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It’s been more than a year since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced their exploratory committees. Ever since, Democrats across the country have been dragged through 19 debates, $200 million-plus in fundraising, and 40 primaries and caucuses. After tens of thousands of handshakes, thousands of stump speeches, and hundreds of meet-and-greets, Democrats are tired. They want one candidate—and that candidate is going to be Barack Obama.
We don’t have to look any further than Texas and Ohio to see the exhaustion firsthand. Rasmussen polls had him down by 16 points in Texas eight days ago (post-Potomac, pre-Wisconsin). Now he trails by only three points. The newest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Texans like Clinton more than Obama on the issues that matter most—health care and the economy. Yet he’s in a statistical tie with her overall. Why? Because 47 percent of the state’s Democrats believe he has the best chance of getting elected president in November—thirty-six percent say that’s the case for Clinton. In Ohio, there’s an even larger disparity between whom Ohioans favor—Clinton—and whom they think can win in NovemberObama.
For all of the talk about the primary fight going all the way to the election, it was probably never possible—especially not once a Republican nominee was selected. The two electorates originally treated the candidates as they would shiny toys—with wide-eyed attention, which then faded to boredom. But once the Republicans decided on their favorite (not so new) toy, the Democrats realized playtime was over. Electability was bound to rule the decision-making once the GOP forced the Dems’ hand, and Obama effectively spun his head-to-head poll numbers into momentum. Remember momentum? It used to be that useless, easily derided metric because it was so unreliable while both races were unsettled. Now it’s likely to decide the nomination.
John McCain was more or less confirmed as the nominee on Feb. 7, the day Mitt Romney dropped out of the race. Since then, Obama hasn’t lost a single contest. That’s partly coincidence—he was always going to do well in Louisiana and Midwest caucuses—and partly Clinton’s post-Feb. 5 ineptitude in not organizing her ground game appropriately. But there was one other factor: Democrats realized they were SOL if they didn’t unite around one candidate to stop McCain. Over the last two weeks, Barack Obama was that guy because he had more votes, more delegates, and more money.
Which brings us to today—on the verge of Texas and Ohio. At this point, Obama’s momentum leads to Clinton supporters’ resignation. Texas and Ohio Democrats could prolong this battle, but they’re tired of not knowing who the nominee will be. The Democrats want what the Republicans already have—a candidate they can call their own. If that means some Democrats have to go to bed with their second-best, then so be it.
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Cuba’s national newspaper, Granma, posts a recent column written by Fidel Castro, in which he weighs in on the current crop of presidential candidates. (See here for the original.)
Most of it reads like nonsense—could be the translation, but probably not. Still, here are a couple of choice excerpts:
At this moment, I turn to the adversary. I enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States. One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter. It was as if I were a Pulitzer Prize winner questioning them on CNN about the most delicate political (even personal) issues from Las Vegas, a city ruled by the logic of the roulette and a place any candidate for the presidency needs to visit. [Does this mean the Vegas debate was broadcast in Cuba?] …
Bush Sr. chooses McCain as his candidate, while Bush Jr., in an African country -- yesterday, the origin of man; today, a martyr continent -- where nobody knows what he's doing there, said that my message was the start of the road to liberty in Cuba, in other words, the annexation decreed by his government in a voluminous and huge book. …
I had thought about not writing a reflection for at least 10 days, but I didn't have the right to keep silent for such a long time. We have to open ideological fire on them. …
Perhaps the next president should sit down with Castro on the precondition that he get an editor.
(h/t The Caucus)
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We first observed Hillary Clinton’s uncanny resemblance to a Star Trek character at last night’s debate. But Slate’s John Swansburg was the one who nailed it: She’s The Next Generation’s Tasha Yar. Behold:
Update 5:44 p.m.: Don't forget, Hillary isn't the only candidate with a celebrity doppelganger.
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From the crossroads of cultural and political commentary (his sofa), Slate associate editor John Swansburg fires off this analysis:
Did the New York Times host an impromptu screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off yesterday? A little matinee to take everyone's mind off the Iseman firestorm?
Stephen Holden's review today of Charlie Bartlett makes an extended comparison between Anton Yelchin's Bartlett and Matthew Broderick's Bueller. It seems like a stretch—Charlie Bartlett is about a kid who achieves high-school popularity by dealing psychotropic drugs. Bueller achieved popularity by cutting class and making his keyboard approximate barfing sounds. Having not seen Charlie Bartlett, however, I'll give Holden the benefit of the doubt.
But what was Alessandra Stanley thinking? Reviewing last night's Democratic debate in a “TV Watch” column for the Times, Stanley wrote that "Mrs. Clinton looked like the Jennifer Grey character struggling to show up her favored brother in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Huh? Ferris Bueller is a classic, but it's a 22-year-old classic. Has Stanley not seen anything in the last two decades, the most recent chunk of which she’s spent covering TV, that would have made for a slightly more au courant comparison?
Of course, my colleague Chris Beam compared Clinton last night to a character from Star Trek: The Next Generation, an equally second-term Reagan analogy. But, in Chris's defense, Clinton really was doing her best Tasha Yar last night.
So why Jennifer Grey in Bueller? It's not a particularly memorable performance, though I suppose the comparison isn't inapt—Jeannie Bueller is very jealous of what she sees as her brother's undeserved popularity. And Stanley's comparison did keep me reading to see whether there would be another I Love the 80s gem. I was holding out hope that she might compare Obama to Deon Richmond, who played Rudy Huxtable's smug yet lovable friend Kenny on The Cosby Show. No such luck.
Trailhead readers: What tertiary characters from 1980s popular culture were you reminded of during the debate last night? Am I the only one who thinks about Rick Astley whenever I see John King? Something about the hair.
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So Round 1 goes to McCain. The Arizona senator’s campaign has successfully turned a story about his alleged inappropriate ties to a lobbyist into a debate about the journalistic integrity of the New York Times. If anything, the Times piece appears to have helped him: It gave the fractured Republican coalition a common enemy against which to consolidate itself.
But it’s hard to see this as benefiting McCain in the long run. Here’s why.
Whatever the story’s flaws, it broke the ice in what is bound to be a yearlong examination of McCain’s complicated (that’s generous) relationship with lobbyists—romantic or otherwise—despite being an anti-lobbyist crusader. Even if he didn’t give Vicki Iseman the sexytime, the lobbyists who work on his staff, the private jets, the letters written to regulators—they all represent conflicts of interest that will dog him. Plus, the piece may not have introduced evidence of new wrongdoing, but it certainly reminded people of the old.
And if it ever comes out that McCain and Iseman did have an affair, McCain is unequivocally sunk. His denials have been so swift and so strong that no apology would repair the damage.
So yes, McCain came out on top. But now the flood gates are open, and November is a long way off.
Also: Is John McCain telling the truth? See what other people think using Slate V's MediaCurves analysis of McCain's press conference on Thursday.
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For all the speculation that Hillary Clinton was going to strap herself with explosives and fling herself at Barack Obama last night (figuratively, figuratively), the whole affair was pretty tame. But there was one notable exception, and it fell so flat—and here’s some more wild speculation, but bear with—it might well have killed high-caliber negative attacks for good in this primary.
It came when Campbell Brown raised the issue of similarities between Obama’s words and Deval Patrick’s. Obama said that notion that he plagiarized from one of his national co-chairs is “silly” before drifting from the topic: “What I’ve been talking about in these speeches—and I gotta admit, some of them are pretty good. What I’ve been talking about is not just hope and not just inspiration, it’s a $4,000 tuition credit every year in exchange for national service so that college becomes affordable,” etc. The line was somewhat canned, but it also turned a question about attacks in the direction of substance.
In her response, Hillary veered back to plagiarism: “I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, they should be your own words. Lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change what you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox.”
Even as she’s saying it, you can tell it’s going to sag. “Come on, that’s not what happened,” Obama says without looking up. It had echoes of Obama’s “You’re likeable enough” moment in New Hampshire, only this time, it was Hillary being unduly petty. The audience boos. That is the sound of the last week backfiring. (Watch the whole thing here.)
Going into Wisconsin’s primary, Clinton ratcheted up the “contrast” with ads charging Obama with skipping debates because he’s scared, as well as the plagiarism accusations. The Wisconsin vote, in which Obama won the majority of people who had made up their minds in the previous week, proved just how ineffective the attacks had been. Something about the charges wasn’t sticking. But the Clinton camp apparently hadn’t learned its lesson. During the debate, Hillary does conspicuously decline to attack Obama in a few places. Twice, when asked whether he could be commander in chief, she demurs. But the Xerox line—so plodding, so preplanned, so poorly timed (Obama was coming off an elegant flourish about words vs. deeds)—will survive the night.
The debate has not changed the master narrative for the coming weeks. In Texas and Ohio, Hillary is still facing her Alamo; Obama is still catching up in the polls. If anything, last night was a draw, and a draw favors Obama. But if it does change anything, it should give the Clinton camp pause about the negative tactics. Not for any moral reason but for a pragmatic one: It doesn’t work. If Clinton wants to take the high road back to the Senate, she will drop the cheap shots in the coming weeks. Maybe the two key states will reward her for it.
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