Blog Nightline
29 May 2008 8:29 pm by Taylor Marsh
Guest post by Grey
Jake Tapper, quoting, in part, Chris Cillizza’s postulation that Sen. Clinton is setting up an “I told you so” argument, isn’t sure that “comparing Clinton’s numbers to Obama’s right now is fair:”
Obama has been getting attacked fairly regularly by McCain, and until recently by Clinton. Conversely, I think it’s fair to say that Obama has been unable to fully attack Clinton on a number of issues on which she’d be vulnerable to GOP attacks during a general election — Clinton scandals, Bill Clinton’s business dealings. On the other hand, Obama has benefited from some embarrassingly obsequious media coverage, and Clinton from some of the roughest treatment a candidate’s experienced since the Nixon years.
Two points on that; one, even with the rough treatment Clinton has been getting and the “obsequious coverage” Obama has enjoyed, Clinton is still projected to clean McCain’s clock in November while Obama, on the other hand, is not. Everyone gets to vote in November, not just the base. Two, we’re all fairly well aware of Clinton’s “scandals” and she already carries that weight around; the negatives have been factored in for sixteen years now and she’s already been attacked for all of it. Obama, on the other hand, has barely been touched and they’ll go at him with a fervor I don’t think we’ve seen before. Guess which of the two can be painted as anything the Republicans want? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not the woman in the race.
As a counterpoint to my first argument, Andrew Sullivan and Ben Smith point to this electoral map from May 28, 2004, which shows Kerry at 327 electoral votes vs. Bush’s 211. Of course things will change between now and November, but that’s a “reality check” without reality; in the first place, Kerry never really had an opponent after his victory in Iowa, nor were the party’s loyalties divided. Second, Kerry lost at least in part because the GOP painted him as an “out of touch elitist,” which is precisely what will happen to Obama (among other things), but not to Clinton. The comparison is, at best, facile. In Alex Cabot’s immortal words, “You’ve offered a provocative theory. What it lacks in substance, it makes up for in pretty colors.”
Glenn Greenwald has a fantastic piece up about the media’s complicity and complacency in the run up to the war. Regardless of how you felt about it then or whether your opinion has changed, this is an incredible piece of journalism, a forceful indictment of the media and of “corporate executives [who] forced their news reporters to propagandize in favor of the Bush administration and the war, and censored stories that were critical of the Government.”
Jay Newton-Small, blogging about the McCain-Obama Iraq “tiff,” asks a question:
But what puzzles me is Obama’s campaign has long planned a victory lap abroad to underline his foreign policy credentials and Iraq has always been on the table for such a trip. See this Washington Post story from March 8 where “advisers” bemoan having to postpone the foreign trip because Obama lost Texas and Ohio. McCain took a similar victory lap when he won the GOP nomination. So which demographic is McCain trying to appeal to here? The Republicans who still support the war? The Independents who are worried about Obama’s foreign policy credentials? Is the war in Iraq really a great topic for McCain to highlight like this?
I’m probably going against the grain here, but I don’t think Iraq is a complete loser for McCain; Obama set foot there only once, in 2006, and he’s being roundly criticized for it already: see Jim Geraghty, John Hinderaker (with a note added by Paul Mirengoff) and John Tabin. The broader national security/military arguments will be mined to death in the general election no matter what Obama and his followers believe. The fact that most Americans want the war to end does not change the fact that McCain has credentials and Obama does not, and it’s not just Independents like me who care about this issue. Plenty of Democrats do, too, and my guess is that McCain is pitching to all of them.
Mark Ambinder on Obama’s first 100 days:
At a fundraiser in Denver last night, Sen. Barack Obama signaled that he would use the grace period of his first 100 days in office to push through national health insurance plan. In general, a fresh administration is given some latitude to pursue a single domestic policy goal; think of George W. Bush and No Child Left Behind — although Democrats were a bit shell-shocked then.
Would that be the national health insurance plan that leaves out about 15 million Americans? Just checking.
