The Note: High Roads, Low Roads
As voting lull looms, Obama starts playing on Clinton's turf.
March 12, 2008 -- She's lost more delegate ground (another boring blowout), her governor (and superdelegate) is being run out of town (in slow-motion tragicomedy), and her supporters aren't exactly helping her with their observations about her opponent.
But being Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., isn't all bad news these days. After all this action, now comes an odd six-week lull -- and time is looking like Clinton's biggest ally these days.
As we bid temporary farewell to actual real-life voting (we hardly knew ye, yet somehow we'll find a way to occupy ourselves), several dynamics favor Clinton: Frozen superdelegates. Possible re-votes in Florida and Michigan. A looming contest in Pennsylvania where she can build on her core argument.
And Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is starting to play Clinton's game. It's him demanding that a Clinton supporter step down over off-message comments -- allowing Camp Clinton to claim some clean ground in the mud match that is the Democratic campaign these days.
"I don't think that Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or the Democratic Party," Obama told the Allentown Morning Call's Josh Drobnyk and John L. Micek. "I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign, they shouldn't have a place in Senator Clinton's."
Obama expanded on his comments on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Wednesday. "When some of my surrogates have made statements that I don't think were appropriate, they left the campaign," he said. "I think that we have to set a tone in the Democratic Party that projects bringing the country together, unifying the country. I think that's what we're about."
What Ferraro is about is anybody's guess -- but she isn't making things go away quietly. She told ABC's Diane Sawyer that she is "not part of the campaign" and is "not a surrogate," then proceeded to ensure that the story will stay alive: "I was celebrating the fact that the black community in this country has come out with a pride in a historic candidacy, and has shown itself at the polls."
Her trip to the high ground: Obama, she said, is "doing precisely what they [Obama aides] don't want done -- it's going to the Democratic Party and dividing us even more."
This used to be the old, tired politics, but now it's fair game. The fact that the Obama campaign is pouncing means -- depending on your perspective -- that Obama is either rattled or ready to grow up.
This time it's Clinton on the high ground -- she ultimately said Tuesday that she would "reject" Ferraro's comments, per ABC's Jake Tapper, but her campaign is dismissing the dust-up as silliness.
"The controversy continued as Obama's advisers demanded a more dramatic renunciation and as Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams accused the Obama team of fanning the race issue," Anne Kornblut and Peter Slevin write in The Washington Post. Williams added "that Clinton had distanced herself from Ferraro but that the Obama campaign continued to raise the issue."
(Hmmm -- sound familiar?)
"Has Barack Obama decided to start 'playing the victim'?" ask ABC's Teddy Davis and Talal Al-Khatib. "[The] call for Clinton to remove the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee from her campaign came just one day after Obama decided to start making an issue of the DrudgeReport's claim that the Clinton camp forwarded a photo of Obama in Somali garb."
Welcome to the new, (maybe) improved Obama war room, The Hill's Sam Youngman writes. "Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) campaign has signaled in recent days it will hit back harder and more quickly to criticism from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign," Youngman reports. "The Obama campaign has stepped up its rhetoric in the campaigns' daily dueling conference calls with reporters."
Even on the substance of the Ferraro comments (if there is a substance left), this may work well for Clinton, particularly after a vote in Mississippi that saw the vote break down on racial lines. "The argument over race and grievance could carry short term benefits for Hillary Clinton, and could boost her support among white voters in Pennsylvania who may be turned off by a more intense focus on Obama's race," Politico's Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn write. "But a Clinton supporter's charge that Obama has received preferential treatment because he's black also carries serious dangers for her."
Who is happier that this is what the campaign has become? "A reporter will never go wrong at a Clinton or Obama press conference by asking: 'Senator, what about the latest outrage?' " Slate's John Dickerson writes. "The question is always apt, because taking umbrage and responding to it has become the chief daily business of the Democratic campaign."
On the broader point, consider the very fact that Clinton -- trailing significantly (and probably permanently) in the pledged delegate count -- can even make a claim to be winning.
"Mr. Obama is emphasizing the breadth of his appeal -- his lead in the popular vote and in pledged delegates and his victories in states that Democrats have trouble carrying in general elections," Patrick Healy writes in The New York Times. "Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, has focused on her victories in states with the most Electoral College votes, like Ohio and California, and her strength among groups like women, blue-collar workers and Hispanics."
You try mapping the endgame: "The Democrats are stuck in their own mud. They have no scripted ending to this titanic battle, no scenario ready for wide embrace. Or any embrace. Or even a handshake," Kevin Merida writes in The Washington Post. "On the let's-get-real level, Democrats have problems even a blind man can see. Their primaries and caucuses have revealed labor splits, racial and ethnic splits, gender splits, age and class splits, and a rivalry that is getting nastier by the day."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for one, is clear-eyed about the "dream ticket." "I think that ticket either way is impossible," Pelosi told NECN's Alison King.
Obama on the veep thing, on "GMA": "I am not running for vice president. I am not thinking about accepting a vice presidency. I am running for the presidency of the United States of America."
More (possible) good news for Clinton: Florida is moving toward a re-vote. "Florida Democrats are planning for the nation's largest vote-by-mail election so the state's delegates can have a say in the hotly contested presidential nominating fight," USA Today's Fredreka Schouten writes. "Under the Florida plan, to be submitted to the DNC by the end of the week, the state party would pay for the new primary."
But don't buy any stamps yet: "The plan is still being developed and significant hurdles remain, not the least of which is strong opposition by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, as well as the unified opposition of the nine Democrats in Florida's congressional delegation," Adam C. Smith writes in the St. Petersburg Times.
Said Obama, on the prospect of voting by mail: "I think there's some concerns in terms of making sure that whatever we do is fair, and that votes are properly counted and the logistics make sense."
