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Super Dienstag

One of the few clearly identifiable trends in the outcome of Super Tuesday is a voter preference for centrist politicians. German commentators, who have been following the nitty-gritty of the campaign, ask if America might finally be moving away from years of polarization.

Super Tuesday changed the world of election politics in the United States, but not in the way that anyone wouldhave imagined. Hillary did well, but not well enough to knock all of her Democratic opponents out of the nomination ring. With Obama's numbers rising -– in both supporters and campaign contributors –- he appears ready for the knock-down, drawn-out battlehe will wage with Hillary for the hearts, minds and votes of the Democrats.

On the Republican side, John McCain is in the driver's seat, and few can believe their eyes. A year ago, the Vietnam veteran-turned-senator had to take out a €2 million ($3 million) loan just to keep his campaign going, and now it's going to take a sea change or other earth-shattering event to wrestle the Republican candidacy away from him.

As can be attested to by the container ships full of ink pouring into articles on the subject, Germans are captivated by these early stages of the election and all the inside baseball, too. Like everyone else, they're looking forward to what the Clinton-Obama one-on-one matchup will bring and amazed at McCain's Lazarus-like resurrection:

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"Barack Obama succeeded in mobilizing young and first-time voters, and he did it to an extent never witnessed before. He electrifies and he inspires. But, even with his sugar-sweet, almost apolitical rhetoric about overcoming all sociological categories and dividing lines, there is still one thing that he cannot wipe away: skin color still plays no small role in determining how Democratic voters decide between the two candidates. And the role that gender played provided Mrs. Clinton some cause for hope: (older) white women number among her most loyal voters."

"Among the Republicans, the matter is much clearer. Senator McCain -– the former prisoner of the Vietcong and an advocate of the war in Iraq, who has made his outsider status within the party into his trademark –- is now the favorite. He of all people! The right-wing Christian party base respects him for who he is. They even believe that he offers the best chance of holding on to the White House for the Republicans. But they do not love him because he stands to the left of the party on many political issues, in particular regarding social, immigration and taxation policies, and because he is no friend of the Bush administration…"

"For many in Europe who are following this campaign with unprecedented attentiveness, the result (i.e., that a Democrat will win) seems obvious. This belief is a sign of the nostalgia for the old, clearly trusted America and for the level of antipathy toward Bush. But who would wager a bet at this stage in the game? The campaign season still has a long way to go. A lot can happen before November, and you still have to think of all the Democratic infighting to come. And the punch line of story of the primaries is that the oldest candidate can imagine himself as the candidate of change."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Whoever wins, must polarize. Over the last several years, that has appeared to be a rule of nature in the United States. What's remarkable about the 2008 election campaign is that the formula for victory has changed: The winners so far have all been centrists."

"The clearest example of this is with the Republicans, where McCain practically has his presidential candidacy in the bag after his victories in the most important states. ... And even among the Democrats, people are keeping their eyes locked on the center. Obama has made overcoming America's political divisiveness his central campaign theme ..."

"Many US voters today are just sick of the never-changing, brutal confrontation between the ideologues from both parties. The theory of the deeply split '50-50 nation,' which influenced past presidential and congressional elections, is something you hardly hear anymore."

"However, in the final stretch before the vote in November, the tone of things might still get much more heated. Both sides realize that the vote will be decided by whoever does a better job of mobilizing their supporters. They need to get the hesitant, the apathetic, the undecided and the uninterested to the voting booth, too. And to do that, they are going to need the passionately fighting base, which is most easily found on the radical wings of the party. This was the campaign strategy logic that heated the debates up most over the past several years. And it has a role to play this time, too."

"McCain and Obama have already shown that they don't want to stage this campaign as the final battle between good and evil. Both of them tacitly benefit from the fact that the very name Hillary Clinton polarizes many voters."

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"The Clinton people had imagined it so perfectly. On one single day in February, a whole mass of states would vote and award Hillary with the Democratic crown, so that she would have time to thoroughly prepare for the battle against her Republican opponent. They thought Hillary's victory was guaranteed and predicted an unpleasant campaign against the Republicans. But everything turned out differently. The democrats did not crown Hillary. Instead, they fell in love with Obama and these primaries."

"In the coming weeks, as Clinton and Obama weaken each other with personal attacks, McCain will be thinking about a running mate who unites voters. While the Democrats bleed each other financially, McCain will start raking in his money. And when, after a long nomination battle, the Democratic candidate is finally chosen, McCain will enter into the presidential campaign from a position of strength. Although they have the more attractive candidates, at that point the Democrats will be at a disadvantage."

-- Josh Ward, 12:30 p.m. CET