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By Christopher Beam and Chadwick Matlin
Obama won. You can stop holding your breath now. Indeed, his victory in Mississippi added yet another notch to his belt, and with that we can begin the long slog to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. (There’s a reason the phrase “death march” contains the word March.) Here’s what we can expect to see in the weeks to come.
Elephants in the room. Details should soon begin to emerge about revotes in Florida and Michigan. The main questions: Will the DNC reinstate the states’ full delegations? Or will the party continue to punish them by withholding their delegates? (The RNC stripped the states of half their delegates.) When will the votes be? (Expect late June, making Florida and Michigan the new Texas and Ohio, which were in turn the new Iowa and New Hampshire.) Do revotes favor one candidate, in particular? (They’re partial to Clinton. Polling in Michigan shows a tied race, and she’s up big in Florida.) Can Clinton catch up in the delegate count if she dominates these contests? (Probably not, but she could make the pledged delegate margin so narrow—as low as 80, perhaps—that superdelegates would have an even harder decision.)
Getting intimate. We’re going to get to know Pennsylvania like it’s our college girlfriend. We’ll grow acquainted with her baggage from past relationships—electing Gov. Ed Rendell over Pittsburgh sports-legend Lynn Swann, perhaps because some were uncomfortable with an African-American governor. We’ll get to know her friends from home—cosmopolitan transplants in Philadelphia, steel-belt workers in Pittsburgh, and wacky, independent farmers everywhere in between. Plus, don’t forget about getting inside her head—nothing’s sexier than probing her feelings on NAFTA, change, and experience.
Surrogate smack talk. The past week has featured a colorful cast of loose-lipped economists, feisty former candidates, leggy academes with attitude, and other surrogates gone wild. Don’t expect that to stop. As the Democratic race drags on, everyone will become sensitive about damaging (or, worse, appearing to damage) the eventual nominee—especially now that McCain can gad about unchallenged. As a result, underlings will hurl the most hurtful barbs, lest the candidates themselves look nasty. By the end of this, monster will sound kind.
Debate # 21. Remember that a Pennsylvania debate in Philadelphia was one of the most newsworthy forums of the season. It’s where Clinton wavered on drivers’ licenses for immigrants, which may or may not have been her first major slip that eventually caused her to lose Iowa and ultimately forced her descent into delegate denial. But Clinton always loves sidling up to Obama under the debate lights, so look for another gabfest sometime before April 22. In the midst of six (relatively) newsless weeks, there may actually be some content to come out of this one.
Foreign
policy posturing. Now
that the race is guaranteed to come down to superdelegates, the candidates will
sell themselves harder than ever as the anti-McCain. That means foreign policy
cred. This week, both candidates held photo-ops with panels of military men.
McCain has already scheduled
a trip next to Europe and the Middle East, including a stop in Iraq.
Will the Dems duck out of Quaker country for a swing through the fertile
crescent? At the very least, expect to hear more about Clinton’s role in healing
Northern Island, Obama’s trips to Africa, and, of course, Sinbad.
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It’s 8 p.m. and CNN can’t project a winner for Mississippi. Huh. (Update 8:43 p.m.: OK, now it's Obama.) They say exit polls suggest he “seems to be” ahead, but perhaps it’s not as decisive as expected. (Fox News is calling it for Obama.) Here are some other exit poll juicy bits (Obligatory disclaimer: Exit polls are unreliable!):
It’s about race, only more so than usual. Both candidates win their own, and overwhelmingly. Obama wins 91 percent of African-Americans—the highest yet—whereas Clinton won 72 percent of whites. Given that African-Americans make up 48 percent of Democratic voters, he almost could have won the election without the help of whites.
It’s not about gender. Women and men split almost evenly between the two candidates, with Clinton winning around 41 percent and Obama winning around 49 percent, according to MSNBC. It’s similar to what happened in South Carolina, where race trumped gender in determining how people voted.
Ads mattered. People who considered political ads to be important swung toward Obama, whereas those who didn’t care about them went for Hillary. This could reflect the fact that Obama outspent Clinton in the state by a few million. Or it could also reflect residual backlash to Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad, widely considered to have helped her in Ohio.
Most people made up their minds early. But those who didn’t favored Clinton. Only 19 percent of voters said they had made up their minds in the last week. Of that group, 53 percent voted for Clinton. Those who decided before the last week favored Obama, with 62 percent.
The dream ticket. More than half of voters think each candidate should pick the other as their vice president.
Hating on McCain. For all the talk of Obama relying on independents and Republicans, Obama’s supporters were far less likely to have high opinions of John McCain. More than half of Clinton voters said they had a favorable opinion of McCain; only about a quarter of Obama voters felt that way.
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During a day’s worth of high-octane umbrage-taking over Geraldine
Ferraro’s comments about Barack Obama, Ferraro herself was unrepentant.
“If it makes David [Axelrod] happy I would get off the
finance committee. But I’m telling David that I will raise money for Hillary. And
if Barack Obama is the candidate, he shouldn’t really antagonize people like
me. Because he’s going to come to me and ask me to raise money for Barack Obama,
and I would do it for him too, if he stops doing this kind of horrendous attacks
at me.”
She has a point. There’s a risk in all this How dare you! perception warfare that
you alienate Democrats who would otherwise be glad to help out. Of course, for Obama, a sympathy vote now is worth as much or more than a dollar later.
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Hillary Clinton has resurrected the charge that Barack Obama’s campaign isn’t based on actions but “just words.” Her campaign sent out a “memo” today defending her foreign policy experience in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, China, and Rwanda, with this intro:
Over the last few weeks, Sen. Obama has successfully undermined his credibility with a series of statements to reporters and voters that have been contradicted by the facts. Unfortunately, he’s doing it again today by having his campaign issue a fundamentally misleading attack aimed at glossing over the doubts Americans have about his readiness to be Commander-in-Chief. Once again, Senator Obama is proving the point that his campaign is about “just words.”
Not to nitpick here, but the “just words” angle seems like an attempt to bring back the Deval Patrick “plagiarism” flap. Obama’s defense, after all, was to borrow Patrick’s line that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Martin Luther King’s speeches were “just words.” Is Clinton trying to tease this out of him again?
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In case you were bored ...
Here's how to make a Barack Obama balloon animal.
It's going to be a long six weeks.
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Obama will win today’s Mississippi primary. The question is by how much. But there's still room for small surprises. Here are a few factors to keep an eye on as the Magnolia State’s results roll in this evening (8 p.m. ET):
It could be closer than you think. Clinton’s people have been playing down the importance of Mississippi—each candidate held all of two events there in the past week—so a narrow win by Obama could be construed as a surprise pseudo-victory for Clinton. Mississippi’s Democratic electorate is about 55 percent black, which bodes well for Obama. But they need to turn out if he’s going to deliver the trouncing everyone expects. One bad sign is that African-American turnout in Texas was lower than expected—even lower than in the 2004 primary. If the same thing happens in Mississippi, Clinton’s estimated 40-point lead among whites could help her close the gap.
Could Obama cancel out Clinton’s March 4 winnings? In the states that voted March 4, Clinton netted about 15 delegates. (Texas is still tallying its caucus results.) Obama closed that gap by two delegates with his win in Wyoming on Saturday. Could he close it the rest of the way tonight? Doubtful. He would need to win 69 percent of the vote in order to beat Clinton by 13 delegates, according to Slate’s Delegate Calculator. Even in his most decisive Southern victory, Georgia, he took only (“only”!) 66 percent. More likely, he will net a handful of delegates today—plus most if not all of the state’s six superdelegates.
Would Obama put Mississippi in play? Some folks have floated the theory that if Obama wins the nomination, he could turn Mississippi blue in the general. The RNC protests the claim, pointing out that he would be up against some tough ideological barriers. (Think immigration, abortion, stem cell research.) Furthermore, a recent survey by American Research Group shows 48 percent of white voters saying they would not vote for Obama. But blacks make up 37 percent of Mississippi’s population. A huge turnout among that cohort in November, combined with a small percentage of white voters, could conceivably hand Mississippi to Obama. Today’s numbers will be a good indicator.
The last word … for a while. Mississippi is the last primary before we embark on the Bataan Death March to April 22. With today’s results, Obama has the chance to slingshot himself into the next few weeks. Clinton is still far ahead in Pennsylvania, so for Obama, April will be all about gap-narrowing. But a devastating victory today would start him out on the right foot—and remind people that in terms of pledged delegates, he is way ahead of Clinton.
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When Barack Obama characterized Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy experience as “having tea” with diplomats, Clinton fired back with anecdotes about a trip she took to wartime Bosnia in 1996. “Somebody said there might be sniper fire," she said, describing a dangerous corkscrew landing her plane had to make. "I don't remember anyone offering me tea on the tarmac.” But now that account is being disputed. By Sinbad.
Turns out the comedian, who was along for the ride with Sheryl Crow, remembers things differently, the Washington Post reports. "I never felt that I was in a dangerous position,” Sinbad said. “I never felt being in a sense of peril, or 'Oh, God, I hope I'm going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of this tank.' "
He also disputed Clinton’s claim that first ladies get sent to all the poorest and most dangerous countries. “What kind of president would say, ‘Hey, man, I can't go 'cause I might get shot so I'm going to send my wife ... Oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.’ ” The ridicule goes on. (Keep in mind that Sinbad is a fervent Obama fan.)
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer came back with this quip: “It appears that Sinbad's experience in Bosnia goes back further than Senator Obama's does. In fact, has Senator Obama ever been to Bosnia?” Good question—perhaps Pauly Shore could tag along?
Needless to say, it's kind of rough to become the punch line of a joke by a man who is himself a walking punch line. I guess we’ll need Sheryl Crow to break the tie.
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The 2008 presidential election has perfected a new category of gaffe: the otherwise sane, rational person saying something utterly irresponsible. Bill Sheehan started it with his coy drug reference, followed by Bill Clinton's comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson, followed most recently by Samantha Power’s "monster" comment.
Welcome to the club, Geraldine Ferraro. Her inflammatory words, spoken to the Daily Breeze last week, were mostly lost in the frenzy over Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s dalliances yesterday. Here they are, ripped from context: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
The Clinton campaign’s response was terse: "We disagree with her," said communications director Howard Wolfson.
Blog reaction has been combustible—how dare she suggest Obama is “lucky” to be black?—but focuses more on demonizing the former vice-presidential nominee than getting at where her words come from. But Ferraro bookends her unfortunate comments with two sound observations: 1) The media seem to dislike Clinton largely because of her gender, and 2) Obama is foolish to suggest that he will end partisanship. “Dear God!” she says. “Anyone that has worked in the Congress knows that for over 200 years this country has had partisanship—that's the way our country is.” Good points, certainly. But she could have chosen a better segue.
Her remarks show frustration that a tough, hard-working, hyper-competent woman like Clinton can still be swept aside by a force of nature. Ferraro is correct that Obama’s race has a lot to do with it (just as Clinton’s gender has a lot to do with her appeal to women). But of course it’s more than that. Gail Collins put it best in a column she wrote before the Ohio primary. If Hillary doesn’t pull through, Collins wrote, she should understand this: “She’s done fine. And she’d probably have won the nomination walking away if Barack hadn’t picked this moment to mutate into BARACK! You do your best, and if things don’t work out, it just wasn’t your time. Life isn’t always fair.”
It’s this realization that has turned surrogates on both sides into gaffe machines. It’s also why staff members of both candidates may have trouble working together in the general. Clinton’s people understand they’re up against a phenomenon; Obama’s people feel like they’re on the right side of history. But I wouldn’t chalk Ferraro’s comments up to racism or bigotry. Rather, they’re the product of high tensions mixed with identity politics in a campaign that is driving everyone a little crazy.