You have to love the irony of the fact that Jon Stewart, goofy, snarky guy-most-likely-to-sell-you-a-bag-in-the-dorm Stewart, is having more of an effect on the political process than most of the partisan talking heads shows. I credit the rise of John McCain as a serious candidate to The Daily Show’s great series of comedic "ambush interviews" in New Hampshire, Mo Rocca and Steve Carrel asking off-kilter questions with a vicious deadpan. The fact that McCain got the freakin’ joke and was willing to laugh about it, on TV, in the most stressful political crucible known to man, humanized him and made him a likable Republican.
Last night Barack Obama made his first – but probably not his last – appearance on The Daily Show. I’ll spare you the play-by-play – it’s pretty adequately covered elsewhere. But this was Barack’s debut to The Daily Show’s highly net literate, college educated, pot smoking audience, and I’d have to say he killed. More postflip.
Jon Stewart has defined himself as the Voice of Reason in the center, largely by defining the center as where he is. Far too self-effacing to take his own power seriously (which, of course, adds to that power) he provided a warm and fertile ground for Obama to present himself. A couple of very funny digs at Hillary, and a nice summation of the blogger debate between the two camps led to an insightful series of questions that didn’t get bogged down in minutia – and, unlike most politicians who brave that chair, he was funny. You gotta love that.
My impressions of Barack were generally very favorable – he’s affable, articulate, and thinks well on his feet. He didn’t take cheap shots at the Democratic opposition when he could have, saving his ire for the present Imperium. He’s humble, or at least can fake it well. He’s demonstrably smart – nothing coming out of his mouth sounded pre-rehearsed or scripted, although it’s likely he’s given a lot of thought to it. I didn’t hear him resort to buzz-words or talking point memos (or, if he did, it was seamless with his banter). He seemed comfortable and generally happy to be there. Most importantly, he’s very likable, and that came across clearly.
The central point that he was trying to put across was the Clinton camp’s meme concerning his "lack of experience" was a double-edged sword, and adroitly pointed out that the important thing in a candidate isn’t experience, but judgment. That’s a meme that most Americans can get on board with. My mom watched, her first time seeing Obama actually talk rather than speechify, and she (a Center Right rural Republican) thought he was great, making the comment "He sounds like you might think Abraham Lincoln would have sounded." Go figure. I didn’t see that, but she’s been a little batty since the menopause. "I mean, he’s a big picture guy," she tried to explain when I pressed her. "And he’s relaxed and funny."
Which means last night’s appearance is, indeed, big trouble for the Hillary people. My opposition to her candidacy is well known here on Kos, so I’ll admit that up front. But what follows is more a series of observations than an attack.
Hillary has been planning her run for the White House since the final days of the Clinton Administration, if not long bfore. She’s put together a crackerjack national organization, has an enviable fundraising machine, is cagey enough to recognize weaknesses and seek to counter them, has tacked artfully as the poll-winds change, and has staked out a position in the Center based on her experience and her resume, in anticipation of attacks from the Right. She’s made all the proper votes, and those that were controversial she has put into spin-mode. She’s a master campaigner, there is no doubt.
Which is why it must gall her people to no end that at this stage of the game she’s still struggling. After seven years of carefully made plans, she should be the undisputed favorite. But she’s not. And one of the biggest reasons isn’t her vote on the War (though that will be telling) or her series of gaffes that her people are spinning mightily into "brilliant articulations of policy", but a factor that Stewart hit on last night (but Obama was gentleman enough to avoid): people, in general, don’t like her.
Blame it on the vast Right Wing Conspiracy (who wants her to get the nomination so badly they can taste it) or her carefully constructed and painstakingly researched speeches, her sometimes shrill supporters or the muck from Monicagate, or the resentment Americans feel at the "It’s-my-turn-I-earned-it" attitude she projects, but the fact is that even among folks who say they will support her, there is a stunning lack of enthusiasm for her campaign . . . because people respect Hillary, but they don’t like her.
In the popularity contest that is American electoral politics, that’s a problem.
No one voted for GWB based on his record, his resume, or his college transcripts. The GOP put him into power by a combination of dirty politics and the fact that Bush was personally appealing to major segments of society. He was likable, to the people who vote. Politics is an emotional argument, not a logical one. People hesitate to support someone that they don’t personally like in the privacy of their own voting booth.
And for all Hillary’s accomplishments, that’s where she is stuck. She has a dinosaur of a campaign organization that takes a lot of feeding, and all the folks she was counting on to jump on her bandwagon are disturbingly not there at this stage of the game. I mean, Oprah should have been having massive celebrity-laden fundraisers for her, not someone else – whatever happened to sisterhood? Edwards she could handle, but Obama is a problem. And with both of them there, they can provide cover for each other – Edwards has been able to improve his organization and his strategy because Obama is acting as a lighting rod for Hillary’s ire. Plus they split the available pool of donors and make her work that much harder.
She has to tread carefully, now, because she’s likely getting heat from some sensitive places. She can’t come out too strongly against Obama, or she risks alienating not just his present supporters, but the large African American vote she thought for six years were firmly in her pocket. Even now those carefully cultivated relationships she’s developed with (largely female) African American activists are under strain, as those same activists are being asked by their friends and families "Why are you supporting a rich White lady instead of a Black man?"
It’s tough to argue back that somehow a rich White lady is going to better look to the interests of the African American community better than Obama. And after a sixty year struggle for civil rights, the possibility of an African American president must be a compelling force to tempt them away from Hillary’s organization. As I’ll articulate in more detail in a later diary, Hillary is just one major gaffe away from losing what part of the AA base she has left.
That’s got to keep her up at night.
Obama is not only a threat to her AA voting machine, but he also threatens to steal away the hidden pool of extra votes she had been counting on. In defense after defense of Hillary’s inevitability, I see one fact articulated above all: the women will vote for her. At least on paper.
The problem is that that ain’t necessarily so. Hillary’s people treat being a woman like being a single-issue voter, and the fact is that most female voters have sophisticated political issues that cross a great swath of the political landscape. To say that she appeals to a majority of women would be an error; to say even that she appeals to a majority fo Democratic women would be a stretch. Supposedly her candidacy will inspire a whole generation of young women to register to vote and sweep her into power.
The problem is, the young women she’s counting on just aren’t very fired up about her candidacy. Barack Obama has standing room only, turn-away crowds with people hanging from the rafters and trees to see him speak. Hillary . . . not so much. How is she going to be able to convince African American voters of the logic that they don’t need to vote for Barack just because he’s Black while at the same time convincing female voters that they do need to vote for her just because she’s a woman? And where does that lead the great number of voters who are both African American and female?
In a popular culture where Oprah Winfrey has more ral influence than Hillary Clinton, Oprah’s support of Barack is telling. Worse for Hillary, Oprah’s reach extends far beyond the African American audience and deep into the suburbs of Middle America. She mentions a book, it hits the New York Times list. She’s one of the most popular and influential people in the country, a bellwether of popular culture . . . and she has spoken about which candidate she likes. And it isn’t ‘her girl’, Hillary.
Another factor is us, the netroots that have been, more or less, decidedly not enamored with Hillary. After cultivating MSM contacts for over two decades, Hillary arrives at her moment only to find her friends in the Fourth Estate with waning influence and crappy credibility. The WWII generation who took everything in print to be gospel is largely gone, now, and even the standard Network News that used to be so vital is struggling with relevancy and an aging demographic. The very young people Hillary had counted on to be her groundswell don’t read newspapers or watch the Evening News. They don’t even watch CNN. They get their news from five million impossible-to-control sources on the internet.
And The Daily Show. Sucks to be Hillary.
Clinton is a master campaigner, but she can only control so much. With the internet and Web 2.0 and all the other modern craziness she can’t get a handle on, staying on message isn’t enough. Television commercials won’t be enough. As she, herself, pointed out, you don’t fight the war of the future with the weapons of the past. You also don’t run the campaign of the future with the organization of the past.
Obama is pulling in some serious dough from the internet, and his people are starting to build up a grass-roots, technologically savvy decentralized organization that will likely run leaner and meaner than Hillary’s. TV spots cost money, consultants cost money, pollsters cost money, telephone banks and direct mail appeals cost money. You can bridge the gap a little with volunteer help . . . but the enthusiastic volunteers are just not mobbing her campaign headquarters the way she had planned. Clearly, the campaign landscape is changing, and the Clinton camp is always reacting, and not always very gracefully.
So that leaves the Clinton Campaign with a dilemma. Under the current situation, simply winning a primary or two won’t be enough. If she comes out of New Hampshire or Iowa with anything less than a sizable plurality, her campaign contributions start to dry up, just as Obama – who could take a close second in either or both early primaries and count it as a moral victory – would be catching fire. And Hillary knows that there is nothing better for a campaign than momentum. If Obama places well, or even wins, in Iowa or New Hampshire, South Carolina will likely fall to him, and after that it’s doubtful that she will have the backers necessary to keep her ponderous campaign afloat.
So she can go negative, inviting the wrath of the African American community and further alienating fence-sitters who will frown upon such tactics, or she can keep her head down, try to smile more, and muscle on through to February, hoping something horrible happens to Obama’s campaign before it turns into the unstoppable juggernaut against her inevitable nomination. Tough call.
One thing that did occur to me last night as I watched Obama and Jon chat it up, is that the Senator oozes confidence and sincerity like a football star choir boy. He not only is likable, he’s charismatic. He comes across as smooth (not slick, like Bill), whereas Hillary comes across as patronizing and remote. He makes people feel good about not just him, but the country and themselves.
Hillary just makes people feel guilty and judged. And that might be the most important issue of her campaign.