Nomination blackout
You might have been wondering why I haven’t written anything about the Democratic presidential nomination contest for the last month or so. Most of my communication about the election has taken place over email, trying to convince voting friends to support Barack. I’ve been neglecting the old blog in the process.
Well, here are my thoughts in a few short sentences.
- Bill Clinton is a liability to Hillary Clinton, especially when he reminds Democratic primary voters of what the 90s political ugliness really was like. Bill did this perfectly right before the South Carolina primary and it really turned voters off.
- Barack Obama is sealing the deal, but Clinton is fighting back relatively well. After a stunned silence from Clinton after Super Tuesday, she seems to have gotten her legs back underneath her and attacked Barack on numerous fronts: plagiarizing speeches from Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA), not getting ’specific enough’ in his policy proposals, and refusing to debate her as much as she would like to debate. In terms of the speeches, Hillary Clinton has taken just as many ideas and turns of phrase from Obama during her campaign. In terms of policy proposals, Obama has always had the details on his website. He reserved the speeches for getting people excited. Oddly, that seemed to slip Clinton’s mind. On the debates, there have been 18 debates so far for the Democrats. Obama agreed to 2 more. Clinton wanted 4 more. Sounds like they’ve debated enough to me. This is all class Bill and Hillary Clinton. This ties into my last point about the negative attacks trumped up on lame points. We’ll see soon enough if voters react to Hillary’s attacks as poorly as they reacted to Bill’s.
- I think Obama is making a mistake about the public financing uproar. If you haven’t been following this, Obama promised at the outset of the campaign that if the Republican nominee wanted to pledge to accept public financing, he would agree to it as well. Since McCain basically won the Republican nomination, he has been hitting Obama on this asking him to pledge to public financing. Obama has not wanted to pledge to that given his ENORMOUS fundraising advantage over John McCain. Also, McCain is attacking Obama now in the hopes that he’ll get to face Hillary instead of Barack. All early match-ups show Obama beating McCain solidly, while Hillary and McCain are tied. I want Barack to say: “No, I will not accept public financing. The public financing system was created before candidates had the ability to raise money from hundreds of thousands of average Americans. It used to be that 50,000 rich Americans would give $1000 each. Now it’s 500,000 average Americans giving $100 each. They have bought a place in the process. They own a little part of this campaign. I do not want to deny that right to the Americans who want to be a part of a new kind of politics. And when I am president, I will work to reform the Public Financing option so that it reflects today’s realities.” Then, he can follow this up with a few profiles of who is giving and why. Be strong on it. Don’t waffle. Just decide.
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