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A conversation is already brewing over at "XX Factor" about what Clinton meant when she invoked Robert Kennedy’s assassination as evidence that nomination battles continue through June. Here’s her wording, from an interview with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader editorial board:
“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it.” (Video.)
Critics have seized on the quote as evidence that Hillary is secretly hoping Obama gets knocked off in the next few weeks. After all, Clinton didn’t say, "Bobby Kennedy was in the race until June.” She said he got shot in June. The Obama camp, ever eager to take umbrage, whisked out a statement that her comment was “unfortunate and has no place in this campaign.” Others, including Slate’s Rachael Larimore, think Clinton’s motives were benign.
But most bizarre is the Clinton camp’s apology, fired off just now. She claims she was referencing the 1992 and 1968 elections “to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June.” Then, the kicker: “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever.”
At first, the move seems brilliant—saying sorry to the Kennedys without saying sorry to Obama. But it also feels like a weak dodge. By not addressing her specific phrasing—why say "assassination"?—she doesn't put the issue to bed, thereby guaranteeing another round of speculation.
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In a Wednesday post at National Review Online, Larry Kudlow, he of CNBC fame, asserts that the stock market likes Hillary Clinton more than Barack Obama. How does he know this? Because on two occasions, the stock market went up after Clinton won a primary, and down after Obama won.
The clearest example was Hillary’s massive West Virginia victory. Stocks opened strong the following day. But after Obama’s big North Carolina win, a night he nearly carried Indiana, stocks opened way down.
Even though Hillary clocked Obama in Kentucky, since Obama took Oregon convincingly, he really carried last night’s elections and now stands on the verge of gaining the Democratic nomination. Not surprisingly, stocks opened down 80 points this morning.
Kudlow, to put it simply, is off his rocker. He is asserting that the stock market would react strongly to a Democratic primary after the nominee has been all-but-anointed. One would think an economist like Kudlow would have more faith in the market than to think it was subject to the whims of a now-meaningless primary that pits two very similar candidates against one another.
Kudlow’s facts are right. The Dow went up by an unimpressive 73.26 points after Clinton won West Virginia. Why? Not because Clinton won; because Wall Street got good vibes from a new inflation report. The Dow went up even more after Obama won Wisconsin and Hawaii. He’s also right that the index plunged a substantial 196 points the day after Obama took North Carolina and made Clinton sweat in Indiana. But not because Obama won. AIG, a bellwhether for subprime-affected insurance corporations, was about to unleash a gnarly balance sheet the next day. As Kudlow notes, stocks tumbled nearly the same amount after Obama won in Oregon and clinched a pledged delegate majority. Why? Not because Obama is going to be the nominee; because oil prices hit a record high and inflation edged upward.
Kudlow doesn’t mention that the Dow rose 32 points during Obama’s streak of 10 straight victories, or that it went up after Obama’s South Carolina, Potomoc, and Wisconsin wins. Kudlow must have been dumbfounded when the market didn’t crater in response to Obama’s success. He must think the market agrees with Clinton and must not count caucuses as real votes.
All of those rebuttals take for granted a tacit, yet crucial, piece of Kudlow’s logic—that Clinton and Obama would be drastically different stewards for the economy. This, also, doesn’t make any sense.
Kudlow takes issue with Obama’s “class warfare” of repealing Bush tax cuts and other initiatives.
Obama then repeated his usual litany: big-government health care, an attack on oil companies, a big spending plan for education, big bailouts for housing, and a pension assault on corporations.
Clinton, of course, is for all of those things, as well. Superficially, Clinton is no more of a sure-thing bull economy than Obama is. Kudlow seems to recognize his argument’s flaw, and attempts to push it aside.
Interestingly, stocks have preferred Hillary in the Democratic fight a) because she was roughing up Obama for the general-election fight against McCain and b) because markets believe they can do business with Hillary in a way they can’t with Obama.
Personifying stocks is always a risky affair, because, oh, you know, they don’t have brains. Traders don’t think “they can do business with Hillary” any more than Kudlow does. Watch this clip of Kudlow castigating Clinton’s economic policies, and you’ll see that Kudlow isn’t exactly a Democratic cheerleader. He’s a staunch supply-side McCain supporter who is using his NRO platform to knock Obama and proliferate McCain talking points. Kudlow saying Obama would be bad for the markets is the same as Karl Rove saying Clinton is the stronger Democrat in November. Even in a quantifiable realm like economics, qualitative spin rules the day.
The Dow Jones is down nearly 150 points today. Maybe it’s because Obama picked up three new superdelegates.
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In today’s Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer slams Barack Obama for what he calls Obama’s "gaffe"-turned-foreign-policy centerpiece. To hear Krauthammer tell it, Obama’s position that he would meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and other unfriendly governments "without preconditions" in the first year of his presidency first surfaced at the July 23 YouTube debate, in his response to a YouTube questioner. (Read the debate exchange here.) Per Krauthammer, Obama's answer just sort of slipped out, and he ran with it: "What started as a gaffe became policy."
Similarly, Matthew Yglesias writes about Obama’s "accidential foreign policy" in this month’s Atlantic, arguing that Obama’s camp "had never articulated such a policy before [the debate], and seemed ill-prepared to defend it on the spot."
But was the July 23 debate really the first time Obama promised to meet with unsavory leaders? I asked Obama spokesman Ben Labolt whether he could point to earlier instances. Here are a few (emphasis mine):
- Back in November 2006, Obama said that "we must engage [Iraq’s] neighboring countries in finding a solution. This includes opening dialogue with both Syria and Iran, an idea supported by both James Baker and Robert Gates." The Baker/Hamilton Report (PDF) recommends that a "Support Group" of nations including the United States "should actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions."
- In a March 2007 speech to AIPAC, Obama advocated "tough-minded diplomacy. This includes direct engagement with Iran similar to the meetings we conducted with the Soviets at the height of the Cold War, laying out in clear terms our principles and interests." Obama has also made the Cold War comparison in recent days.
- In April 2007, he said that "effective diplomacy" with "governments from Jerusalem and Amman to Damascus and Tehran" will require the "personal commitment of the President of the United States."
None of these statements are as strongly worded as the YouTube debate question. But they do signal a willingness engage enemies diplomatically, suggesting that Obama’s statement on July 23 was hardly a departure, let alone a "gaffe."
In recent days, campaign representatives have "clarified" Obama’s position. "I would not say that we would meet unconditionally," Obama supporter Tom Daschle told CNN. "... 'Without precondition' simply means we wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us." Susan Rice, a foreign policy adviser to Obama, said that meeting with Iran doesn’t necessarily mean meeting with Ahmadinejad—it could mean lower-level talks.
Again, these statements offer more specifics than before, but—the debate over the meaning of "preconditions" aside—they don’t really contradict Obama’s previous statements.
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John McCain finally rejected, denounced, and bused over Pastor John Hagee, whose remarks about the Catholic Church have been dogging McCain for months. The final straw was a sermon in which Hagee, citing the book of Jeremiah, called Adolf Hitler a “hunter” sent by God to drive the Jews back to Israel, which would pave the way for the second coming of Jesus Christ.
The rejection was long overdue. In March, McCain drew fire over Hagee’s statements calling the Catholic Church “the great whore” and a “false cult system.” McCain said he disagreed with any comments “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics,” but thought they were “taken out of context.” A McCain spokeswoman clarified: “While we welcome his support, it shouldn't be seen as a wholesale endorsement of all of Mr. Hagee's views.” But McCain did not reject his endorsement until now.
So what changed? You could argue the Hitler shout-out was the deciding factor—any time a supporter drops the H-bomb, he or she becomes radioactive. But take a look at demographics McCain needs to win in the general.
In Florida, a key battleground state, McCain can count on the support of Catholics no matter what. He won 40 percent of the GOP Catholic vote in the primary there (Obama won 22 percent in the Democratic race), and Florida’s Hispanics have voted Republican in the last few presidential elections. McCain’s stance on immigration makes him especially popular among that group. Despite criticism from Catholic leaders over Hagee’s remarks, McCain is unlikely to lose that demographic.
Jews are a different story. Florida Jews are famously skeptical of Barack Obama, particularly on his support of Israel. (Rep. Robert Wexler called Southern Florida “the most concentrated area in the country in terms of misinformation” about Obama.) Hence Obama’s ongoing courtship of Jewish leaders and recent visits to Boca Raton and Miami. McCain, by contrast, is seen as unwaveringly hawkish when it comes to Israel. As one older Jewish Floridian told the New York Times, “The people here, liberal people, will not vote for Obama because of his attitude towards Israel. They’re going to vote for McCain.”
In other words, now would be a bad time for McCain to risk alienating Jewish voters. At a certain point, the harm of Hagee's remarks starts to outweigh his popularity among evangelicals.
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Lanny Davis, former special counsel to the Clinton White House and a high-profile fundraiser/surrogate for Hillary's campaign, circulated an e-mail a few days ago from Rear Admiral David Stone (Ret.), a Clinton supporter who has visited other veterans across the country. Stone's message includes this passage:
Of note, Senator Obama has zero—repeat zero—traction in the VFW and American Legion Halls. Veterans cite his refusal (until recently) to wear the American Flag pin, the photo where he is shown not saluting the Flag with his hand over his heart, ... his alleged MoveOn.Org relationship and that organization's innuendo (in an ad) of General Petraeus as a traitor, his relationship with Rev. Wright (who once said "God Damn America" in a sermon), Mrs. Obama's comment about only recently being proud to be an American, and Senator Obama's recent comment that some people were "bitter" about their economic situation and thus "cling" to guns and religion as a result. ...
Surrogates can't always be on message, but this is particularly far astray. Obama has not "refused" to wear a flag pin, and the flag-saluting photo has been fairly thoroughly debunked. Instead of correcting these misperceptions, Davis is spreading them, even after the Clinton camp has pointedly toned down its rhetoric on Obama. But attacks on Obama's patriotism have been verboten among Dems for some time now. Most references to the lapel pin or saluting the flag or Michelle Obama's "proud to be an American" comments come from the RNC. Apparently that memo didn't reach Davis.