For those of us watching on the networks tonight, we saw a savvy political move made by the Obama campaign. Only a few minutes into Hillary's speech in Ohio, Obama began to make his way to the lecturn in Houston. The networks began to franticly react by trying to show split-screen the ongoing Hillary speech, while still showing Obama entering for his own speech. Finally, all three major news networks, CNN, MSNBC, and our beloved Fox News cut off Hillary's audio, turned on to Barack, and gave Hillary's speech the boot.
Now, this scores some major political points in more ways than one. First of all, you have the straight-up national air time lost by the Clinton campaign. Did I mention that while they only showed a short portion of Hillary's speech, the networks went on to show Obama's speech in its entirety? Robbing Hillary of that air time alone made the move worth it. However, it doesn't end there.
The Obama campaign also gains from this move by creating the symbolic brushing aside of Hillary as an element of the past, while ascending to the role of expected nominee. The visual was powerful, and its symbolic meaning was not lost on the networks nor on the American people. We even saw Obama continue with this new stance as expected nominee by completely ignoring Hillary in his speech, treating her as, once again, an element of the past.
While it was a reletively quick and subtle move by the Obama campaign to push his speech over Hillary's, the lasting effects of the lost national air time and the powerful visual of Hillary being swept aside will continue to resonate through the upcoming weeks of the primary.
UPDATE: Apparently this PR disaster may have been orchestrated by the Hillary campaign itself. MSN reported that her speech was supposed to take place much earlier. Ben Smith over at Politico thinks Hillary timed this delay on purpose ( Thanks to Warren Terra for the info!) See the video as it happened here at the Huffington Post