In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the media, looking for a reason to make up for their brutal coverage of Hillary Clinton, are about to turn on Barack Obama. Although maybe not. Obama’s somewhat-better-than-expected margin in Wisconsin, combined with Clinton’s graceless “concession” speech, may forestall his inevitable turn in the interrogation room.
Tag: Barack Obama
“Just words”
And lots of them! Barack Obama really gave a long speech tonight, didn’t he? Too long, by my estimation. He made the mistake of talking to the crowd rather than the folks back home. TV viewers were made to feel like they were watching an event rather than being spoken to.
As good a speaker as he is, I’ve thought for some time that he needs to work on his conversational skills. People don’t have the stamina to be speechified at for four years. It’s instructive that of the best presidential communicators of the television age — John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — only Kennedy, with his feet planted in two different media eras, excelled at delivering a set speech.
Reagan and Clinton, by contrast, always came off as though they were talking to you. That’s what TV demands. And Obama’s shortcoming in that area makes him seem surprisingly old-fashioned sometimes.
A media primary challenge
It will be interesting to see whether Hillary Clinton can hang in there given the pressure that’s now going to come her way to get out in favor of Barack Obama. Not that she’s going to withdraw. But it’s possible that Obama now has such a head of steam that Clinton is going to run out of money and be relegated to also-ran status before Texas and Ohio, where she hopes to resuscitate her campaign.
Check out some of the morning commentary following Obama’s broad victories yesterday in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.:
- Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post. “Obama’s thrashing of Clinton in the two states yesterday raised the possibility that her coalition is beginning to crack, three weeks before she reaches what will probably be more friendly territory in Ohio and Texas.”
- Emily Bazelon, Slate. “Hillary has been an excellent first for us. No one else could have done what she’s done, with all her aplomb and professionalism and seriousness. But she doesn’t have to be the nominee, or the president, to have come through.”
- Adam Nagourney, New York Times. “The lopsided nature of Senator Barack Obama’s parade of victories on Tuesday gives him an opening to make the case that Democratic voters have broken in his favor and that the party should coalesce around his candidacy.”
- Jeanne Cummings, The Politico. “Hillary Rodham Clinton is now on a path to the Democratic nomination that is remarkably similar to the one that failed for Republican Rudy Giuliani.” (Indeed, there was something very Rudy-in-Florida-ish about Clinton’s popping up in Texas last night while she was losing badly on the East Coast.)
- Peter Canellos, Boston Globe. “Clinton’s supporters insist they will make up for the recent string of losses with wins in some very large states ahead, including Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Each of those states has more of the type of voters who have supported Clinton in the past — lower- and middle-income Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Hispanics in Texas. But most analysts — along with many in both the Clinton and Obama camps — can only wonder whether Obama’s momentum will change the outlook.”
- Andrew Sullivan, TheAtlantic.com. “She’s come undone.” (His head for a round-up of “Hillary’s finished” commentary from across the Web.)
I’m sure I could dig up more, but you get the idea.
Now — a challenge to the media, much of which deeply loathes Clinton and would love to see her campaign topple over for good. Pointing out that the game is just about over is perfectly legitimate. Analysts analyze, pundits pontificate and yes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to picture Clinton’s winning the nomination.
But just cover the damn race, OK? The fact remains that Clinton and Obama are practically tied in delegates, and that if Democratic voters in Texas and Ohio decide they really prefer Clinton after all, then she’s back in it. I’m a political junkie, and I enjoy polls and predictions as much as anyone. It’s just that they need to be kept in their proper perspective.
Hillary Clinton’s non-challengers
Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn is quoted in the New York Times as saying:
She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner. Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.
Now, why would Times reporter Patrick Healy take dictation from Penn without observing that his statement is pure spin? This is Clinton’s third run for office. She did not face a serious Republican (or Democratic) challenger in her 2000 Senate run, as Rudy Giuliani dropped out. (If Rick Lazio counts, so does Alan Keyes.) Her 2006 re-election was essentially a coronation.
It looks to me as though Penn is conflating Bill Clinton’s campaigns with his client’s. And that Healy neglected to pause and say, “Wait a minute.”
As goes Maine …
Despite the current conventional wisdom that the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton race will go all the way to the end of the primaries, I keep thinking that, at some point, the familiar dynamic will kick in. That is, one of them will be perceived to have gained an edge, and will start to roll.
Could the Maine caucuses have been a harbinger of that moment? Isn’t this the first time since Iowa that Obama has won a state he wasn’t supposed to win?
RealClearPolitics now has Obama ahead in delegates. He’s beating Clinton in the popular vote by a margin of 8.2 million to 8 million. He’s primed to win Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Clinton’s campaign is hurting for money and in disarray at the top. And — let’s be honest — the national press is openly rooting for Obama, with David Shuster’s sleazy comment about Chelsea Clinton only the most recent manifestation. (Although that could spark a protest vote in Clinton’s favor, as it may have in New Hampshire.)
No predictions — there are many scenarios. But one of the more plausible of those scenarios is that Clinton’s wobbly campaign will topple over sometime after Tuesday. Even though the March schedule supposedly favors her, it’s not going to matter if there’s a stampede in Obama’s direction as he keeps winning state after state.
It depends on the poll
Democratic political consultant Dan Payne, writing in today’s Globe about Hillary Clinton’s victory in Massachusetts, says, “Once again, pollsters failed to render an accurate snapshot of the race, missing a 56-to-41-percent landslide, making prognosticators like me look bad. This has got to stop or there will be blood.”
Really? The final WBZ-TV/SurveyUSA poll of registered voters, taken on Saturday and Sunday, had Clinton over Barack Obama by a margin of 56 percent to 39 percent. Yes, the WHDH-TV/Suffolk University poll had Obama ahead by two. But SurveyUSA called it almost perfectly.
Grown-ups on the stage
Tonight’s debate is remarkably civil and substantive. CNN’s Bill Schneider, who’s live-blogging it, calls it a “grown-up debate,” especially compared to the Republicans last night. He’s right. But doesn’t Obama, who’s behind in the polls in many states, need to throw a haymaker?
My guess is that Obama, not having any particularly good choices (check out these poll numbers), has decided that he has to hope voters are looking for a reason to vote against Clinton — and that, by coming off as presidential, he’ll give it to them.
The one-on-one format gives this an entirely different feel — it’s actually approaching a conversation about policy rather than a mindless recitation of soundbites. So far, no sign of Borat.
It looks like they’re going to close with Iraq. Obama just criticized “the mindset that got us into Iraq in the first place,” so we could get some heat.
The Clintons’ Kazakhstan problem
The New York Times fronts an absolutely brutal story today about Bill Clinton’s dubious dealings on behalf of a Canadian mining mogul.
According to the article, by Jo Becker and Don Van Natta Jr., the mogul, Frank Giustra, unexpectedly won a lucrative uranium-mining deal in Kazakhstan after Clinton flew to that country with him in 2005 and schmoozed the human-rights-abusing dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra then turned around and donated $31 million to Clinton’s charitable foundation, with a pledge to give $100 million more.
There’s also an account of Bill Clinton’s and Giustra’s somehow not able to remember meeting with the head of Kazakhstan’s state-controlled uranium agency, Kazatomprom, at the Clintons’ home, in Chappaqua, N.Y., until confronted with evidence. Here’s a lowlight:
“You are correct that I asked the president to meet with the head of Kazatomprom,” Mr. Giustra said. “Mr. Dzhakishev [the head of the uranium agency] asked me in February 2007 to set up a meeting with former President Clinton to discuss the future of the nuclear energy industry.” Mr. Giustra said the meeting “escaped my memory until you raised it.”
That’s perfectly understandable, of course. I mean, any of us could forget about meeting with a former U.S. president and the guy who was about to make us many millions of dollars richer, right? Admit it: You probably can’t remember what you had for breakfast this morning.
The story raises the question of how happy Hillary Clinton is with this, as she has been an outspoken critic of Nazarbayev. But she certainly can’t distance herself from her husband’s shenanigans given that she’s ultimately responsible for unleashing him to attack Barack Obama during the past few weeks. It is the Clintons who’ve created the impression that they’re running for co-president, so his baggage is now hers as well. (Not that it ever wasn’t.)
But there’s an additional point of interest here, and that involves timing. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate story, and the Times deserves a lot of credit for ferreting it out. Tonight we’ll see the most crucial debate of the campaign, as Clinton and Obama go at it one-on-one on CNN at 8 p.m. I suspect that this story will be a big part of the debate. And from there, it could dominate coverage right through Super Tuesday.
As we know, the Times has already endorsed Hillary Clinton. Today’s story may have far more of an effect on the outcome. Whether by accident or design, the news side has sent a clear message that it’s more relevant and more important than the paper’s opinionmongers.
Break glass in case of emergency
File this away. The Globe’s Alex Beam has a terrific column on Barack Obama’s minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who’s “controversial” for reasons that are not entirely clear. If Obama keeps doing well, Wright will no doubt be depicted as a cross between Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. Not that I like Wright’s views regarding Israel. But, as Beam notes, they are no different from those of some mainline Protestant denominations.
Speaking of Farrakhan: John Doherty offers some information I wish I’d known and that I wish Beam had told us.
The Kennedys and the Clintons
It’s hard to imagine that anyone would base his or her vote on what a Kennedy says. (Especially this one!) Still, it’s pretty interesting that both Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy would endorse Barack Obama on the same weekend.
Caroline Kennedy’s choice, which she reveals in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, is all the more impressive because she submitted it before last night’s South Carolina blowout. For all she knew, her op-ed was going to appear on a very good day for Hillary Clinton — that is, the day after a narrow loss in South Carolina and bulging leads in most other states. Whatever the opposite is of inevitable, that’s how Obama was starting to look, and Kennedy endorsed him anyway. As it turns out, she looks prescient.
As for Ted Kennedy, I have to assume his endorsement has been in the works for some time, and that he’s been waiting for the moment when it would have maximum effect. With Super Tuesday coming up on Feb. 5, and with Massachusetts being a part of it, now’s the time. I’m surprised by Kennedy’s choice. The Clintons have always been wildly popular here, and Kennedy seemed to have enjoyed a good relationship with them. Did something happen? Or does he simply find Obama too impressive not to support?
With Sen. John Kerry and Gov. Deval Patrick also supporting Obama, that’s the trifecta for the state’s top three elected officials. House Speaker Sal DiMasi’s endorsement of Clinton isn’t looking all that significant right now.
Predictions, always futile, have been especially so this year. But I can confidently predict this: The next few days are going to be the roughest of Clinton’s campaign, regardless of whether she has a happy Super Tuesday or not.
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