Election 2008: Weekly Scorecard (1/27)

Tensions rose and differences came into sharper relief as both parties prepared for Super Tuesday on February 5th. Following a contentious debate on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the Democrats closed the week with Obama’s monumental victory in South Carolina. The Republicans had their own relatively peaceful debate, followed by heated rhetoric on the campaign trail as Tuesday’s Florida primary loomed large.

Let’s get right to the week’s grades (in order of most likely to succeed):

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THE DEMOCRATS

This week, the performances of the three Democratic candidates are so intertwined, I’ll discuss them together before issuing their separate grades at the end. Let’s begin with how the week ended: Obama’s South Carolina victory speech.

Barack Obama’s South Carolina Victory Speech (Part 1)

Obama’s South Carolina Victory Speech (Part 2)

With his surprisingly large victory in South Carolina, combined with the Clintons’ divisive political tactics, Barack Obama has leap-frogged Hillary into the lead this week as the most likely to succeed, heading into Florida and Super Tuesday. After Iowa, I confessed to underestimating Obama’s unique political talents, and after Obama’s South Carolina victory, I must confess to overestimating the political skill and goodwill of the Clintons. In many ways, Obama owes much of his decisive victory to the conduct of the Clintons in the last week. The consequences of the Clintons’ campaign tactics should provide lasting harm to Hillary’s campaign.

Let’s start with Monday’s Democratic debate sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute. In retrospect, it turns out one bitter exchange between Obama and Hillary captured what would unfold later in the week. It was when Obama said he was a community organizer in the streets of Chicago trying to undue the harsh effects of Reagan’s policies while she was a corporate lawyer on the board of Wal-Mart. Hillary retorted that she was doing great things while he was a corporate lawyer representing his contributor Rezko as a “slumlord in inner city Chicago.” Her remark, said with her patented harsh edge, triggered gasps and hisses from the predominantly African American audience of the debate.

Because Hillary was responding to an attack by Obama, however, many in the MSM failed to appreciate the devastating effect of her words. It’s “campaigns 101″ that an attacked politician has a free pass to counter-attack, while the one who attacks first usually pays the price for going negative. But Hillary’s counter-attack was gratuitously vicious, implying that Obama was a sleazy sell-out to African Americans. Obama’s calm reply that he had merely worked five hours as a law firm associate on a real estate transaction for Rezko was persuasive, aided by Hillary’s failure to contradict his explanation. He further marginalized her by highlighting her attack as the kind of politics his campaign is up against. Thus, Obama made Hillary Exhibit A of his campaign theme because she crossed the line.

She didn’t have to go nuclear. Serving on the board of Wal-Mart in the Eighties while she was living in Arkansas is hardly a crime of the century. She could have put Obama on the defensive with a much softer touch, such as “I’m not sure why you are choosing to attack me personally. It seems to conflict with your message of hope and transformative politics.”

Instead, her Rezko response was disproportionately harsh and put on full display evidence that the Clintons were using race to attack Obama. The fact that the rest of the debate, particularly after they moved from podiums to chairs, was something of a love fest did not matter — the damage was done. Many in the MSM stated that Edwards was the winner of the debate by largely staying above the fray, but the MSM missed the degree of offense Hillary had just caused, particularly in the African American community. In retrospect, Obama was obviously the winner.

Ironically, it was something of a reversal of the New Hampshire debate when Obama was ungracious to Hillary (”you’re likable enough, Hillary”) and seemed to tag-team with Edwards against her, which contributed to her come from behind victory there. Apparently, he learned from his mistake and she did not.

After the debate, Bill Clinton only compounded the harm by directly attacking Obama in suspect terms. Even early in the morning of primary day, Clinton couldn’t avoid belittling Obama in racial terms when he inexplicably compared Obama to Jesse Jackson in response to a question that had nothing to do with race. His comment was aired live on a cable news network and re-broadcast on the others and on South Carolina local TV stations throughout the rest of the day:

One of Bill Clinton’s greatest gifts was his ability to take a measure of the moment and respond in perfect pitch with words and body language, but with age he seems to have gone tone deaf. This week’s repeated video of Bill’s angry red face and wagging finger, regardless of the merits of what he might have been saying, made him look embittered and out of control. Meanwhile, as these visuals of Bill flashed across cable news networks, Obama was calmly cracking jokes on David Letterman.

Hillary’s introduction of Rezko ultimately backfired in two devastating ways. One, Hillary got ambushed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show when he showed Hillary a picture of Rezko smiling with Hillary and Bill. Nothing like a little hypocrisy to de-fang an attack.

Second, Hillary’s Rezko accusation dredged up reminders of their myriad past scandals. Indeed, the ease with which the Clintons’ sordid past was used against them conflicted with Hillary’s central argument for her candidacy: that’s she’s been fully vetted by the GOP and survived. She may be vetted, but the Clintons’ past remains fodder for the GOP.

Instead of being immunized by their past, the Rezko episode suggested a troubling vulnerability for the Clintons — that the wounds are merely covered by scabs that can be ripped off at any time by the GOP (and may ironically serve more to immunize the GOP from criticism for their own bad acts by a Clinton administration, on grounds of hypocrisy).

Notice that I’ve been referring to the Clintons in the plural. Until this week, Hillary has been working hard to distinguish herself as the presidential candidate. This week, that pretense was shot to pieces. Bill repeatedly used “we” and “our” when referring to Hillary’s candidacy. After the South Carolina results came in, it was Bill Clinton, not Hillary, who spoke on television first and conceded the race to Obama. Bill’s initial remarks were all about his own post-presidential acts during the last seven years, not Hillary’s achievements. Indeed, he sounded as is if her race was all about him and his legacy. For him, perhaps it is. As a result, now they are both fair game for attack. Indeed, Romney had a memorable line against Hillary in this week’s GOP debate when he spoke of the perils of “Bill Clinton in the White House with nothing to do.”

Some pundits observed that Bill was getting into Barack’s head this week with his attacks, but by the end of the week, it seemed that the reverse was true. Bill seems deeply unnerved by the prospect of Obama’s victory. Perhaps it is because more than any other Democratic candidate, Obama represents a rejection of Clinton’s legacy.

At first, I thought Obama was making a mistake by speaking critically of President Clinton. After all, Bill was the first two-term Democratic president since FDR and has remained very popular among the party faithful. Moreover, tens of millions know Bill Clinton well and relatively few people know Obama well, so you would think voters would give Bill the benefit of the doubt (if forced to choose).

But Bill Clinton has not been up to this challenge. In an almost Karmic sense, it’s as if Obama is the youthful Clinton confronting the aged Clinton, rebuking the poor choices the aged Clinton has made. Obama’s message of hope and unity is similar to Bill’s own youthful campaign of 1992. What Obama is rejecting is how Clinton actually conducted his presidency — the partisanship and rancor — in addition to the divisive Bush Administration that followed it.

Exit polls showed that both White and African American voters in South Carolina were unhappy with the Clintons’ conduct. Edwards landed the largest share of the White vote, particularly those who decided in the last days before the primary. It seems that those who were upset with Hillary but could not bring themselves to vote for Obama chose Edwards as their outlet. If Edwards had not been in the race, it seems likely that these voters who rejected Hillary for Edwards would have broken for Obama.

Now, with the race turning to Florida next and Super Tuesday the following week, the question is whether the Clintons will change their approach. It seems unlikely. The Clintons will have to straddle running an aggressive come-from-behind campaign while not causing any further harm. Obama, meanwhile, can now credibly respond to any attack with the claim that the Clintons will do and say anything to get elected.

Following his victory, Obama’s broad coalition of supporters is growing at just the right time. Suddenly it’s Hillary who has the marginalized coalition of AARP members and poorly educated White voters.

Obama still needs to demonstrate that he has depth behind his platitudes. But one clear difference between the Obama of Iowa and the Obama of South Carolina is his increased resolve to fight. He took risks in South Carolina confronting a popular former president, and he prevailed. In his speech last night, he mixed a new combativeness into his message of hope and unity. Voters need to see that in a leader. Last night we may have seen the Obama that we will see in general election.

Barack Obama – Grade: A

Hillary Clinton – Grade: F

John Edwards – Grade: D

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THE REPUBLICANS

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John McCain

This was a great week for McCain. It began with his basking in a redemptive victory in the GOP South Carolina primary, with the help of a going away present from Fred Thompson. As noted here last week, if Fred Thompson hadn’t taken 16% of the vote, most of which was from Huckabee’s base, then Huckabee would have beaten McCain. Now, Thompson is out as attention turns to the Florida GOP primary on January 29th. As a winner-takes-all primary, it is essentially a do or die state for the candidates — not only because of the large number of delegates it will award, but because it’s broad demographics should be indicative of Super Tuesday’s voting and will provide enormous momentum and free media heading into that contest.

McCain entered the week with some lingering weaknesses, including the longstanding enmity of right wing talk radio, fiscal conservatives and the establishment GOP. Yet by the end of the week, he had gained crucial endorsements from popular Florida Governor Crist, Florida Senator Martinez, General Schwarzkopf and, in a blow to Giuliani, several police and fire organizations. The resulting free media buzz may be enough to put him over the top on Tuesday night.

What’s unknown is whether Obama’s South Carolina victory will have any effect on McCain. At the GOP debate this week, the candidates assumed Hillary would be their foe and said nothing about Obama. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. A youthful Obama against an elderly McCain may be unwise for the GOP, and if the primary voters vote strategically, they may turn to Romney as the better match-up.

Grade: A-

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Mitt Romney

McCain’s only serious challenge for Florida is from Romney. Romney has seemingly unlimited funds and has conveniently morphed into an expert on economic matters just as the economy became the leading campaign issue. Most of the MSM pundits believed Romney won the largely civil GOP debate this week, particularly when the discussion turned to the economy.

But immediately after the debate, McCain and Romney got into a war of words over whether Romney sufficiently supported the surge in Iraq. It allowed McCain to attack Romney from the right just as Romney was trying to attack McCain from the right for his intermittent deviations from GOP orthodoxy. Romney should now be in a better position to attack McCain from the right following Thompson’s departure, Huckabee’s loss in South Carolina and Giuliani’s self destruction. At the moment, the polls have McCain and Romney within the margin of error, with Romney outspending McCain on the airwaves, but McCain getting more free media from political and newspaper endorsements. If Romney pulls off a victory, it will once again cause chaos in the GOP race and increase the likelihood of a brokered convention.

Grade: B

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Mike Huckabee

Huckabee’s loss in South Carolina was likely fatal. With his evangelical base, he should have won convincingly. Now the race turns to Florida, a state too large and diverse to support his narrow evangelical focus. He was already underfunded, relative to Romney and McCain, and a loss in Florida would dry up his fund raising. It’s difficult to see a scenario with him coming out on top on Super Tuesday. With a likely third place finish in Florida and a poor finish on Super Tuesday, he should drop out by mid-February. Interestingly, he showed very little fight in this week’s debate or since on the campaign trail, which is curious for someone in his dire situation. Perhaps he has already made up his mind to keep his prospects for a vice presidency alive by remaining uncritical of his competitors.

Grade: D

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Rudy Giuliani

What a total disaster. As well documented here for weeks, Rudy has run the worst presidential campaign in modern history when you consider his position at the top of all the national polls for months (until his recent free fall). He never really waged a traditional retail campaign. Perhaps after years of traveling in black SUVs with police escorts, he wasn’t ready to press the flesh with the common folk. Or perhaps this was all a publicity campaign for his business, Giuliani Partners, rather than a serious run for the presidency. In any event, it all should be coming to a merciful end very soon.

Grade: F