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CAMPAIGN
OUTSIDER
Doubting Obama
By Muhammad Cohen
The New York Times called Hillary Clinton’s campaign "mean, vacuous, desperate,
pander-filled" and says it's trending worse. Her tactics, whatever you think of
them, are working. Clinton is drawing fire - and winning grudging respect for
her tenacity - from detractors, but Barack Obama and his campaign are largely
to blame for letting her slither around the deck, looking to clamp her jaws on
anything within reach.
Even though Clinton's Pennsylvania primary win last Tuesday didn't overcome
Obama's insurmountable lead in popular votes, states won, and pledged delegates
for the Democratic presidential nomination, the conversation has shifted
dramatically. Proclaiming "the tide has turned", the Clinton campaign and its
supporters talk as if she can win, evidence be darned. The media, happy to keep
the campaign story going, has bought into the Clinton spin. Everyone has picked
up on Obama's statement three weeks ago that Indiana, voting next Tuesday along
with North Carolina, could be a "tie breaker" in the contest, foolishly
implying he and Clinton are tied. It was another Obama misstep that didn't seem
so big back then.
Voters say they don't like negative campaigning, but it's succeeding for
Clinton. She won late deciders in Pennsylvania last week by nearly 20 points.
The New York Senator has been challenging Obama's readiness for the presidency,
attacking his positions even when they match hers, and tossing around charges
to keep the Obama side off balance and off message. Late last week, Clinton's
camp came up with a new untruth, claiming that she had overtaken Obama's lead
in the popular vote. That's accurate only if you count the unsanctioned
primaries in Florida and Michigan that all sides agreed would not count.
Wright and wrong That assertion coincided with a revival of
the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy. Obama's former pastor broke his
silence with a heavily publicized TV interview. In addition, North Carolina's
state Republican party created a television advertisement featuring Wright to
attack local Democrats who've endorsed Obama. Presumptive Republican nominee
John McCain denounced the ad and asked the state party not to run it. But
Republican strategists must be thrilled to have a test marketing opportunity
for Wright's "God damn America" soundbite in a state they'll need to hold in
November. For the Clinton team, there's opportunity to have the 800-pound
gorilla on Obama's back get more attention while they play innocent.
Maybe Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist who stepped down, but not out, of
the campaign in early April, really was the problem all along. In recent weeks,
Clinton's side is controlling the message and the discussion, contending its
candidate is better positioned to beat McCain than Obama, that she has
momentum, that he can't win white voters, despite Obama winning several states
with negligible black populations.
With their candidate's mojo missing since his February winning streak, Obama's
brain trust now displays the losing edge that has plagued Democratic
presidential candidates not named Clinton for three decades. Obama has
repeatedly promised to let voters hear his story of an upbringing far less
privileged than his rivals, but he’s yet to deliver. The Illinois senator's
"bitter" voter remarks may be astute analysis of why some working people
support Republicans against their own economic interests. Or it may be elitist
pablum, a lame alibi why Democratic strategists are so unsuccessful. In either
case, saying it publicly wasn't smart.
Obama hasn't yet learned that anything he says in a national campaign can and
will be used against him. A corollary of Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule also
applies - if you say, it you’re stuck with it. Clinton has demonstrated she
understands this point far better than Obama. When caught in her lie about
landing under fire in Bosnia, Clinton didn’t try to explain it. She said it was
a mistake and moved on. To seal the deal, she joked about it on late night TV.
New gets old
Despite promising a new kind of politics, Obama's campaign keeps
showing old politics tendencies. While saying it wants to play clean, it has
tried to attack Clinton - on healthcare mandates, on taking money from
lobbyists, on her free trade flip-flops - but they're not the stuff that
catches voters' imaginations the way 3am phone calls and images of Osama bin
Laden can. Considering that Obama outspent Clinton by more than two to one on
media in Pennsylvania, it may be time for a rethink of media tactics.
Meanwhile, they've let Clinton keep claming a victory in Texas, when Obama got
more delegates.
Next time supporters of the two candidates are shown on television, viewers may
notice how Clinton's sound much better briefed and on their talking points. It
seems Clinton partisans (and most Republicans in these roles) play in a higher
league than their Obama counterparts. CNN's regular Obama supporter, Jamal
Simmons, is particularly weak. If the Obama folks were on their game, they'd
either get Simmons up to speed or get him off the air by offering CNN someone
much better.
Questions about Obama's toughness have arisen in part because he has been
ducking fights since his February winning streak. His campaign was content to
let the Florida and Michigan issues fester rather than risk losing legitimate
votes; too bad it didn't have the guts to go out and try to win them. Clinton's
votes in those unsanctioned primaries - she has real ballots on her side, while
party officials and Obama's team have only legalisms - loom larger as the
convention approaches.
Kitchen sinking
Obama has also been far less anxious to debate than Clinton, who's
behind in fundraising and the national polls so craves free media. He is
refusing to debate ahead of the Indiana and North Carolina votes next week. Of
course, the Illinois senator should have ducked the debate ahead of the
Pennsylvania primary, where moderators adopted the Clinton campaign's kitchen
sink strategy, peppering Obama with questions about Wright, "bitter"-gate, his
fundraisers' pasts, and more before questions on issues that impact voters.
Obama's campaign (and ABC News) also lost points for letting Bill Clinton's
former presidential spokesman serve as a questioner. But none of that excuses
the candidate's poor performance.
The biggest problem for Obama and his campaign may have been his decision to
sit on the big lead he built in February. Now, as the clock ticks down, it's
obvious that the lead can be overturned by superdelegates if Clinton can
convince them she's better choice. There's been consensus that the
superdelegates would not overturn the verdict of party primary voters. But the
Clinton campaign is successfully muddying those results. This campaign, under
the Democratic Party rules, is not like the baseball standings, where the team
that has the most wins at the end of the season will goes to the playoffs.
With no candidate getting a majority of pledged delegates, the Democratic
contest is like the college football polls, voted by experts, where all wins
are not created equal. In the football polls, the team that wins 72-0 gets more
credit than the one wins 14-10. After years of leaving the winner to the polls,
college football now has a championship game, but who gets there is still
decided by the experts voting in those subjective polls.
No matter what the scoreboard and that statistics say, it's time for Obama to
start impressing those pollsters if he wants to keep his number one ranking.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s
story to the world as a US diplomat and is author of
Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
for information on
sales, syndication and
republishing .)
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