The Presidential Campaign Continues

John Kerry endorsed Barack Obama for President today, and the endorsement seemed heartfelt and genuine enough, but I suspect it could have been as much against the Clintons and John Edwards as for Obama. Kerry, I am led to understand, feels he was shortchanged by Bill and Hillary in getting their blessing for his 2004 presidential run, while he had fundamental disagreements with Edwards, his vice presidential running mate, over how the 2004 campaign should have been run.

Moreover, he seems to be a signal to Edwards that he's splitting the anti-Clinton vote with Obama and that he should get out of the way. Edwards, though, plans to stay in the race up to the convention. There could be a method to his madness; perhaps he plans to win enough delegates to be a power broker at the convention in Denver and get Obama (Hillary? highly implausible) to agree to infuse more of his populist proposals in a general election campaign.

Meanwhile, the attempts of Michigan to move its primary up to January to get the Democrats to talk about its deteriorating industrial economy - only to get punished by the party for running afoul of the rules - may have had the unintended consequences of getting the Republicans to pay more attention to economic issues. Republican candidates are all competing in Michigan for its primary next Tuesday and talking about how to revive manufacturing. This is fertile ground for Michigan native Mitt Romney, who is a venture capitalist and whose father ran American Motors back when their cars wore the Rambler brand. He can talk about business and how it relates to the need for a prosperous manufacturing base, but if he can't win here, he probably can't win anywhere else. John McCain - fresh from his return to grace by winning in New Hampshire - can probably survive a loss here if he can hold on to his lead in the polls in South Carolina, but if he can manage a win here, he can regain the front-runner status he enjoyed in the GOP before the campaign started in earnest. And for either McCain, Romney, or Mike Huckabee, the chance to talk about kitchen table issues could strengthen any one of them for the fall campaign should one of them be the Republican nominee.

Speaking of Detroit, I had chosen Ford as a loser of 2006 for their sinking fortunes and Toyota as a winner of that year for the rising ones. I didn't find this out until after I posted my winners and losers of 2007, but it turns out that Toyota surpassed Ford in U.S. sales for 2007 in the United States, placing the largest Japanese automaker ahead of everyone except General Motors. This indicates just how bad off the domestic car industry is. It may take awhile for Ford - whose current products lack identity and imagination - to regain its position as the second largest automobile seller in the its own home market. The fact that American manufacturing is in that dire a situation shouldn't escape any one's attention - least of all those who would be our forty-fourth President.