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There’s still no reliable data to show whether Obama’s "bitter" comments have taken a toll in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. But the first bit of highly tenuous, anecdotal evidence deserves a look.
Both Clinton and Obama spoke today at a forum sponsored by the American Alliance for Manufacturing in Pittsburgh. The group is a nonpartisan nonprofit that can’t legally endorse a candidate. It does include the United Steelworkers, though, which backed John Edwards’ bid but hasn’t thrown its weight behind either Clinton or Obama.
While Obama got cheers when he challenged Clinton’s assertion that he is "out of touch," Clinton’s suggestion that voters were "disappointed by recent remarks that [Obama] made" drew audible murmurs and at least one "No!" The Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins posts the two videos back-to-back and argues that the contrast should be "heartening for the Obama camp."
But someone who was in the room at the time (and doesn’t back either candidate) said the videos exaggerate the response. In the roomful of 1,600 people, only "a handful" were making noise. "I think it was a pocket of a few ladies near the microphone who happened to be very vocal," he said. Also, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports, per the Clinton campaign, that the objectors were a group of pro-Obama SEIU members.
All that being a long way of saying, we'll wait for the polls.
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A month ago, Huffington Post promoted an article on its home page that led to this garishly bad YouTube video by the McCain Girls. Trailhead steered clear at the time—if we wanted to hear appalling, off-key crooning we’d go to a Kristy Lee Cook concert—for fear that we’d provoke a lawsuit from aggrieved readers if we linked to it. When it originally published a link to the video, HuffPost didn’t include any details about the video—who made it, how they found out about it, or why they thought it was remotely amusing.
Today, HuffPost offered answers to all three of those questions. The site promoted an article on their home page titled “McCain Girls Mystery Solved… See Who Made The Music Video.” Inside, there’s a paragraph of original text where HuffPost reveals the creator is comedy site 23/6—a site that they co-produce with IAC/InterActiveCorp. (They didn’t give a direct answer to why thought the video was chuckle-worthy, but we can assume their funny bones were numbed by corporate synergy.)
Huffington Post never mentions that they have a stake in 23/6’s success—only that the video and the singing trio “are the brain children of comedy site 236.com.” The piece then goes on to quote today’s New York Times piece that outs the video as a parody. The New York Times reporter says only that 23/6 is “owned by an affiliate of IAC/InterActiveCorp that parodies the news.” No mention of the Huffington Post. Mario Ruiz, a HuffPost spokesman confirmed to me that 23/6 is a “joint production between IAC and the Huffington Post” and that “the Times failed to mention HuffPost.” The Huffington Post also failed to mention the Huffington Post.
For the site to write that its subsidiary created the video, but hide the fact that 23/6 is its subsidiary violates journalistic ethics 101. It’s only compounded because the video wouldn’t have gone viral without the Huffington Post’s help in the first place. Nor would it have exploded in popularity if people knew it was a joke from the outset. The Washington Post writes that the clip languished on YouTube for a week without much fanfare until Huffington picked it up. A month later, it has more than 1.7 million views. Huffington has every right to advertise its own product—Slate does it with SlateV every day—but it needs to make clear where the content is coming from. (Huffington does this on a regular basis with 23/6’s written content.)
I asked HuffPost’s spokesman whether they had purposefully omitted a line about their stake in 23/6’s videos. He has yet to respond.
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Hillary Clinton’s strategy when it comes to wooing superdelegates seems to be aggressive courtship followed by equally aggressive rejection. They’re your best friend until the moment they endorse Obama, at which point you disown them. Bill "Judas" Richardson learned this firsthand.
That could explain why Clinton took a thinly veiled shot at Al Gore at last night’s “Compassion Forum":
We had two very good men, and men of faith, run for president in 2000 and 2004. Large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand, or relate to, or respect their ways of life.
Honestly, if Clinton thought there was even a sliver of a chance that Al Gore would endorse her, she never would have said this. The dis isn’t quite explicit; she couches it as what other people think. But a little interlinear reading—“large segments of the electorate” represents the unassailable Will of the People, which is of course never wrong—makes it pretty clear that she’s endorsing the idea. Later in the evening, when Obama appeared on the program, he pointedly stood up for the former veep: “I thought Al Gore won.”
Meanwhile, the Scotsman (of Samantha Power fame) ran a thinly sourced piece yesterday reporting that Jimmy Carter and Al Gore are planning to endorse Obama any day now in a double-fisted death blow to Clinton’s campaign. Over at DailyKos, diarist "davefromqueens" thinks Clinton lashed out at Gore yesterday as a pre-emptive strike against an impending endorsement. Of course Gore would endorse Obama, the logic goes, they’re both out-of touch elitist males.
It could be that Gore has truly decided not to endorse, and that Obama was just defending Gore in order to defend himself. But then why would Clinton go out of her way to 1) attack Gore, 2) explicitly link Gore and Kerry, who has endorsed Obama, and 3) implicitly link Obama to both of their losses? There’s no reason to publicly insult a potential ally unless he has already switched to the other side. Neutrality wouldn’t merit scorn.
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The reasons Obama’s “bitter” gaffe could hurt him have been widely enumerated. In a nutshell: It creates the centerpiece of the Republicans’ general election case against him. Coupled with Rev. Wright, the lapel pin, the pledge of allegiance, the persistent Muslim rumors, and his race/name, the charge of elitism is a Swift Boat campaign waiting to happen.
But there’s another vulnerability in his remarks, and that’s the optimist/pessimist factor. In any election, pretty much no matter what the circumstances, voters are going to favor the optimist. Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech may have nailed a core truth about the state of the union, but come on, what a downer. As Joe Klein pointed out, “When Ronald Reagan touted ‘Morning in America’ in the 1980s, Dick Gephardt famously countered that it was near midnight ‘and getting darker all the time.’ ” Who wants to hear that? If Americans wanted to be depressed, they’d elect Eeyore.
That’s one reason Obama’s campaign has succeeded so far—“hope and change” is more compelling than “judgment and experience.” But “bitterness” could easily become the new byword of critics looking to undercut his message of (some would say misguided) optimism. Clinton says the Pennsylvanians she has met aren't bitter—they're hopeful. John McCain is already intimating that bitterness is somehow the opposite of patriotism. Of course, Obama would argue that bitterness and optimism—not to mention patriotism—aren’t mutually exclusive but that together they make change possible. It's been part of his message all along. Which is why the “bitterness” aspect isn’t likely to do much lasting damage to Obama—among a certain population slice, the man is synonymous with optimism.
If this episode manages to tar Obama, it won’t be for the “bitter” part. It will be for pairing “guns” and “religion” with xenophobia and racism. That’s where Clinton is hitting him now and where McCain will hit him in the fall.
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Barack Obama's "bitter" comment is just the gaffe Clinton needed to
woo superdelegates. Her chances of winning the nomination jump 4.5
points to 14.2 percent.
Hillary Clinton needed
a miracle. She's down in pledged delegates, likely to lose the popular
vote, and slipping on the superdelegate front. So, Barack Obama's comment
at a San Francisco fundraiser—that bitter Pennsylvanians "cling to guns
or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" in response to
economic hardship—is as close to divine intervention as she could get.
With Pennsylvania a week off, Clinton has just enough time to foment
outrage and perhaps regain her formerly wide lead
in the polls. It's also as comprehensive a gaffe as Obama could have
mustered: It's got elitism, guns, religion, immigration, and trade—just
the controversy cocktail Clinton was waiting for.
The "bitter"
incident serves one real purpose for Clinton: It strengthens her case
to superdelegates. Clinton has already been painting a potential Obama
nomination as a disaster scenario.
This flap gives her fresh buckets and a new brush. Among her plausible
arguments: Obama just lost Pennsylvania in the general. He alienated
Reagan Democrats across the country. He squandered a major advantage
over the less-religious McCain. His "bitter" comments—and the attitudes
they represent—are just the tip of an iceberg of vulnerabilities. Clinton even compared
him to John Kerry and Al Gore (so much for that endorsement), who
voters thought "did not really understand, or relate to, or respect
their ways of life." An Obama nomination, she can now argue, would be
the worst kind of disaster—a repeat. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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