An Obama supporter plays Devil's Advocate (w/ poll!)
Wed Mar 05, 2008 at 08:13:16 AM PDT
Like many people here today, I was discouraged by last night's results. Not that they were bad for Obama, but many of us were hoping for the "knockout punch" that would effectively end the Democratic primary race, so that the party could rally around the candidate we prefer. And, like many of those same people, I woke up this morning dreading the thought of another six weeks of the Clinton campaign going hard negative and tag-teaming with Saint McMaverick, all in a quixotic quest to overcome her daunting delegate deficit.
But then I got to thinking about the big picture, and I might be changing my mind. Tell me what you think.
Clinton's deficit of pledged delegates is pretty significant when viewed in terms of available pledged delegates remaining in the contest, no doubt. Many excellent number-crunching analyses are available on this site and others, and number-crunching isn't my strong suit, so I'm not going to rehash. But, even so, in terms of just raw numbers, the delegate count is not all that far apart. Likewise, though Obama I believe leads in the total popular vote, it's not as though he's crushing her in that department, and that gap theoretically could close as the contest wears on.
So, Clinton fights on. The lessons of Texas and Ohio include an important one: going hard negative on Obama works. That may or may not be an accurate lesson in the long run, but being here in Ohio I can say she went hard negative and it worked. Some of the hard negative is crappy, low-blow Rovian stuff, like the skin-darkening ad and the comment to reporters implying that McCain would be a better president than Obama. And of course, there's the infamous 3 a.m. ad which I found laughable but which may have worked some for her where she ran it. Hard for me honestly to say that's truly low-blow, Rovian stuff, but it certainly wasn't highbrow. She also ran a lot of radio ads in Ohio hitting Obama on the whole Canadian embassy/NAFTA flap. It worked. We can all bitch and moan about it, but it worked and she's going to keep doing it, because if you find something that works and don't keep doing it then you're not a very smart campaigner.
So let's say the negative stuff keeps working, and over the next couple of months she wins most of the contests, even gets a landslide or two, and puts a dent in Obama's delegate lead. She goes to the convention making a hard play for the Superdelegates, to the extent they remain either unpledged or soft for Obama. We can all scream and moan about how undemocratic (both small and large "d") that is, how damaging that is to the party, etc etc. But you know what? She'd have a point. Whoever the nominee is going in to the general election is going to have to attack McCain good and hard. Of course we want a positive, inclusive message and a campaign that brings in new voters and helps build a democratic majority for some time to come. But, we also want to win this election, the argument goes, and I can't really disagree. And if Obama hasn't shown that he can do a good enough job fending off negative attacks by the Clinton campaign and go on offense sometimes himself, then what's the general election going to look like? In terms of working the press and pointing out your opponent's perceived weaknesses--both of which are going to be part of the general election, whether we like it or not--this past week Clinton did a better job of that than Obama did. He needs to step up.
Please understand that I'm not saying I agree with Clinton's overall message here. After all, for the most part they differ more in concept ("change vs. experience") than in substantive views on health care, the economy, judicial appointments, etc. And if the whole election becomes, as Clinton has been pushing, about experience and competence AND experience and competence gets defined as "time spent hanging around Washington," then frankly the Democrats are going to lose in November because neither one of them matches McCain on that score. But what I am saying is that the Obama campaign needs, in my opinion at least, to view yesterday as more than just a temporary slowdown. They need to view it as a wake-up call. And, for that reason, maybe having the campaign continue on and even, yes, get more bare-knuckles, won't be such a bad thing after all.
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