Ickes added: "It seems to me that there's this great desire to rush to judgment...this has been a genteel debate for God's sake. People are wringing their hands, `oh, we're gonna tear party apart.' The party's a lot sturdier than these hand wringers in Washington would have you believe."
I wouldn't call the campaign "genteel," what with the racialized discussion, but I also don't think that there is a big risk of long-term damage to the party at this point, or that the extended campaign is a negative. The most dangerous scenarios for the party would be if Clinton secured the nomination without winning the popular vote, and / or if there is no presumptive nominee by the end of June. However, I just don't see either scenario as particularly likely right now, since Obama remains on course to lock up the nomination at some point between May 20th and June 21st. Considering the organizing that will have been done in virtually every state by that point, considering that the general election matchups remain tied, and considering what will be Obama's overwhelming financial advantage on McCain, I still feel confident we are headed toward an Obama Presidency. After another two or three months of nearly exclusive focus on Democrats, we will still have twenty weeks to take on McCain, unite the party, and win back the White House. Maybe I should be more worried about this situation than I am, but at this point it won't be long before the voting begins anew, which will inject new life into the nomination campaign, and clear out some of the dead air we have been experiencing since mid-March.
Now, with all that said, here is some hand-wringing by Ickes himself:
"Look what the Republicans did to a genuine war hero," Ickes said, in a reference to John Kerry.
"Super delegates have to take into account the strengths and weakness of both candidates and decide who would make the strongest candidate against what will undoubtedly be ferocious Republican attacks," Ickes continued. "I've had super delegates tell me that the Wright issue is a real issue for them."
In a reference to Wright's controversial views, Ickes continued: "Nobody thinks that Barack Obama harbors those thoughts. But that's not the issue. The issue is what Republicans [will do with them]...I think they're going to give him a very tough time."
Oh no, the Republicans are going to attack us! Whatever shall we do? Surely, Republicans will lay off attacking a different nominee, say Hillary Clinton. Talk about lame hand-wringing.
Here is my question: what attacks, exactly, will Obama face in the general election that will be worse than what he has faced in the primary campaign? Will it be worse than arguing that he is a Muslim who attended a madrassa? Will it be worse than selected exceprts from Rev. Wright played on every single news channel for weeks on end? Will it be worse than the most recent Democratic President saying McCain is more qualified to be commander in chief than Obama?
No, it won't be any worse. In fact, Obama will actually have a much easier time in the general election, media wise, than he has had in the primary. The reason for this is simple: in the general election, the most prominent Democrats in the entire country, the Clintons, will not be reifying every single right-wing attack against Obama. It has become a truism in politics that when both Democrats and Republicans are delivering the same message on a given topic, that message will invariably become conventional wisdom nationwide. Right now, when it comes to both Rev. Wright and qualifications to become President, Obama faces the triangle of Republican attacks, corporate media, and Democratic complicity in those attacks. In the general election, the Democratic complicity will be removed.
The media environment for Obama will actually be easier in the general election than in the primary. The argument that Obama won't be able to withdstand the oh-so vicious Republican attacks is nonsense, because he is weathering those attacks right now, even when Democrats are helping Republicans out in those attacks. This isn't even my theory-this is the theory put forth by Clinton senior staffer Peter Daou. If Obama can get past he primary and still outperform Clinton against McCain, then he is pretty much a sure bet to win the Presidency. The rest is just a bunch of hand-wringing by nervous, Clintonista types.
I have been surprised more than once in this campaign already, and I have been reminding all my Obama friends over and over again to not underestimate the Clintons. Anything could happen Tuesday. But all that said, this one sure has the feeling of it being over. I was talking to an old friend the other day who has raised over $100,000 for Hillary who said:
Well, of course, I want the candidate I've been helping to win, but, man, Obama is amazing, he's like Bobby Kennedy...
It's hard to keep going when some of your biggest fundraisers are in awe of the other guy.
Another sign: throwing Hail Mary passes like the ringing phone ad. We'll see that style of "Obama is scary" ads in the fall because fear is the only thing the Republicans have to run on. But in a Democratic primary after seven years of over-the-top Republican scare tactics that Democrats are sickened to death of? Yeah, I know it worked for Mondale 24 years ago, but the whole re-running the Mondale campaign hasn't been working for awhile now. And reinforcing Republican themes in the Democratic primary seems like a huge gamble. Maybe huge gambles are all they feel like they have left.
But the biggest sign of all that this campaign might be on the verge of being over is that senior Clintonites are already openly trying to persuade people as to why they aren't at fault for the loss. Check out these two articles from the New York Observer here and here, and this from the New York Times. This has become a bitter primary, alright, but not so much between Clinton and Obama as between Harold Ickes and Mark Penn for who made the Clinton campaign suck so badly.
Part of me feels badly for Hilary Clinton in all this. I know a lot of my fellow OpenLefters aren't fans of hers, but I still basically think she's a good person, Senator, and candidate whose campaign has made some fundamental mistakes (not that a candidate doesn't deserve a big share of the blame for a bad campaign).
I have to admit, though, that there is a part of me that can't but help the guilty pleasure of being entertained by this kind of open food fight. For an old Presidential campaign hand like myself, this kind of good juicy antagonism is a lot of fun to watch.
For my part, I'm on Ickes' side in this little war. I've never been close to Harold- I always had this impression that when I didn't yell back at him the first couple of times he yelled at me at the White House, that he decided I was a wimp and never trusted me again. In spite of that, I always admired his raw knuckle, sharp elbowed brand of power politics, and loved the way he would scream "fuck!" at people in those usually dignified White House staff meetings more times than Steve Martin at the rental car counter in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Harold, unlike so many Democrats in D.C., never was afraid of the Republicans- not even when they were threatening to indict him- and he got stuff done.
Penn, on the other hand, always seemed like an overrated, consistently pro-corporate egotist. I had met him on the 1996 campaign, but never thought he deserved the credit the punditocracy gave him for that victory. I thought Clinton won that election when he stood up to Gingrich on the budget battle in 1995, and that Penn never really mattered that much in that victory. I also worked with Penn on the impeachment fight, but I thought the ads and strategies that we at PFAW and MoveOn came up with were far better than anything Penn did. (When I last saw Penn about three years ago, he complained to me about $6,000 that he said PFAW still owed from that fight seven years prior. I felt so badly about that, that a man as poor as Mark Penn was so cheated.)
As I wrote here, Penn has been badly wrong about this campaign from the beginning, somehow convincing himself (and, sadly, Hillary) that this was not a change election. It was one of the worst judgment calls in recent Presidential campaign history, right up there with the decision not to respond to the Swiftboaters.
If Hillary loses this primary fight, as it increasingly looks like she will, I give Penn the lion's share of the blame. And while I will have mixed feelings if she does lose, I will not regret that Mark Penn will have no influence on the Democratic nominee.
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