Remember this all important question concerning whether Obama would wear a flag pin?
Well, TPM revealsthat this woman is not some random, undecided voter:
Remember that woman from the debate last night who the moderators showed videotape of asking whether Barack Obama "believes in the flag"? Her name is Nash McCabe.
I remember thinking it was sort of odd to have a couple one-off uses of ordinary voter question when it didn't really seem like it was part of the format. But I was too distracted by the general inanity of the debate to focus on this issue too closely.
Well, it turns out TPM Reader JL did give some thought. And he came up with something very interesting (see JL's post at the DrexelDems blog). He did a little googling and found out Nash is pretty popular with the traveling press now in Pennsylvania. It turns out McCabe was featured in an April 4th story in the Times which begins like this ...
Ask whom she might vote for in the coming presidential primary election and Nash McCabe, 52, seems almost relieved to be able to unpack the dossier she has been collecting in her head.
It is not about whom she likes, but more a bill of particulars about why she cannot vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.
"How can I vote for a president who won't wear a flag pin?" Mrs. McCabe, a recently unemployed clerk typist, said in a booth at the Valley Dairy luncheonette in this quiet, small city in western Pennsylvania.
Mr. Obama has said patriotism is about ideas, not flag pins.
"I watch him on TV," Mrs. McCabe said. "I keep looking for that lapel pin."
Now, it does seem like McCabe is not a fan of Sen. Obama's. And I think we can assume that it's not a coincidence that McCabe managed to show up featured in the Times and also as the sole outside questioner in the ABC debate. Presumably, a researcher for ABC or Gibson saw the piece in the Times, figured, hey, this lady hates Obama and is seriously ginned up about the lapel issue. Let's send a camera crew Obama and film her slamming Obama to his face. It'll be great in the debate.
Let's forget the absurdity of this question or the fact that neither Hillary, Gibson nor Stephanopoulos were wearing flag pins. You have to ask why the moderators thought it important to ask a question from someone who already had no intention of voting for Obama and was basing her decision on something that the vast majority of Americans are not worrying about. Gibson tried to justify asking the question by stating, "As you may know, it is all over the internet." But as many others have pointed out, there are also innumerable sites devoted to Paris Hilton, outlandish 9/11 conspiracy theories, and Webkinz, but that does not qualify their being included as questions in the highest viewed debate of this season.
Debates are aimed at trying to sway voters. The fact that this woman was predisposed not to vote for Obama - and who, despite her protestations otherwise, was in fact questioning Obama's patriotism - appears to me to make her a lousy choice for asking such a question. That Gibson and Stephanopoulos could not see how inappropriate this woman was to ask such a question seems to be yet further evidence that this was most definitely the worst presidential debate this cycle, if not of all time.
Update [2008-4-18 9:8:12 by John Campanelli]: There is one mistake in the above TPM piece: McCabe was not the sole outside questioner. If I remember correctly, they also used a man on the street video to ask Hillary about her Bosnia sniper-fire tall tale. But the fact that Gibson and Stephanopoulos felt the need to outsource uncomfortable questions to seemingly undecided voters reveals how cowardly these two were. It's not like these questions were particularly original. But by using citizen-questioners to ask these questions, ABC made it appear that these questions rose up organically. These two video segments used the time-worn technique of using the word of supposedly unbiased voters, like Clinton used to attack on Obama's bitter comment:
In both cases, neither Clinton nor Gibson and Stephanopoulos wanted to dirty themselves by seeming to raise such bullshit issues themselves.
Update [2008-4-18 9:8:12 by John Campanelli]: Fozzie Bear has some other links to this story:
McClatchy: "Obama questioner explains why she finds him annoying"
On paper, [McNabe's] stances make her as likely to support Obama as Clinton.
But she sees a difference between the two. In Clinton, she sees someone who has struggled for years, just like her, and has earned the right to be president. In Obama, she sees someone who rose like a rocket, always has a smooth explanation for everything — whether it's about his former preacher or the flag pin — and who makes it all look too easy.
"That's what upsets me about Barack Obama," she says. "He takes everything so nonchalantly."
She admits that she's more likely to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt while looking for fault in Obama. For example, McCabe says that she once saw Obama on television and noticed that "he turned his back on the flag" before the Pledge of Allegiance ended. That irritated her to no end.
Once again, that misrepresented photo of Barack not having his hand over his heart supposedly during the Pledge of Allegiance, when in fact it was during the national anthem. But it's strange that it "upsets" her that he stays cool under pressure. To each his own, I guess.
Will Bunch:
So Nash McCabe wasn't located at random at all. Instead, someone at ABC News decided that they wanted to go after Obama on the patriotism issue, and they actively sought a Pennsylvanian who they knew wanted to bring it up. I assume they thought it would sound better if "a typical voter" asked the question instead of Charlie Gibson. "You see, we're only raising the issue the voters really care about," they can claim.
Now, remember the other issue that's been bandied about for the last week, about what's really happening in small towns like Latrobe, Pa., and whether voters are "bitter" or "frustrated," as Obama said in the debate last night, and whether economic anxiety is driving other issues that serve as political diversions. Latrobe is a model city for that breed of frustration -- as the Times noted in its article:
Latrobe is probably best known as the birthplace of Rolling Rock beer. The label was sold to Anheuser-Busch, and brewing was moved in 2006 to Newark. A new company came in that employs fewer people, mostly at lower wages.
Why didn't Gibson and Stephanopoulos ask the people from a small town like Latrobe that might have had jobs shipped over seas whether they were bitter and then asked Clinton whether she - like her husband in 1992 and Obama today - could feel the pain and, yes, bitterness of these small town people? That would have been a way to deal with the "bitter" remark as well as trade.
Update [2008-4-18 9:8:12 by John Campanelli]: During the 1992 campaign, Stephanopoulos criticized the exact kind of questions he himself employed this cycle. In fact, this exchange with Sam Donaldson happened on the same show, This Week, that Stephanopoulos would later host:
STEPHANOPOULOS: What he's going to do in this campaign is focus on what's important to the American people, on the jobs and the education. That's what the American people care about. They want to move into the future. They don't want to be diverted by side issues, and they're not going to let the Republican attack machine divert them
You can find this segment within this portion of the documentary The War Room. Not only was Stephanopoulos decrying these tactics, but the entire Clinton campaign was against using these tactics before they were for them when Hillary decided to run: