Dems Shooting Themselves In The Face?
As his 1992 campaign for president imploded, Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey -- a Vietnam veteran who had lost a leg in combat -- initiated a brutal assault on Bill Clinton.
"Bill Clinton should not be the nominee of our party because he will not win in November," Kerrey declared. "He is going to be opened up like a soft peanut."
In a speech at Spellman College in Atlanta, Kerrey attacked Clinton's avoidance of the draft during the Vietnam War. "It should not surprise you that it was the men and women who went to Vietnam who suffered, and they particularly suffered when they came home. And all of a sudden all the sympathy in this campaign is flowing to somebody who didn't go."
Georgia State Rep. "Able" Mabel Thomas (D), who helped introduce Kerrey, declared that the country needs "a commander in chief, not a commander in chicken."
The criticism failed to resurrect the Bob Kerrey campaign. Instead, Kerrey's comments served only to diminish his own image and credibility as a candidate.
Now, 16 years later, the equally bitter fight for the Democratic nomination has become something of a circular firing squad. The last two candidates left standing are even turning their weapons on themselves.
Hillary Clinton, in her bid to discredit Barack Obama's primary and caucus victories, has, for example, dismissed many of them as irrelevant because they were in Red states that will be impossible to win in November: "I have been winning the big states we have to win. With all due respect, unless there is a tsunami change in America, we are never going to carry Alaska, North Dakota, Idaho, it's just not going to happen."
While probably true, there are two problems with Clinton's statement.
First, in 1992, Bill Clinton won a number of states that would likely fall into the category of contests the Hillary Clinton campaign is writing off: Montana, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia and Kentucky.
Second, and more important, as Chris Bowers, a principle analyst on the OpenLeft web site, notes: "writing off and/or taking for granted any area of the country, no matter how red or how blue, will damage that candidate as President. The way you campaign reflects on the way you govern, and writing off and/or taking for granted any part of the country reduces your political capital from the outset."
Clinton is not alone is damaging her prospects on November 4. The Obama campaign quietly undermined efforts to hold "re-votes" in Michigan and Florida, the two states that violated party rules by holding primaries too early and that will not have their delegations seated, unless the convention credentials committee overturns the party rule.
There is a clear logic for Obama to avoid re-votes in these states: Clinton would be the favorite to win. The Obama campaign would prefer just to seat state delegation split evenly between Clinton and Obama supporters so that neither state influences the outcome.
But again, there are two problems.
First, for the front runner -- and very likely the nominee -- to go to the convention, and almost certainly to the general election, conducting what amounts to a "prevention defense" suggests a fear of taking on contests for the nomination everywhere.
Second, and again more significantly, Michigan and especially Florida are likely to be battleground states. Disregarding Democratic voters there by diminishing, or eliminating altogether, their role in the nomination process can only hurt the chances for a strong turnout by the Democratic base in the general election.
Rob Shapiro, who served in the Commerce Department during the Clinton administration, and who is now a politically active economic consultant, noted, "I do think the failure to resolve Michigan/Florida - jeez what a disaster Howard Dean has been - will hurt either of them, especially in Florida."
Some analysts and consultants contended neither the Florida-Michigan situation nor Hillary's downgrading of "red states" will significantly influence the general election outcome. But they were almost unanimous in the view that Clinton's engaging the debate over Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright would be disastrous, if she were to win the nomination -- further alienating African American voters.
"If Hillary wins the nomination, I suspect she will have frittered away most of the good will and political capital that Bill has accumulated over the years with black voters," said Democratic consultant Dan Gerstein, an Obama supporter. Clinton's comments on Wright would contribute to "the cumulative impact of all the intended and unintended racially-tinged gestures her campaign has made, as well as the perception that will spread that she stole the nomination from the guy who won the pledged delegate fight and the popular vote," he said.
Another Democratic media specialist, James Duffy, argued that Wright represents a major hurdle for Obama, "his statements...will not go away."
But, Duffy added, "for Hillary to raise them is to play with dynamite. The Black community is fully vested in Obama. It is not his campaign now, but it their campaign. The more the Clintons' probe the Wright connection, the more they risk alienating the most loyal base the Democratic Party has had for the last 50 years. The fact that they have picked up the dynamite indicates they know time is running out. They must destroy Obama or lose."
Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who lost the 1984 nomination to Walter F. Mondale in a bitter and hostile struggle, said the "nomination process would have been a lot more productive if it had not become so negative." He puts more blame for this on Clinton than on Obama, whom he supports.
He added, however, that "We have not yet reached the point where the struggle is making the nomination worthless."
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March 27, 2008 01:28 PM