Regardless of how one defines electability, does anyone get the sense that Team Clinton is feeling the pressure? Yesterday, it held a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, seizing on a 1996 Obama questionnaire (displaying his liberal positions on abortion, guns, and health care) that a rival campaign gave to the Politico (there are more questionnaires out there, by the way, which aren't flattering for Obama).
Several rationales can be given for calling a press conference over this questionnaire, but no matter what the rationale may be, the heart of the matter is that the Clinton campaign called a press conference to further the implication that Obama is too liberal. If it is about electability, then the implication is that Obama can't be elected because he is too liberal. If it is about holding consistent positions, then it is about a flip-flopping Obama abandoning his core, liberal views. If it is about the views expressed in the questionnaire, then it is straightforwardly about Obama being too liberal. There is no way to avoid the implication that the Clinton campaign is calling Obama too liberal through this press conference.
A week after Politico provided the questionnaire to the Obama campaign for comment, an aide called Monday night to say that Obama had said he did not fill out the form, and provided a contact for his campaign manager at the time, who said she filled it out.
Both the Obama and Clinton campaigns are focused on Iowa right now, where 57% of electorate self-identifies as liberal. And yet, Clinton is heavily implying that Obama is too liberal, and Obama is running away from the implication that he is a liberal. Why is this happening? How can the two frontrunners be running away from the majority of the electorate they are trying to win? Why is being painted as left-wing something Democrats try to avoid like the plague, even in a campaign when the majority of the electorate identifies as left-wing?
The lack of left-wing power here is stunning. This entire questionnaire incident demonstrates that leading Democrats are still more interested in appealing to a media and political establishment that views being called left-wing as a dangerous attack than they are interested in appealing to left-wing voters. How can liberals expect to have meaningful power in a Clinton or Obama administration if, when faced with a majority liberal electorate, they consider the term to be an attack? How much more power would liberals in Iowa need before the specter of being called left-wing no longer haunts Clinton or Obama? 70% of the electorate? 90%?
The way the campaigns have reacted to this incident strikes me as emblematic of the power deficit facing progressives with the Democratic Party as a whole. Somehow, even though we have the majority, we are not really in charge. This is why Democrats have decided to stop running on Iraq, even though it is still the top issue in the country and voters overwhelmingly prefer Democratic positions on Iraq. The Hoyers, Schumers, and Emanuels of the party don't want to run on Iraq, have never wanted to run on Iraq, and they remain the people mainly responsible for what Democrats decide to campaign on. And so, we don't run on Iraq.
As I explain in the extended entry, this also has an impact on who I intent to support in the primaries.
I have to say, that unless something big changes among the second-tier, this incident is also the final straw that would push me over the edge and begin favoring Edwards. Consider First Read's take on the electability struggle that came just before their description of the quesitonaire incident:
Now each campaign will push back on the others' claims to electability: Clinton foes will say she can only win a general election with 271 electoral votes and 50%+1; Obama foes will argue that if he faces Giuliani in the general, he'll be forced to defend turf in the Northeast that Clinton wouldn't have to; and Edwards foes will say he's taken too many liberal positions to look mainstream by the fall.
If, compared to the rest of the top tier, the main charge against Edwards is that he is too liberal, then sign me up. Even though I am clearly obsessed with Barack Obama, since I write five times as much about him as I write about any other Democratic candidate, I was already leaning toward Edwards anyway. It has been an extremely difficult decision making process, but I want to have someone in the top tier to cheer for the night of the Iowa caucuses. If Clinton will attack Obama for being too liberal, and Obama will run away from the charge rather than meeting it head-on, then yeah, I'll cheer for Edwards.
I don't think there is significant separation between Obama and Edwards on the core policy list I produced last week, but I do think Obama and Edwards are better than Clinton when it comes to that list. Outside of the core policy list, time and time again it seems that Obama considers liberals and the DFHs to be a political liability from which he will distance himself. Clinton, while hardly perfect in this area, is also ahead of Obama in this category. The end calculation is that if I am going to cheer for someone in the top three, right now it seems like I should cheer for Edwards. I reserve the right to change my mind, and I'm also not at the point where I am ready to do any activism for his campaign, however. It just means that, of the top three, right now I think I would rather see Edwards win Iowa than Obama or Clinton. The questionnaire incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.
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