The students at Washington and Lee University put their unsurpassed record of nomination predictions on the line Saturday by choosing Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee.Former President Bill Clinton got on the phone from South Carolina to thank the 1,600 students who participated in W&L’s 100th anniversary Mock Convention, telling them: “We have got to restore economic opportunity in America. We’ve got to restore America’s standing in the world. We’ve got a war to end in Iraq.”
To loud cheers throughout the convention hall in W&L’s gymnasium, he thanked the students five times in three minutes and added, “We have got to do something major to combat the threat of global warming,” among other issues.
“I am more grateful than you will ever know for what you have done, and I want you to keep on doing it,” the former president said. “Stay active all the way through these months, all the way to November, and we can turn this country around and move it forward.”
W&L students every four years conduct a mock convention predicting the nomination of the political party out of power in the White House and they have been right 18 out of the last 23 times and have been wrong only once since 1948. In 1972, the W&L students chose Ted Kennedy instead of George McGovern.
Ironically, Hillary Clinton’s nomination came despite louder cheers at times from students who favored presidential candidate Barack Obama, whom the convention picked to win Saturday’s South Carolina primary plus Virginia’s Feb 12 Democratic primary.
But students, in keeping with the convention’s tradition, carefully researched each state’s likely leanings for this summer’s national convention in Denver and voted the way they think the states will vote, based on conversations with political leaders, journalists, professors and others in the 50 states.
Clinton’s phone call capped two days of convention activity and a morning of speeches from U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Arlington; West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and former Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Memphis, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.
In a move that surprised even convention organizers, the convention chose Ford by voice vote as Clinton’s running mate for vice president.
Ford, a rising star in the Democratic Party, was thrilled with the choice and told a local radio station that he “has got to ask his fiancée if that’s OK.” Ford nosed out Webb and Obama in the voice votes for vice president.
“Nominating Harold Ford was not on our schedule,” said Wesley Little of Austin, the convention’s political chairman.
“I think he gave such an amazing speech that people felt compelled to support him,” Little said. “Personally, I thought that Jim Webb would win after his speech, but people were definitely swayed by Harold Ford’s speech.”
Richard Friedman, the convention’s general chairman, said the Ford pick as a running mate was not as much predicative as it was “recognizing him as a rising star and we’re looking forward to him being a major player in the Democratic Party.”
Friedman said the student body takes the convention very seriously, with more than 90 percent of students participating in the civic educational exercise by playing the roles that they expect the summer’s convention delegations to play.
In fact, W&L’s student body leans Republican, he said.
“I would say that we’re more politically diverse than we have been in the past, but we are still more of a conservative school than a liberal school at this time, largely Republican, but we have growing numbers of Democrats,” Friedman said.
Sara Mueller, the convention’s personnel chairwoman, said the convention “gets everyone excited about a political party. People just put aside [personal] partisanship for two days, which is great.”
Steve Jarding, a Democratic political consultant who teaches at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, called the convention “a good political effort.”
“This group of students does as good a job as any of the pundits,” said Jarding, an adviser to the students conducting the convention.
Jarding said Hillary Clinton “is going to win a lot of states on Super Tuesday [Feb. 5], and a lot of big states. If I had to bet, she puts it away on Super Tuesday.” He listed New York, Texas, New Jersey and California as states where she is very likely to win the majority of delegates.
Webb told the convention that the Bush administration still lacks an exit strategy to leave Iraq and noted that Republicans are talking about having U.S. troops there for 50 years.
“When you are dropping off your grandchildren at Washington and Lee, the Republican Party still wants to be in Iraq,” Webb said.
He said the price of oil was $24 a barrel before America invaded Iraq and “the price of oil has quadrupled since the invasion of Iraq.”
“All of this instability around the world affects the world’s economy and especially our own,” Webb said. “The value of our dollar is crashing”
As for Iraq, Webb said his grandmother would say, “Don’t take out a hornet’s nest by sitting on it. It’s time we did something else.”
Source: Daily Progress
