Election 2008

If you happen to be wrapped up in the news cycle, you would be aware of the diminishing chance Hillary Clinton has to win the Democratic nomination. Keep in mind, though, that it’s only early April. (seriously!)

One of Clinton’s chief strategists, Mark Penn, left the campaign over the weekend. Reportedly, he departed voluntarily. Also reportedly, Clinton was furious over his meeting with a delegate from Colombia regarding the Colombian free trade agreement, a proposal the candidate does not support. No matter which is more true; at this point Mrs. Clinton might be expected to insist upon a tight reign.

For the past two months, Clinton has lost momentum to Obama. Either candidate–Clinton or Obama–will have to gain support among both “real” delegates and superdelegates to win at the convention. While many Democratic voters have chosen their candidate, superdelegates’ votes are still fluid. Until the final voting at the convention, many will voice support for one of the candidates, some will change their minds, and others will remain undecided. By nature, these Democratic party insiders are tied to the influence of the media and the news cycle. Momentum in the press and in primaries lead to superdelegate perspectives.

For Clinton, it is “tough math” to say the least. According to NYT, however, a full 364 superdelegates are undecided or chose not to answer in a recent poll. This week (or two) the pendulum swings in Obama’s favor, but the Pennsylvania primary is approaching and Clinton is expected to do well in the state. Emphasis then turns to North Carolina, and the Democrates are likely to continue the competition.

And thus the horse race continues, as does its coverage.

It looks like we should settle in for the long haul:

BBC 

Washington Post

New York Times and NYT

Barack Obama’s speech on race this week brought the issue to cable news, blogs, and dinner tables nationwide. Shadi Hamid, a blogger and American of Middle Eastern descent, watched the speech from Jordan and thought “he might as well have been talking about the burgeoning anger toward America felt by millions of frustrated Muslims around the world.” Hamid writes in this Saturday’s Washington Post.

Thus far, the national discourse on the question of Muslim anti-Americanism, and particularly the violence and terror perpetrated in the name of Islam, has been dominated by condemnation and denunciation. As it must be. Targeting innocents — whether they are Israeli children on their way to school or the nearly 3,000 Americans who showed up to work one day and found it would be their last — can never be excused. And we must unapologetically wage war on those who seek to destroy us.

At the same time, we can’t simply wish future violence and terrorism away by relegating it to the domain of irrational, crazed fanaticism. We cannot say that “they hate us for who we are” and leave it at that.

Obama’s comments about race in the United States apply to a number of racial and cultural conflicts around the world. Would a President Obama apply the same logic to international misunderstandings as domestic?

Last week, when the U.S. archives released 11,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s documents from her eight years as First Lady, it was not the trove of information that many expected. Why? One reason: some of what transpired was never written down. Another: the government censored much of the most potentially enlightening information. The official, misleading word for this practice is “redaction.” But this wasn’t mere editing. Of the 11,000 pages, many had extensive content blacked out before they were released to the press.

Did Mrs. Clinton play a role in the Northern Ireland peace process? Did she negotiate the transit of refugees from Kosovo? Did she contribute to the formulation and conduct of foreign policy during her husband’s tenure as President? She and her campaign say that she did, but the “redacted” documents from her tenure as First Lady don’t tell us the answer. On the days when Bill Clinton made critical foreign and security policy decisions – the disastrous Somalia intervention, the response to the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, the U.S. air attack on Yugoslavia – there is no contemporaneous record of Mrs. Clinton having taken part in them. There is obviously no official role for a First Lady in the “3 a.m. phone call” scenario that has become so much a part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advertising. We are asked to believe that she is “ready on day one” based on her proximity to decision makers, not her having been one.

Mark Penn and other Clinton supporters point to now-Senator Clinton’s decades-long life in the public eye as evidence of “vetting” – another misused word. True, many journalists have written about Bill and Hillary Clinton in the course of their political lives – enough to fill a library. But “vetting” is usually an organized, directed process, not the independent activity of journalists. Also, it usually implies a positive outcome, as in “Mrs. Clinton has been vetted for the position of X, and has been cleared for duty.” Political candidates – even for high office – really don’t get vetted in any systematic way. (Witness last week’s chance revelations that led to the downfall of New York Governor Elliot Spitzer.) Even when personal peccadilloes are exposed, voters may not be aware of them, or may disregard their importance. Victory in a political campaign should not be confused with ethical vindication.

It is not clear why so much of Hillary Clinton’s record as First Lady has been censored – sorry, redacted. But it is clear that we cannot consider her “vetted” until all evidence – supporting and otherwise – about her foreign policy record is made available. For the same reason, the public has every right to see “unredacted” copies of the Clintons’ tax records.

When we hear about State Department contract employees prying – unauthorized — into Barack Obama’s passport file, or seven-year-old videos of Obama’s church pastor being surfaced in an effort to discredit him, it is clear that we are into a very extreme season of “opposition research” – yet another misnomer. Such so-called “research” amounts to nothing so much as an effort to find more mud beneath a river of slimy political tactics.

The blogosphere, like cable news, is abuzz with analysis and discussion of Barack Obama’s speech today, “A More Perfect Union.” Overall the commentary has been positive, with many applauding Obama’s thrust to the fore the issues of race and religion in American society and raising the level of political rhetoric.

In the speech, however, Obama responds to the recent controversy of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his church pastor in Chicago. By some analyses, Obama is acting on the defensive; but his speech seems to have gained for him all the benefits of “offense.”

The political team at NBC has this round-up of commentary.

Taylor Owen at Oxblog thinks the speech is a testament to Obama’s Christianity and the unique voice he offers to the political dialogue.

the style he exhibited goes to the core of his candidacy. He speaks about issues, controversial issues, with a political voice that hasn’t been heard before. He transcends old ideological, ethnic, religious and historical divides. This voice is not just new to the US, but internationally. This is why so many people in Canada and Europe, for example, are watching him in a way they don’t even look at their own leaders.

Owen agrees with Andrew Sullivan, who vociferously advocates for Obama on his blog, that the candidate is transcendent of the race divide, among others.

I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

The Economist sees it as a possible turning point in the primary contest.

Barack Obama’s ambitious and impressive speech on race and religion earlier today has rightly got the political pundits and blogosphere buzzing. It may even set the stage for a new chapter in this primary season. It is unlikely the Reverend Wright controversy is over just yet, but Mr Obama has tried to change the context of this conversation.

And in case you missed it, here is the speech in full:

Obama took a controversy and elevated it to the level of a national dialogue. He stood in front of eight American flags and a blue backdrop; he wore a blue tie and a dark suit. He looked presidential. To the extent that Rev. Wright’s comments wavered beyond the scope of his pulpit, Obama ensured that his response raised the issue of race to the contemporary consciousness.

This blog recently reported on the volatility of the Obama campaign’s foreign policy surrogates (Susan Rice: neither Clinton nor Obama are ready for the 3am phone call; Samantha Power: Clinton is a “monster”). Throughout the campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had to keep a particularly watchful eye on their surrogates’ and supporters’ public appearances. But as the media attention grows and the campaigns need surrogates to convey increasingly negative messages, surrogates are taking on a greater burden.

Geraldine Ferraro, an open supporter of Hillary Clinton, has taken her turn spurning controversy. After the South Carolina incidents for which Mrs. Clinton apologized, Geraldine Ferraro has again brought race into the conversation:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Marc Ambinder says it best: “gas, meet fire.”

UPDATE: The former Vice Presidential candidate is now a former member of Hillary Clinton’s finance committee. Geraldine Ferraro stepped down today saying “that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign was twisting her words to make her appear racist and that this was hurting Mrs. Clinton.”

The two incidents that have caused resignations from the Obama (Samantha Power) and Clinton (Ferraro) campaigns, demonstrate the unprecedented speed with which

A comment each to a Scottish or a minor Los Angeles area newspaper first led to vehement controversy on the Internet, then cable news, then national news. In just two days, and amid the height of another political scandal, it’s yet another sign that campaigns are facing increased scrutiny from all sides this time.

Photo: Getty Images via npr.org

Barack Obama seeks to usher in a new kind of politics. His stump speech calls on supporters to help him “end the politics of fear,” and borrowing from John F. Kennedy, “that we should never fear to negotiate.” Now in a one-on-one battle with Hillary Clinton for the nomination, Obama has been forced to the defensive, searching for an effective way to fight back.

Hillary Clinton has persisted with her claim that Obama is less prepared than she and John McCain for the “3am phone call” that will come as President. But the Obama campaign is built upon positive ideals–the candidate could tarnish his image, should he go negative. The answer: send out the surrogates, particularly those who can vouch for national security credentials, to convey the message.

The Obama campaign had two of its most high-profile foreign policy advisors, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, grant a series of interviews with the press. They tried to send the message that, in their views, Senator Obama was equally, if not more qualified for that middle-of-the-night phone call than his opponents.

In one of these interviews, Samantha Power let it slip in what she thought was an off-the-record comment to The Scotsman that she thought Hillary Clinton had been a “monster” during the campaign. Ms. Power, a prominent scholar and advocate for US involvement in Darfur, quickly apologized and resigned from her post with the campaign. She issued a number of apologies to Senator Clinton, most of them equally as poignant as this:

Susan Rice took her turn speaking with the press this week, as she responded to Senator Clinton’s characterization of Obama’s in ability to handle the 3am phone call. On Tucker Carlson’s show on MSNBC, Ms. Rice announced that she believed neither Clinton nor Obama have substantial national security experience.

As Samantha Power pointed out, she is a relative novice to the tires of a political campaign. Ms. Rice, while not new to the Washington and foreign policy arenas, also made a slight error in her comments on television. Both have created nominal headaches for the Obama campaign, and failed to accomplish their objective. Instead, they made the candidate seem to be just what he had intended to combat: inexperienced.

Democrats have a problem. Not the excitement of a close race, in which millions have voted in primaries for the first time, and not the prospect of running against a Republican Party weakened by an unpopular President. The Democrats’ problem, which threatens to outweigh their considerable advantages, is their inability to govern themselves.

It is now mathematically certain that, without delegates from Florida and Michigan, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can go to the Democratic Party convention in Denver in August with enough elected delegates to win the nomination. Democrats from Florida and Michigan, you will recall, decided last fall to disobey the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and hold their primaries in January. The Party then ruled that the delegates chosen in these two states would not be allowed to vote at the Convention.

In deference to the DNC, Obama and Clinton did not campaign in Florida and Michigan — although Hillary did go to Florida for fund-raisers right before the vote. Obama’s name was not even on the Michigan ballot. Hillary won both primaries easily, and now Hillary’s supporters in these two states are lobbying to have the election results upheld and the delegates seated. More likely, there will be a new primaries scheduled in Michigan and Florida.

NPR’s Juan Williams said it best last night on Fox News:

I think that Barack Obama is in a trap here. He can’t say, “No, I oppose a do-over,” because otherwise, he’d then be saying he wants the status quo, which is to disenfranchise those voters. Hillary Clinton can take the higher ground, but you and I both know what she has out of this is delegates. She wants to say she she’s won not only the popular vote and she’s likely to win the popular vote in both those states, but to win those additional delegates. It’s a trap.

Now, that’s the scenario. If you count today the delegates elected through votes in primaries or caucuses, Obama has 1366, Clinton 1222. A candidate needs 2025 delegate votes at the Convention to win the nomination. There are a total of only 611 more delegates left to be chosen through state primaries. Because delegate votes will be awarded proportionate to the election results in these states, neither Hillary or Obama can capture enough in the remaining primaries — excluding Michigan and Florida — to win the nomination.

Michigan and Florida together would have added another 338. That leaves the Democratic Party with a potentially schism-causing choice: either change its ruling in effect and include Michigan and Florida votes, or allow the so-called “superdelegates” — there are 795 of them from around the country — to determine who becomes the Party’s candidate. Right now, the superdelegates who have already declared a preference are fairly evenly split between Obama (209) and Clinton (242). But they are not “pledged,” and can change their minds and vote for whomever they please.

Hillary and Obama have already staked out positions on how the Michigan and Florida primary results should be treated, but there is really no one in a strong position to mediate between them. The DNC and its Chairman, Howard Dean, have been shown to be ineffectual so far in enforcing their own decisions.

There are a number of nightmare scenarios for the Democrats that are, of course, dream scenarios for the Republicans. The worst might be if a candidate who wins the most votes in the primaries — with or without Florida and Michigan — fails to get the nomination. This would not only be a “train wreck” in terms of efforts to unify the Party for the general election, but would discredit the American political process in the eyes of many in the United States and around the world.

As the WSJ’s Peggy Noonan puts it today, the Democrats are in the trenches today, and for weeks to come. As they fight it out, in the muck and mud of a now less than clean campaign, they need to decide if a non-democratic result will help the Democratic Party.

Yesterday’s election results were another lesson in how hard it is to predict outcomes in this year’s campaign. America is sharply divided, but where the dividing lines are varies from state to state and from day to day. The opinion polls in Texas and Ohio misjudged Hillary’s strength, just as they did in New Hampshire in January, forcing us to conclude that either the pollsters are incompetent or the (Democratic) electorate is impressionable and subject to last-minute mood swings.

I think it is more the latter. If you look at the last 72 hours before the New Hampshire contest, and the several days leading up yesterday’s vote, media coverage highly favored Hillary Clinton. Right before the New Hampshire vote the “news” was her emotional answer to a citizen asking her at a Town Hall meeting “How do you do it? How do you keep up?” Her response was good television, a news clip that was incessantly repeated in the last day or two before the New Hampshire vote. The media concluded that Clinton had “found her voice,” although her stump speech remained the same. After Hillary pocketed a victory, the pollsters, in league with the media, concluded that they needed to do more polling close to the election in order to capture the impact of such last-minute dynamics.

Now Clinton has found her voice again. CNN reported last night from Texas that about two-thirds of last-minute deciders voted for Hillary. What influenced their vote? Was it her TV commercial or the incessant media coverage of the commercial? Was it the dubious report of an Obama aide’s discussion of NAFTA with the Canadian consulate in Chicago, or the way Clinton succeeded in browbeating the media into covering it? (”I would ask you to look at this story, substitute my name for Sen. Obama’s name and see what you would do with this story. That’s what I would ask you to do.”)

The media have become the “back story,” to use their phrase. If it can be shown that in a close race it’s the media coverage above all that influences voters, then the campaigns will fight over every bit of “breaking news.” By playing media victim in the run-up to yesterday’s vote, starting with her rehearsed quip in last week’s TV debate (“If anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,’ maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow”), Hillary showed she understood better than Obama the media’s hunger for news and respect. Many broadcasters and journalists weren’t sure whether they had (perhaps unconsciously) favored Obama, but they couldn’t afford to ignore the allegation. After all, if Saturday Night Live “reported” it, and Hillary repeated it, it was “news!”

More than campaign commercials and pamphlets, it’s the news media’s coverage of them that has become the line of scrimmage in the Democratic campaign. Barack Obama may not like this kind of game, but he can’t change the playing field or the spectators. All he can try to do is to influence the way it’s covered.

Twenty-five delegates are not all that the state of South Carolina has granted Barack Obama this weekend.

The Saturday primary was exactly for what the Obama campaign could have hoped. It was a win for Obama of greater proportions than yet seen in the primary race—margins of thirty-percent in favor of him over Clinton and Edwards.

The exit polls tell the story of a victory among young voters, females, and African-American voters, a compelling story for the Sunday papers, talk shows, and brunch banter.

In New Hampshire Hillary Clinton’s victory was a result of her, well, Clintonian door-to-door/ town-hall style of campaigning around the state (and yes, the “tears” could have helped). But now, less than ten days away from Super, or Tsunami Tuesday on February 5, the meet-and-greet approach is impractical and impossible. At this stage, free media is gold.

Endorsements are central to playing the media game, and few are more coveted within the Democratic party than support from the Kennedy family. Today Caroline Kennedy wrote in the New York Times of her belief that Obama can be a “President Like My Father.” Senator Ted Kennedy is in agreement.

As Democrats are not campaigning in Florida prior to Tuesday’s primary, the candidates’ attention and paid media cash is scattered across the country, from California to Georgia. Any little bit of help from the commentariat can only help.

This weekend Barack Obama took center stage and was able to portray himself as the candidate to beat. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards must reclaim the front page if they are to curtail Obama’s momentum before next Tuesday.

We’re back on-line (after some server trouble) at just the point when the candidates have to pause briefly to allow the voting public a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving. The candidates may not be thankful, but the public surely is. For a day we will be without new polls, candidate debates or spin. It’s a good time for taking stock, which is, after all, a big part of Thanksgiving.

We’re in a strange place right now in terms of the campaign and foreign affairs. None of the candidates – in either party – thinks the Iraq war has been conducted well, none thinks that the decision to go to war (based on what we now know) was wise. But no one (except Joe Biden) has articulated a strategy for what should happen in this critical country after American troops begin leaving, probably sometime before next November. The military “surge” seems to be working, for which we should all be thankful, but where is the political “surge?” The only public action in Washington last week on Iraq was inaction, as both the Senate and House left town without passing funding for the troop deployment.

In a post after last week’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas, I compared it to professional wrestling – a kind of political “smackdown.” For a couple of news cycles afterward, the talk was about Hillary having picked herself up, then came polls that showed Obama for the first time with a five point lead in Iowa and closing the gap in New Hampshire. The tighter the race gets, the less it will be about issues and the more it will be about perception. This is the province of the campaign ad, and a slew of them have just been introduced into the airwaves of Iowa and the early primary states. I recommend you watch Giuliani’s muscular pitch or Hillary’s tough talk on energy. But resurgent Mike Huckabee’s hard-hitting promo takes this all to its logical (ridiculous) conclusion. Watch it before sitting down to your turkey dinner, but after you’ve had a drink.

After dinner, you might listen to a discussion by two prominent pundits, Mark Halperin (ABC) and John Harris (Politico), who spoke last week before the San Francisco World Affairs Council. You can listen to it here. To whet your appetite, I will list their shorthand descriptions of the three top Democratic candidates, as they viewed by the “filter” – political professionals and media pundits: Clinton – “warrior”; Obama – “interesting, frivolous”; Edwards – “phoney.”

Enjoy your turkey!

Our political contests borrow heavily from military vocabulary: “campaigns” are waged in “battleground” states, “attack” ads “target” key opponents, and so on. Since 2004, we even have an opprobrious tactic — “swiftboating” — drawn from a synonymous naval vessel.

But on this Veterans’ Day, we are reminded that there is very little military experience — except for John McCain’s — among the current Presidential candidates and their lieutenants. Our most notable military hero in public life, McCain is the only candidate who can speak of deploying American forces with a credibility borne of his own personal experience. However, due to the unpopularity of the Iraq War and his strong support of it, this turns out not to be much of an asset. Without a very strong showing in New Hampshire and South Carolina, this survivor of the Hanoi Hilton will be an early primary casualty.

On Veterans’ Day, the candidates automatically focus on helping veterans. Hillary has a campaign video featuring endorsements from veterans, Romney a campaign speech pledging benefits for vets, and Edwards a talk promising new support for treating Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Obama has a pro-vets activity scheduled as well.  But don’t look for this focus to last beyond today’s news cycle.

Hillary’s approach to foreign affairs and security as campaign themes seeks to position her between — as she would have it — Bush’s rush to use military force and Obama’s rush to talk to dictators. She will continue repeating, as she puts it in her Foreign Affairs piece, that the military is “but one element in a comprehensive strategy.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats’ skirmish at last weekend’s big Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines showed that the five speakers (Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Richardson and Dodd) are sharpening their rhetoric on other topics in preparation for the next campaign battle — the debate on Thursday in Los Vegas. The long, positive, cover stories on Obama that have appeared in the last week (NYT Magazine, The Atlantic) are another indicator that Obama’s forces are winning over the media — at least for now.

There are a number of wounded candidates on the presidential battlefield: Giuliani from the Bernie Kerik indictment, Thompson from lackluster campaigning. On the Democratic side, Richardson’s emphasis on his years of experience in elected and high-level positions has not gained him any points in the polls. In both parties, it is the real survivors, the candidates with the most years of experience — McCain, Biden, Dodd and Richardson — whose future now seems most in doubt.

• Barack Obama has come out strong, announcing that he believes Senator Clinton has been dishonest with Democratic voters on many positions, namely her stances on social security and Iran.  The offensive marks Obama’s first major foray into attacking Clinton, answering calls of many of his supporters to engage with her.  Obama remains points behind Clinton in national and New Hampshire polls, though he is competitive in Iowa.  His campaign is trying to balance his message of “a politics of hope” with the requisite debate with his clear competitor.  Democrats may not be thrilled that he has raised the social security issue, but his supporters, financial supporters in particular, will view this new approach as long overdue.
• Meanwhile, Clinton has announced she will be hiring upwards of one hundred paid staff in Iowa.
• Candidates from right to left are stating their policies on Iran.  The NYTimes.com today has a bit of context.
• In case you missed it, Giuliani is a Sox fan.  Coincidence that most of New Hampshire is too?

• Ds The latest rendition of what TPM calls the “dueling memos” phenomenon between the Obama and Clinton camps has to do with the newsy case of Iran, upon which the Bush Administration designated serious sanctions today. They are some of the harshest imposed on the country since 1979. If the Administration continues to move in this direction, not only will there be a 2003 Iraq-like discussion in the international community, but the campaign front-runners will be forced to take stances they may not be prepared to take.
• Rs The New York Times, Alex Massie and The New Republic call out Rudy Giuliani’s response to a question raised at a town hall meeting in Iowa regarding torture. Christopher Orr calls it “what may be the mot honest defense of torture I’ve seen from an American politician.”
• Rs Iowa papers are abuzz with John McCain’s statements on the Middle East, which include hints at long-term American involvement in Iraq and the construction of military “lily pads” in the region, similar to those currently in Eastern Europe, in case of “crisis.”

• Rs and Trade Romney proposes opening markets in his “Reagan Zone of Economic Freedom” plan. He suggests opening markets and helping American workers “succeed,” claiming it would be the largest free trade zone “ever.” By raising the trade issue, not only does Romney get policy points (which he may be in even more need of after this rough morning), but he would renew a dialogue about the issue in Republican circles. Democratic candidates have taken stances on NAFTA and Doha before, but broadened debate could propel this issue to the fore.
• Ds and FISA Obama and Clinton offered “conditional support” for filibustering the FISA bill, which has yet to make it through Committee. They join Dodd and Biden in their distaste for the measure, which liberal bloggers are touting as “defending the Constitution against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.”
• Rs and Immigration Mark Krikorian over at The Corner is a fan of Fred Thompson’s recently announced platform on immigration.
• Endorsing Rs Mitt Romney lost an endorsement today from Pastor Don Wilton of South Carolina today, the pretty heavy-handed state Baptist Convention President. If nothing else, the loss of Wilton’s support signals the continued hesitation on the part of social conservatives to back the candidate. Does it all come down to his Mormon faith, or is there something more political going on here?
• Ads Bill Richardson (D) released this ad yesterday, highlighting his role in negotiating the release of hostages out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1995. He has made his experience the focus of his spots in the past; this new ad drills down onto the finer points of his CV.