Tuesday, May 27, 2008 - Posts
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Perhaps the biggest advantage of campaigning in Puerto Rico is that it forces both candidates to dance.
Obama broke into a timid little groove—it looks kind of like he’s running in place—while campaigning on Saturday in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan (video here; it’s around 1:50). Yesterday, Fox News embed Aaron Bruns managed to persuade Hillary Clinton to make vaguely dancelike movements to Enrique Iglesias’ “Be With You” at a bar.
Both moments are, somehow, incredibly charming. If I were an advance staffer for a campaign, I’d get palpitations every time danceable music started playing. Everyone knows dancing makes perfect stock footage for attack ads. But the high risk comes with high payoff. When Obama shook it on Ellen, he probably won over grandmothers across the nation. In Clinton’s case, showing vulnerability has worked out rather nicely, too.
Best of all, it provides some clear contrast with John McCain (Exhibit A). Every time McCain proposes an unmoderated debate, Obama should propose a pop and lock contest.
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This weekend’s meeting of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will be full of theater. Each campaign must publicly make its case for why Florida's and Michigan’s delegations should or should not be seated, and the committee’s 30 members must deliberate. Clinton supporters will be protesting. But the most intriguing performance will come from RBC member and Clinton delegate guru Harold Ickes, who voted last August to strip Florida of all its delegates but is now pushing to reinstate them.
That may sound like some tough logical gymnastics, but Ickes is a gold medalist when it comes to this stuff. Here’s a quick chronology of his past statements, starting with his justification for stripping the states of their delegations. (Pardon the long quotes—the man can talk.):
“I think this whole system [the primary calendar] is goofy. It's all out of kilter. I think we start way too early.”
—Aug. 26, 2007
“I was not acting as an agent of Mrs. Clinton. … I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules and I felt I had an obligation to enforce them.”
—Feb. 16 2008
“[W]e think that the Florida vote was fair and square. And the Obama campaign whining about the fact that it wasn't fair when they, in fact -- when he, in fact, broke the pledge that his campaign signed by actually campaigning in Florida, you know, rings high. I don't think any objective observer who looked at that result, in which a million more Democrats came out to vote in this presidential preference compared to 2004, can argue with even a semblance of a straight face that that was not a fair contest and that those results reflect the will of the Democrats who participated. Senator Obama just didn't like the results. I suggest that had the results been just the opposite, he would be rushing to the forefront to try to seat those delegations, and if not, arguing for a redo.”
—March 25, 2008
“We decided to invoke a full stripping of the delegates from those two states to send a very strong signal to other states that if they broke the window, there would be very severe consequences. We think that that signal was received, listened to, no other state broke the window, and it is it is now time as practical political people with very much at stake in deciding our nomination and in winning the general election and in winning the White House … we ought to now turn our attention to that. …
“These states have in fact been punished. They didn’t have primaries run in them. They didn’t have full fledged campaigns run in them. … Some people can disagree on that, but the fact is punishment was imposed by virtue of not running the primaries there. The lessons were learned and it’s now time for us to turn our attention to the general election and make sure that these states—that we do everything to make sure these states are in the Democratic column.
“One million more people participated in that state’s primary than in the prior 40 years. People came out in droves. People knew who they wanted to vote for, they knew why they were voting.”
—May 22, 2008
So first it was about fixing the calendar; then it was about enforcing the rules; then it was about record turnout, Obama breaking the rules (which is debatable), and winning the general election. Next it will be about the deliciousness of Tropicana orange juice.
Set your TiVos to C-SPAN.
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Hillary Clinton's ill-advised invoking of RFK's assassination might
have damaged her campaign if there were anything left to damage.
Meanwhile, Obama closes in on the current magic number of 2,026,
bringing Clinton's odds of winning the nomination to 0.5 percent.
On
the list of campaign no-nos, hinting at the possibility of your
opponent being shot is up there. Yet that's what some people thought
Hillary meant when she told the editorial board of the Sioux Falls,
S.D., Argus-Leader that Democratic nominations often extend
into June: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he
won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We
all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I
don't understand it."
The New York Post led the way, blaring, "Hillary Raises Assassination Issue." Drudge quickly followed. The Washington Post fronted the story, albeit less sensationally. But little consideration was given to what Clinton meant. (Watch the video and draw your own conclusions.) Never mind that she had said the same thing to Time back in March and no one noticed. Never mind that her calendar argument is misleading
in the first place: Her husband may not have mathematically secured the
nomination until June, but he was the presumptive nominee in March; RFK
was still campaigning in June because the primary calendar started so
late. The focus was on the "assassination" comparison. "We have seen an
X-ray of a very dark soul," opined the Daily News' Michael Goodwin. That or a very click-hungry media.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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