The controversy surrounding Obama's campaign has been well documented. Some have said as a result that his campaign is now done. Over. Finished. Finito.
New polling from New Hampshire (after the jump) and two new interviews with
Obama should give Obama supporters and doubters reason to pay attention.
First, Rasmussen shows a jump for Obama in New Hampshire:
10/23, 841 LVs, IVR style, 9/16 results in parenthesis
Clinton 38% (40%)
Obama: 22% (17%)
Edwards: 14% (14%)
Kucinich: 7% (at or below 2%)
Richardson: 7% (11%)
No one else above 2%
Second, Obama has responded at length regarding the McClurkin controversy:
The Advocate: How did this happen? Was Mr. McClurkin vetted?
Senator Obama: Obviously, not vetted to the extent that people were aware of his attitudes with respect to gay and lesbians, LGBT issues--at least not vetted as well as I would have liked to see.
Having said that, we viewed this simply as an opportunity to have a gospel concert as part of our overall outreach, and since he was singing at a concert along with a number of other artists, as opposed to being a spokesperson for us, probably it didn't undergo the same kind of vet that someone who was serving as a surrogate for me might have.
And later...
Look, these kinds of issues are going to crop up inevitably through the course of campaigns. It's important to recognize that these are issues that every Democratic candidate who has African-American ministers as supporters may have to confront. It just so happened that it popped up on the screen in this particular instance. But I assure you, I am not the only candidate who's got a black minister or a white minister who's supporting them prominently who subscribe to similar views.
Part of the reason that we have had a faith outreach in our campaigns is precisely because I don't think the LGBT community of the Democratic Party is served by being hermetically sealed from the faith community and not in dialogue with a substantial portion of the electorate, even though we may disagree with them.
Part of what I have done in my campaign and in my career is be willing to go to churches and talk to ministers and tell them exactly what I think. And go straight at some of these issues of homophobia that exist in the church in a way that no other candidate has done. I believe that's important. We can try to pretend these issues don't exist and then be surprised when a gay marriage amendment pops up and is surprisingly successful in a state. I think the better strategy is to take it head on and we've got to show up. These people of faith may be operating in part out of unfamiliarity, or they may be insular in terms of how they're viewing LGBT issues, they may not understand how what they say may be hurtful, and the only way for us to be able to communicate that is to show up....
My views on gay issues and on choice issues are well-known. I did not trim my sails in the conversation I had with [evangelicals]. And I think as a consequence of appearances like that, I am helping to encourage understanding that will ultimately strengthen the cause of LGBT rights.
At some point, if we are going to have a conversation on these issues, what I expect to be judged by in the LGBT community is, have I been a strong advocate, have I been a forceful advocate, have I avoided these issues in any way. And if I have not, then that's how I expect to be judged.
FWIW, I agree with Chris Bowers' take on all of this:
I am far more prone to think mainly it just says something about the first one: the Obama campaign made a couple of mistakes that resulted in getting caught in a discussion it would rather not have and which no presidental campaign is equipped to handle gracefully. I don't think that this mean's Obama is any less dedicate to reach out to any of these groups, and I certainly don't think it means Obama's campaign is bridging any major divides within the progressive ecosystem. I think it means that the Obama campaign screwed up with inadequate vetting, and it has justifiably pissed off a lot of members in the GLBT community. Sometimes, a rose is just a rise, and a mistakes is just a mistake.
Third, Obama is strengthening his critique of Hillary Clinton. In an interview with the NYT:
Asked if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, "No."
"I don't think people know what her agenda exactly is," Mr. Obama continued, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been fully forthcoming.
"Now it's been very deft politically," he said. "But one of the things that I firmly believe is that we've got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we're going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election."...
In a 53-minute interview as he ate breakfast aboard a chartered jet that brought him here from Chicago, Mr. Obama said Mrs. Clinton had been untruthful or misleading in describing her positions on problems facing the nation. He accused her of "straddling between the Giuliani, Romney side of the foreign policy equation and the Barack Obama side of the equation." He said that she was trying to "sound or vote" like a Republican on national security issues and that that was "bad for the country and ultimately bad for Democrats."
Mr. Obama suggested that she was too divisive to win a general election and that if she won, she would be unable to bring together competing factions in Washington to accomplish anything.
"There is a legacy that is both an enormous advantage to her in a Democratic primary. but also a disadvantage to her in a general election," he said. "I don't think anybody would claim that Senator Clinton is going to inspire a horde of new voters," he said. "I don't think it's realistic that she is going to get a whole bunch of Republicans to think differently about her."
Howard Wolfson, Clinton's spokesman, responded with the same old boiler-plate response:
"Senator Obama once promised Americans a politics of hope. But now that his campaign has stalled he is abandoning that strategy and is engaging in the same old-style personal attacks that he once rejected. We are confident that voters will reject this strategy, especially from a candidate who told us he would be better."
Of course, I can't blame the Clinton campaign from dodging such attacks. And so long as the voting public doesn't demand a substantive response from such concerns then they'll get away with it. Obama's response to the boiler-plate Clinton response:
"I've been amused by seeing some of the commentary out of the Clinton camp, where every time we point out a different between me and her, they say, 'What happened to the politics of hope?' which is just silly," he said, laughing.
Asked why it was silly, he responded: "The notion that somehow changing the tone means simply that we let them say whatever they want to say or that there are no disagreements and that we're all holding hands and singing 'Kumbaya' is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have, hasn't been paying attention."