“[Hillary Clinton is] currently running attack ads in Pennsylvania and Indiana trying to capitalize on this non-issue because at this point in her campaign the poor woman is completely bereft of affirming ideas.posted by ericb at 2:59 PM on April 16, 2008 [7 favorites]
Add to this cacophony the full-throated shrieks from the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and the rest of the Right-wing chorus, and the last four or five news cycles have been a banner display of everything that is wrong with our for-profit, media-dominated political discourse. Civility makes for boring television; better to cast our politics into the mold of a food fight and ignore the substantive issues and challenges facing the nation that Obama has been consistently articulating.
But you know something? Barack Obama is not an ‘elitist.’
Unlike Al Gore he's not a Senator's son. Unlike John Kerry he didn't marry a woman worth $600 million, (and he doesn't wind surf). And most importantly, unlike Hillary Clinton, Dowd, Brooks, Kristol, Dobbs, Hannity, and the rest of them, Obama can walk into just about any storefront church or community center in the poorest inner city neighborhood in America's toughest cities and relate to the people there as a true friend and advocate.
What's more, Obama's presidential campaign has successfully organized, mobilized, and energized a growing coalition of working people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. There is nothing remotely ‘elitist’ about a grassroots ground campaign that has registered millions of new voters and garnered small donations from over 1 million people with the average donation being about $109. Union households support him overwhelmingly.
…Obama has inadvertently exposed the folly of the political punditocracy. Here they are fulminating about Obama's ‘elitism’ when his two opponents are far more privileged than he has ever been. John McCain is wed to a beer-brewing heiress who is worth about $200 million. And Hillary Clinton's tax returns show that she and Bill raked in $109 million since 2000. The Obamas struggled for years to pay off their student loans -- how ‘elite’ is that? And really, let's be serious, do you think David Brooks and William Kristol and Maureen Dowd and Sean Hannity and the gang are somehow less ‘elitist’ than an African-American couple from the Southside of Chicago?”
It's hard to know where to begin with this, less than an hour after you signed off from your Democratic presidential debate here in my hometown of Philadelphia, a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg Mitchell has already called, quite accurately, "a shameful night for the U.S. media." It's hard because -- like many other Americans -- I am still angry at what I just witnesses, so angry that it's hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking. Look, I know that "media criticism" -- especially when it's one journalist speaking to another -- tends to be a genteel, colleagial thing, but there's no genteel way to say this.posted by psmealey at 7:25 AM on April 17, 2008 [11 favorites]
With your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy.
You implied throughout the broadcast that you wanted to reflect the concerns of voters in Pennsylvania. Well, I'm a Pennsylvanian voter, and so are my neighbors and most of my friends and co-workers. You asked virtually nothing that reflected our everyday issues -- trying to fill our gas tanks and save for college at the same time, our crumbling bridges and inadequate mass transit, or the root causes of crime here in Philadelphia. In fact, there almost isn't enough space -- and this is cyberspace, where room is unlimited -- to list all the things you could have asked about but did not, from health care to climate change to alternative energy to our policy toward China to the deterioration of Afghanistan to veterans' benefits to improving education. You ignored virtually everything that just happened in what most historians agree is one of the worst presidencies in American history, including the condoning of torture and the trashing of the Constitution, although to be fair you also ignored the policy concerns of people on the right, like immigration issues.
Only a few weeks ago, we were presented with what was considered by many to be a historic speech by a presidential candidate on race in America -- historic for its substance, tone, delivery, and stark candor. Last night, we had an opposing, equally historic example -- and I sincerely mean that, I consider it to be every bit as significant as that word implies -- of the collapse of the political press into self-willed incompetence. You might as well pull any half-intelligent person off the street, and they would unquestionably have more difficult and significant questions for the two candidates. It was not merely a momentarily bad performance, by ABC, it was a debate explicitly designed to be what it was, which is far more telling.posted by aqhong at 7:36 AM on April 17, 2008
The debate also touched on Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, taxes, the economy, guns and affirmative action.If you can't spot the absurdity in that sentence, read it again.
"When Barack Obama met Hillary Clinton for another televised Democratic candidates' debate last night, it was more than a step forward in the 2008 presidential election. It was another step downward for network news -- in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.posted by ericb at 8:07 AM on April 17, 2008
For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.
The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.
...At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates -- or was he really patting himself on the back? -- for 'what I think has been a fascinating debate.' He's entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer."
“Contrary to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign slogan, we believe Barack Obama is more likely to be ‘ready on Day One’ to lead us in a new direction. Because of his experience.posted by ericb at 8:46 AM on April 17, 2008
Sure, Clinton has more ‘experience’ of a sort. For one thing, she has 14 more years on earth. How much of this experience is directly applicable to the job of president is, at best, debatable.
We are frankly troubled by her assumption that her husband's administration and accomplishments were her own. And if her equation holds, that the first spouse is an equal partner in the administration, then the reappearance of Bill Clinton in the White House is a prospect we have a hard time reconciling with the work that needs to be done.
THERE IS a way to match Clinton's and Obama's performances on a relatively equal playing field: their campaigns.
A candidate's campaign may be the best indicator of how she or he will govern. If so, an Obama administration would be well-managed, inclusive and astonishingly broad-based. It would make good use of technology and communicate a message of unity and, yes, hope.
It would not be content with eking out slim victories by playing to the narrow interests of the swing voters of the moment while leaving the rest of the country as deeply divided as ever. Instead, an Obama administration would seek to expand the number of Americans who believe that they have a personal stake in our collective future - and that they have the power to change things.
It would motivate them to hold their representatives accountable for making it happen. That is, after all, the only way to get us out of Iraq, to address global warming, to make us energy-independent. It's the only way to resist the forces arrayed against providing universal health care, rebuilding our infrastructure and returning our schools to world-class status. It's the only way to give our children the means to compete with children in other parts of the world who are healthier, better-educated and have more opportunities than many of our own.
An Obama administration would be freer of the the corrupting influence of big-money donors and corporate interests. Obama has raised $240 million overall, with half coming in contributions of less than $200. People who contribute to political campaigns can feel they ‘own’ a candidate and so Obama would owe allegiance to the wide swath of America that has financed his campaign.
Based on his experience in running a quarter-billion-dollar enterprise with thousands upon thousands of volunteers, we could expect an Obama administration to be well-managed and cost-effective, with the president choosing forward-thinking advisers committed to his program, demanding that they work as a team and pay attention to details.
He would be steady and calm, given neither to irrational exuberance or outbursts of anger. He would make mistakes, that's for sure, but he could be expected to recognize them, adjust, and move forward.
He would adjust his views to reality rather than trying to adjust reality to his views.
Obama's unprecedented appeal to younger voters is significant not only because it expands the electorate, which is vital. It's also a validation of his promise as a president to be free of the baby-boomer/Vietnam/segregation-era hangups.
Younger people are more egalitarian, more accepting of diversity, and more comfortable with rapid change. They also are less confined by old resentments or regrets.
AND AN OBAMA administration would lower the tone of the rhetoric that separates us.”
Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the "Keating Five," had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics -- do you think it's possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?posted by aqhong at 10:00 AM on April 17, 2008
"I will tell you it does not get more fun than these debates. They are inspiring debates. I think last night we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people.posted by ericb at 12:23 PM on April 17, 2008
It took us 45 minutes — 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices.
Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversies and getting us to play gotcha games and getting us to attack each other. And I’ve got to say Sen. Clinton looked in her element.
She was taking every opportunity to, you know, get a dig in there.... That’s all right, that’s her right, that’s her right to kind of twist the knife a little bit....
Look, I understand though, because that’s the textbook Washington campaign, because that’s the politics that’s been taught to be played, that’s the lesson that she had heard when the Republicans were doing the same things to her back in the 1990s."
That's why Obama's comments were so off-putting. He effectively told the Iraqis, once again, that they weren't worth anything to America.So? The Iraqi's don't want us to give a damn about them. They want us to get the hell out.
Barber reports in his 2001 book that Hillary Clinton said "Screw 'em" about southern working class whites who did not support Bill Clinton. Two other scholar-particiants, Alan Wolfe and Harry Boyte, agree she said this. Reported demurrals (and not a clear denial) come from Clinton staffers Bruce Reed and Ken Baer, not from the independent intellectuals in attendance. But independent witnesses who keep notes trump employees any day.posted by aqhong at 1:33 AM on April 18, 2008 [1 favorite]
I have gone back to my 1995 notes to check my recollections of the event. My notes do not have any exact words, so I am not going to try to corroborate a particular phrase from Hillary Clinton or any other speaker.
But what is clear in both in my memory and my notes is that there was extensive, hard-nosed discussion about why masses of voters did not support Clinton or trust government or base their choices on economic as opposed to what people saw as peripheral life-style concerns. Hillary Clinton was among the most cold-blooded analysts in attendance. She spoke of ordinary voters as if they were a species apart, and showed interest only in the political usefulness of their choices -- usefulness to the Clinton administration, that is.
I vividly remember at the time finding it impressive that Bill Clinton (not Hillary Clinton) showed real empathy for the ordinary people whose motives and supposedly misguided choices were under analysis. Ironically, just as Barber reported, Bill Clinton was the one who combined analysis and empathy, much as Obama himself did in his full San Francisco remarks.
"In a dramatic reversal, an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll found that a clear majority [56%] of Democratic voters now say Sen. Barack Obama has a better chance of defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in November than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.posted by ericb at 7:13 AM on April 18, 2008
While Obama and Clinton are both sustaining dents and dings from their lengthy presidential fight, the former first lady is clearly suffering more. Democratic voters no longer see her as the party's strongest contender for the White House.
...The most encouraging sign for Obama is that many Democrats who previously saw Clinton as their party's best hope now give him that role. About one-third of them still prefer Clinton, but they have lost confidence in her electability.
...By tracking the same group throughout the campaign, the AP-Yahoo! News poll can gauge how individual views change. It suggests that Clinton has paid a price for hammering Obama since early February on several issues as she tries to overcome his lead in delegates and the popular vote. Among those Democrats who no longer consider her the more electable of the two, most now see her as less likable, decisive, strong, honest, experienced and ethical than they did in January.
Meanwhile, those same voters are more likely to see Obama as strong, honest and refreshing than before."
"Curious of what the bitterness and anger could look like if Obama is somehow denied the Democratic nomination? Check out the reaction from the ObamaNation over Wednesday’s debate. To put it simply, ABC was under siege yesterday. This may only be a taste of how the ObamaNation would react to a Clinton nomination. If MoveOn is motivated to do a petition campaign against the media over a debate, imagine what Clinton delegates and undecided superdelegates would face this summer if there is doubt. And as the Politico’s Ben Smith pointed out yesterday, it’s also what the GOP would face in the general election, especially if Obama is nominee. The level of devotion among Obama's supporters rivals what Bush had with his flock in 2004. The left-wing blogosphere is MUCH more powerful than what you see on the right this cycle and it reminds us of the advantage Bush had in '04. While we all know about that so-called right-wing voice machine, don’t forget that there is now a left-wing noise machine (on the internet) as well. And it has found its voice."Politico.com's Ben Smith:
"The ABC debate, according to the network, got 10.7 million viewers.posted by ericb at 8:01 AM on April 18, 2008 [1 favorite]
It also triggered the most furious outrage I've seen from the huge, and growing, Obama activist base, which in this case merged with the liberal Netroots -- which aren't always on the same page -- to generate a volume of complaints about the first 45-minutes of questioning that are pretty impossible to miss.
It's just a small glimpse, I think, of the level of heat the media is going to take in the general election, and John McCain doesn't seem to have any equivalent."
In this one-size-fits-all analysis, Mr. Obama must be the new Dukakis, sure to be rejected by white guys easily manipulated by Lee Atwater-style campaigns exploiting race and class. But some voters who lived through 1988 have changed, and quite a few others are dead. In 2008, they are supplanted in part by an energized African-American electorate and the young voters of all economic strata who fueled the Obama movement that many pundits didn’t take seriously before Iowa. And that some still don’t. Cokie Roberts of ABC predicted in February that young voters probably won’t show up in November because “they never have before” and “they’ll be tired.”
However out of touch Mr. Obama is with “ordinary Americans,” many Americans, ordinary and not, have concluded that the talking heads blathering about blue-collar men, religion, guns and those incomprehensible “YouTube young people” are even more condescending and out of touch. When a Washington doyenne like Mary Matalin, freighted with jewelry, starts railing about elitists on “Meet the Press,” as she did last Sunday, it’s pure farce. It’s typical of the syndrome that the man who plays a raging populist on CNN, Lou Dobbs, dismissed Mr. Obama last week by saying “we don’t need another Ivy League-educated knucklehead.” Mr. Dobbs must know whereof he speaks, since he’s Harvard ’67.
...
Next to such knuckleheaded obtuseness, Mr. Obama’s pratfall may strike many voters as a misdemeanor. He was probably rescued as well by the typical Clinton campaign overkill that followed his mistake. Not content merely to piously feign shock about Mr. Obama’s San Francisco soliloquy (and the operative political buzzword here is San Francisco, which stands for you-know-what), Mrs. Clinton couldn’t resist presenting herself as an unambiguously macho, beer-swilling hunting enthusiast. This is as condescending as it gets, topping even Mitt Romney’s last-ditch effort to repackage himself to laid-off union workers as the love child of Joe Hill and Norma Rae.
The video of Mrs. Clinton knocking back drinks in an Indiana bar drowned out the scratchy audio of Mr. Obama’s wispy words in San Francisco. Her campaign didn’t seem to recognize that among the many consequences of the Bush backlash is a revulsion against such play acting. Americans belatedly learned the hard way that the brush-clearing cowboy of the Crawford “ranch” (it’s a country house, not a working ranch) was in reality an entitled Andover-Yale-Harvard oil brat whose arrogance has left us where we are now. Voters don’t want a rerun from a Wellesley-Yale alumna who served on the board of Wal-Mart.
Privileged though they are, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama do want to shape policy to help the less well-heeled. Mr. McCain, who had a far more elite upbringing than either of them and whose wife’s estimated fortune exceeds the Clintons’, is not just condescending to working Americans but trying to hoodwink them. Next week, in a replay of the 2000 Bush campaign’s “compassionate conservative” photo ops among black schoolchildren, he will show he’s a “different kind of Republican” by visiting what he calls the “forgotten” America of Alabama’s “black belt” and the old steel town of Youngstown, Ohio. What he wants voters to forget is the inequity of his new economic plan.
That plan’s incoherent smorgasbord of items includes a cut from 35 percent to 25 percent in the corporate tax rate. For noncorporate taxpayers, Mr. McCain offers such thin gruel as a battle against federal pork (the notorious Alaskan “bridge to nowhere,” earmarked for $223 million in federal highway money, costs less than a day of the war in Iraq) and a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax (a saving of some $2.75 per 15-gallon tank). Now there’s a reason for voters to be bitter — assuming bloviators start publicizing and parsing Mr. McCain’s words as relentlessly as they do the Democrats’.
That may be a big assumption. At an Associated Press luncheon for newspaper editors in Washington last week, Mr. McCain was given a standing ovation. (The other candidate who appeared, Mr. Obama, was not.) Cindy McCain, whose tax returns remain under wraps, has not received remotely the same scrutiny as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, except for her plagiarized recipes. The most damning proof of the press’s tilt toward Mr. McCain, though, is the lack of clamor for his complete health records, especially in the wake of his baffling serial factual confusions about Iraq, his No. 1 issue.
But that remains on hold while we resolve whether Mr. Obama lost Wednesday’s debate with his defensive stumbling, or whether Mrs. Clinton lost it with her ceaseless parroting of right-wing attacks. The unequivocally good news is that ABC’s debacle had the largest audience of any debate in this campaign. That’s a lot of viewers who are now mad as hell and won’t take it anymore.
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.This pretty much captures it for me: Clinton's scorched earth tactics, Obama's continued taking of the bait, and overall the Democratic Party ending up even more morally and intellectually impoverished than ever.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
... By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.
...It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
Even as Hillary Clinton trails Barack Obama in pledged delegates, the popular vote, and number of states won, she has made it clear that she plans to stay in the race for the nomination. All of which brings me to this logical conclusion: It is time for Barack Obama to drop out.We must destroy the village in order to save it? This is the same logic that called the Republican victory in the 2002 midterms a good thing, that it would finally reveal them to be incompetent turd when they were fully in charge. Yeah, they were, but things got worse.
If Clinton had the good of the Democratic Party in mind, she would have given up her bid the day after the Mississippi primary, which Obama won by 25 points. The delegate math was as dismal for her campaign then as it is now, even after Pennsylvania, and she was facing down a six-week gulf before the next election.
But Hillary Clinton isn’t going to drop out. There simply isn’t a function in her assembly code for throwing in the towel.
Obama, on the other hand, is fully capable of it. And if he’s really serious about representing a new kind of politics, now is the time for him to prove it in the only meaningful way left. Moreover, were he to play it right, dropping out now nearly guarantees that he’ll be elected president in 2012. Here’s the roadmap:
Obama drops out next week, stating that although he could almost certainly win the nomination by fighting it out until the convention in August, he is simply not willing to drag the party through a battle that will cripple its chances against John McCain. He then pledges to help support Sen. Clinton in her bid—with full knowledge that she will not take him up on the offer.
In one stroke, Obama will regain his messiah creds by making the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the party. His followers will be furious. The mere mention of Clinton’s name will provoke unspeakable acts. They will abandon Clinton in numbers sufficient to hand McCain the election in November.
Losing the presidency again after eight years of Bush will ruin the Democratic Party. It will become obvious that Clinton’s decision to stay in the race was the turning point in the election. The base will turn its wrath on party leaders like Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi, who failed to push Clinton out. Obama, as the de facto head of the party, will broker negotiations to install new leaders loyal to him.
McCain will be eminently more beatable in 2012. Demographics will continue to shift in Obama’s favor as his 14- to 17-year-old supporters come of voting age. Anyone foolish enough to challenge Obama for the nomination—and don’t rule out Clinton—will go nowhere. Obama’s utopian vision for a Democratic party unified around him will be complete. QED.
posted by psmealey at 12:03 PM on April 26, 2008Sen. Hillary CLINTON:
- Clinton talking point No. 1: Clinton consistently performs better with downscale voters, women, Catholics, and older voters. In Pennsylvania, for example, she won among whites without college degrees by 42 points. She won whites earning less than $50,000 by 34 points. These constituencies are crucial to Democratic prospects in the fall, particularly in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, and in Ohio. The corollary to this argument is that Obama is the boutique candidate of young voters and wealthy elites, which taps unwelcome memories of candidates like Michael Dukakis and George McGovern, whom Republicans easily branded as liberals.
- Obama counterargument: There's no evidence to suggest that his problem with these voters will carry over to the general election. Most of the Democrats voting in primaries are going to support the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she is. Asked whether Obama "cares about people like you," 66 percent of Pennsylvania voters said yes. Hillary Clinton received almost exactly the same rate of endorsement, suggesting Obama is not seen as an elitist relative to Clinton.
- Clinton talking point No. 2: Voters consistently favor Clinton to Obama when asked which candidate can better handle the economy. In Pennsylvania, 75 percent said Clinton would do a better job of solving the country's economic problems. When asked which candidate would make the better commander in chief, voters also regularly pick Clinton by a large margin as they did in Ohio by 60 to 37.
- Obama counterargument: On the economy, Obama will be able to distinguish himself against McCain in a way he can't against Clinton, with whom he has nearly identical economic views. On foreign affairs, Obama says that his early opposition to the war gives him a better argument in the long run against McCain.
- Clinton talking point No. 3: She can take a punch. Clinton has shown extraordinary tenacity. Voters get proof every day of just how hard it will be for Republicans to beat her down. Obama, by contrast, can't stand the heat, according to Clinton's suggestion in her last ad. Clinton aides argue that Obama wobbled when challenged about his remarks relating to people who live in small towns or about his poor debate performance. Late-deciding voters in Pennsylvania saw this weakness and went overwhelmingly for Clinton, she can credibly claim.
- Obama counterargument: He can handle adversity—look at his well-received race speech in the wake of questions about his relationship to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And he can also inspire voters—which is what they want, rather than more aggression and fighting for the sake of a fight.
Sen. Barack OBAMA Obama talking point No. 1: He can capture independents and younger voters, bringing new people into the Democratic fold and into the voting booth in November. Obama consistently wins voters under the age of 44, who represent the future of the party. In head-to-head matchups with John McCain, Obama regularly does better than Clinton among independents. Clinton's negatives, which reached their highest point in a recent ABC survey, mean that she'll never break through a certain ceiling with independents and moderates.
Clinton counterargument: Obama isn't well-known and Clinton is. He's benefiting from that now, but once McCain and the Republicans attack him as a doctrinaire liberal, his negatives will rise and independents will run from him. Obama talking point No. 2: He is the candidate of change. Eighty percent of those polled say that the country is moving in the wrong direction. More than any other candidate, Obama is more associated than any other candidate with the change voters want.Clinton counterargument: The more Obama campaigns, the more he contradicts his promise to practice a new high-minded politics, weakening his appeal as a new kind of politician.Obama talking point No. 3: The party will explode if superdelegates reverse the will of the pledged delegates, among whom Obama leads. Young voters, first time voters, and African-Americans will stay home in November in protest or even vote for John McCain. That could lose Democrats not only the presidency but also other races down the ballot. Clinton counterargument: According to Pennsylvania exit polls, Clinton's coalition would be more dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee than Obama's supporters would be if Clinton won the nomination. Sixteen percent of Obama's voters would stay home or vote for John McCain if Clinton were the nominee, but 24 percent of Clinton's would if Obama gets the nod. In other words, there's more to worry about, in terms of internal party dissent, from an Obama nomination.
"If you threw in both Florida and Michigan, you will still look at a popular vote lead of some 150 to 200,000. If you throw in those delegates in her math you will have almost 100 delegate lead there for Obama. This was a big night because it really almost erases the doubt as far as Florida and Michigan is concerned too. You can throw those numbers in there and they really don't change the math that much for Obama."posted by ericb at 8:53 AM on May 7, 2008
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.Y'know, I always knew Mark Penn was incompetent, but wow.
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posted by psmealey at 2:43 PM on April 16, 2008 [2 favorites]