The Clinton-Obama race in New Hampshire is still up in the air, but procrastinators are full of theories as to why Hillary has apparently outpaced the final polls. Many theories center on Hillary’s tears on Monday. Dan Kennedy and John Wirzbicki, however, are asking if the discrepancy between the polls and the votes may be attributable to the Bradley Effect. Kennedy:
Obviously you can vote for Hillary Clinton without being a racist. But the results so far certainly don’t jibe with the polls.
Although the Bradley Effect was not seen in Iowa last week, as Jon Ponder says, Wirzbicki notes that the social aspect of a public caucus could mask such racist tendencies. I’m sure real political scientists will be exploring this tomorrow and into the future.
I never thought I’d agree with Obama…. I’ve never thought of my identity as any kind of qualification. I’ve never written an article that contains the phrase “As an Indian-American …” or “As a person of color …”
But when I think about what is truly distinctive about the way I look at the world, about the advantage that I may have over others in understanding foreign affairs, it is that I know what it means not to be an American. I know intimately the attraction, the repulsion, the hopes, the disappointments that the other 95 percent of humanity feels when thinking about this country. I know it because for a good part of my life, I wasn’t an American. I was the outsider, growing up 8,000 miles away from the centers of power, being shaped by forces over which my country had no control…We’re moving into a very new world, one in which countries from Brazil to South Africa to India and China are getting richer, stronger and prouder. For America to thrive, we will have to develop a much deeper, richer, more intuitive understanding of them and their peoples. There are many ways to attain this, but certainly being able to feel it in your bones is one powerful way.
If Clinton were running against Obama for Senate, it would be easy to choose between them.
But they are running for president, and the presidency requires a different set of qualities. Presidents are buffeted by sycophancy, criticism and betrayal. They must improvise amid a thousand fluid crises. They’re isolated and also exposed, puffed up on the outside and hollowed out within. With the presidency, character and self-knowledge matter more than even experience. There are reasons to think that, among Democrats, Obama is better prepared for this madness.
[A]ny 50-50 bet, like craps, is a great bet. And Bill Clinton’s use of this particular metaphor ought to allow us to compare the risk of rolling the dice to that of electing Hillary. Is she really better than a 50-50 chance not to embroil us in another war? Not to fail again on health care? Not to succumb to the power of special interest lobbies? Are you convinced enough to put some money down?
I’ll let you decide which level of risk you’re more comfortable with.
The Iowa piece I encountered today was David Greene’s story on Morning Edition. Greene spoke to Iowans representative of the 90% of the Hawkeyes who will not be voting.
Have we come to a tipping point this week, in which Obama is now the frontrunner? Newsweek’s Howard Fineman (via Mark Kleiman) thinks so:
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is teetering on the brink, no matter what the meaningless national horserace numbers say. The notion that she has a post-Iowa “firewall” in New Hampshire is a fantasy, and she is in danger of losing all four early contests, including Nevada and South Carolina – probably to Sen. Barack Obama, who is now, in momentum terms, the Democratic frontrunner.…If he can win Iowa – and it remains a big if – Hillary’s campaign could collapse. New Hampshire would almost surely go his way.
Adding to the Obama-entum, the Wall Street Journal reports tonight that Black voters in South Carolina are beginning to break for the Chicagoan in part on the basis of his ability to draw white support:
A big factor behind the rise in black support for Mr. Obama in South Carolina appears to be his popularity among white voters, though he is also expanding his outreach to black voters, and many of his views, especially his opposition to the Iraq war and support of social programs, resonate strongly with them.
“I see how [Obama's] charisma is among other races,” says Ed Robinson, owner of Posh soul-food restaurant in downtown Florence, S.C. “He has been able to attract people from all races.”
Meanwhile, Matt Bai drops some love in Obama’s Moment in Rolling Stone today:
this is the moment that Barack Hussein Obama was born for, and it really is happening before our very eyes. Like Kennedy or Reagan or even Bill Clinton [ed.: ??], Obama is a politician whose best chance for success has always been on the level of myth and hero worship; to win the Democratic nomination, he must successfully sell himself not just as a candidate but as an icon, a symbol of the best possible future for twenty-first-century multicultural America and an antidote to both the callous reactionary idiocy of the Bush administration and the shrewd but soulless corporatism of the Clinton machine.
With just weeks to go before Iowa, Obama is succeeding at that sales job, thanks in part to an unexpected avalanche of positive press and in even greater part to Hillary Clinton’s recent performance as a creaky, suddenly vulnerable establishment villain….[T]he Powers That Be may find that they waited too long to get the real show started — that the long wait gave America just enough time to decide that it’s ready to move on to something new.
For most of this campaign season, I doubted that Obama really was that new something. Now I’m not so sure he isn’t….[There is a] whiff of destiny that lately seems to surround Obama. At the outset of the campaign season, he was treated as a not-ready-for-prime-time sideshow, with media pundits all in one voice bitching about his “rookie mistakes” and “lack of aggressiveness.” But now that he’s got the numbers and the momentum, even the most hardened political cynic has to ask — why not this guy?…The very fact that the public, mostly on its own, has lifted Obama past an arrogant establishment consensus adds to his appeal as a symbol of the idea that not everything in our politics is rigged, that not everything that they tell us is impossible really is. So maybe it’s OK to let the grandiose things that an Obama presidency could represent overwhelm the less-stirring reality — i.e., Obama as more or less a typical middle-of-the-road Democrat with a lot of money and a well-run campaign. Maybe it’s OK because it’s not always about the candidates; sometimes it’s about us, what we want and what we want to believe. And if Barack Obama can carry that burden for us, why not let him? Seriously, why not? The happy ending doesn’t always have to ring false.
The Washington Post turns to Obama for the latest in its “The Front-runners” series. The story focuses on Obama’s father-less childhood and includes a (as far as I can tell newly revealed) touching photo of 10 Year-old Barry apparently saying good-bye to his father, for the last time, at the airport. An accompanying Post piece credits Team Obama’s surge to his address at last month’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa. I doubt it had any real world effects, but I’m struck by the fact that the Obama wave coincided with Andrew Sullivan’s Goodbye to All That, his artful paean in this month’s Atlantic Monthly.
For what it’s worth, here’s the takeaway moment from today’s Iowa debate, wherein both Obama and Clinton come off well; followed by Chris Rock’s introduction of Obama last month at the Apollo– replete with some Jackie Wilson.
In the midst of this week’s back-and-forth between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, and, indeed, the two candidates, I wondered about the views of Stephen Sixta, the man whose YouTube debate question touched the whole thing off and the co-owner of the SoCal media firm Nelson and Sixta. In an interview with Al Giordano of NarcoNews on Friday (excerpts below), Sixta expressed a preference for the way Obama responded to the question and discomfort with the hubub that followed.
The post-debate brouhaha has ignored the way Sixta prefaced his question: “spirit of” the “bold leadership” that Anwar Sadat demonstrated in his trip to Israel. (Sixta placed the visit in 1982; it actually occurred in 1977. [Update: Wasn't CNN's supposed to be the gate-keeping fact-checker?] By 82 Sadat was dead and Israel was in Lebanon, and Carter was home in Plains. Relevant to the reaction to Obama’s response in the debate, Sadat’s visit was the result of diplomatic efforts that followed the 1973 Yom Kippur War.) In any case, in an American campaign, at least, perception is more important than policy, and I thus tend toward David Corn’s analysis:
Obama had suggested he would sit down with these leaders willy-nilly, no preconditions. Clinton and Edwards explained that that they would use diplomacy to try to improve relations with these nations and that such an effort could lead to a one-on-one with these heads of state.
Obama had responded from the gut, working off a correct critique of the Bush administration’s skeptical approach toward diplomacy. But his answer lacked the sophistication of Clinton’s and Edwards’ replies. And this moment illustrated perhaps the top peril for the Obama campaign: with this post-9/11 presidential contest, to a large degree, a question of who should be the next commander in chief, any misstep related to foreign policy is a big deal for a candidate who has little experience in national security matters.
Sixta in the NarcoNews interview:
Stephen Sixta: I preferred Senator Obama’s reply because I felt it indicated a readiness to use the power of the Presidency to solve problems… to actively pursue a better world. His answer was, it seemed to me, spontaneous, passionate, and well reasoned… and I applaud him for that. My understanding is that his campaign is about change… a new approach to solving our problems… fresh ideas and all. I think his answer reflects a new and possibly more dynamic way of employing foreign policy. A charismatic man who is not afraid to get involved to make the world a better and more peaceful place.
Narco News: What did you think of Senator Clinton’s response?
Stephen Sixta: I thought Senator Clinton’s reply was solid, although more traditional… less visionary, but still a quantum leap in a different direction from the Bush Administration. She has a big advantage in the presidential envoy area because of Bill Clinton. He would be outstanding. I’m sure Obama could use President Clinton as well but with her administration he would certainly be employed more often. I’m not sure what she specifically meant by not wanting to be used as propaganda. Is that a valid reason not to engage other leaders in creating a better world. I could be persuaded that it is but as I write this today… it is not.
Narco News: Do you have any thoughts or responses of your own to any of the subsequent statements by the candidates, their spokespeople, pundits or others that have been discussing the issue since the debate?
Stephen Sixta: I have blissfully avoided watching or reading or listening to anything relating to the debate and the responses that my question generated. So I don’t know specifically what is being said by whom about whom or to whom.[...]All in all I have mixed emotions about it. In one way I am gratified that there has been, for the time being at least, a discussion of how we as a country should deal with those nations and leaders with whom we have disagreements and the role that the President should play. On the other hand I am uneasy because of the controversy that my question has generated.
One day later, here’s a summary of what some smart folks have been saying about last night’s CNN-Youtube debate. First, tonight in the Times, Katharine Seelye interviews, without substantive comment, the man responsible for the controversial (among some bloggers) video selection process, CNN bureau chief David Bohrman:
“We vetted people if we had any real doubt about them,” he said. …He also said he had tried to modulate the pace and tone of the questions, and used the video from the good ol’ boys from Tennessee _ who asked whether Al Gore’s possible entry into the race would hurt anyone’s feelings _ as “comic relief….To complaints about the quality of the audio and the video, Mr. Bohrman said: “It’s not TV yet. It’s YouTube. They were small. I’m amazed we were able to make them be about 10 feet across. You saw what you needed to see.”
Seelye fails to ask why the need for comic relief– and does not point out that those of us watching at home were not able to read the two or three Pennebaker-esque videos that relied on written placards.
Catching up, John Palfrey enjoyed the debate, calling it
a big step forward for the way campaigns are covered. The producers deserve a lot of credit for the innovative format they introduced. The videos they chose were terrific: authentic(-seeming, anyway) voices from ordinary voters speaking directly to candidates. The final video, about “the candidate to your left,” was a brilliant parting shot. The effect was at once to empower voters and to render more human the candidates. I loved it. Well done, CNN and YouTube/Google.
Calling it “their debate,” Jeff Jarvis was disappointed:
CNN selected too many obvious, dutiful, silly questions.
Anderson Cooper didn’t pace the debate; he tried to trip the runners.
The videos were too tiny to be given justice.
The candidates’ videos were just commercials.
There were far too few issues.
There were too many candidates.
The candidates gave us the same answers they always give.
I have no doubt — no doubt — that we, the people, would have done a better job picking the questions than CNN did.
I have no doubt that we would have heard far more substance without CNN and TV cameras in this. This should have been a debate held online: candidates answering questions directly without the need for CNN, Anderson Cooper, or their questions.
We end with the usual horserace blather of the TV commentators.
A terribly wasted opportunity, this was.
Writing In the Hill, Frank Donatelli is also skeptical, though in a manner different from Jarvis:
I found this more of an attempt by CNN to increase its ratings rather than a serious way to improve the quality of the debate. Why exactly is the video question better than having a live person in the studio actually asking the question himself?
I agree with his Obama-nalysis:
He’s always good, but never great, in these forums. He has so far failed to give definition to the “new politics” cause that is fueling his insurgency.
It was pretty good - except for the candidates’ YouTube efforts, which were predictably lame. Probably the best debate so far, though some will say that’s damning with faint praise.
It was a bad night for news anchors and Washington bureau chiefs, the traditional interrogators of would-be holders of American high office…instead of being this campaign season’s version of a candidate playing saxophone on a talk show, the few dozen amateur questions that co-sponsor CNN selected from among almost 3,000 posted to YouTube led to a relatively lively and informative two hours. The inaugural effort to harness the wide net of the Web to craft questions for would-be presidents offered further demonstration of the Internet’s rapid ascension to a place of prominence in American politics….While CNN’s question choices weren’t always the very sharpest — there were dozens of better-worded questions from atheists than the one the news channel picked — they didn’t allow YouTube users to game the system, either.
though CNN and YouTube encouraged creativity, most of the three dozen chosen videos featured questioners simply looking into a camera. At times, the format and occasionally offbeat videos seemed to overshadow the candidates, and leave them struggling on occasion to answer unexpected queries.
The Washington Post said it:
featured sharp and sometimes witty video questions and often equally sharp exchanges among the candidates on issues ranging from Iraq and health care to whether any of them can fix a broken political system…[It] underscored the arrival of the Internet as a force in politics. The citizen-interrogators generated the most diverse set of questions in any of the presidential debates to date and challenged the candidates to break out of the rhetoric of their campaign speeches and to address sometimes uncomfortable issues, such as race, gender, religion and their own vulnerabilities.
Writing later, Dan Balz picks up on what was perhaps the debate’s most revealing policy exchange:
Stephen Sorta of Diamond Bar, Calif., asked the candidates if they would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea during their first year as president.
“I would,” Obama said. “And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”
It was an answer that sounded good as campaign rhetoric and one designed to please the legions of Democrats who dislike the president. But it was not the kind of realpolitik answer one might expect of a seasoned chief executive.
Clinton had the benefit of answering after Obama and made the most of the opportunity to draw a contrast with her rival — without mentioning him by name.
“Well, I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year,” she said. “I will promise a very vigorous diplomatic effort because I think it is not that you promise a meeting at that high a level before you know what the intentions are. I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes.”
On that question, the advantage went to Clinton — reminiscent of the first Democratic debate in South Carolina last spring when she handled a question about how she would respond to another terrorist attack more aggressively and directly than Obama.
Ann Althouse appreciated HRC’s bright fashion sense:
She’s wearing an orange jacket textured with curving, scalloped lines. It reminds me of a chair we had in the 1950s, but it actually looks rather pretty and definitely sets her apart from the guys who absolutely are not free to wear orange suits. She speaks in a solid, stern voice that has nothing to do with wavy orange patterns. She speaks in a straight, navy blue line.
She also draws a conclusion from the different responses to the “would you meet with Kim Jong Il et al” question:
this is the precise point in the debate where I conclude — I’d been toying with the conclusion — that Clinton is the superior candidate. [my unscientific surveys reveal that Althouse is one of many coming to this determination.]
I thought Rev. Reggie Longcrier’s question led to the most interesting personal insights. John Edwards really seemed to think this one through:
I finished Bernstein’s Woman in Charge on the train tonight. Alas, I uncovered more mistakes and odd statements to add to the list I put together last week.
A footnote on page 382 says that HRC “would use [the phrase 'the politics of personal destruction'] effectively, too, in her presidential campaign.” The book hit stores within the last month– how much of her campaign could he have witnessed before putting the book to bed?
On pages 469- 470, Bernstein refers to old Clinton family friend James Riady and his “objectives,” which included “recognition of North Vietnam.”
On page 530, Bernstein writes that the Democrats picked up five seats in the 1998 elections, “shrinking the Republican majority from 223 to 211.” A loss of five seats from the 105th Congress left the GOP with 218, not 211, seats.
Alicia Shepard takes a look at the Woodstein legacy on its 35th anniversary: “The drama that concluded with the early departure of the nation’s 37th president included a few other key characters as well.”
In a Sunday Times Magazine story , Matt Bai looks at the internet’s potential for changing money in politics. Unfortunately, Bai buys into Phil de Vellis’ myth that he is an amateur producer:
[T]he people who make ads for a living now admit that they are losing their mystical hold over the electorate…In this new world, the most effective political ad makers may be amateurs like Phil de Vellis, the Internet consultant who recently took it upon himself to make a powerful pro-Obama ad, based on a famous Apple spot from 1984, that portrayed Hillary Clinton as Big Brother. The ad, which de Vellis made on his Mac in a single afternoon, ricocheted around the Web, reaching millions of Democratic voters. It cost nothing. “This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last,” de Vellis later wrote on the Huffington Post blog. “The game has changed.”
De Vellis may have made the Big Hillary video on his own Mac on his own time, but a man who makes (or made) his living by crafting online strategies for political candidates is hardly the paragon of the empowered citizen producer. Likewise, the touchstone Macaca moment was crafted and nurtured not by a regular Joe, but by a Webb campaign staffer.
Bai’s concludes:
the emerging high-tech marketplace may yet bring us closer to what decades of federal campaign regulations have failed to achieve: a day when candidates can afford to spend less time obsessing over the constant need for cash and more time concerned with the currency of their ideas.
Ann Althouse is not too optimistic about the role of those ideas in the future:
What sorts of ideas will help you win under the new conditions? Blogs and YouTube chew over all sorts of cute little nuggets — odd quotations, gaffes, images. It’s likely to be just as shallow as old-style advertising, but wild and strange and completely uncontrollable.
Today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine profile details Obama chief strategist David Axelrod and his 1984 decision to abandon journalism for campaign consulting. In the last couple of weeks, another ex-journalist has joined the Obama camp. Official campaign blogger Sam Graham-Felsen was until recently a free-lance writer for the Nation– his Nation bio states that “since March 2007, he has been on leave” while working on the campaign; his first post for Obama was March 19. (On Saturday I mentioned the back-and-forth between Obama critic Paul Simon Democrat and Graham-Felsen.)
Graham-Felsen the journalist was clearly enthused by Obama. He wrote several articles about, and in favor of, the young Senator.
Eyebrows will always rise when a journalist accepts a job within an industry or with a company that she has been covering. Such professional transitions are surely common and acceptable occurrences, provided that the relevant parties make it clear that the two roles do not overlap.
On the surface, certainly, there is no reason to doubt the motives of Graham-Felsen, the campaign or the Nation. The most likely scenario: a web-savvy and talented young writer with an expressed appreciation for Obama’s appeal came to the attention of the campaign and a job offer ensued and Graham-Felsen stopped reporting on Obama and the campaign. Nevertheless, a brief review of Graham-Felsen’a Obama journalism:
In February, he penned Obama’s Impressive Youth Roots, a paean to the campaign’s web appeal and a look at a rally at George Mason University. (The campaign itself linked to the article.)
Obama’s youth following is more than a bunch of kids who clicked a button. Before the rally, Obama’s campaign already knew they had a massive presence on Facebook. Students for Barack Obama (SFBO) had around 60,000 members, and even more astonishingly, a 26-year-old named Farouk Olu Aregbe had assembled more than 200,000 in his Facebook group “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)” in little more than two weeks (the group now has more than 272,000 members). According to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, the growth was “unprecedented.” As a point of comparison, the Facebook group for Hillary Clinton has fewer than 4,000 students and the largest group for John Edwards has half that…[Obama’s] campaign has allowed a youth-led grassroots following to sprout organically without interference. … by attending the George Mason rally, Obama signaled to students that he respects their ability and power as organizers, and acknowledges what a grassroots youth movement could bring to his campaign. It’s clear that Obama will have to run a nontraditional, decentralized campaign if he wants to see this kind of energy flourish. He’ll have to communicate consistently and directly with students, in their medium….If Obama can show his young followers that he’s still that grassroots organizer–a rock star perhaps, but one who listens to, trusts and empowers his base to come on stage and rock with him–it’s going to be one hell of a show.
Obama already has a massive and growing youth following, and this announcement can only add to Generation Y’s Obamamania. Young people are pining for something new–and now they’ve got more than a guy who gives great speeches about the future. Now they’ve got a guy who’s offering a concrete policy change on the most pressing issue of their generation.
Obama’s got the youth vote locked up, and with his new announcement, he may have the Netroots and the grassroots anti-war left behind him as well. These are three extremely powerful bases of support– folks who won’t simply vote, but also volunteer, blog, organize, and raise money.
In 2006, he praised Obama’s “electric” address to a Save Darfur rally and, in October, reported on youth enthusiasm for the Senator in Bonkers for Obama:
if Obama decides to run, he will have a tremendous base in young people. Obama would likely draw an unprecedented number of new young voters to the polls, and he would amass a huge volunteer core (one that would make the Deaniacs look like the Teeniacs).
As far as I can tell, he is by far the political superstar of the moment—and perhaps ever—for Generation Y.
In a comment to that post, he added,
In interviews I’ve done with young people, casual discussions, based on my reactions to young people listening to Obama speak, I’ve never seen anything like the amount of excitement he’s produced.
There is no indication that Graham-Felsen reported anything but the truth as he saw it, hyperbolic though it may be at times. Nevertheless, readers deserve a statement from the Nation assuring us that Graham-Felsen had no relationship or understanding with the campaign whilst covering the 08 elections.
(I searched for, but failed to find, an email address for Graham-Felsen on the Obama and Nation web sites, or anywhere else.)
Obama hasn’t approved any friend requests, or “support this candidate” requests, for almost a month. I’ve been waiting patiently, since you can’t give gifts to people who aren’t your friends
[Clinton’s] once-sizable margin over the freshman senator from Illinois was sliced in half during the past month largely because of Obama’s growing support among black voters.
