The campaign schedule has been pretty intense over the last week and will continue to be so until the BIG day on Tuesday, November 4th. I want to congratulate everyone for putting so much effort into this year's election, not just for an individual campaign, but for the entire Democratic ticket. I've seen people in every community throughout the 5th district working to make sure the message is getting out.
I want to remind everyone it is important that we finish strong. Don't take anything for granted, ignore the polls and work like the polls show our candidates 5 points down. Remember, while all indications show Barack Obama will be our next president, if we believe the polls, Al Gore would be concluding his second term or we would be working to re-elect President John Kerry right now.
Although he uses an old-timey analogy, I think Ed Rendell is generally correct in his assessment of Obama's wordy, intellectual speaking style:
"He is a little like Adlai Stevenson," Rendell mused. "You ask him a question, and he gives you a six-minute answer. And the six-minute answer is smart as all get out. It's intellectual. It's well framed. It takes care of all the contingencies. But it's a lousy soundbite."
"We've got to start smacking back in short understandable bites," he said, noting "Everybody is nervous as all get out. Everybody says we ought to be ahead by 10, 15 points. What the heck is going on?"
Even though one of the attractions to Obama in the nomination campaign was that he seemed to be a charismatic speaker in the style of Jack Kennedy or Bill Clinton, there have been numerous times during this campaign where I have wondered if we just nominated Gore or Kerry again. Obama does not do a good job of fitting his speeches or answers into sound bites. Many of his ads have reminded me of the five-paragraph essay you were probably taught in freshman composition. There are times when he seems to over intellectualize his framing of policy on the stump in a manner that is reminiscent of Gore or Kerry.
However, I have to disagree with Rendell on the utility of such a speaking style. While it doesn't seem to be helping Obama in this campaign, I am just as tired of having to dumb things down in order to win elections as I am having to appeal to socially conservative whites. Further, the intellectual lucidity of Bill Clinton is often overlooked because he won, but he often gave lengthy, intellectual answers to questions, too. It isn't necessarily a problem.
We nominate smart candidates with strong grasps of policy, and we should be proud of that, not afraid. We shouldn't think that we have to dump nuance and gravitas just to appeal to voters. America is not such a an incredibly provincial nation of xenophobic anti-intellectuals that those qualities will always be negatives. After all, Clinton, a Rhodes scholar, won twice. Also, the nation voted for Al Gore, and John Kerry only narrowly missed. Intelligence is not necessarily an electoral loser.
The problem comes in when our candidates talk this way, but give our opponents a pass for not talking this way. Bush was framed as an idiot, and he looked dumb compared to both Gore and Kerry. That hurt him in the polls, and it can hurt McCain in the polls, too. Obama can keep talking like Stevenson, or Gore, or Kerry, or whoever, but he needs to make McCain pay for his frequent gaffes about his knowledge of policy and international relations. Obama's speaking style will help him as long as McCain is regularly mocked for not grasping important details. People don't want another idiot in the White House. This is a line of attack we should pursue, not wring our hands about looking like the smartest kid in the class.
Barack Obama made an excellent choice with his selection of Delaware Senator Joe Biden to be his running mate. On Saturday I spent the day working at the Democratic booth at the Centre County Grange Fair and throughout the day people were asking if the announcement had been made. Everyone I spoke with expressed positive opinions about the choice. If this is any indication of the type of qualified people Barack Obama will surround himself with as President, we can all rest assured that our country will be headed in a better direction come January of 2009.
The daily trivia question at the Democratic booth was "What Pennsylvania town was Joe Biden's hometown?" I'm usually pretty good at trivia but Kim Bierly had to tell me the answer was Scranton PA.
A Choice - More of the Same or Something Different
On November 4th, voters will have a choice to make, not only in the race for President between Senator John McCain (More of the Same) and Senator Barack Obama (Something Different), but also in each of the contested races for seats in the US Congress.
Voters have to look no further than two recent congressional roll call votes to see a contrast between the Democratic and Republican parties. On May 21st, with solid Democratic support, HR 6049 passed on a 263 for / 160 against vote. HR 6049 provides energy, business and personal tax breaks totaling $55.5 billion to spur the production of non-fossil fuels, promote energy conservation, stimulate business activity and help homeowners and the working poor. In order to offset the costs of HR 6049, the bill tightens accounting rules on multinational corporations and eliminates certain offshore tax shelters and loopholes utilized by some US hedge fund managers. Most important, HR 6049 does not add any additional burden to the national debt.
I went to the spin room after the debate, looking for someone from ABC in order to ask them about the questions in the first half of the debate. Unfortunately, in the spin room, a vortex of discourse was eating its own tail as the signifier drowned the signified in a rusty bathtub in the corner, so I fled out of a deep sense of existential horror. As I was walking back to the filing center, I passed Governor Ed Rendell just as he was finishing an interview. Afterwards, appearing very happy, he said the following to someone standing next to him, revealing not only what he thought of the debate, but also of the early questions at the debate:
"Even an Obama Kool-Aid drinking guy like yourself has to admit she scored a decisive victory tonight. A decisive victory. A knockout blow. A decisive victory. A decisive victory. Even more decisive when they started asking real questions."
The part in bold is an exact quote, even if I might not have accurately remembered exactly how many times he said "decisive victory." (He said it a lot.) It was a candid, off-the record moment that I was able to catch because I was only standing five feet away. Far more informative than the spin room where, as I type this, the ghost of Jean Baudrillard is performing an autopsy on the bloated, water-logged corpse of the signifier in American political news media.
Feel free to call ABC News and tell them what you thought about their debate. The number is 212-456-7777.
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