McCain arose from predicted oblivion by shedding the overhead and aura of a front-runner. He fought back as an underdog fighting off challengers from Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Like many analysts, Bob Burns, a political scientist at South Dakota State University, never expected his state to count. Also like many, he was inclined to believe polls last fall that had Clinton and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in comfortable positions.

"Probably wrong on both counts," Burns told USA Today last week.