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So that happened. The hostages have been released, Leeland Eisenberg has been arrested, and the citizens of Rochester, N.H., are now safe. That means we can finally get to the postgame analysis of who wins and who loses. (Too soon? Too late!)
Winners:
Hillary Clinton. Hands down. The most obvious reason: attention. She steals headlines from today’s DNC event (not to mention all the other campaigns), cancels her speech there, and gets enough traction to carry over into the Sunday talk shows. The one downside is the timing: Friday afternoon is a notorious black hole for news. Also, remember how Giuliani played up his close call with the mob? Well, it looks like bad guys are going after Hillary, too. What now, Rudy? Lastly, there’s the sympathy factor. Or, as a friend insensitively put it: “Hillary really is sticking with this victim theme, huh?” People will now send cards, flowers, chocolates … and votes. That said, crazy man Leeland Eisenberg could have picked a better location. Hillary already has a solid lead in New Hampshire, whereas her numbers in Iowa have been slipping.
New Hampshire. OK, so maybe nut-job bombers aren’t great press for the Granite State. But with every national news organization sending their camera crews over from Des Moines, New Hampshire steals a little bit of Iowa’s pre-caucus thunder. Plus, voters are reminded how seriously the people of New Hampshire take politics.
Local journalists. By the end of this weekend, everyone will know what WMUR is.
Rudy Giuliani. Suddenly the mayor’s record on gun control doesn’t seem so offensive. Look for other Republicans to focus on keeping weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people—which, of course, doesn’t include you.
Bill Richardson: The first Clinton “opponent” to release a statement on the situation: “Our thoughts and prayers are with the hostages, their families, Senator Clinton, and her campaign staff.” Is this guy a VP lock or what?
Losers:
Commentators. All that language about “attacks,” “taking shots,” and “explosive statements” is temporarily off limits. Sorry, guys.
Republicans. Especially if the human bomb turns out to be one.
Second Amendment advocates. Eisenberg wasn't carrying a gun, but he might as well have been. Has “Live Free or Die” ever sounded like a worse motto?
The Secret Service: Agents' jobs just got a lot more stressful, as campaigns are likely to be on extra high alert over the coming weeks.
Mike Huckabee. The insurgent candidate was also in New Hampshire today. The press corps has most likely abandoned him. If only he had brought Chuck Norris.
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Tomorrow night the Democrats are having a debate in Iowa. Who knew? See, you probably can’t watch it, even if you wanted to, since the event is airing on HD Net, the Mark Cuban-owned channel that broadcasts only to HD-ready sets. Seven million people get HD Net as part of their cable packages.
The forum itself, a caucus-season tradition called the Iowa Black and Brown Forum, sounds pretty engaging. It asks candidates to focus on issues that matter to African-American and Latino communities. It will be simulcast in Iowa for almost everybody who subscribes to MediaCom cable—about 450,000 people.
Of the 7.5 million who could watch, only a few hundred thousand, at most, will. The CNN/YouTube debate that took place earlier this week pulled in 4.4 million people—the most ever for any primary debate. CNN is in nearly a hundred million households.
But these days, a debate’s reach hardly matters. As long as someone can get the eight candidates together and turn on a camera, you can be sure that anything newsworthy will finds its way to YouTube. And from there, into the political press. And from there, to the talk radio shows. Just think back to how Hillary’s cackle infiltrated the mainstream press a few months ago. That first happened on the Sunday talk shows, which the average American doesn’t tune in to.
And really, who wants to hang out with Dennis Kucinich on a Saturday night, anyway? Mike Gravel on the other hand…
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"The Democrats, for once, have had a fairly quiet week ..."
-- Marc Ambinder, Nov. 30, 9:42 a.m.
And then this. Local networks are reporting that a man strapped with a bomb took campaign workers hostage at the Clinton campaign's Rochester, N.H. offices. Two hostages have been released, but there's still a standoff between the man, who's apparently a well-known local wacko, and the police. The man reportedly demanded to speak with Hillary. The Obama and Edwards campaigns have evacuated their offices. You can watch a streaming local broadcast here.
The Clinton campaign released this statement: "There is an ongoing situation in our Rochester, NH office.
We are in close contact with state and local authorities and are acting
at their direction. We will release
additional details as appropriate."
UPDATE 5:44 p.m.: Still no word on whether or not there are still hostages inside. Local police captain Paul Callaghan's press conference yielded no new information. The hostage taker is being identified as Leeland Eisenberg, a local kook "well-known to police." (Initial reports said he was Troy Stanley.) Regular updates here and here.
UPDATE 6:17 p.m.: The standoff seems to be over. Just watched Leeland Eisenberg surrounded by a SWAT team, arrested, and pushed into a police vehicle. He came out of the building right after a last hostage, a young man, was released.
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Since when did Chuck Norris go from badass killing machine to Sarah Lawrence visual arts major? Behold:
UPDATE 1:47 p.m., Dec. 26: Embedded image removed.
(Source: Screenshot of an AP photo from the Washington Post's The Trail.)
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Team Hillary hosted a conference call this morning to discuss a letter they wrote to Barack Obama’s campaign (available here). The letter asks Obama to take down a political ad claiming that his health-care plan would “cover everybody.” In fact, they say, his plan would leave about 15 million people uninsured.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton blasted back that “[t]he Clinton campaign didn't say a word when this ad was released a month ago, and the only thing that's changed since then is the poll numbers. The truth is, Barack Obama would offer health coverage to every single American who can't afford it.”
But the real problem, as Paul Krugman explains in his brickbat of a column today, isn’t lower income Americans. It’s that young, well-off Americans who are generally healthy and therefore don’t have to buy insurance will drive up costs for everyone else. Hillary and John Edwards both have ways of enforcing their mandates—requiring proof of enrollment on tax forms, say, or anytime someone seeks medical treatment. Obama’s plan, on the other hand, would allow them to remain outside the system.
The upside to this kerfuffle is that—are you sitting down?—it’s substantive. In the Obama campaign’s response, they call Hillary’s move an “attack.” Yes, there’s clearly a political purpose to demanding that the ad come down. But this dispute isn’t about Obama’s patriotism, or his religion, or the “politics of hope”—it’s about policy, and that’s a nice change from previous scuffles. For Obama’s team to dismiss it as a cheap shot ignores the fact that they goofed.
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Slate's Garin K. Hovannisian sends in this dispatch from New York:
“Is Jesus in the house?” “Yes!” roared the capacity crowd at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. “Louder!” yelled the founder of the Harlem Gospel Chorus. “Is Jesus in the house?” Yes, yes, yes, Jesus was certainly in the house. But at 8:06 p.m., more than an hour after the scheduled start time, Barack Obama was nowhere to be found.
A revolt had nearly erupted earlier, when Obama’s organizers had announced to the press that “America’s next president” wouldn’t be arriving until 9. The members of the media lined the back entrance of the Apollo and breathed steam and fury into each other’s faces; some had been standing in the New York cold for hours.
As packs of Sean John-sporting VIPs were escorted through the doorway, the Metro reporter yelled, “I’ve been to 60 damned Obama events. This is the worst by far.” Asian TV decided to shift its angle to Obama’s organizational incompetence. A South African journalist texted her editor begging a release.
Those of us who eventually made it inside were treated to “Amazing Grace,” “Happy Days,” and the full repertoire of gospel hits. A reverend came on stage to “thank God for Barack Obama—a messenger of peace in a world of strife; a messenger of strife in a world of false peace." We then heard a violinist, then some grass-roots organizers, then—since Obama still hadn’t arrived—the violinist again.
After a state senator spoke, the moment to which the entire night had been logically crawling finally arrived: no, not Obama. Cornel West. The Princeton professor/MC/Matrix star rapped and flapped his arms and said that Obama “is his mama’s and daddy’s son, and we must accept him for it.” West then introduced Chris Rock, who called Obama “a smart guy,” cracked a few jokes, and brought the Apollo to its feet.
By the time Barack Obama stepped on stage to blame Katrina on compassionate conservatism and to brandish his fresh preacherly inflection, the show was pretty much over.
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The lead
story (as of 4:30 p.m.) on CNNPolitics.com has a headline that seems like a veiled insult at Politico.com, its
web-journalism competitor. Referring to Politico's agenda-setting
story on Giuliani's questionable expense allocations after trips to the
Hamptons, the story's headline reads, "Giuliani: Web site report a 'hit
job'"
Guys, that's pretty Web 0.0 of you. Sure the story originally appeared on a web site, but if Congress
wasn't out of town, it would have been published in Politico's print edition, as well. (Politico suspends its
hard-copy daily when Congress is in recess.) To refer to it as a "web site
report" rather than something like the "questionable expense report" or the "Hampton flap" only makes the story sound illegitimate. I understand it was probably unintentional, but it's
an interesting glimpse into CNN's psyche, nonetheless.
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Both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are out with new ads today, following up on yesterday’s debate in which the two candidates tussled like hyperactive siblings.
Rudy’s, titled “Promise,” is pretty straightforward, pitching his experience in New York lowering taxes, shrinking government, and otherwise saving the city from its liberal self. Romney’s, called “Historic Choice,” pulls back to look at the broader challenges of security, the economy, and family values. It hits all our favorite imagery: the barbed wire, the Chinese assembly line, plus Romney's trademark sleeve roll. The narration culminates with the line, “Ordinary isn’t good enough,” at which point we see a shot of … the Statue of Liberty.
The viewer's first thought: That can't possibly be a swipe at Giuliani. His second thought: How can it possibly not be? Just when political attacks were starting to get explicit—i.e., fun—Romney goes back to the coy subtlety thing. Instead of referring to his wife as "sweetheart" 80 times per speech, why doesn't he just come out and say he thinks Giuliani is a family-wrecking sleaze? Instead of slyly talking about "triangulation," why doesn't he just call Hillary a conniving you-know-what? All this euphemism is exhausting.
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The best part about Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa—and his resulting increase in speaking time during last night’s debate—is that we’re bound to hear more Huckabee-isms. No, not those cute jokes about Jesus being too smart to go into politics. I’m talking about his penchant for vivid imagery that, while hilarious, often feels slightly unsettling.
Take the time Huckabee told MSNBC that because his opponents’ levels of support didn’t match their fund-raising, they would “have to be sitting in a warm tub of water with razor blades.” He upset a few suicide prevention groups, but it never turned into a real flap. Other morbid images: “You never put the cross hairs on a dead carcass,” he said, after rivals attacked him last month. Then at the Oct. 21 GOP debate in Florida: “I am more than content to let them fight all they want tonight, shed each other's blood. …” And then last night, responding to a question about space exploration, Huckabee suggested that “maybe Hillary could be on the first rocket to Mars.”
The reason these bizarre quips fly is simple: He smiles the whole time. Yes, he may have suggested that the former first lady should be sent on a likely fatal mission to a faraway planet. But look at those dimples! He’s the class clown who gets away with wisecracks just by being so darn likeable.
Indeed, his good nature might be Huckabee’s best defense. Last night, Romney accused him of supporting tuition breaks for illegal immigrants. But even Romney had to preface the attack by admitting, “I like Mike.” The other candidates mostly left him alone, despite Huckabee’s controversial support for the Fair Tax, his unorthodox immigration stance, and ethics investigations during his time as governor of Arkansas. Laying off Huckabee is smart, at least for now: It’s not just that he’s quick with a riposte; it might also make the attacker look like a bully, or a nag, or a bore. A Huckabee line is likely to end with the audience laughing—a weapon even the best debaters have trouble combating.
Things could change if Huckabee’s supposedly notorious temper decides to make an appearance. But for now, he seems about as threatening as Pooh Bear.
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Using transcripts from CNN and the New York Times debate analyzer, I crunched some stats from last night's GOP debate.
- 3: Number of times Hillary Clinton was mentioned
- 4: Number of times Bill Clinton was mentioned
- 2: Number of times Mitt Romney mentioned health care
- 0: Number of times any other candidate mentioned health care
- 5: Number of times Rudy Giuliani said "Islamic"
- 3: Number of times any other candidate said "Islamic," "Islam," or "Muslim"
- 4: Number of times Duncan Hunter addressed Anderson Cooper as "Cooper." No other candidate followed suit.
- 2: Number of times the candidates mentioned President Bush
- 26: Number of times, according to CNN's transcript, the audience laughed
- 5: Number of times the audience laughed after watching a question from a YouTube user
- 7: Number of times the audience laughed after a Fred Thompson joke
- 4: Number of times the audience laughed after a Mike Huckabee joke
- 0: Number of times the audience laughed after Ron Paul or Duncan Hunter said something
Also, a breakdown of which candidates speak the fastest. Mitt Romney's mouth was a-flappin', while Fred Thompson, unsurprisingly, was the slowest talker.
| Talker |
Words |
Seconds |
Words/sec |
| Moderator |
2174 |
812 |
2.68 |
| YouTube Questioners |
2398 |
942 |
2.55 |
| Giuliani |
3163 |
945 |
3.35 |
| Huckabee |
1942 |
587 |
3.31 |
| Hunter |
918 |
293 |
3.13 |
| McCain |
2034 |
670 |
3.04 |
| Paul |
1288 |
431 |
2.99 |
| Romney |
3223 |
831 |
3.88 |
| Tancredo |
830 |
221 |
3.76 |
| Thompson |
1841 |
625 |
2.95 |
If you'd like, feel free to compare the words-per-second statistics to the Democrats'.
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We'll leave it to the experts to declare winners and losers. But we hope everyone can agree that 1) Huckabee came across well, despite not being really pushed, and 2) Romney took every opportunity to choke.
And judging from activity in the Romney press shop, everyone was on Red Alert. Check out this inbox, which may or may not belong to a friend from a rival publication (some lines blacked out for privacy):
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Mitt Romney finished off a dreadful debate with an awful last word. The former Massachusetts governor, supposedly a member of Red Sox Nation, said that the Red Sox waited 87 years in between championships. It was 86. This won't sit well in New Hampshire.
UPDATE 10:24 p.m.: Uhh, Chris blogged about this, too. It's like one of those classic Highlights games where there are two images, but one has six things the other doesn't. Can you spot all of the differences?
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Mitt Romney, referring to how long the Red Sox had to wait to win the World Series: "We waited 87 years ..."
Eight-six years, Mitt. It's 86. Botching a major statistic known to every resident of his supposed home state--Romney couldn't have found a worse note to end on.
UPDATE 10:19 p.m.: Ah, the perils of tag-team liveblogging.
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Mike Huckabee: “I will accept the support of anyone and everyone I can get.”
Cut to Chuck Norris sitting in the audience. Someone give these CNN directors a raise!
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Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr asks a question about gays in the military. He is gay; he was in the military. Romney's answer is painful to watch. Anderson points out that in the past, he said he looked foward to getting rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Now, he refuses to denounce it. He may have looked forward to it, but, he says, "This is not that time." When will we be ready? Well, he'd have to consult with military experts and find out.
Again, it's like his "meet with my lawyers" answer from a few months back. The boos say it all.
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Through 23 questions, the breakdown of the main characters in the questions:
White men: 15
White women: 6 (including the woman from Alabama wearing a hijab)
Black men: 1
White cartoon character: 1
No Latinos, thus far.
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... On the question of whether waterboarding is torture. Romney says he doesn't want to get into specifics as a presidential candidate. He might as well have said he's going to consult his lawyers. As Romney speaks, McCain looks like he's getting ready to water-board him right then and there. McCain's response: "I assume Romney doesn’t know what waterboarding is. ... If we’re going to get the high ground in this world, we’re not going to torture people."
Earlier, McCain looked like he was nodding off behind the podium. He appears to have woken up.
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That question from FoxBrosStudios--the one that one of the candidates scolded for exercising poor gun safety--is a low-concept offering from the award-winning team that brought you the under-the-radar hit Vigilantes. The Web-based comedy series takes place on the U.S.-Mexico border, and a cursory glimpse suggests it follows the Citizen Border Rangers, a fictional version of the Minutemen vigilantes that keep watch on the border for illegal immigrants. There's a lot of swearing (bleeped out) and a lot of jokes about the ineptitude of border security, both among vigilantes and the government.
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These questioners make Tim Russert look like Larry King. One of them asks whether Jesus would support the death penalty. Huckabee has the best answer: “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.” Cooper moves on. I like that if your joke is funny, the moderator gives you a pass. If it’s not funny, it looks like a dodge, and he presses you to answer.
Anderson doesn't ask: What would Joseph Smith do?
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Scratch that earlier quip about Rudy not having to answer the question of diverting bills to city agencies. Looks like Anderson Cooper came to play hardball. Here’s what Rudy said about the report (paraphrased):
It’s not true. I had 24 hour security. They followed me every place I went. There were threats, some have become public, some haven’t. I had nothing to do with the handling of the agencies’ records. As far as I know, the bills’ handling was perfectly appropriate.
Anderson Cooper, the reporter who made his name asking tough questions during Hurricane Katrina, doesn't follow up.
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Did both Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani just say they support corn subsidies because we could face a devastating food shortage?
Romney: “We don’t want to find ourselves in the same position with food supply as we are with energy supply.” Giuliani: “We have to have our own supply of food.”
There are plenty of arguments in defense of ethanol subsidies. As far as I know, impending famine is not one of them.
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Even Mitt Romney admits that, and the audience seems to agree.
Huck puts up a damn good first showing, answering a question about whether he gave tuition breaks to children of illegal immigrants. The money line—“We’re not going to punish a child because their parent committed a crime”—gets applause.
Mitt, seeing a looming shape in the rear view mirror, pounces: “Mike, that’s not your money. That's the taxpayer’s money.” Nice to see they put Mitt and Huck next to each other—it lets you watch the battle for Iowa in a single frame.
Also, notice how Huckabee declines to attack Romney on the illegal gardeners question. No wonder he likes Mike.
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Throughout the evening, we'll be doing spot background checks on some of the YouTube questioners' video libraries.
Emilyekins, who wants to return to the small government of the GOP's past, is a blank slate on YouTube. She is a new aunt, though, and judging by her favorite videos, she's a Ron Paul kind of gal. She's a graduate student in political science at UCLA. Google freaks me out sometimes.
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ConservativeVoiceUSA, who asked the amnesty question, is a brooding vlogger. Every video on his YouTube page has the same dimly lit background that made for the awful-looking image you saw on your TV. He's 49, a Fred Thompson supporter, and has video titles like "ILLEGAL ALIENS MURDER 12 LEGAL AMERICANS DAILY 4380 A YEAR." Something tells us he fancies Tom Tancredo, too.
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Rudy accuses Mitt Romney of employing illegal immigrants in his home, saying he not only had sanctuary cities in his state, but that Romney even lived in a "sanctuary mansion," in which he employed six illegal immigrants.
Romney: "Mr. Mayor, you know better than that."
Rudy: "You did."
Romney then asks whether he's supposd to check the papers of every foreign-sounding worker. Mitt should really work in a quip about Giuliani checking that pedophile priest's papers. ...
I also like how Mitt Romney quotes Rudy Giuliani "almost verbatim." Those Bain guys sure are precise.
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Throughout the evening, we'll be doing spot background checks on some of the YouTube questioners' video libraries.
First up, pudgenet, who sang a nice little diddy for the candidates. Pudgenet, né Chris Nandor, is a budding musician who sings Lisa Loeb in his spare time. Nandor is the man behind the scenes at Slashdot, according to his Wikipedia page. The rest of his political-themed songs are up at a snazzy-looking Web page. Insta-judgment tells me that "Osama bin Laden, You Ruined My Birthday" is worth a listen.
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So they're doing the staggered entrance thing again. John McCain is making everything awkward by trying to shake each candidate's hand as they come onstage.
Also, speaking of making things awkward: The Politico broke news earlier today that Rudy Giuliani billed obscure New York City agencies for expenses he accrued while making trips to see his then-girlfriend Judith Nathan in the Hamptons. He's probably thanking God right now that all the questions are pre-selected YouTube videos. ...
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The Democratic National Committee wants another "macaca" moment, bad. So bad, in fact, that it launched a new site today, Flipper TV, which compiles footage of the GOP front-runners on the campaign trail.
Here’s how it works, in theory: Web-savvy Democrats comb hours of raw footage, discover telling or embarrassing moments the media missed, mash them up into digestible YouTubes, and unleash them upon unsuspecting Republicans. In theory.
In execution, I see problems. First of all, the footage comes from DNC trackers—people paid to follow candidates and film their every move. If they watch an event and then upload the footage, how are they not going to spot key moments? (Not to mention the media—most of the events on the site are public.) Second, the footage is crap. Wobbly cameras, grainy sound, and, more often than not, some guy’s giant head obstructing the view. And third, who in their right mind is going to sift through hour after hour of shoddy, home video detritus in hopes of finding the gold nugget everyone else overlooked? If someone needs embarrassing shots of Mitt Romney, he’s not going to find it in a video of the Ames straw poll.
Don’t get me wrong, open sourcing raw footage is a great idea. Just look at the glorious results of Romney’s create your own ad contest. And it never hurts to make extra B-roll footage available. But if it’s gotcha moments the DNC is expecting, they’re in for disappointment. More likely, they’ll end up with a lot of Democratic supporters being forced to watch hours of Fred Thompson praising tax cuts.
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"He talks in the third person a lot. That's just the way he speaks. It can make it hard for him to connect to the listener."
-- Hillary Clinton strategist Mark Penn on Barack Obama, speaking to reporters after the Hanover, N.H., debate in September.
“Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there.”
-- Barack Obama, speaking on ABC's Nightline Monday night.
Bob Dole would be proud.
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Is Duncan Hunter even trying any more? Examples A, B, and C:
- His home page has "60 second Daily Updates" that purport to be daily podcasts of what's happening in the Hunter campaign. The date above the play button changes every day, but the content does not. The feature hasn't been updated since October.
- The "Iowa Virtual Headquarters" page has a countdown timer that says it's counting down to the Iowa caucuses. Unfortunately, it's counting down to the wrong date. The Iowa GOP is holding its caucus on Jan. 3, not Jan. 15. Unsurprisingly, New Hampshire's countdown is also incorrect.
- The "Bloggers for Hunter" page is empty. As in, there are no bloggers who support Duncan Hunter. Don't worry, it's "Coming Soon !!"
Not to be harsh, but when you can't keep track of the primary calendar, it's time to wave the white flag.
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The Republican presidential debates are starting to look like Lost, in which each character gets his own episode. First there was the Thompson debate, with all eyes on Fred. Then came the Hillary debate, in which her name was invoked more than 40 times.
So you'd think, given the recent emergence of Mike Huckabee as a front-runner in Iowa and Ron Paul as a major fund-raiser, that those two candidates might dominate tonight's discussion. But if that’s the case, CNN’s podium lineup (exclusive!) doesn’t reflect it:
Tancredo
Huckabee
Romney
Giuliani
Thompson
McCain
Paul
Hunter
Shouldn't Huckabee, the guy statistically tied for first in Iowa, get a better position than McCain, the guy polling third in New Hampshire and invisible in Iowa? Maybe it would just be too sad a statement to take McCain out of the Middle Four.
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John Edwards unveiled a new Web site today that asks voters not to vote for any candidate who takes money from lobbyists or Political Action Committees.
Sorry, let me rephrase that. Edwards unveiled a Web site today that asks voters not to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Championing his own commitment to a lobby-free lifestyle, Edwards wants to rally a million Americans around an anti-lobby pledge. The Web site is the culmination of a campaign-long initiative by Edwards to move fund-raising away from lobbying and PACs. A noble goal, certainly, but this is chiefly a political gesture, and the politics of the move aren’t that sound.
The problem is, his attacks against Clinton, who has defended the role of lobbyists in politics, continue to help Obama. On a conference call this morning, Edwards’ staff had the chance to hammer Obama, but chose not to. A reporter asked Edwards’ staffers whether the pledge’s anti-lobbyist clause meant pledgers couldn’t vote for Obama. (Obama accepted lobbyist money when he ran for Senate and while he was a state senator.) The Edwards campaign dodged the question, but the pledge implies that since Obama had atoned for his lobbyist sins, he’s in the clear.
At some point, Edwards is going to have to realize that voters he shakes loose from Hillary’s grasp aren’t all flocking to him. And with Obama’s recent PAC flap in the news, he’s passing up a golden opportunity to go after Hillary and Obama. Sure, he doesn’t want to seem overly aggressive. But as Edwards himself likes to remind us, the Democratic primary isn’t a two-person race—certainly not between him and Senator Clinton, anyway.
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Here’s a shot of a young, lawyerly Fred Thompson from his most recent ad, “Marie”:
And here’s Javier Bardem as hypnotic serial killer Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men:
Hulking frames. Rumbling bass voices. Floppy Prince Valiant 'dos. Sign this man up for the inevitable Fred Thompson biopic.
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UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: I have to retract this entire post, which was wholly inaccurate. The Edwards campaign called me to rightfully inform me that the question in the conference call was about whether Hillary Clinton's support had peaked in Iowa and the rest of the country. They then responded that the "Clinton machine is very formidable, and that's what it is." I misheard the question.
I deeply regret the error. You can find full audio of the call here.
The original post, in strikethrough, is below:
During a conference call with the Edwards campaign this
morning a reporter asked an innocuous question: Does the campaign think Edwards’
support has peaked in Iowa?
Five seconds of silence followed. Finally, an Edwards staffer piped up. “Look, the Clinton machine is very formidable,
and that’s what it is.”
Way to be confident, guys.
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One fascinating aspect of the antiquated, convoluted Iowa caucus system is that each candidate has to teach his or her own supporters how to, er, caucus. (‘Tis the season where caucus becomes a verb.) The state parties also hold training sessions, but for the most part it’s up to the candidates to make sure people know how it works.
So far, Hillary and Obama have led the charge. Hillary released a web video earlier this month called “Caucusing Is Easy,” that explains which forms to fill out and what to do once you show up to the caucus. “It’s usually over early enough to get back for your favorite TV show,” says one lady. Unless, of course, your favorite TV show is the Orange Bowl.
Obama, meanwhile, has recruited a team of 73 “Caucus Pros” to train first-time caucus-goers across the state. But given that Obama’s Iowa organization depends largely on mobilizing younger voters, it seems bizarre that the average Caucus Pro is 62 years old. (The youngest is a sprightly 41.) If it’s young bodies they want, why not have Amber Lee Ettinger run the training? Obama also has his own caucusing-made-easy site.
While John Edwards has no high-profile caucus training program, he does have two big advantages: One is the Services Employees International Union, which endorsed Edwards in Iowa last month and has 2,000 workers it can mobilize in that state on his behalf. The other is that the majority of Edwards supporters have caucused before, compared to about half of Hillary and Obama supporters, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post survey. So on the one hand, he seems to have a less developed caucus training program; but on the other, Ed-heads already know how it's done.
Republican candidates have an easier a job, since the GOP caucuses are much simpler: Show up, talk about your favorite candidate, vote, and you’re done. There’s none of the complicated group-forming and re-forming the Democrats deal with. It makes you wonder why they don't just suck in their pride and call it a primary.
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An upcoming issue of TV Guide has an amusing roundup of the 2008 presidential candidates’ favorite television shows. Nothing too surprising here: Hillary watches Grey’s Anatomy, Barack Obama likes The Wire (for the record, that’s the right answer), and John Edwards says his viewing guilty pleasure is "Fred Thompson on Law & Order."
But the collection is hardly comprehensive. We decided to make a few calls and fill in the cracks:
Mike Gravel likes the History Channel and Turner Movie Classics, according to a spokesman. Although Gravel, he says, “doesn’t watch a lot of TV.”
Ron Paul, according to spokesman Jesse Benton, “really only watches the news.”
Tom Tancredo watches “nothing in particular. He really likes the History Channel, though,” says spokesman Alan Moore.
“I’ve never seen Duncan [Hunter] watch TV,” says a volunteer who works in the California congressman’s office.
You can sort of see why TV Guide left them out.
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Barbra Streisand threw her vocal chords behind Hillary Clinton today, a not-so-surprising endorsement for the long-time Democratic activist. Streisand sang at Bill Clinton's inaugural gala and dedicated a song to 42 and Hill. Most interesting, though, is that Streisand donated $2,300 to not only Clinton, but also Barack Obama and John Edwards. (She also tossed a grand into Chris Dodd's coffer.)
Can you imagine if Oprah had donated to Hillary's campaign? Chuck Norris to Mitt Romney's? That Desperate Housewives guy to Bill Richardson's?
Meanwhile, does this mean Hillary Clinton's theme song might change from Celine Dion's "You and I" to Babs' "The Way We Were"? Probably not. Lyrics like "static pictures of the smiles we left behind; smiles we gave to one another of the way we were" would make her sound like she's running to reinstate the Clinton era--and the campaign is careful to "Stay Away" from that message. Zing!
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Spotted in an AP story about Fred Thompson's visit to a gun store in Bristol, N.H.:
"I used to have my own skeet shoot," Thompson boasted as he wandered through the gun shop and bought his children gifts. "Some of my opponents, you know, have a bad record or no records. I have a solid record. ... I'm not embarrassed to remind anybody of it." [emphasis added]
Baby's first AK-47? A flak jacket with matching booties? Not exactly, says Thompson spokesman Jeff Sadowsky: "He got Hayden some winter gloves and Sammy a T-shirt. ... I believe it was a camo T-shirt."
Still—a gun store? Surely there was some charming antique shop or Mom and Pop toy outlet just around the corner. Either way, best to save the 12-gauge for next year.
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They say the Democratic candidates’ gloves came off at the Philadelphia debate on
Oct. 30, when Obama and Edwards “piled on” Hillary. If that’s true, then the
latest flurry of belligerent e-mails suggests the gloves have now been
shredded, burned, pulverized, and blasted out of a cannon into the mighty Mississippi.
First there was this
little dust-up over Barack Obama’s childhood abroad amounts to foreign
policy experience. Then today, after the Washington
Post revealed
that Obama’s PAC has given a large chunk of its money to officials in early
states, Clinton’s camp released a list of
questions—and good ones, too—asking for more information about why Obama’s organization
gave to these officials and who knew about it.
Obama’s people responded with a line that sounds all too
Clintonesque: “Whatever happened to the confident
frontrunner who said she wouldn’t attack other Democrats just two weeks ago?” You
half expect them to accuse her of abandoning the politics of hope. Team Clinton shot back that
Obama’s “failure to deny that it committed campaign finance violations speaks
volumes.”
It’s true, the Obama camp doesn’t
quite deny that the donations are shady—it only insists that they were
disclosed (which doesn’t necessarily make them legal). Of course, Obama’s not
alone. The Post story suggests that conveniently
timed donations like these are common enough, but that the FEC doesn’t usually
crack down on the practice. But if Clinton or someone else could quietly get
the commission to intervene—now that might actually ruffle a few feathers.
If this is what the
post-Thanksgiving sprint is going to look like, they'll need to start selling Orville Redenbacher's in bulk.
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At 11 a.m. today, one of FoxNews.com's top stories was an article about a Nevada brothel owner endorsing Ron Paul. But the story wasn't written by Fox News; it was a tweaked version of an Associated Press story that hit the wires early Monday. And, to make matters even more muddled, that story was taken from a Reno Gazette-Journal piece. Something was lost in translation.
The original article was a solid piece about a strange scene at a Ron Paul event in Reno. Tucker Carlson, who was trailing Paul for a magazine piece, invited his friend Dennis Hof out to the event. Hof, who owns the Moonlite BunnyRanch brothel, emerged from a limousine with Carlson and two prostitutes. He then took a liking to Paul and decided to endorse the Republican, saying that he would "get all the Bunnies together, and we can raise him some money."
The Associated Press then adapted the story and sent it out on the wires. But the AP story that Fox News published is different than the one the AP originally ran.
Changes include:
- The headline: "Paul Endorsed by Nevada Brothel Owner" became " ‘BunnyRanch' Brothel Owner Endorses Underdog GOP Candidate Ron Paul." Note that Fox News thinks you need more detail to know who Ron Paul is. Also, they add the brothel's name in the headline--the Playboy bunny allusion makes it a bit sexier. It's common practice for news organizations to spice up AP headlines.
- The donation box: One of the best details in the AP story is Hof's plan to put a "collection box" outside the brothel's door for patrons to donate money to Paul. It's not in Fox's story.
- The kicker: In the most curious change, Fox took a sentence from the middle of the AP's article and stuck it at the end. By concluding the piece with the true statement, "Paul also is a devout Christian who opposes abortion," it makes Paul sound like a hypocrite for accepting the brothel owner's endorsement. You don't get that impression reading the AP's article, which is more about the oddity that a political candidate isn't trying to distance himself from Nevada's brothel industry.
In principle, Fox hasn't done anything wrong. News outlets edit AP content all the time, and the AP's senior managing editor told me that Fox was within its rights to make changes to the copy. He added that he doesn't think Fox's tweaks change the fundamental tone of the story.
I disagree. The emphasis on its home page and the altered kicker suggest Fox is getting in a dig at Paul, however minor it may be. But if Fox wanted to make Paul look like he was taking money from prostitutes and their patrons, why remove the detail about the donation box? I'm not asking for fairness or balance--just consistency.
One more detail that Fox inexplicably eliminated: The damning revelation that MSNBC anchor Tucker Carlson emerged from a limousine with prostitutes at a political event. Have Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes gone soft?
UPDATE Nov. 27, 11:25 a.m.: The Associated Press has video from inside the brothel.
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What is it with Massachusetts governors and convicted killers?
Back in 1988, a hapless Michael Dukakis buckled after George H.W. Bush managed to turn a murder committed Willie Horton, a convict released under a Massachusetts furlough program, into a major campaign issue. (See Bush's famous political ad here.) Now Mitt Romney is trying to beat a similar rap.
Romney’s opponents pounced last week after Daniel Tavares, a murderer released from prison in Massachusetts after serving 16 years for killing his mother with a carving knife, was arrested again for killing a couple in Washington. Now why, you may ask, is this Romney’s fault? It turns out that Kathe Tuttman, the superior court judge who approved Tavares’ release, was appointed by Gov. Romney in 2006.
Romney quickly called for Tuttman’s resignation, but not so quickly that Rudy Giuliani couldn’t beat him over the head with it. On Saturday, Giuliani said that “it's not an isolated situation” and that “the reality is, he did not have a record of reducing violent crime" as governor. Romney’s camp fired back: “[T]he fact is under Governor Romney violent crime in Massachusetts decreased and he had a strong record of appointing law and order judges.”
Tavares isn’t likely to cripple Romney the way Horton did Dukakis. For starters, Dukakis continued to defend the furlough program under which Horton had been released. Romney, in contrast, came right out and denounced the judge’s decision. Also, the Horton flap drew attention to the death penalty, a major campaign issue that hurt Dukakis even more when he gave a seemingly emotionless response to a question about what he would do if his wife were raped and murdered. This latest tiff may well carry over into Wednesday’s debate, but I don’t see it dogging Romney into January.
For Giuliani, of course, this stuff is catnip. In one clean motion, he gets to attack Romney’s judgment, remind conservative voters that Romney was governor of Massachusetts, and bring up his own crime-fighting record for the 742,118th time. He's on fire!
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Now this is how you rally voters. From today's New York Times piece on Obama organizer Rory Steele:
On the Fourth of July, [Steele] vowed to have himself tattooed with the
initials of whoever turned in the most signed supporter cards. Delane
Adams, a campaign organizer from Chicago, won by submitting 33.
So
on Mr. Steele’s right bicep, just below a Marine Corps tattoo, is
another work of art: “DA 33 July 4.” (“I thought it would have been
weird to tattoo “Obama” on my arm,” he said, “but now I have some
dude’s initials on me.”)
Imagine the fundraising possibilities. Who wouldn't pay for some real estate on Hillary's ankle?
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You know it’s 2007 when a candidate, in this case Mike Huckabee, holds a bifurcated conference call, first with reporters, then with bloggers. I listened in on both calls to see what the differences were. The reporters’ questions were much more concise and polished. But the bloggers’ questions were more substantive by a long shot. Here’s a sampling of the reporters’ questions, paraphrased:
How much flak are you getting for endorsements by Chuck Norris and Ric Flair?
Is the drop in violence in Iraq making it a less important campaign issue?
What’s it like facing the Clinton political machine?
Why aren’t you spending more time in Iowa right now?
What do you think of Romney and Giuliani going after each other?
What’s going to be your strategy coming out of Iowa?
Compare that with questions raised by the (largely pro-Huckabee) bloggers:
Can you speak about the Arkansas home-schooling bill that came up when you were governor?
How is the Fair Tax likely to affect tourism in Michigan?
What are your thoughts on a parental rights amendment?
How do you plan to make education a bigger issue on the trail?
Can you respond to claims that your economic policies are in line with populist traditions of the Democratic party?
What would you say to immigrants turned off by all the anti-immigration talk among Republicans?
Everyone knows the media is shallow, horse-race obsessed, blah blah blah ... but in many cases, bloggers really are the ones driving discussion of the issues.
That said, the reporters’ call did yield this yarn—classic Huckabee—about why Mitt Romney isn’t polling better despite spending so much money in Iowa (largely paraphrased):
There’s an old story about a guy who opened a dog food company. He spent a lot of money. He got best food nutritionist, the best marketing people, the best sales force. He was going to launch the biggest, best food company around, and it was going to take the market away.
But then when it launched, sales were flat. He called all his people together and asked them: Who has the best formula? “We do, sir.” Who has the most ingenious marketing plan? “We do, sir.” Who has the best distribution? “We do, sir.” Who has the best labeling? “We do, sir.” Then how come we’re not doing better in the market? “Because the dogs won’t eat the darned stuff, sir.”
Forget ponderous campaign books. Huckabee should do fables.
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It's fascinating to see candidates dance the line between virtue and authenticity. They're good people, the pitch goes—but they're also people. Rudy Giuliani constantly reiterates that he is but human: "I'm not a perfect candidate," he told an audience in September. "I'm not a perfect person—you may have heard. But we need a candidate who can win in all 50 states." Barack Obama also tried to downplay expectations: "I don't pretend to be a perfect man," he said a few weeks ago. Mitt Romney has even been called "too perfect"—a charge he rebutted by debating with slightly mussed-up hair.
So Obama's decision to come out and talk about his past drug use—something he alluded to in his book, Dreams From My Father, but hasn't discussed on the campaign trail until now—shouldn't surprise anyone. "You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about," he told a group of high schoolers in Manchester. "You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs. There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realizing, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time.' "
One reason Obama can admit to doing drugs without paying a political price (so far, at least) is that he has staked his campaign on candor. He's the guy who tells car makers to cut emissions. The guy who promises Wall Street execs he'll raise their hikes. He leads the field of Democratic front-runners in "honesty and directness." But it's also possible because of who the rest of the candidates are. Is Obama's drug use really more offensive than Rudy Giuliani's serial bigamy? More than his willingness to defend corrupt officials? More than Bill Clinton's philandering? It's illegal, certainly, but most voters can probably relate to it more closely than they can to other candidates' (and their spouses') vices. And among young voters, to whom Obama is making particularly strong overtures, it's unlikely anyone will hold his past against him.
We've come a long way since "I didn't inhale."
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Barack Obama announced a new piece of his education plan yesterday that essentially makes community college free for most Americans. But he’s not the only presidential candidate proposing on-the-house schooling. Both Chris Dodd and John Edwards unveiled their own plans months ago. So, just in case you don’t feel like wading through post-Spellings education policy, here’s a quick primer on what each plan offers:
Obama (PDF): The centerpiece of his plan is a tax credit that pumps $4,000 into community college students’ wallets. The campaign claims that the credit, combined with financial aid, will make two-year colleges free for lower- and middle-class Americans. The policy would apply to all U.S. citizens in all states. The benefits do not extend to four-year students.
Dodd: He’s asking the states to meet him halfway to provide community college students a free ride. If he’s president, he’ll match any funding that a state assigns to helping students pay, which means if a state pays half of the tuition, so will he. But that raises some fairness issues. For example, if you’re living in Dodd’s native Connecticut and Gov. Jodi Rell doesn’t offer any funding—but Eliot Spitzer does next door in New York—you’re out of luck unless you move. Dodd’s plan doesn’t have similar benefits for four-year students, either.
Edwards: Borrowing from an initiative that he says worked well in North Carolina while he was one of the state’s senators, John Edwards wants to offer a free year of tuition, fees, and books for students enrolled in public colleges and universities, as long as they’re working 10 hours a week. Not too shabby for out-of-state students at a place like University of Michigan, where the price tag is north of 30 grand. Edwards’ plan wouldn’t offer that same $30,000 to students enrolled at a community college. They’ll receive funding for their tuition amounts, which averages $2,300. Private-university students are left out of Edwards’ plan.
Obama's plan is the surest thing for high-school grads thinking of going to a community college. While Dodd’s quasifederalist solution helps alleviate the costs on the federal government, it could create a nasty disparity as community colleges try to fix the socioeconomic divide. Edwards’ plan, meanwhile, is flawed by the difference in subsidy amounts. Obama’s is the fairest of them all.
Free education sounds great. But shouldn’t we be worried about the capacity of community colleges to handle added stress on their enrollments? Nearly 50 percent of America’s college students are enrolled in community colleges, and the schools continue to receive more and more students, thanks to higher costs at 4-year universities.
If everybody can go to school for free, there is a chance that such a large influx of students will decrease the quality of the education at these schools. That means the colleges will need more professors, more facilities, and more funding. Obama’s plan makes overtures to that effect, as may the other candidates’ once further details are released. Reformers, consider yourselves on notice.
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"Parsing" is an occasional series in which we dissect the candidates' words down to the nitpickiest detail. First up, Hillary's remarks today on Barack Obama's foreign-policy experience:
Hillary Clinton knows how to craft an insult. On the same day that she releases an ad deploring the "Republican Attack Machine," she goes after Barack Obama's claim that living overseas as a child gave him a unique understanding of foreign policy. Quoth Hillary: "Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face. I think we need a president with more experience than that. ... I don't think this is the time for on the job training on our economy or on foreign policy."
Let's pick this apart, shall we?
Wording: "Now voters will judge ..." Effect: Reassures the audience that it's not Hillary doing the judging. It's the voters themselves. She's not attacking anyone; she's merely pointing out a set of facts that others can interpret as they wish.
Wording: "... living in a foreign country ..." Effect: Reminds listeners that Obama was not born and raised an American. Does that make him Muslim?
Wording: " ... at the age of 10 ..." Effect: Reminds you that Obama is still relatively young. Ties in with portrait of Obama as "naive" and "inexperienced." From Hillary's perspective, he might as well still be 10.
Wording: "... big, complex international challenges ..." Effect: Juxtaposed with "age of 10," suggests that Obama is a child in above his head. Doesn't go into detail about what those challenges are. You wouldn't understand, and neither would Obama.
Wording: "... on the job training ..." Effect: A favorite Hillary phrase. Similar to an attack Mitt Romney leveled at Hillary when he called her an "intern." Leverages Clinton's experience in the White House to paint Obama as a newbie.
Translation: Barack Obama is a stripling from another country who can barely dress himself, let along negotiate complex nuclear disarmament pacts. If he were president, they'd need to hire an official White House babysitter. Plus, he'd be so busy reading the Constitution for the first time (after having it translated), he wouldn't know how to protect it.
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The celebrity endorsements—they just don't stop. Today, former WWF (now WWE) champion "Nature Boy" Ric Flair endorsed Mike Huckabee, offering these thoughts: "His authentic conservative qualifications and level of executive leadership experience are unmatched by his opponents. And like I always say, to be the man, you've got to beat the man and Mike Huckabee is the man. Whoooooooo!" Between Norris' roundhouse kick and Flair's shin-breaker/Figure Four leglock combo, Huckabee's opponents might as well tap out now.
In other celebrity endorsement news: Hustler CEO and First Amendment advocate Larry Flynt held a fund-raiser for Dennis Kucinich at his company's Los Angeles headquarters on Friday. "I support Dennis Kucinich because not only have I been a friend of his for 40 years, but I believe he offers an essential, viable and exciting option to the candidates that are more popular at the moment," Flynt told the adult site XBiz.com.
Kucinich spokeman Andy Juniewicz was cagey when asked about Flynt’s involvement in the campaign. “Larry Flynt and Dennis have been friends for more than 30 years, and he has contributed to campaigns in the past,” he told me, adding: “He was one of the key organizers in the most recent fund-raiser, one of a list of hosts” that included Woody Harrelson, Ed Norton, Sean and Robin Wright Penn, and others. Juniewicz pointed out that Flynt gives lots of money to lots of Democrats, including a $1,000 donation to Hillary Clinton in 2005. (Clinton rejected the money.)
So, I asked, does this mean Larry Flynt will be taking on a larger role in the campaign, a la Chuck Norris? “It was an event,” Juniewicz said. So he won’t be part of the campaign and appearing at other events from here on out? “You are correct.”
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Barack Obama's campaign has leaked a new television spot that is set to air in South Carolina, according to Ben Smith. Listen closely, and you'll hear the same background music from his black radio ad in S.C. earlier this month.
Is Obama's campaign hinting that the muzak union is backing him?
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One problem with always talking like you're in a rocking chair is that you tend to mumble, or trail off at the end of sentences. Fred Thompson has a tendency to do this. But sometimes it's not his fault. Just watch his latest ad and the short postscript tacked on at the end. Here's what he sounds like:
Thanks for watching my message. You can make sure that a lot of other folks see it, too, by making a contribution to my campaign. I’d sure apreshumoshmmhm.
You know what they say about a crumbling campaign: It always starts with the sound technicians.
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With many of the big-name donors tapped out, campaigns have turned to the Internet to try and wrangle up new funding in the fourth quarter. And what's a fund-raising campaign without a few gimmicks? A roundup of some recent offerings:
John Edwards: If your mother's stuffing recipe isn't good enough, then try the Edwards family's. Taking a page out of Ann Romney's book, the Edwards campaign offers recipes as a reward for making a donation to the campaign. Dishes include: macaroni and cheese casserole and sweet potatoes with apples. Unclear if milquetoast is on the menu.
Mike Huckabee: Million-Dollar Homepage, meet Mike Huckabee. Huckabee launched his "Discover Huckabee" campaign on Nov. 5 to try to boost his fund-raising numbers this month. The more money Huckabee supporters give, the more tiles are revealed to show a photo collage of Huckabee's life. Along with learning more about Huck's life, supporters are treated to little tchotchkes like Huckabee buddy icons, blogger badges, and videos. No word on whether a digital Chuck Norris bobblehead doll will be the grand prize.
Barack Obama: Obama's campaign wants its supporters to put Obama back on the trail in Iowa rather than have to trot around meeting with funders all over the country. The fundraising drive is simple: Raise 850 grand in a week, and they'll cancel a terrestrial fund-raisier so Obama can spend the day in Iowa. For some context: Mike Huckabee wants to raise about $2 million in a month, while Obama wants $850,000 in a week.
Mitt Romney: Mitt Romney hopes you're willing to sell your junk for his benefit. The campaign has partnered with auctionPAL, an eBay knockoff, to offer "Mitt Market," which is basically a forum for Romney supporters to clear out their garages. auctionPAL sells your items for you on eBay and takes a cut of the earnings. Then you can elect to send the rest of the proceeds toward the Romney campaign, which will be happy to profit off of that eight-track player your spouse made you get rid of.
Have ideas of what kind of fundraising drives the gimmick-less candidates should be holding? Visit our suggestion box.
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The Obama-Clinton Enemy at the Gates-style sniper showdown escalates today, as Barack Obama unveils "Fact Check," a site dedicated to rebutting attacks and setting his record straight. It's similar to Hillary's "Fact Hub," which she unveiled earlier this month, only Obama's has a special section dedicated to refuting "Rumors & Smears." (Examples: "Obama Is Not And Has Never Been a Muslim;" "Obama Is a Patriot Who Loves His Flag and His Country.") Whereas campaigns used to trade vollies in the form of obviously biased press releases, now they can do the same thing behind a thin veil of purported objectivity!
On the bright side, the two sites provide front row seats to the daily propaganda war. Check out a few of the current flaps playing out:
- On Social Security: Hillary blasts Obama for shifting his stance. Obama upbraids Hillary for contradicting her husband.
- On NAFTA: Hillary tweaks Obama for misquoting her. Obama clarifies his record of opposing the free trade deal.
- On personal records: Hillary bombs Obama for keeping his papers under wraps. Obama defends his commitment to transparency.
- On Health Care: Hillary slams Obama for claiming that his plan insures everyone. ... Obama has yet to respond. Get on it!
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I've seen parts of Edwards' latest stump speech a few times now--first in this ad, then at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Las Vegas last Thursday, then again at Saturday's environmental forum hosted by Grist. And every time, he repeats the same line about how he and his wife decided, "in the quiet of a hospital room," to continue his campaign. The line goes by quickly, but it's about as subtle as a Mack truck. When you hear it once, it's moving. When you hear it three or four times, it sounds mawkish. But more importantly, it resurrects the debate--dormant for several months--over whether the former senator uses his wife's cancer as a political tool.
When Elizabeth appeared in an ad describing her husband as someone who can "stare the worst in the face and not blink," the campaign downplayed suggestions that she was talking about her own illness, as if Edwards would never use that experience for emotional leverage. Of course, a candidate should be able to discuss personal struggles. One could even argue that a painful experience like his wife's cancer does, in some ways, qualify him for office. But if there's been any doubt that Edwards regularly and deliberately uses that struggle to elicit sympathy, let this put it to rest.
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A thought about the 9 p.m. start time for the general election debates come September and October 2008: Isn't that a bit late? Not that many elementary school kids want to watch the debate, but shouldn't parents at least have the option to let their kids learn about democracy without sacrificing sleep? I'm also concerned that the late start foreshadows an especially nasty general election because part of the debate falls outside of Safe Harbor.
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When we wrote about Chuck Norris fundraising for Mike Huckabee last week, we didn't realize that was only the first glimmer of a major Norris-themed media blitz. Huckabee has now unleashed a new TV ad in which the candidate and actor-turned-pundit take turns stating "facts" about the other. Norris tells us that Huckabee will "protect our Second Amendment rights." Huckabee informs us that "there's no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard--only another fist." The $60,000 ad buy starts airing on Iowa television today.
The spot has already drawn flak from unlikely sourpuss Fred Thompson, whose campaign tells Politico that "Mike Huckabee has confused celebrity endorsement with serious policy." Because Fred Thompson would never, ever favor entertainment over substance.
But my question is, will people in Iowa get this? Unless he's trying to target college kids who can recite "Chuck Norris facts" like poetry, it's unclear to me why he would base his first Hawkeye State TV campaign on an outdated Internet meme that might not have trickled up to most caucus-goers. Sixty-four percent of Iowa caucus-goers in 2004 were older than 55. Chances are they don't know that "Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer--too bad he never cries," let alone find that concept funny. So Huckabee will have to hope that the ad is amusing on its own, or that Iowa voters are Web-savvy enough to get the reference. Because otherwise, it's just a mildly confusing spot with that guy from Top Dog.
And in the meantime, can someone please start LOLcandidates?
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While attending the final Nextel Cup race in Florida yesterday, Rudy Giuliani was asked to comment on the news that his beloved Yankees were close to re-signing Alex Rodriguez: "‘I'm glad to see as an American League fan, as a Yankees fan, we're keeping him in the American League, we're keeping him on the Yankees,' he said."
As the Washington Post pointed out, Giuliani made sure to say that he was an American League fan before he was a Yankees fan—an allusion to his heretical claim in October that he would be rooting for the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. At the time, commentators chalked up his pro-AL stance to political pandering. (He said it in New Hampshire, after all.) Giuliani, it seemed, thought that voters turn out for candidates who echo their sporting allegiances.
But if that's the case, Giuliani should quit talking about the AL and stick to hyping his newfound NASCAR passion. For one thing, in early Southern primary states like South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee, the National League reigns supreme. One look at this map of baseball territories suggests Giuliani risks alienating a whole lot of Braves, Cardinals, Astros fans.
He would be wise to emphasize NASCAR while he's below the Mason-Dixon. Remember, "NASCAR voters" are a coveted demographic in this election for both Republicans and Democrats. Another reason Giuliani should stick with NASCAR: The mainstream press usually doesn't know enough about NASCAR rivalries to make Giuliani choose between Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing. And come to think of it, Jeff Gordon did pump $2,300 into Giuliani's campaign. Ah, but George Steinbrenner pitched in $4,600. Damn Yanks.
(Image via the strange maps blog.)
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The weekend’s big item—the skirmish fueled by Robert Novak’s column claiming that “agents” of the Clinton campaign have unspecified dirt on Obama—has inspired a few different theories. TNR’s Noam Schieber thinks the rumor is “a little too convenient” for the Clinton campaign to deny any knowledge, especially now that they’re “trying to take credit for not disseminating” the rumor. An admittedly paranoid Andrew Sullivan suspects this flap may be a “dummy run” for the Clinton campaign to test the media waters in case a Bill story eventually leaks out.
But don't both candidates look bad here? Sure, Obama gets a chance to show off his tough new rapid-response policy. And yes, Clinton benefits from not being the first to deal with vague allegations. But the cons for both dwarf the pros. Obama now faces insinuations that, like the Muslim thing, the pin thing, and the flag thing, are likely to persist throughout the primaries. Hillary gets equally muddy by issuing the “Who, me?” response. (In Nevada on Saturday, Clinton spokesman Jay Carson laughed about it with reporters: "So you have no secret info about Barack Obama?" "No." "Why not?" "This is ridiculous.") The smearing is more likely to drag both campaigns down than leave one standing. Novak supposedly has solid sources in Hillaryland, but if there’s a logical perpetrator, or at least one acting in his or her own interest, it’s someone from neither camp.
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LAS VEGAS, Nov. 17—The Democratic presidential candidates have just passed through town, and Anthony, perched behind a formidable stack of chips in the Excalibur Casino, couldn't care less. “In here, there's no Democrats and Republicans,” he says. “Only blacks, reds, whites, Benjamins and Jeffersons.” It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and Anthony is rocking a black scoop-neck t-shirt and baggy black pinstripes, and by "Jefferson," he means a two-dollar bill or a nickel. I don't ask.
As you might expect in a town that features mock pirate battles, 9-pound burgers, and Barry Manilow, the debate Thursday night at UNLV hardly registered with most casino-goers. If you're up $900 in craps, or if you've just pissed away the rent standing on soft 17s, the question of who will win the state caucuses Jan. 19 doesn't seem all that pressing. In three nights of gambling, not one of the chip-slingers around me ever brought up the subject.
But that's just the players—dealers are a different story. So, after hearing CNN's experts discuss the debate and its aftermath, I decide to consult the best oddsmakers around, the number meisters, the Charlie Cooks of the gambling world: Las Vegas blackjack croupiers.
Dealers are by nature a talkative bunch. The best ones can simultaneously fan cards, add and subtract, change money, lend sage advice, and still have enough mental bandwidth to deftly analyze the Barry Bonds indictment. There’s just one problem: They can’t talk politics. Well, they can, but they’re not supposed to. Most casinos discourage discussion of two subjects: politics and religion. (Both topics apparently provoke fights and even the occasional lawsuit.) As a result, dealers are stoic when it comes to matters civic and metaphysical. For them, there is no God but luck, no presidents but the dead ones.
So I’m not surprised when Gregg, a dealer at Excalibur with a penchant for sleight of hand, declines at first to say whom he supports in 2008. The last eight years have been rough, he says, and it will take a long time to right Bush’s wrongs. But who’s the person for the job? “There’s only one choice,” he says. I ask if he means Hillary. He nods, and a five materializes in his hand.
Charlotte, a bottle redhead from Hungary working the graveyard shift at Tropicana, says she doesn’t pay much attention to politics. She wheels the cards around. The blond guy sitting to my left, Devon from California, has 14 showing. He asks Charlotte what he should do. “You can hit, or you can stay” she offers helpfully. “Hit,” he says. Nine: bust. “Fuck!” he says. “No cursing!” Charlotte says. (She isn’t joking, either. A friend of mine was thrown out for swearing the night before.) When I push her for more detail about 2008, she scowls: “Not Bush.” I ask Devon what he thinks of the Democrats. “Hillary, she’s fucking—” “No cursing!”
Things are more civil across the street at the MGM Grand. The dealer, Joyce from China, says she doesn’t care for Rudy Giuliani, but only after I remind her who the GOP candidates are. Joyce hasn’t decided whom she’ll vote for yet, but thinks “probably Hillary.” Same goes for Deanna, a Planet Hollywood dealer whom one tipsy player, Steve, keeps calling “Halle Berry.” (I’m “John Denver,” apparently.) Deanna says she’d support either Hillary or Obama, but prefers the former “because Hillary is the shit.” Pushed to elaborate, she calls the New York senator a “strong woman.” (It suddenly occurs to me that the Planet Hollywood pole dancers, who were gyrating above the tables earlier, have left for the night.) Steve disagrees, and bets me $5,000 that Mitt Romney will win. We shake on it.
I find the first Republican-supporting dealer in the Bellagio. A spiky-haired blond lady named Valerie says she’d pick the “lesser of two evils.” That means “Giuliani, I guess … although I don’t really like any of them.” So what does she like about Giuliani? “Nothing.”
Other dealers seemed disillusioned with politics—a natural response, I think, for someone who gets paid to help Americans hemorrhage money. Sean, a saggy dealer at the Luxor, says he doesn’t vote. It just wouldn’t be responsible: “I might be voting against my own interest and not know it.” It’s the most principled statement I’ve heard all night. Tom, a dealer at New York-New York (but from Chicago), waxes equally bleak. He didn’t vote in the 2004 election. “We have 300 million people in this country, and these are the two I get to choose from?” But this year, he’ll vote for either Hillary or Obama. What with Iraq and health care and the environment, he’s convinced “it will be a Democrat” who wins. So why is it, I ask him, that he’s not supposed to talk about politics? “People get in fights,” he says. “Think about what I was just saying—what if you were a Republican?” I can’t tell if that’s a dig at Republicans or humanity in general.
By the end of the night, it seems to me that Hillary has the Las Vegas dealer vote locked up. And frankly, that’s not a bad group to have. Croupiers might not endorse collectively (Would that make them card-carrying card-carriers?), but, rules against political talk notwithstanding, they’re still remarkably influential. They meet hundreds of Americans passing through the city every day. They chitchat like it’s their job—because it is. And players vest them with absurd amounts of authority, both moral and emotional. (I once saw a man propose to a dealer who had just given him blackjack.) If a campaign wanted to disseminate propaganda nationwide, they might start with the Strip.
That’s not to say Hillary is in the clear. I hear the Bookies’ Association of America, the Meth Lab Technicians United, and the Sex Workers’ Local 116 may still be undecided.
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Barack Obama just won the anonymous blog commenter vote. In
his tech plan (PDF)
released Wednesday, Obama pledged to give Americans “an opportunity to review
and comment on the White House website for five days before signing any
non-emergency legislation.” I can hardly wait for the comment war between
ObamaIsHott245 and BarackSux666.
The initiative is a small piece of a progressive Obama plan
that open-Internet
advocates love. He wants to build digital literacy, outsource government
problems to expert citizens (open-source style), and beef up the nation’s
broadband infrastructure to compete globally. The White House message board,
though, seems to be one of the most innovative pieces. It’s unclear whether
President Obama would ever sit down and read these things, but an Obama
spokesman told me it would emphasize that Americans have a digital seat around
the legislative table. I doubt Obama's reasoning behind vetoing legislation would be, "The Internet told me to."
Obama’s spokesman didn’t have details, though, about how the
White House would moderate these posts. Imagine if an elementary school kid is
surfing the Web to do research on the executive branch. He heads over to
WhiteHouse.gov to do some research and sees a message inviting him to, “Tell
President Obama what you think of the immigration legislation on his desk!” God
only knows what he’ll see when he clicks on the link.
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Joe Biden has a goofy new Web video (goofy because it's scored by Randy Newman) that compiles clips of the other Democratic candidates agreeing with him during debates. For a full minute plus, they spew variations on "Joe is right." It's not just a trick of the eye—Biden has killed in the past few debates. When it comes to foreign policy, especially, his answers are usually as strong or stronger than the frontrunners'.
But that doesn't mean praise is a good thing. On the one hand, yes, he has good ideas about education and immigration and Iran that earn his opponents' admiration. But on the other, the frontrunners can praise Biden because they don't see him as a threat. Hillary, for example, looks good for saying something nice about a colleague, but she doesn't set any traps for herself by making that colleague Barack Obama. It's win-win, but it's also more than a little condescending. Just as "you never put your crosshairs on a dead carcass," as Mike Huckabee says, you never pet an animal that can still kick.
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Team Edwards is already on message today, expanding on last night's insta-spin that seized on Hillary's response to a question about NAFTA—a laugh, followed by a dismissive quip—as an indication of her soulless disregard for working people. The campaign just held a conference call in which Michigan Rep. David Bonior and others repeated that the trade agreement is "no laughing matter." "I saw families devastated in my state of Michigan," Bonior said. "Families and communities ripped apart as a result of the worst trade deals. ... John Edwards understands this instinctively." Roger Touse of the transport workers union described her laugh as "like a flashback" to working-class nightmare that was Rubinomics.
It's no mistake the campaign decided to make this moment the night's sticking point. For one thing, there weren't really any others: Hillary was, sigh, back in action. It also fits Edwards' message of working-class solidarity. (He's walking the Hollywood picket lines today.) Plus, it maintains the Edwards narrative of Hillary Clinton as heartless, gutless, and in the sack with corporate interests.
But most importantly, it resurrects her laugh. The Hillary "cackle" managed to span a half-dozen news cycles a few weeks back. Anything her opponents can do to remind people of it—and how much they hate it—is a point for Edwards. Cue the YouTube mashup of Hillary chuckling over NAFTA spliced with Dr. Evil's muah-ha-has. Going after her laugh is a low blow, but subtle enough that it's lowness probably won't make Edwards look bad. Of course, this is the candidate who bristled at the media's obsession with his hair. Now those nitpicky, superficial chatterboxes just might help him.
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Just so everybody is aware, Lou Dobbs is thinking of running for President.
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Using data from the indispensable New
York Times’ debate
analyzer , I crunched some word-per-second numbers from
last night’s debate. Dodd talks faster than Biden and Richardson speaks the slowest of all. Clinton and Obama’s
cadences, meanwhile, are in sync.
| Talker |
Words |
Seconds of talk |
Words/sec |
|
|
|
|
| Moderators |
4131 |
1435 |
2.88 |
| Audience |
719 |
304 |
2.37 |
| Biden |
1906 |
586 |
3.25 |
| Clinton |
2944 |
953 |
3.09 |
| Dodd |
1564 |
446 |
3.51 |
| Edwards |
2010 |
627 |
3.21 |
| Kucinich |
1119 |
355 |
3.15 |
| Obama |
3339 |
1081 |
3.09 |
| Richardson |
2199 |
838 |
2.62 |
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A few glimpses of post-debate chatter from the UNLV Spin Room:
- No one has anything to ask Mark Penn. The Hillary strategist stands there surrounded by a gaggle of shifting, near-silent reporters. What is there to ask? Hillary acquitted herself well. The debate raised no questions about suppressing documents in presidential libraries. She didn't seem to exploit her gender. She hadn't blundered over drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. In fact, in a funny twist, Penn himself brought up the subject of licenses, calling it the "big issue of the debate," presumably because this time it was Barack Obama who had given a less than concise answer. And her opponents hadn't furthered the charge that her vote on the Lieberman-Kyl amendment was tantamount to authorizing war on Iran. "The big change in the race was that they were going to attack her," Penn said. In that respect, they were "unsuccessful tonight."
- Edwards brain Joe Trippi would beg to differ. Hillary did stumble, he
says, by thinking she can "laugh off NAFTA" by joking that all she
remembers is "a bunch of charts." (Read the exchange here.) "Well, there are lots of human beings" who were hurt by the trade deal, and he thinks it's "really going to hurt her."
- Obama guru David Axelrod says the takeaway point of the debate is
that Obama is "a guy who can answer complicated issues." About that
iffy answer on driver's licenses? "He answered the question directly."
What about when Obama compared Hillary to Giuliani and Romney and the
audience booed? "I don't think [the audience] was a representative
sample of voters."
- A spokesman for Dennis Kucinich blames the media for the fact that his candidate isn't a frontrunner: "You heard all the people cheering for him. Do you ever wonder why that is?" I ask him why. "The media" created the Hillary-Obama-Edwards narrative. Kucinich trails in the polls because he's not getting enough attention in print. I decide to save my question--about whether Kucinich would be traveling to Rachel, NV, the UFO-sighting capital of the world--for another time.
- For every talking head in the Spin Room, there's a volunteer standing nearby, holding a big sign with the spinner's name on it. The kid holding the sign for Howard Dean, a UNLV student, told me he had beat out two other people who wanted to carry it. I asked him which sign was the most coveted. "This one or Rosario Dawson," he said.
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Sorry to focus so much on logistics, but does anyone else find this McLaughlin group seating arrangement really awkward? Biden remained sitting as he answered an audience member's question. Hillary stood up. Obama stood up, too, to rebut a remark by Hillary. At one point, Kucinich stood up and then sat down again when he realized Blitzer wasn't going to let him speak. Richardson stood there for an uncomfortably long beat, raising his hand, then sat down. I also fear too many people will now vote based on how and whether the candidates cross their legs. God invented lecterns for a reason.
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Spotted in the transcript of CNN's pre-debate discussion:
BLITZER: John, a quick thought from you, John Roberts?
ROBERTS: Well, it will be interesting to watch how John Edwards and Barack Obama comport themselves tonight. They know that there is a crack in Hillary Clinton's suit of armor. Can they get inside there and wedge it open just a little bit more? It is a natural for John Edwards to go in and try and do that. Barack Obama, he has a different personality.
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I'm curious to see the final breakdown of who talked for how long tonight. So far, it seems like this debate is a lot more egalitarian than most. According to Chris Dodd's talk-o-meter, Bill Richardson has wagged more jaw than John Edwards. Maybe Biden's earlier quip about "the three people who get to talk at these things" got through Blitzer's furry head
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Hillary definitely saw this one coming. Responding to Campbell Brown's question about whether she's been exploiting her role as a woman, she unleashed this threefer:
"I’m not exploiting anything at all. I’m not playing the gender card … I’m playing the winning card. ... They’re not attacking me because I’m a woman, they’re attacking me because I’m ahead. ... As Truman said, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Well, I’m very comfortable in the kitchen."
Sometimes, one zinger just isn't enough.
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Wolf Blitzer pushes Richardson to say he thinks human rights is more important than national security. Obama hedges, but somehow it doesn't sound like a dodge: "The concepts are not contradictory. They are complementary." For everyone who suggests Obama could be a different sort of president when it comes to foreign policy--I'm thinking this guy and this guy--this notion is key. He doesn't view safety and human rights as part of a zero sum equation. That none of the other candidates articulated it this way is telling.
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Vice presidential candidate candidate Bill Richardson sounds like he just came from a love-in: "John Edwards wants to wage a class war. Barack Obama wants to wage a generational war. ... I just want to give peace a chance."
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Obama, arguing that the driver’s license issue is a red herring, says that illegal immigrants “aren’t coming here to drive. They’re not coming here to go to the In-and-Out Burger.” Having just eaten a fantastically tasty In-and-Out burger—maybe one of the best I’ve had—I think Obama might be wrong on this.
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As Hillary says “I respect all of my colleagues on this stage," you can see Joe Biden shaking his head and laughing.
Blitzer then turns and asks for Biden to weigh in. "The American people don’t give a darn about anything going on up here tonight," he says. "They’re worried about whether their child is gonna run into a drug dealer," whether they can afford their mortgages, whether they’ll keep their job, and whether their children will get killed in Iraq."
It's worth remembering that these are twilight days for the B-list candidates. They'll only be around for so many more debates. Now's their chance to paint their second-tier status as something that in fact puts them above the fray. (When in reality they just don't have to get their hands as dirty.) Look for Biden and Dodd and Richardson to make the "can't we all just get along" argument more and more. Easy for them to say, so why not say it.
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"This pantsuit is made of asbestos tonight." That was Hillary's first line, responding to Campbell Brown's suggestion that Hillary has trouble taking firm stances on controversial issues. It calls out people's hyperattention to her every move, and diffuses crticisms she'd like to portray as nitpicky. Not bad.
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Because what happens in Vegas ... gets broadcast to the world.
Here's the lectern line-up, left to right: Biden, Richardson, Kucinich, Hillary, Obama, Dodd, Edwards
Seems a little odd to banish Edwards to the fringes, especially in favor of Dennis Kucinich.
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"Don't worry, we'll leave a tip."
-- A John Edwards aide reassuring the owner of Harrie's Bagelmania in Las Vegas, where Edwards stopped today to shake hands with supporters and purchase a plain bagel with cream cheese.
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LAS VEGAS, Nevada—As the Democratic presidential candidates prepare to debate here at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, let the parade of strained gambling metaphors begin. Hillary Clinton is called the "odds-on favorite," the race in Iowa is still a "crapshoot," and anyone who makes a risky statement will be "rolling the dice."
So, as long as we're in the business of Vegas-themed comparisons, it's worth pointing out that the candidates bear striking similarities to major Vegas hotels. They're multimillion-dollar operations, they soak up people's money, and they're designed to attract as much attention as possible. In fact, if the candidates were hotels on the Strip, here's what they would be and why:
Hillary Clinton—Wynn Las Vegas. Polished, buffed to a shine, extremely well-financed.
Barack Obama—Luxor. Massive, covered in lights, hugely popular ... but still just another hotel.
Mitt Romney—Planet Hollywood. Used to be called Aladdin, changed its name and theme in 2007.
Rudy Giuliani—New York-New York. Uh, New York.
John Edwards—Excalibur. Family-friendly, a little cheesy, looks like something out of King Arthur.
John McCain—Plaza Hotel and Casino. Old, broke (rooms go for $34).
Mike Huckabee—Hard Rock Hotel. Relatively new, musical, surprisingly fun.
Mike Gravel—Treasure Island. Loud, silly, largely ignored.
Joe Biden—The Flamingo. Showy, colorful, still around somehow.
Sam Brownback—Frontier Hotel. Recently imploded.
Dennis Kucinich—Tropicana: One of the smaller hotels, stands next to Hooters ...
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Dear Mr. Gravel,
I'm sorry we didn't get a chance to talk today. I just wanted to chat about your alternative debate that you're holding in protest tonight. I know CNN didn't let you into the televised forum because you didn't raise enough money, so I was hoping we could talk about the kinds of questions you were anticipating. I called and emailed your press person, but I never heard back from him. I'll try and tune into uStream.tv once the debate starts to watch you answer Wolf Blitzer's questions all by yourself. I never heard how your last solo debate went, either.
Stay strong out there, Mike.
Sincerely,
Chadwick Matlin
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John Edwards is determined to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming the Democratic nominee. So determined, it seems, that he's willing to risk his own candidacy.
The Edwards campaign unveiled a new Web site today that scolds Hillary's camp for its question-planting shenanigans. PlantsforHillary.com includes such biting content as "Top 10 Questions Plants Should Never Ask Hillary," including, "Why do you defend lobbyists?" and "How can you change Washington when you keep defending a broken system?" Take note, Wolf Blitzer.
Edwards' Web zingers are the latest evidence that he doesn't mind being the bad guy. Let's review Edwards' naughty behavior over the past two and a half weeks:
- An aggressive debate performance in Philadelphia, where he out-attacked Barack Obama after the Illinois senator had promised to make clearer distinctions between himself and Clinton.
- The release of his instant classic "Politics of Parsing" Web video, a brilliant portrayal of Clinton's flip-flops.
- He refused to say whether he'd support Clinton in the general election if she became the Democratic nominee.
Obviously, this is all politics. But these are attacks you expect to see from the GOP side. (Oh, wait, that already exists, too.) This is still the primary, where Iowa voters (supposedly) don't like to see such intraparty sniping and nominees are supposed to emerge with the backing of their party. Edwards continues to load his opponents with ammo, but how does he know his strategy won't backfire?
UPDATE Nov. 16 4:10 p.m.: Marc Ambinder has the scoop on why PlantsforHillary.com is no longer.
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Mike Huckabee's prolific use of charm continues. Today, on Fox News, Huckabee was asked to respond to an under-the-radar critique from Mitt Romney that he cares more about illegal immigrants' right to a college education than he does about U.S. students. Per Politico, here's Huckabee's response: "I guess Mitt Romney would rather keep people out of college so they can keep working on his lawn."
Bam! Pow! Zing! In one sentence, Huckabee managed to do three things:
- Avoid capitulating on a pro-immigrant-education stance he took while governor, one that is sure to be unpopular with the conservative base he's courting.
- Portray his support of immigrants and higher education as tenets of compassionate conservativism. Tacitly, he's also suggesting that Romney is a cruel education-hater.
- Show that Romney isn't as pure on illegal immigration as he would like voters to think he is. The lawn work Huckabee's alluding to comes from a Boston Globe story that alleges Romney employed illegal immigrants to maintain the grounds of his Belmont, Mass., home.
Relative to Huckabee, Romney mustered a bland reply. I'll spare you the full text, but the gist was that Romney isn't afraid to use the veto to make sure illegal immigrants' lives don't get priority over the lives of American citizens.
A bit of background on this sniping: While governor of Arkansas, Huckabee supported equal in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants at public colleges. While governor of Massachusetts, Romney vetoed similar legislation. In my pre-Trailhead days I made a short documentary on the fight over the Massachusetts bill, which by most accounts would have made a positive impact on the state's economy. Romney equated the program with amnesty and refused to sign it into law. Immigration advocates weren't able to find a veto-proof majority, and the legislation never came to pass.
When you zoom out a bit, this little tiff is an illustrative example of the difference between the two candidates' campaigns. Both men are atypical Republicans--Romney is a formerly pro-choice Mormon who worked toward creating a universal health-care plan in his state. Huckabee, meanwhile, is a formerly obese creationist who is willing to tax constituents in order to aid government services.
While Romney is careful not to emphasize pieces of his past that may alienate him from conservatives, Huckabee has found a way to embrace his idiosyncrasies. Sure, that makes him a target of the Republican establishment at times. But those attacks don't seem to be resonating as deeply as his charm. The latest poll puts Huckabee six percentage points behind Romney in Iowa. Romney may soon have to get serious about maintaining his lead.
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Phew. That must
have been Hillary’s first thought upon picking up today’s New York Times, which reports that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has dropped
his plan to provide illegal immigrants with drivers licenses. The plan became a
rallying point for Clinton’s
critics after she gave what many people considered an evasive answer at last
month’s Democratic debate. (It also gave her opponents their best
attack material yet.) Well, now that Spitzer has dropped the measure,
everyone can move on, right?
Yes, and George Bush can invite Kim Jong-Il, Nancy Pelosi, and
the ghost of Saddam Hussein to Crawford ranch for a tea party. I highly doubt anyone is going to let this go. If anything, the
death of the measure could hurt Hillary even more. At the time, her
half-support for the plan seemed like a smart hedge, even if it sounded a bit
bungled. But for the purposes of political attacks, she might as well have been
supporting it. And in the oversimplifying lens of hindsight, the measure could be an even greater liability now that opponents can refer to it as “the failed plan to grant licenses to illegal
aliens.”
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Last week we noted how Rudy Giuliani seems slightly squeamish about making Pat Robertson a major part of his campaign. The evangelical leader’s endorsement was great and all, but it’s too risky to keep him around on the trail. Mike Huckabee, in contrast, has no trouble flaunting his assets. Especially when it comes to his greatest asset of all: Chuck Norris.
When the martial artist/actor/poster boy for irony itself, who now moonlights as a conservative pundit, endorsed Huckabee for president in October, most people probably figured that was the last we would hear from him. The stunt worked once, we figured. Dragging it out would just come off as desperate. (Norris is, after all, the only presidential endorser I first knew as a fully poseable action figure.) But instead, Norris is back. The kung-fu legend sent out a fund-raising e-mail today laying out “facts” about the former Arkansas governor:
Fact: Mike Huckabee is my choice for President of the United States. …
Fact: Mike Huckabee needs our help. …
Fact: Working together on Mike's behalf we can make a great difference. …
Norris assures us that after spending an afternoon with Huckabee, “I can say with complete certainty that Mike is mentally and physically up to the challenge.” I’m picturing some sort of brutal obstacle course training regimen in the Himalayas.
That Norris serves as anything but a circus act is impressive. That he’s a viable fund-raising vehicle is stunning. I’m curious to hear what sort of response the e-mail gets. But in a weird way, the pairing makes sense. Huckabee is known for his humor, and Norris has been a remarkably good sport about inspiring an entire genre of jokes. Plus, I imagine there are people out there who would give money to Chuck Norris just to say they gave money to Chuck Norris. Or because they're afraid to say no ...
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Rudy Giuliani got the memo about the importance of early primary states. He's just choosing to ignore it.
While Iowa and New Hampshire are crucial states for most Republican candidates, Rudy Giuliani thinks of them more as a nuisance. Giuliani's campaign told reporters today that they think Giuliani can lose the first three contests in the cycle and still win the nomination. They essentially conceded defeat in Iowa and New Hampshire to Mitt Romney, who has double-digit leads in the polls and has poured millions into radio and television advertising.
Instead of the traditional strategy, Giuliani is hoping that Feb. 5 is a second Christmas, one where he'll be given hundreds of delegates wrapped inside a Romney concession speech. According to his campaign manager and strategy director, Giuliani can come away with delegates from January primaries in Florida and Michigan, where he leads in polls. Then on Feb. 5, the campaign figures, Giuliani's popularity in the New York region will guarantee him at least the 200 delegates from Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York, plus many from the other 16 states that hold contests on "Tsunami Tuesday."
This strategy borders on hubris, but it also wisely lowers the bar. If the press starts railing on Giuliani for poor showings in the first two contests he can just say, "I told you so." But can a national front-runner really set expectations that low and expect to stay out front? If Giuliani finishes fourth in Iowa to Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and maybe even Ron Paul (gasp!), could his candidacy still be taken seriously? What if Romney, Paul, and McCain trump him again in New Hampshire? As a Connecticut native, I can tell you Giuliani isn't in for a soft landing on the icy streets of the Nutmeg State (where he called his lead "momentum-proof").
For Giuliani, his strategy is necessitated by disappointing polls in Iowa and New Hampshire. And to be fair, Giuliani has a real shot at winning South Carolina, where he's locked in a race for first with Fred Thompson and a surging Romney. But his explicit focus beyond Iowa and New Hampshire won't help his supporters in those states court new converts. Proof that Giuliani is thinking long term: He spends this week in Missouri, Florida, the Dakotas, and Washington, D.C. Iowa and New Hampshire aren't even on the schedule.
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Some politicians are often compared to rock stars. Dennis Kucinich is not one of them.
But you wouldn't know it after seeing him onstage at this weekend's Ani DiFranco concert in Boston. (Or, rather, seeing the video.) He took the mic for a few minutes between songs to describe a world without nuclear weapons and to ask the audience to "join us in New Hampshire." Ani later praised him for being, of all things, "so incredibly electable." When he finally left the stage, it was to the screams of adoring fans. The audience would probably have been throwing brassieres, had they been wearing them.
Contrast that with John Edwards' appearance at a John Cougar Mellencamp concert over the weekend. (Video here.) After crooning a few verses of "Small Town," Mellencamp interrupted the song to bring out Edwards. According to this account, cheers quickly turned to boos and chants of "Refund, refund." Edwards kept smiling but soon retreated—"You didn't come to listen to me"—and left Mellencamp to explain that Edwards was actually "a pretty fun guy." Add that to the rave reviews.
If there's a lesson here, it's that politicians and musicians don't mix. Best-case scenario, you don't come off as a total fool. Worst case, you get laughed off stage, a la Edwards, or you have Donnie McClurkin using your stage for a pulpit, a la Obama. Best to pick your theme music and stick with it—even if it's Celine Dion.
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As if rival campaigns weren't enough, presidential candidates have a new enemy to worry about: Audience members.
This weekend, the Clinton campaign fessed up to prompting a college student to ask Hillary a question about global warming. Sounds harmless enough—global warming comes up on the campaign trail all the time. But the actual exchange sounds particularly canned:
Student: "As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming How does your plan combat climate change?
Clinton: "Well, you should be worried. You know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it's usually young people that ask me about global warming."
The backstory became public Friday when the student told the Grinnell newspaper that "One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask]." Another former audience member, Geoffrey Mitchell, recently came forward as well, telling FOX news how last April a campaign worker prompted him to ask about Hillary’s position on funding the Iraq war. Clinton told reporters that any planted questions were "news to me" and that they will "certainly not be tolerated."
These incidents highlight what seems to be a growing problem for candidates, and particularly Hillary: audience participation. Last month, Ted Bowman, a man from Iowa who saw Hillary speak about Social Security, asked Clinton after her speech whether she really opposed lifting the cap on Social Security taxes. She told him she might consider it, directly contradicting what she had just said publicly. After Bowman complained to the AP, the Obama campaign drafted him to testify to Clinton's apparent dishonesty.
You can see how a campaign becomes paranoid. Nothing is private, every quip is on the record, and every audience member is a potential oppo researcher. As a result, you get ugly interactions like the one between Clinton and Randall Rolph, the Iowa audience member she accused of being a plant for another campaign. Rolph responded angrily, and Clinton apologized. It makes sense that the campaign, wanting to avoid a repeat scenario, would try to control Q&A sessions. It's a downward spiral of artificiality, and it makes for stiffer candidates, blander quotes, and about as much spontanaeity as an assembly line. But most importantly, it makes audience members and candidates mutually suspicious. Look for Obama and Edwards to crank up the "trust" rhetoric another notch, if that's even possible.
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You may remember our item last month about the drought of campaign blog names. We rounded up all the names that have been taken—variations on “trail,” “political,” “bus,” "ballot"—and then listed all the names that are still available. It was only a matter of time, we figured, before someone would have to draw from that list.
Friends, that day has come. First we saw Newsweek’s Stumper, then the New Republic’s The Stump. Now, via washingtonpost.com, meet the new blog on the sphere: Stumped. (We'd predicted “Stump’d”—close enough.) It’s a write-in column in which former Los Angeles Times editor Andres Martinez answers readers’ questions about the presidential campaign. In his first column, he offers up a highly scientific formula to determine whether you should vote for Hillary or not. In fairness, the name is sort of perfect. But we still reserve the right to give Stumped a wedgie for unoriginality. Note to the Dubuque Telegraph Herald: “Stumpy” is still available.
(Slate is owned by the Washington Post.)
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Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have been engaged in a multicycle slapfest over whether their plans for American combat troops in Iraq constitute “continuing the war.” Edwards says he would withdraw all combat troops from Iraq but would keep a small force of 5,000 or so nearby—in Kuwait, say, or Afghanistan—to carry out “expeditions” against terrorists in Iraq. Hillary would also withdraw, but she would keep the counter-terrorist combat troops stationed in Iraq instead of outside. That’s the difference.
But to hear Edwards talk about Hillary’s plan, you’d think there was a huge gulf between them. “Senator Clinton says she will continue the occupation, keeping combat troops stationed in Iraq for combat missions," said Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis in a statement. Keeping them there, Edwards told the Boston Globe, is “like putting a target on the foreheads of American combat troops.”
The fact is, the U.S. will continue to have a large presence in Iraq after the 2008 election no matter what. Assuming we maintain an embassy and keep aid workers stationed there, those units will need to be defended. If the troops defending them get attacked, the president won’t have any choice but to retaliate. And that means combat troops. Sure, military units make fat targets, as the forces currently stationed there have learned. But if attacks on noncombat troops continue, will it really matter where the intervening combat troops are officially stationed? For Edwards to act like fighting terrorists in Iraq from outside Iraq is better than fighting terrorists in Iraq in Iraq seems like a thin distinction. I know it's a candidate's job to tease out the differences between him and his opponents, but I don't think this angle is working for Edwards.
Symbolically, of course, it’s a powerful distinction. Having bases in Kuwait rather than Baghdad would allow him to say the occupation is over. But, whether we hear about it or not, any future president will be forced to keep combat troops operating in Iraq. He (or she) would rather be accused of continuing an occupation than of failing to go after al-Qaida. To suggest that any two Democratic candidates (except maybe Richardson) diverge this point seems to be manufacturing differences.
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For the past few months, Rudy Giuliani has been repeating the same refrain. Some variation of "I'm not a perfect candidate" has become the Giuliani motto. He uses it as a blanket mea culpa to convince conservative voters worried about his social positions that he's the best they've got. It seems to be an effective hedge—Pat Robertson's recent endorsement is just the latest sign that religious leaders are willing to place Rudy's terrorism toughness ahead of his conservative drawbacks.
The refrain appeared again this week after Rudy's former driver, police chief, and business partner, Bernard Kerik, was indicted on conspiracy charges. Giuliani had lobbied for Kerik to become the next secretary of Homeland Security in 2004, a bid that ended in Kerik's disgraceful withdrawal. Today's New York Times story ends with Rudy's trotting out of the old standby: "I am not running as the perfect candidate."
Prior to this week, Giuliani has used the phrase to imply that he's imperfect in his personal life but that he is strong where it really matters: in the fight against terrorism. But this time, the imperfection is security-related. If Giuliani once trusted Kerik enough to put him in charge of the entire country's security, then whom else will he mistakenly trust if he's president? The ghosts of Michael Brown and Donald Rumsfeld loom large.
Two of Giuliani's rivals were quick to attack. John McCain said Giuliani shouldn't have trusted Kerik after his disappointing stint training Iraqi police forces in Baghdad. Mitt Romney's campaign sent a memo to reporters trumpeting Romney's commitment to a clean government.
But Kerik's indictment could actually hurt Giuliani most if he ends up as the nominee. The corruption trial may take place during the heart of the general election's campaign season. There's even an outside chance that Giuliani may have to testify. For Giuliani, that's an imperfect scenario.
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Mike Huckabee sat down for two separate interviews Wednesday night to respond to Fred Thompson's charge that, outside of his pro-life beliefs, Huckabee isn't a true conservative.
To Atlantic's Marc Ambinder:
Let’s face it.. the Writers' Guild is on strike and Fred is kind of
struggling to get some lines..whoever put that line together is writing
for comedy and not for a serious political drama…
To Salon's Michael Scherer:
With the Writers Guild on strike, I mean it's obvious that Thompson is in need of some better lines.
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John Dickerson points to a new myth that’s been dogging Barack Obama on the campaign trail: the claim that he refused to put his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance. E-mail chains making this claim have circulated for the past few weeks, marshaling this photo as evidence. But as Obama has repeatedly said, the photo was taken during the National Anthem, not the pledge of allegiance. (His spokesman sent out several photos of Obama covering his heart for the pledge.) Still, Dickerson writes, audiences keep asking him about it day after day.
It’s just the latest example—along with lapel pin-gate and rumors that Obama is Muslim—of a myth that it doesn’t necessarily help to deny. The Post’s Shankar Vedantam wrote a fascinating piece a couple months ago about how refuting myths only reinforces them. A University of Michigan study gave people a list of commonly held views and labeled them “true” or “false.” After several days passed, young people remembered about a third of the myths as factual, whereas for older subjects the number was as high as 40 percent. Another study found that over time, people often confuse where they heard the myth first. As a result, the myth-denier sometimes ends up being remembered as the propagator. (An anonymous e-mail chain is particularly pernicious, since it’s not a source that sticks in the mind.)
This doesn’t mean Obama shouldn’t address the issue. He doesn’t want to look like he’s dodging the question. But as Vedentam points out, denials require that you repeat the initial falsehood, and repetition is often enough to further embed a notion. It's lose-lose. So far, Obama has had to deal with this type of allegation more than the other candidates. Imagine how they would multiply if he actually got the nomination.
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Ah, the rigors of the campaign trail. From The Caucus, today's campaign agendas:
* Barack Obama holds town hall meetings in Des Moines and Sioux
City, Iowa. ...
* Chris Dodd holds a news conference with the Iowa Democratic Party
Veterans Caucus and speaks at a fund-raiser for Fayette County
Democrats in Oelwein, Iowa.
* Mike Huckabee speaks at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., holds private meetings in Concord, N.H.
* Mitt Romney meets with locals in Atkinson, N.H., and holds a town hall meeting in Hudson, N.H.
* Dennis Kucinich attends an Ani DiFranco concert in Boston. [EA]
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A note before we begin: Grass-roots supporters of Ron Paul are placing bets on whether the story you're about to read will make them sound like a bunch of wackjobs. Decide for yourself.
Before all the hoopla about Paul's record-setting fund-raising total on Nov. 5, I posted a message at RonPaulForums.com asking to talk to a few supporters about the way organization works within the grass roots. Twenty-seven different people messaged me in response, and all were willing to talk. (I only spoke to a few for this story.)
Adjectives describing Paul's grassroots network have run the gamut. Words like decentralized, fervent, and anarchic have all been used. Paul often says that he didn't choose his supporters—they chose him. He posted this note on his Web site after the so-called "moneybomb":
I say "you raised," because this historic event was created, organized, and run by volunteers. This is the spirit that has protected American freedom in our past; this is the spirit that is doing so again.
But according to supporters I talked to, it's not just the fund-raising effort that was "created, organized, and run by volunteers." It's his entire campaign. To hear them tell it, Ron Paul is not actually in control of his presidential run. Neither is Jesse Benton, Paul's national spokesman, nor his campaign manager, Lew Moore. They're just the "official campaign," according to one supporter. The grass roots, he said, are the "real campaign."
Headquarters and the "real campaign" don't communicate all that much. Ron Paul supporters make their own signs, fliers, and banners, instead of using official campaign literature. They sponsor fund-raising drives within their own networks to take out their own ads in newspapers. In other words, money is being raised for Paul behind Paul's back. The ideas are concocted, nurtured, and executed within the grass-roots community.
Take the "moneybomb," for example. To garner press coverage, a supporter named Trevor Lyman had the idea to synchronize fundraising on Nov. 5 and proposed it on a Ron Paul forum. The community helped make it happen, which led to 4.2 million dollars and dozens of headlines.
There's obviously a danger here. The two campaigns don't always agree. Jesse Benton, Paul's spokesman, told me that having such active supporters is great 95 percent of the time, but every now and then, the grass roots cause some problems. Paul's fans, after all, include 9/11 conspiracy theorists and white supremacists. (Then again, so do most candidates' fan bases.) But the controversial supporters come lumped in with the outspoken, organized, and Internet-savvy ones. Unique to the Paul campaign is that his fans not only have a forum-they have sway.
Case in point: This weekend's rally in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia meetup group (Paul's supporters often organize themselves via these Internet-mediated networks) won the official campaign's fund-raising competition and was awarded "a visit from Dr. Paul." The meetup group booked space on Independence Mall in downtown Philadelphia.
But then the "official campaign" got involved. After costs for the event skyrocketed to six figures, Ron Paul headquarters moved the rally to Valley Forge, Pa., 25 miles outside of Philly. People in the grass-roots campaign were pissed, so they lobbied Paul's headquarters to move the rally back. Moreover, they sought out fresh quotes from independent contractors to bring the price down. Eventually, the grass roots won out: The rally will be in Philadelphia.
The tension can only increase as Paul gains more traction with voters and pollsters. Some community members sense this tipping point and are urging restraint. One supporter writes:
Now that Dr. Paul has more attention from the MSM, we have to take extra precaution to ensure that we are being as tactful as humanly possible. We cannot afford to give the MSM or any of Dr. Paul's opponents ammo. This means taking the extra steps to avoid controversy in everything we do.
But trying to prevent controversy could neuter both the "official" and "real" campaign's most attractive talking point: the freedom of the individual. The supporters I spoke to all thought the real campaign's modus operandi dovetails nicely with the principles Paul espouses on the campaign trail. If those principles are left behind because supporters are afraid of people like me showing up in their forums, then Paul and his supporters may lose their sense of personal liberty. At that point, the real campaign might start acting like an official campaign.
For your convenience, here's a link to our talkback section. While you're at it, here's my e-mail address. Let me know who won the bet.
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Hillary Clinton’s camp is positively afloat over the new NBC News/WSJ poll. Bush’s ratings remain in the dumps, half of Americans want a Democratic president (as opposed to 35 percent who want a Republican commander-in-chief), and it looks like Clinton’s post-debate lead over her closest Democratic opponent is about as wide as her pre-debate lead.
But one of the most interesting findings—and one that certainly benefits Hillary—is this one.
Americans by 52% to 34% call the economy and health care, issues that favor Democrats, more important to their vote than the Republicans' relative strong suits of terrorism and values. That's a reversal from the Journal-NBC poll finding just before the 2004 vote that re-elected Mr. Bush and Republican congressional majorities, when voters rated terrorism and values more important, by a 49%-to-39% margin.
The implications for a candidacy like Rudy Giuliani’s couldn’t be more stark. Just yesterday, when announcing his endorsement for the former mayor, Pat Robertson ranked terrorism at the top of America’s priorities. But if this poll is correct—and its impressive 1,500-person sample size gives it extra heft—Rudy’s whole security uber alles approach might be more out of touch with mainstream Americans than he thought. That said, if he really is out of sync, it doesn’t seem to be hurting him so far: The poll shows him and Hillary competing neck and neck, with 46 percent of Americans saying they’d back Hillary to Giuliani’s 45 percent.
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Currently featured on www.JoeBiden.com:
(Screenshot)
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Rudy Giuliani made Tommy Thompson his national co-chair. He
did the same for Steve Forbes. Hell, Jeb Bush Jr. is the chairman of Florida
Young Professionals for Rudy. But Pat Robertson? He's title-less.
There's no doubt that today's official endorsement from
televangelist Robertson is a major coup for the pro-choice Giuliani. But the
campaign isn't putting Robertson front and center in Giuliani's cabal of endorsers.
Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Rudy, told me that Robertson doesn't have an
official title and didn't have any plans to give him one. Today, she said, was
just the first step-an opportunity to be in public talking about his support
for Giuliani.
One would assume more steps will follow, but she offered no
specifics. I asked her if Robertson planned to campaign on Rudy's behalf. She
didn't have an answer. I asked her if he could be expected to be a Giuliani
proxy on cable news. Unclear.
That conversation, combined with today's hasty press
conference-where Giuliani and Robertson seemed to have little in common besides
a history of prostate cancer-makes me wonder how much Giuliani wants to
associate with Robertson.
Remember, this is the same Robertson that said the U.S.
should whack
Hugo Chavez, that abortions
caused 9/11, and that in the next
month and a half there will be a "mass killing" in the U.S. Doesn't sound
like somebody a frontrunner wants mouthing off on his behalf.
Tomorrow is the first day in Giuliani's post-Robertson
candidacy. Will we ever hear from Robertson again? Or will Rudy hope that
today's deluge of news coverage is enough to convince the religious right that
he's their guy?
Giuliani flies to Iowa
tomorrow. Robertson won't be joining him.
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Remember that Iowa
City ordinance that would ban 19- and 20-year-olds from
hanging out in bars after 10 p.m.? The one that was going to mobilize all the young ‘uns to register to vote against it and thus increase the youth
turnout at the caucuses in January and thus swing Iowa toward Obama?
Well, it
didn’t pass. As predicted, college students voted in record numbers to
oppose the ordinance, which would have driven much of the University of Iowa’s
night life out of bars and into dorms and houses. Of the Iowa City residents who voted before election
day—about half of the total voters—63 percent were ages 18-24. The booze-loving,
Obama-supporting youth of America have spoken!
Now if only they were going to be around for the Jan. 3
caucuses. Too bad they don't take absentee ballots.
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More evidence that Hillary’s stumble over drivers’ licenses
for illegal immigrants isn’t going away: Rudy Giuliani said this morning
that he phoned two members of Congress, Rep. Peter King and Rep. Pete Sessions,
and “asked them to consider introducing legislation to prevent states from
giving licenses to illegal immigrants.”
“I never thought of [Hillary] as a federalist before,” Giuliani
said. “This is one area where federalism is not the answer.”
Presumably this will give Giuliani some ammunition to keep
tweaking Hillary. Even if the legislation never materializes, he can now say he has acted on his conviction, rather than
just spouting off from the sidelines. It also makes her evasion look even more stark: She kept saying that she can’t say what she would do because she’s not
governor of New York.
Well, neither is Rudy, but that’s not stopping him from weighing in.
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An email sent out today:
From: Obama For
America
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007
10:34 AM
To: [Redacted]
Subject: EXPERT'S PRAISE BARACK
OBAMA'S PLAN TO RECLAIM THE AMERICAN DREAM
It actually kind of works if you think of "Barack" as a verb.
Trailhead thanks eagle-eyed reader Elizabeth Summers.
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Pat Robertson’s decision to endorse Rudy Giuliani has some conservatives scratching their heads. Why back a candidate whose record on abortion—a supposed litmus test for evangelical support—so clearly repudiates everything you stand for?
The reason, according to Robertson: terrorism. America’s No. 1 goal right now, he said at a press conference today, should be the “defense of our people from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists.” Beyond that, he said, the No. 2 goal should be stemming government waste and corruption. Appointing conservative judges—and thus reducing the number of abortions—is all the way down at number three. That one of America’s foremost social conservatives would rank the country’s priorities in that order is very, very good news for Rudy.
Robertson is at least the second prominent social conservative to endorse Giuliani because of his record on security. Texas Gov. Richard Perry, who threw himself behind Giuliani last month, said that picking a president is like buying a truck: He wouldn’t reject a model just because there’s one option he doesn’t like. Again, security trumps abortion. (What’s the point of keeping the child if it’s just gonna get blown up?)
Robertson’s endorsement might also diffuse talk of a James Dobson-backed third-party candidate should Giuliani win the nomination. Without the support of Robertson or Brownback or Weyrich (or Perry or Bob Jones III), it’s hard to imagine another religious-right candidate gaining much momentum.
When he decided to run for president, Giuliani took a gamble that Republican voters care more about security than they do about his record on social issues. It looks like that gamble has paid off.
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Mitt Romney's day wasn't supposed to go like this. Romney was supposed to be campaigning happily in South Carolina—a state where he's gained in the polls thanks to beefy advertising time and a heavy event schedule. But as he was giving his speech on education this morning, word trickled down that two of his rivals nabbed high-profile endorsements from the religious right.
Today's endorsement-palooza—Pat Robertson backed Giuliani and Sam Brownback supported John McCain—hurts Romney in Iowa the most. Romney has led the polls in the state since June and ran away with the Ames Straw Poll in August. (Giuliani and McCain did not compete.) But both of today's endorsers have a broad base of support in Iowa, something McCain and Giuliani don't have.
Robertson ran for president in 1988 and finished a surprising second place in the Hawkeye State. Second wouldn't be too bad for Giuliani, who trails Mike Huckabee in the polls. Giuliani's campaign has recently shifted strategy, basically acknowledging that they need to do well in Iowa or New Hampshire to build up momentum going into Tsnuami Tuesday on Feb. 5. Now, with Robertson by his side, Giuliani is armed with a Republican foil who can help anchor him to the religious right. Romney is already fighting with Huckabee for the religious right's vote in Iowa, so he'd prefer if Giuliani stayed out of it.
McCain, meanwhile, has picked up more of a wildcard in Brownback. The two senators announced the endorsement in Iowa, where Brownback's support was strongest. (He finished third in the straw poll.) McCain is currently toiling in fifth place there and, in some polls, finds Ron Paul nipping at his heels. If McCain can use Brownback to reach out to Christian conservatives and finish in third (behind Romney and Huckabee) in Iowa, then he can use that momentum to roll through New Hampshire. But all is not rosy. The nightmare scenario for McCain—and a real possibility—is if Pat Robertson soaks up all the votes Brownback might have given him.
Most importantly, this whole thing yanks Romney's recent religious right endorsement, that of Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich, out of the spotlight. In the religious hierarchy of the week's endorsements, Robertson trumps Weyrich and Weyrich trumps Brownback.
All of a sudden, Romney's pre-emptive anti-Rudy direct mail campaign in Iowa this week is starting to seem prescient.
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From inside the bowels of the National Press Club, Christopher Beam sent this over the wires:
Pat Robertson just announced his endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for president of
the United States. Giuliani, however, seemed to have trouble fully endorsing Pat
Robertson. Here's how he introduced the evangelical leader:
Pat
Robertson is a very well-known leader, a person of well-deserved reputation. He
has run for president of the United States. He understands what America is all
about. And he has articulated the overriding issues of our time.
No
friendship? No admiration? And keep in mind that his "well-deserved reputation" could mean anything …
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John McCain was for ethanol before he was against it. And oh, he was also against it before that.
McCain told a conference of renewable-energy proponents in Iowa yesterday that he opposes federal subsidies for ethanol. He argued that American farmers can still compete with growers overseas: "I trust Americans. I trust the markets. And I oppose subsidies," he said. But this is the same guy who told Iowa voters in February that "[w]e need energy independence. We need it for a whole variety of reasons, and obviously ethanol is a big part of that equation.” Then compare that statement to his platform in 1999, when he argued during a debate that "[e]thanol is not worth it. It does not help the consumer. Those ethanol subsidies should be phased out.”
On the one hand, you could call it flip-flopping. But on the other, the ethanol issue is so complicated that it’s hard to say what constitutes a reversal. Support for ethanol is often linked to energy independence and other green agendas. For example, Hillary currently supports ethanol subsidies as part of a $150 billion energy plan meant to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. (She has voted against ethanol perks in the past.) But ethanol subsidies are also a form of protectionism, and as the government promotes ethanol and other biofuels, the price of domestic corn soars.
Because of these crisscrossing issues of the environment and trade, it’s tough to analyze the motivations behind each candidate’s stance. Both Hillary and Fred Thompson are ethanol converts, and their transformations are widely seen as pandering to voters in Iowa, the country’s largest corn grower. It’s interesting, then, that McCain would come out so brazenly against it, especially in front of the very voters he’s hoping to win over. He prides himself on his “straight talk.” But when it comes to the state’s No. 1 crop, Iowans would probably prefer his support over his bluntness. Or, better yet, that he make up his mind.
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Security, small government, and family values, according to a panel of four spokeswomen for the top Republican presidential campaigns. In other words, they want the same thing as their male counterparts.
The panel, organized by the National Review and held today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., discussed how each GOP candidate could appeal to women voters. But for a gathering of Romney/Giuliani/Thompson/McCain reps, they didn’t disagree on much. Instead, they turned most of their barbs toward Hillary Clinton. Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, chided Hillary’s campaign for “playing the gender card” after the last Democratic debate. Karen Hanretty, representing Fred Thompson, called the notion that women should automatically vote for Clinton “insulting.” And as for whether Hillary can get mileage out of her womanhood, the panelists were dubious. Just because she’s a woman “doesn’t mean you can’t have a tough discussion on the issues,” said Giuliani communications director Katie Levinson.
But they refused to go after each other or their men. Except for the occasional familiar sound bite—a reference to the “terrorists’ war on us,” say, or the “three-legged stool”—you could be forgiven for assuming they were backing the same candidate. Rather than talking about differences, they mostly discussed similarities. “I think we all support a market-driven approach” to health care, said Comstock. The need to fight Islamic extremists is “something our candidates all agree on,” said Hanretty. Levinson argued that the differences between the candidates are “minimal.”
It wasn’t until the end, when a questioner asked about abortion, that the women began to seriously disagree. As a senator, Thompson opposed the federal funding of abortion and as president would not sign the Freedom of Choice Act, Hanretty said. Romney would go a step further and veto the act, said Comstock. Giuliani’s spokeswoman emphasized the former mayor’s record as a “strict constructionist” and his support for adoptions over abortions. But even then, none of the panelists challenged each other, and the moderator, NR’s Kate O’Beirne, didn’t press them.
It was actually amazing how little time the panelists spent discussing “women’s issues.” The reason, they would argue, is that there’s no such thing. Women care most about Iraq and national security. And on those issues, Hillary’s gender shouldn’t be an advantage or a disadvantage. As far as they're concerned, the general election might as well be mano a mano.
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Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for Fred Thompson,
fired off a great (and telling) line at a panel
today on “Women Voters and the Right Guy,” sponsored by the National Review. Responding to a question on how much personality
matters in the 2008 election, she argued that it matters quite a bit: “Fred
will never rush to war because Fred doesn’t rush to anything.”
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John Edwards rereleased his Iowa "Heroes" ad in New Hampshire today, but not all of the b-roll characters made the trip. (Watch the original Iowa ad here; here's the New Hampshire version.) The ads share the same audio track—a speech about true American heroes—but the campaign has made a few visual changes.
Gone are the tractors, suspenders, and trucker hats. Instead, the new characters have nondescript profile shots. The ad replaces an image of an older white couple with two younger adults, one of whom appears to be a person of color. Plus, instead of a white woman near the end of the ad, the ad shows a black woman.
The changes come after the Iowa ad caught flak from bloggers for being almost exclusively white. The Edwards campaign countered that the waitress in the diner is Hispanic, but ABC News' Jake Tapper insisted that the "optics" of the ad didn't convey any diversity.
Edwards' national spokesman, Eric Schultz, told me that the "Heroes" series of ads "highlights the hard-working men and women from across the country." The new version, he says, is specific to New Hampshire, and the new faces in it are all New Hampshire residents. Many of the characters in the Iowa ad, however, are also in the New Hampshire ad (including the Latina waitress).
According to the Census Bureau's 2005 stats, New Hampshire's percentage of black residents is half that of Iowa—1 percent to 2.3 percent. Similarly with Hispanics—2.2 percent to 3.7 percent. Which makes it interesting that the New Hampshire version has more minorities in it. Still, the changes may be an effort to better reflect the demographics of the audience.
What we're seeing may be yet another example of the YouTube Effect. Advertisements can no longer be contained to a specific audience in the age of YouTube. The campaign got burned on its Iowa ad because the world had access to it, not just 3 million Iowa residents. Now we have a different set of characters in the New Hampshire ad.
UPDATE 2:32 p.m.: Here's a side-by-side comparison our SlateV team put together. Allow it about 20 seconds to load:
[Video]
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Party Pooper of the Day award goes to Inez Tenenbaum and Rep. Bakari Sellers, two Obama supporters in South Carolina who phoned the state’s Democratic Party to oppose Stephen Colbert’s inclusion on the ballot. It shows how secretly nervous Democrats were, even as they pretended to laugh along with Colbert. Just look at the Obama campaign’s statement to Politico’s Mike Allen today: “We will always respect Colbert's willingness to speak truthiness to power.” But, the statement doesn’t say: We also have an election to win.
The campaign denied any connection to the phone calls. But there was no way that Obama, whose campaign is focusing heavily on getting young people to the polls, would let a joke candidacy—even a funny one—get between him and the nomination. And it’s not like pressure from Tenenbaum and Sellers sealed the deal, either. The state party’s executive council voted 13-3 against putting Colbert on the ballot. He never had a chance. But I would have loved to see this story drag out, if only to watch the campaigns play along in public while frantically trying to sabotage it behind closed doors.
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Rudy Giuliani seems to have a lot of trouble admitting he
messed up. In a radio ad released last week, he said that the chances of surviving
cancer “under socialized medicine” in England
are 44 percent, compared to 82 percent in the U.S. But those statistics have been strongly disputed.
First, Dr. David Gratzer, the author of the City
Journal article Giuliani drew the numbers from and an adviser to the
Giuliani campaign, acknowledged
that they were outdated and “crude.” Then his
source for the numbers, a health research organization called The Commonwealth
Fund, accused Gratzer of misusing the data. In other words, no one was willing
to stand behind the numbers. Both the Washington
Post’s Fact Checker and PolitiFact.com, two watchdogs for the lies, damned
lies, and statistics of the 2008 presidential candidates, roundly rejected
Rudy’s statement.
At the time, the Giuliani campaign itself issued a
not-quite-defense of the statistic: “The citation is an article in a highly respected
intellectual journal written by an expert at a highly respected think tank
which the mayor read because he is an intellectually engaged human being.” But
on Friday, Giuliani reiterated his support for the numbers as “absolutely
accurate,” if a little dated: “Even if you want to quibble about
the statistics, you find me the person who leaves the United States and goes to England for prostate cancer
treatment, and I'd like to meet that person,” he said.
Rudy does have defenders other than himself. The Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner argues in National Review today that Giuliani’s
numbers are problematic, but that his overall point stands. “Beyond
the debate over numerical minutiae,” Tanner writes, “the basic fact is that Britain’s
system of socialized medicine is bad for your health.”
But then why use such murky numbers? As Tanner himself notes, the stats on non-prostate cancers support his point much better. It
illustrates a larger point about Giuliani that Slate’s John Dickerson
has made before: that his greatest strength is his willingness to make highly questionable statements with
utter conviction. It’s an approach that has gotten Rudy in trouble before,
like when he said he’d pay for tax cuts with
more tax cuts. But getting in trouble with fact-checkers is different from
getting in trouble with Republican voters. From the perspective of the polls, what
he says seems less important than how loudly and how often he says it.
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Forget about Ron Paul's polling numbers, these days it's more fun to forecast his fund-raising numbers. In the past two weeks, he aired his first ads in New Hampshire, raised his national media profile, and, as of today, raised more money online in a single day than any other candidate this election cycle.
Paul's indefatigable grassroots supporters are "moneybombing" the campaign today, partly to pay homage to Guy Fawkes, the bomber-with-a-cause featured in V for Vendetta, and partly just because they felt like it. As of this writing, Paul has already raised $2.5 million. That's more than Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo, and Duncan Hunter raised in the 3rd quarter, combined. To understand the magnitude of today's donations, see the chart from RonPaulGraphs.com below:
Much of this was organized by Paul's slightly anarchic grassroots network. Trevor Lyman, who started the central moneybomb Web site, told me he started the process without informing the campaign. (He eventually warned them that their servers would be getting a huge influx.) "It's very organic," he said about the grassroots system, "and anybody at any point can have an idea that resonates with people." Lyman told me he floated the Nov. 5 moneybomb idea to the crew at RonPaulForums.com, who then inspired him to make the Web site. Originally, the plan was to get 100,000 people to donate $100 each, giving Paul $10 million. But Lyman admits they probably won't hit that total.
Paul, meanwhile, is enjoying the attention. His spokesman told me that he thinks the moneybomb is a "real neat idea." If thousands of people gave me millions of dollars, I'd think it was pretty neat, too. A reality check to temper the Paul masses: It's not all about the Benjamins. The campaign still needs voters to show up at the polls.
UPDATE 6:20 p.m.: Paul has surpassed $3.1 million, which breaks Mitt Romney's one day total (online and in-person) fundraising record for this cycle.
UPDATE Nov. 6, 9:53 a.m.: The campaign raised $4.3 million yesterday, according to spokesman Jesse Benton.
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Barack Obama went on Saturday Night Live this weekend, an appearance that, along with his move-busting stunt on Ellen, people are calling his “saxophone moment.” But it also highlighted a problem (for others, if not for him) that still persists: It’s nearly impossible to make fun of Barack Obama.
The skit takes place at a Halloween party. Amy Poehler stood in for Hillary (dressed as a bride), Horatio Sans did a great sycophantic Bill Richardson (dressed as Al Gore), and Darrell Hammond reprised his role as Bill Clinton (dressed as “Mystery” from The Pickup Artist). Obama played himself, dressing for Halloween as himself, which allowed him to get in a half-joke about authenticity: “I have nothing to hide. I enjoy being myself.”
The moment was funny, but it also drew attention to the fact that no one currently on SNL could do a Barack Obama impression. (Something tells me Kenan Thompson isn’t quite right for it.) And anyway, what do you make fun of? His ears? His aloofness? The closest anyone has come so far has been Robert Smiegel’s animated "TV Fun House," which depicts Obama and the other presidential candidates confessing their secrets on Oprah. “I’ve made drugs myself,” brags Chris Dodd, only to be one-upped by Obama: “I’m high right now.” But when it comes to impersonations, he’s seemingly immune.
Needless to say, mocking politicians has never been a problem for SNL before. Here are a few morsels:
- A debate between George W. Bush (Will Ferrell) and Al Gore (Darrell Hammond)
- Darrell Hammond’s Gore after he won the Noble Peace Prize
- Will Ferrell as George W. Bush on voting (spot sponsored by ACT)
- Norm McDonald’s Bob Dole meets the real Bob Dole (transcript)
- Hammond addresses the nation as Fred Thompson (yanked)
- Dana Carvey’s George Bush Sr. announcing the first war in Iraq
- Carvey does George W. Bush
- Seth Meyers’ John Kerry congratulates Will Forte’s George W. Bush on his victory
P.S.—NBC’s diligent policing of YouTube makes old SNL skits ridiculously hard to find. Send others if you got 'em.
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Silicon Valley nerd blog TechCrunch has an interview with Mitt Romney hitting on a few subjects you’re not likely to hear at the debates: Internet taxes, HB1 visas (an issue that affects tech businesses that hire workers overseas), venture capital taxes, and renewable energy. Romney doesn’t say anything revolutionary—have you heard he opposes taxes?—but he does offer this little tidbit at the end:
MA [interviewer]: … Governor Romney, Mac or PC?
MR: I have a PC. My sons have a Mac and swear by it, but I have a couple PC’s.
He didn’t say whether they’re located in his frontal lobe or if they operate remotely. Hot-cha! More:
MA: Do you have an iPod?
MR: I do.
MA: Of course you have an IPod! What’s on it? What are you listening to right now, what sort of albums have you downloaded or listened to?
MR: What I typically download is country music as well as 1960’s music. I’m a baby boomer, so the Beatles and the Stones and some of the old groups from the 1960’s are my favorites, I listen to them and I listen to country. I might have some inspirational music as well, but those are the highlights for me.
Romney's candor gave us an idea. In the spirit of transparency, we hereby challenge the other presidential candidates to release their iPod playlists. If voters have the right to know which donors have the candidates' ears, they certainly have the right to know which bands do. Is Tupac's "Changes" blasting on the campaign bus? Or is it "Power to the People"? Perhaps the Beatles' "Tax Man"? Please send song lists here.
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First came the Politics of Hope. Then the Politics of Pile-On. Now, via the Edwards campaign, the Politics of Parsing.
In what looks like a direct response to Hillary Clinton’s mashup of Tuesday’s debate, which shows the other Democratic candidates uttering her name over and over, Team Edwards has released what has got to be the most devastating indictment of Hillary’s debate performance so far.
The spot, posted online today, juxtaposes clips of Hillary saying one thing—on Iraq, Social Security, and drivers licenses for illegal immigrants—and then saying something that sounds contradictory. Plenty of observers and campaigns have already pointed out these inconsistencies. (Some might call them nuances.) But no one has lined them up in such a simple way that, context be damned, lets you watch Hillary dig her own grave. It's pretty unfair, but it's also why YouTube was invented.
This line of attack seems to be carrying Edwards (and Obama) a long way. Hillary’s camp was concerned enough after the debate to hold a conference call with big donors to talk strategy and ask for more money. Her opponents are speaking of “chinks in the armor.” Supporters say it’s good practice before facing Giuliani. But if there’s an anti-Hillary narrative that could sustain itself through the primaries, it’s her tendency to equivocate—not to lie, necessarily, but to slice and dice the truth into tiny little slivers. (An approach that, with a little YouTube trickery, starts to sound a lot like like lying.)
In the meantime, Edwards might consider taking this attack to prime time.
UPDATE 12:52 p.m.: Hillary spokesman Phil Singer responds:
"In 2004, John Edwards said 'If you are looking for the candidate that will do the best job of attacking the other Democrats, I am not your guy.' But now that his campaign has stalled, he’s launching false attacks on his fellow Democrats. Voters will certainly be asking whether Mr. Edwards’ pledges to be positive in 2004 were anything more than just a political tactic."
UPDATE 11/5/07 1:07 p.m.: The knife twists.
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As a defender of fringe candidate rights, I was disturbed when I read the news coming out of South Carolina yesterday. Stephen Colbert's rejection by state Democrats is getting headlines, but it was actually another, less-publicized denial that irked me most.
Henry Hewes, a New York Democrat, was also left off the Democratic ballot in South Carolina. Hewes paid the $2,500 filing fee and then waited for his candidacy to be approved by the party's executive council. But Carol Fowler, the chairwoman of the state party, told the New York Times that nobody had heard of him before, so he didn't get on the ballot. Eight mainstream Democrats—including Mike Gravel—did.
Hewes wasn't going to win the primary. He probably wasn't even going to win a delegate. But if there's anything that American democracy should allow, it's delusions of grandeur. I've talked to quite a few fringe candidates for president, and they all share a common desire: to achieve the American dream. Granted, their American dreams include ridding the world of Zionists, drastically altering the Constitution, and restaging the Scopes trial, but they're American dreams nonetheless. Hewes wants to abolish Social Security, get our troops out of Iraq, and boost the minimum wage. Sounds pretty presidential to me.
I understand the need to have financial barriers in place to sift through the candidates who run on a lark. But New Hampshire charges only $1,000 (which covers all the costs) and runs a pretty impressive operation. If South Carolina wants to charge an extra $1,500, that's their prerogative.
But on top of that, they add two unnecessary criteria. First, S.C. Dems want their presidential candidates to be nationally viable. Why does a candidate need national appeal? Are the state Democrats worried about becoming a national laughingstock? (The Colbert rejection suggests as much.) Joe Werner, the executive director of the state party, told me that having too many candidates becomes unwieldy. To be blunt, democracy can be a bit unwieldy at times. Deal with it.
Secondly, the candidate needs to have campaigned in South Carolina before they officially get on the Democratic ballot. What's the incentive for a fringe candidate to spend valuable resources on campaigning in the Palmetto State if they aren't even guaranteed a spot on the ballot? The guy has raised only about $10,000, according to Green Papers. A round trip flight from New York City to South Carolina would eat away 2 percent of Hewes' fund-raising.
South Carolina Democrats' $2,500 filing fee already weeded out all but two fringe candidates—Hewes and Colbert. It prevented 10 of the long-shot Democrats who registered for the New Hampshire primary from registering in South Carolina. So why impose these extra hurdles? The $2,500 fee is enough. (The Democrats have to pay an extra $20,000 to put a candidate on a ballot, but Werner told me that the financial cost didn't factor into the council's decision.)
Henry Hewes is not Stephen Colbert. He was not running for president for publicity or to expose the inane quirks of the American presidential process. He was running for president to follow a dream and because he thought his ideas could fix the country. Unfortunately, South Carolina Democrats won't even let him try.
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You can find it here. Then watch what Ron Paul fans think of Ron Paul’s new ad.
The spot, one of two that will air in New Hampshire over the coming weeks, looks like something out of a different era. Soft tones, New Age music, stilted dialogue—it’s like a political infomercial. They used volunteers instead of actors, and it shows. “He wants us to get out of Iraq, pronto,” says one supporter. “I agree with him most of the time, I really do,” says another. The footage looks like it was shot on Super 8 video, with a soundtrack lifted from the local cable-access station. Still, the two spots cost the campaign roughly $30,000 to make, according to spokesman Jesse Benton. That includes travel to the Granite State for the camera crew, as well as payment for the producer, Jay Bryant.
Benton said the campaign initially got some negative reactions, but mostly from hard-core fans who expected more policy details. “These ads speak to people who haven’t turned to Ron Paul yet,” he said. “From those kinds of crowds, we’ve been getting pretty positive reviews.” He also said the ad works better on TV than on YouTube, where people are usually expecting something “more dynamic.”
The spots are part of Paul’s first major commercial blitz. Depending on their success, the campaign could roll out as many as four more ads. In total, Paul is spending $1.1 million on Granite State airtime through the primaries.
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This is the seventh entry in "The Fringe," a periodic look at the lesser-known candidates for president. Read the archives here.
Don't tell anybody, but John Blyth wants to become president so he can put himself out of business. Blyth, an independent candidate from Illinois, wants to make government-run health care mandatory for everybody in the country. He also owns a small insurance company. So, no privatized insurance, no business for him.
As noble as that may be, when I asked Blyth for more details about his health plan he said he couldn't tell me anything further because he thinks the mainstream candidates have been spying on his Web site and swiping his policy initiatives, Bill Belichick style.
But a look at his site makes those claims hard to believe. On many issues, Blyth hasn't made up his mind yet. On his "agenda" page, he writes in response to immigration, "When will congress act?" For gun control, he says, "In this country, what?" Gay marriage: "Non Issue, get busy congress." [sic] I didn't hear anything that sounded like that on Tuesday night.
Blyth says he deliberately kept his policy positions short on his Web site, so it would be a quick read. Perhaps, but it also makes him look rusty and unprepared. During our conversation, he said he wanted to send our troops to Africa to help fight genocide but couldn't pinpoint Sudan: "Where's all the genocide at down there? I forget the country."
Throughout the conversation, Blyth had few specifics whenever I asked for more information. Over and over again, he claimed he would let Congress decide policy—a far cry from the Bush administration—as long as they started acting more like federalists. "If you leave it up to the 50 states, you've got 50 different ways and you've got hodgepodge," he told me. To be fair, he does have some specifics. He knows he wants to begin a 15-month withdrawal from Iraq immediately, stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and veto any pork-barrel spending.
Blyth has time to refine these policy positions. Because he's running as an independent, voters won't see him on the ballot until November of 2008. That leaves ample time to look up Sudan on a map.
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The Obama campaign has announced that harmless and exceedingly heterosexual Grammy
winner John Legend will
play at a rally on Nov. 10 before the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines, Iowa.
Unlike another artist
we shall not name, Legend is about as controversial as shredded wheat. The only
thing to fight over now is whether Legend’s voice sounds more like honey or velvet.
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In a campaign full of cheesy new Internet memes—Facebook groups, “candid” campaign videos—the most annoying has to be the faux off-the-cuff e-mail chain. Exhibit A, just sent out today:
From: Chris Dodd
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 12:29 PM
To: Christopher Beam
Subject: Fw: Re: Update?
Dear Friend—
I only have a few moments on my way back up to New Hampshire.
I asked my Campaign Manager for an update on what we accomplished online during the month of October, and I was so pleased with her response I wanted to make sure you saw the email chain.
[etc., etc.]
Scroll down and you find what you’re supposed to believe is an organic e-mail exchange between Sheryl Cohen, Dodd’s campaign manager, and Tim Tagaris, his Internet communications director. It’s meant to be a glimpse behind the scenes, a secret discussion Dodd decided to let us in on. Here’s the secret: The senator raised a lot of money in October, but he just needs a teensy bit more.
It’s not a bad way to reach supporters. It’s also utterly artless. For starters, it totally abuses the “Fw: Re:” prefix, usually reserved for funny e-mail threads your friends send you. The moment I clicked on it, I knew I’d been had. Plus, who would ever write this sentence in a personal e-mail: “We're gonna do everything we can to keep growing—something that is made easy as [Dodd] continues to lead on the issues important in this race.” Or maybe that's the way campaign people actually talk.
Dodd isn’t the first offender, or the worst. Back in September, Barack Obama sent out a mass e-mail with the subject, “Hey,” no doubt sending a million hearts aflutter. Of course, it was just another solicitation. Michelle Obama followed up with a “Re: Hey.” I was hoping she’d accidentally hit “reply all” on some missive meant only for Barack. Wrong again.
These kind of faux-personal notes will probably become standard for online fundraising. But what happens when it expands to texting—which is already happening—and IMs? Someday they'll pare their solicitation down to a single set of characters: "$?"
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John Edwards is launching a new ad in Iowa today called “Heroes.” (No, we can’t embed video at the moment; yes, we’re working on it.) “If you’re looking for heroes, don’t look to me,” he says over a soundtrack that sounds a lot like Coldplay. “Don’t look to Elizabeth. … We have the American people behind us. Look to them.”
He’s using the ad to kick off “American Heroes Week,” a tribute to the working men and women of America. Seems like a good way to use his momentum coming out of Tuesday’s debate. Plus, after his New Hampshire SEIU endorsement, it could confirm him for good as the candidate of the working class.
But am I the only one who can’t hear that tour name without thinking about Bud Light’s “Real American Heroes” ads? Edwards could certainly use the votes of Mr. Jelly Donut Filler, Mr. Major League Infield Raker, Mr. Fake Tattoo Inventor, Mr. Putt-Putt Golf Course Designer, and Mr. Wrecking Ball Operator. He might even pander to Mr. Inspirational Poster Writer (although that guy’s probably already on staff). Of course, let’s not forget the realest of American heroes, the one who toils away for countless years despite the slimmest odds: Mr. Third-Place Candidate Man.