After reading a couple dozen different takes on Obama’s Philadelphia speech (NYT’s Janny Scott has the latest installment here and WaPo has a handful of articles today linked here), I am now prepared to render the judgement that it did him more good than harm. Shucks, no need to commend my vision and candor — the glory goes to Obama.
What I have been wondering for the last week is how one large and pivotal constituency, the white working class, including it’s subgroup the “Reagan Democrats” received Obama’s heartfelt oration, or even if any such broad generalization, pro or con, could be made. I’ve seen no post-speech poll cross tabs that lay it out clearly, although the latest Gallup polls since Obama’s March 18 speech show Obama holding steady against McCain. My assessment is also anchored in the collective shrug from that key constituency, other than a few paragraphs in comments sections following articles. What we don’t hear/read about is a chorus of complaining workers exploded in man-on-the-street round-up articles, or otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong. Obama’s speech was excellent, as measured by clarity, persuasive power and delivery. It is exactly the sort of speech that generates future royalties for the speaker when reprinted in ‘Great Speeches’ anthologies, chapters on ‘The Explanatory Speech.’ But I’m not sure it was a great campaign speech in the sense of winning hearts and minds among undecideds in general or the blue collar constituency in particular.
The speech was necessary — he had to respond in some way to the fuss about Rev. Wright. And speechifying is most definitely Obama’s strong card as a candidate. It was a wise decision to address the problem this way instead of issuing a press statement and then being subjected to endless media interviews in which he is less skilled and in which he would be vulnerable to attacks from the press. Ditto for debates, in which Clinton is a little sharper. Now he can just say “Well, I’ve already discussed that thoroughly in my speech, and don’t really have much to add.” No one will blame him, because most voters of all races are more interested in how a candidate is going to help get their kids educated, protect their retirement assets, fix the health care mess and get us out of Iraq.
Although Obama’s speech may not have won many new hearts and minds, it did the job well enough, which was to counter-balance the negative buzz about some of Rev. Wright’s sermons and what Obama thought about them. For that, hats off to David Axelrod, or whoever was responsible for the strategy and speechwriting for jobs well-done, as well as to the candidate himself for masterful delivery.
As a practical matter, however, campaign speeches are probably best measured by their fallout. This one was a winner in that regard, with more positive than negative buzz, even if most of it comes from the choir. When was the last time anybody got so much good ink from a speech? All in all, yet another impressive example of Team Obama’s edge in strategy and tactics.
Month: March 2008
NOTE: This item by James Vega was originally published at The Daily Strategist on March 13, 2008.
As the eulogies for Bill Buckley give way to more cerebral discussions of modern day conservatism, it is worth stopping for a moment to insist upon a basic fact – one that Democrats should never allow the mainstream media (or themselves) to forget.
Despite the frequent use of the term “movement” by the press, the “conservative movement” that has provided the Republican Party with its basic ideology since the Reagan- Gingrich era is profoundly different from the two major social movements whose viewpoints are deeply embedded in the basic outlook and philosophy of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party’s economic perspective comes not simply from the legislation of the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt, but from the epic struggle of the American trade union movement in the 1930’s. Equally, at the heart of the modern Democratic Party’s social philosophy lies the historical experience of the civil rights movement and the legacy of Martin Luther King.
These two social movements had three things in common. They were struggles of profoundly disadvantaged and oppressed groups for basic social and economic justice, they were grass-roots, bottom-up movements in which leaders emerged from the rank and file, and they were led by dedicated militants who made huge personal and human sacrifices.
Both trade union and civil right organizers lived with the constant fear of death, vicious beatings, or imprisonment and both movements had many famous martyrs killed in the struggle (the Haymarket victims and Joe Hill for the trade unionists; Emmet Till, Medgar Evers, the Mississippi Three, (Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner) and the children of the Birmingham bombing for the civil rights movement). Many of the leaders of both movements spent significant time in jail — it was, in fact, a proud badge of honor and a symbol of their commitment to the cause.
Sadly, for many people under the age of 40 these realities — which everybody knew perfectly well at the time — now sound like melodramatic exaggerations. But they are not; they are simple statements of fact.
The modern “official” conservative movement on the other hand – although in some respects indeed a social movement – was and is to a significant degree a movement of the “haves” rather than the “have-nots” and as a result has never had any of the three characteristics above.
The modern conservative movement was heavily subsidized by foundations and wealthy individuals from its beginnings. By the 1980’s there was a substantial network of think-tanks, book publishers, house-organ magazines, scholarships and internships that recruited and financially supported young conservatives. Communication with ordinary people was overwhelmingly conducted by very sanitary, “no getting the hands dirty” methods – largely direct mail and television (particularly televangelist programming) – rather than by any actual door-to-door, grass-roots organizing.
Now to be sure. there have indeed been a number of genuine right-wing, grass roots activist movements since the 1970’s. There have been skinhead/racist/survivalist groups (like “The Order” and “White Power” in 1980’s, the militia movement in 1990s, the Minutemen today), and also broader grass-roots movements to fight local gun control initiatives, to infiltrate local school boards to mandate creationism and to conduct civil (and also very uncivil) disobedience against abortion clinics.
All of these movements shared two characteristics – they were authentically bottom up, grass-roots movements and they were all treated like embarrassing, party-crashing, beer-drinking, trailer park trash phenomena by the official beltway conservative “movement”.
On the other hand when the current generation of “official” conservative spokesmen – the Gingrichs, D’Souzas, Laffers, Murrays, Limbaughs, O’Reillys and Coulters– were in college in the 70’s and 80’s, the worst injustice most of them suffered was having to listen to pompous tenured radicals talk endlessly about Foucault and Germaine Greer rather than Edmund Burke and Adam Smith.
It is important for Democrats to point this out whenever the media casually equate the modern conservative “movement” with the genuine social movements that underlie the Democratic coalition because it creates a false equivalence between the moral authority of the two. It artificially imbues official “inside-the-beltway” conservatism with connotations of a genuine grass-roots social movement – traditions of altruism and self sacrifice, identification with the struggle for justice and solidarity with the underdog.
Let’s face the facts. The conservative movement indeed recognized and capitalized upon a number of genuine and sincere grievances of working-class and other ordinary Americans. But the middle-class and upper-class, white American men who compose the official conservative movement have never in their “custom-tailored-suit- and- tie”, “better-side-of town” lifetimes been the oppressed victims of systematic social injustice.
This is illustrated by an ironic fact. Genuine grass-roots social movements of the oppressed always have songs and anthems that express their deepest social ideals. At the end of every union organizing meeting trade unionists would always sing “Solidarity Forever”. Every civil rights rally concluded with the singing of “Oh Freedom” and “We Shall Overcome”.
There is nothing remotely comparable in the well-funded, “inside the beltway” conservative so-called “movement”. In fact, it is hard to even visualize exactly what kind of spiritual anthem could properly express the social philosophy of the audiences who attend meetings of groups like the Conservative Political Action Council, the Heritage Foundation, the College Republicans or the US Chamber of Commerce.
Oh, wait a minute. Come to think of it, there is one. All these groups could kick off their conferences with a few lusty choruses of “Yo-Ho, Yo-Ho, A Pirates’ Life for Me”. It would fit them like a glove.
Lurking in the background of the interminable dispute over the Democratic Party’s handling of outlaw primaries in MI and FL has been the fear that keeping these two states unrepresented at the convention in Denver could hurt the ultimate nominee’s ability to win either or both in November.
Up until now, this fear has been largely subjective and anecdotal. But earlier this week, three Florida media outlets published a poll suggesting that Florida Democrats are indeed feeling invested in the controversy, with a significant number of them currently inclined to punish the national party for its alleged disrespect.
More specifically, 14% of respondents say a failure to seat the Florida delegation would make them “much less likely” to support the presidential nominee in November, with another 10% saying it would make them somewhat less likely to do so. It’s also worth noting that only 28% of respondents blame the Republican governor and legislature for the mess, with 25% blaming the DNC and another 20% blaming the Florida Democratic Party.
There’s clearly some intraparty factionalism affecting these results, since Clinton supporters are roughly twice as likely to want the original primary results to stand as Obama supporters (Obama’s support, BTW, has gone up modestly since the primary).
This is all interesting, and perhaps questionable. Given the high odds of a polarizing general election, and the certainty that the Democratic nominee will campaign heavily in the Sunshine State, you’d have to figure some of these bruised feelings among Florida Democrats would abate by November.
But on the other hand, if the Clinton campaign continues to make its championship of MI and FL primary voters a centerpiece of the case for her nomination, and particularly if there is a Credentials Committees fight before or during the convention, then this issue is likely to remain front-and-center in Florida political coverage for quite some time. If HRC wins the nomination, this particular problem might largely go away. But if the nominee is Obama, and he wins after fighting tooth-and-nail against any seating of Florida delegates, then we should all hope someone in Obama’s political braintrust is already devoting some long-term thinking to what the candidate can do during the General Election to heal the wounds. A fly-around to key media markets in Florida, and perhaps Michigan, the day after the convention, might not be a bad idea. Maybe he could distribute some of those convention goodie-bags the unseated delegates will have missed.
I didn’t cross-post an article I wrote for TPMCafe on the religious dimension of the Jeremiah Wright controversy and Barack Obama’s handling of it, in part because it overlapped with earlier observations I made on this site, and also because I’ve tried to keep TDS relatively free of my various non-political interests (hence, no posts, much as I’ve been tempted, about Georgia football or basketball).
But given the apparently endless nature of the Wright controversy, at least among conservatives, and the heavy emphasis placed on religious factors by Obama’s critics, you might want to give it a read, particularly if you are a Christian in search of relevant if non-momentous Holy Week reading material.
On the heels of Adam Nagourney’s survey yesterday of Hillary Clinton’s difficult strategy for winning the nomination, Ben Smith of The Politico gets deep into the math of HRC’s effort to claim a majority of the overall popular vote. He concludes, like many observers, that absent a deal to “count” popular votes from MI and FL, HRC’s goal of a popular vote majority depends on either big landslide wins in the upcoming states she’s expected to do well in (PA, KY, WV and PR), or surprise showings in states where Obama is thought to be leading (e.g., NC, OR and IN). Complicating the picture even more is the fact that four caucus states (IA, NV, ME and WA) have not reported, and may be incapable of tabulating, actual raw votes.
Smith also links to a useful if complicated chart at RealClearPolitics that displays various popular vote configurations. It has Obama up by just over 700,000 votes without FL, MI or the four non-popular-vote-reporting caucus states, three of which were won by Obama.
The March issue of Campaign & Elections ezine, Politics has a freebie cover story by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch. “Tuned Out: Cultural Libertarians Are A Growing Force in America. But Just How Can you Reach Them?”
Much of the article is a plug for Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul as a prototype presidential candidate of the future, without even a mention of Paul’s disturbing flirtation with white supremacist groups/ideology. But the authors do shed some light on Paul’s popularity with Libertarians, if not racist groups.
There’s also a fair amount of dubious speculation about “long-tail marketing” being the wave of the future in politics, as well as the economy. The authors cite a study of public opinion polls indicating that “15 percent of the electorate can more or less be described as Libertarian,” which doesn’t tell us much about what they actually do at the ballot box.
The merit of the article, in terms of Democratic strategy, is that it illuminates a significant ideological minority that divides its voters between Democrats, Republicans and the Libertarian Party and sheds light on what they think about a host of issues in current context. The sidebar, “7 Ways to Win Our Vote” limns current Libertarian preferences regarding online gambling; internet tax proposals; eminent domain; Iraq; immigration; medical marijuana; and health insurance. Democrats have an edge with Libertarians on most of these issues and other issues concerning personal and lifestyle freedom. Republicans will do better with Libertarians who are more focused on taxes, shrinking government and expanding unfettered trade.
It’s unclear whether the Libertarian percentage of American voters will grow in the years ahead. No doubt, Democrats can bite off a healthy chunk of the Libertarian-leaning constituency with the right kind of candidates. My guess is Obama would have a better chance than Clinton to win Libertarian votes in this cycle, although neither one satisfies the inflexible standards of free-trade ideologues. One suspects that many, if not most self-described Libertarians are not all that rigid on all their issues, so there is likely not much benefit in tailoring a strategy to win their votes.
Surely one measure of the judgment of politicians who have supported and continue to support the Iraq War and those who didn’t and/or don’t is the overall cost, generally estimated at $2 trillion. That’s calamitous enough, as Joe Conason explains, given the original cost estimates:
How mistaken were the war’s optimistic promoters in 2003? The official line on the expected cost of rebuilding Iraq after ousting Saddam was just under $2 billion, according to testimony provided by Bush administration officials. That estimate did not include the likelihood, according to Paul Wolfowitz, the then-deputy secretary of defense, of whether Iraq’s oil reserves would cover the entire cost of invasion, occupation and reconstruction. Five years later, the estimated cost of the war to American taxpayers is well over $2 trillion, including the care we must provide for wounded Americans over the next few decades. Much of the Iraqi oil, of which production remains sporadic, is being stolen and smuggled away.
The difference between an estimate of $2 billion and a cost of $2 trillion could be considered a significant miscalculation, even in a Republican government.
But that’s not all:
Yet those figures don’t quite reckon with the real costs, which should include the rise in the price of oil from around $36 a barrel in March 2003 to well over $100 a barrel this month. Some economists go further, blaming the subprime mortgage collapse — and the ensuing deluge of bad paper that may capsize the world economy — on the effects of the war.
No matter how broad or narrow your estimates, the costs of this war have to cast a pretty heavy shadow on John McCain’s reputation for fiscal probity, and should make his obsession with appropriations earmarks–mostly peanuts as compared to a week or so of this war, which he supported from the beginning and wants to continue indefinitely–pretty laughable.
In a minority view, Chris Bowers thinks the Obama campaign’s decision to resist a deal or “re-do” for Michigan could invite a credentials fight in the DNC and at the convention, on grounds that the required majority of delegates may arguably be based on a count that includes MI and FL.
Adam Nagourney of The New York Times has a good summary of Hillary Clinton’s current strategy for winning the Democratic presidential nomination:
She has to defeat Mr. Obama soundly in Pennsylvania next month to buttress her argument that she holds an advantage in big general election states.
She needs to lead in the total popular vote after the primaries end in June.
And Mrs. Clinton is looking for some development to shake confidence in Mr. Obama so that superdelegates, Democratic Party leaders and elected officials who are free to decide which candidate to support overturn his lead among the pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses.
But the growing unlikelihood of a “re-do” or a delegate deal for MI and FL is a big obstacle to the second goal, which may be the key to an HRC claim to superdelegate supremacy.
The fight over Florida and Michigan is just partly about delegates. Victories in new primaries in those states are among the only realistic ways for Mrs. Clinton to erase Mr. Obama’s advantage in the total popular vote.
Mr. Obama’s edge over Mrs. Clinton is 700,000 votes out of 26 million cast, excluding caucuses and the disputed Florida and Michigan results. About 12 million people are eligible to vote in the remaining contests.
Aides to the two candidates said even with the best possible showing for Mrs. Clinton in the states ahead, it was hard to see how she could pass Mr. Obama without Michigan and Florida.
That’s why (as Ed Kilgore has argued here) it’s in Clinton’s interest to accept absolutely any deal she can get on delegates for FL in particular, to preserve her 300,000 popular vote win there. And that may be why the Obama campaign seems increasingly committed to the status quo, despite the risks that involves for the general election.
The other big thing to watch is whether Obama quickly recovers from the polling “swoon” that seemed to hit him when the Jeremiah Wright controversy exploded. If his speech on the subject was as effective with the public as it was with most of the media, that should begin to happen soon.
Today, as you probably know, is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. And two national politicians–George W. Bush and Barack Obama–marked the anniversary with major speeches on the subject.
Anyone who doubts there are significant differences between the two parties on foreign policy and national security issues ought to read these two speeches. No, George W. Bush won’t be on the ballot this year, but John McCain has accepted and even championed Bush’s point of view on the original decision to invade Iraq and the “victory” strategy going forward. And no, Obama has not yet won the Democratic nomination, but Hillary Clinton, while disagreeing with Obama’s analysis of the original war resolution vote, does agree with him in most particulars about what to do now.
The gap between Bush and Obama is remarkably wide and deep. Bush still argues that the original decision to invade Iraq was justified by Saddam’s “threatening” behavior and the need for a more aggressive post-9/11 U.S. military posture in the Middle East. He’s still asserting the “flypaper” theory that al Qaeda’s involvement in Iraq has denied it the resources to attack America again, and still claims the invasion has made us safer. He’s still dismissing the post-invasion Iraqi turmoil as little more than a rearguard action by elements of Saddam’s regime, augmented by al Qaeda. And he’s still predicting “victory,” defined as a stable Iraqi democracy.
Obama, on the other hand, continues to argue that the invasion was based on lies, bad intelligence, ideology, and most of all a major strategic blunder. He continues to stress the handicaps the war has imposed on the United States, ranging from an overstretched military, to erosion of prior gains in Afghanistan, to neglect of Pakistan, to soured alliances, to the overall costs of the war in human and dollar terms. And he continues to deride the idea of “victory” in Iraq as based on a perpetual engagement with no real definition of success.
The only real change in Bush’s argument over time has been his shift from delusional talk about military and political progress in Iraq to celebration of the real (if limited) military progress associated with the “surge.” And as always, he stresses the allegedly baleful consequences of any sort of withdrawal, especially now that “victory” is in sight.
Meanwhile, Obama is honing his own argument on the “surge” as a tactical success within a strategic failure. His passage today on McCain’s Iraq position nicely combines his analysis of the “surge” with the claim that his own consistent opposition to the war gives him the upper hand in a general election debate on the subject:
If you believe we are fighting the right war, then the problems we face are purely tactical in nature. That is what Senator McCain wants to discuss – tactics. What he and the Administration have failed to present is an overarching strategy: how the war in Iraq enhances our long-term security, or will in the future. That’s why this Administration cannot answer the simple question posed by Senator John Warner in hearings last year: Are we safer because of this war? And that is why Senator McCain can argue – as he did last year – that we couldn’t leave Iraq because violence was up, and then argue this year that we can’t leave Iraq because violence is down.
To the extent that the small recent shift in public opinion towards optimism on Iraq has not been matched by any retroactive positive judgment on the wisdom of the war itself, Obama’s approach makes a lot of political sense. Let the Republicans, Bush and McCain alike, try to perpetually make untenable claims about the whole mess, and it will become clear that after five long years–longer, as Obama pointed out today, than the American engagement in either World War, and longer than the American Civil War–time is definitely not on their side.
