Democratic Horse Race: current state

Some disclaimers:

• I support Barack Obama
• This post is more about the politics of the race than about who is best qualified to be President
• Where I am a political junkie, I am no political expert. What the heck, when it comes to running a campaign and to what works, I don’t know what the heck I am talking about! I do know that candidates that appeal to me often are not successful.

So from the peanut gallery:

I think that you can tell who did well in a debate and who didn’t by reading what the various campaigns sent out afterward. I do note that the Biden and Obama campaigns had videos up right away, whereas the Clinton campaign didn’t put out nearly as much.

Joe Biden First, I’ll deal with his performance. At the time, I thought that he had a strong debate; he was the only candidate that taught me something (when he answered the question: “would you guarantee that Iran wouldn’t obtain nuclear weapons on your watch”.

Sure enough, his press release was swift, immediate and to the point:

veryone is talking about Joe Biden’s smackdown of Rudy Giuliani in Wednesday

night’s debate. More than 25,000 people have already viewed the YouTube video of

the event!

If you haven’t seen it yet, take a minute right now to watch, and then forward this

email to people who want to see how Democrats can stand up to Republicans in this

election.

Click here to watch the video more than 25,000 people have already seen and make a

contribution to the campaign so we can continue to fight back.

The comment must have struck a sensitive nerve, because the Giuliani campaign

released an ugly attack on Joe Biden within moments of the debate ending. The

smackdown made the New York Times this morning:

Biden-Giuliani Smackdown Enlivens Campaign Trail
By MICHAEL COOPER

In addition to the headline-grabbing Edwards-Obama-Dodd tag-team match with

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic debate Tuesday night in

Philadelphia had a pretty lively undercard: Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. vs. Rudolph

W. Giuliani.

It began when Mr. Biden, a Delaware Democrat, proclaimed Mr. Giuliani, a New

York Republican, “genuinely not qualified to be president” and declared, to some of

the biggest laughs of the night, that “there’s only three things he mentions in a

sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11.”

The Giuliani campaign immediately fired back, and hard.

We are well aware that Rudy Giuliani will attempt to drag this race into the mud

where the Republicans like to wage their campaigns. It’s pretty obvious that Mr.

Giuliani can’t defend himself on the real charge that he walked away from the cops

and firefighters who were waiting for the 9/11 Commission recommendations to be

enacted and the Biden crime bill to be restored.

We know he’s going to resort to gutter politics rather than defend his record, but we’re

not going to back down. It was the COPS program in the Biden crime bill that funded

the police officers that helped reduce crime in New York, and Mayor Giuliani did

nothing when the Bush administration slashed its funding.

Please forward this video to everyone you know, and make a contribution to the

Biden campaign today so we can keep setting the record straight and fighting back.

This video shows why Joe Biden is the candidate to take on the Republican candidate

in the general election next year. He doesn’t back down from fights — he has the

courage and strength to take them on.

Thank you,
Luis Navarro
Campaign Manager

http://www.joebiden.com/

From the debate: (posted earlier)

Lest I forget, here is a bit more on Bill Richardson:

Oh yes, let us not forget Dennis Kucinich.
(yes, I know that he was being very literal; by UFO he really meant a flying object that he couldn’t identify).

Now for the dust-up!

Hillary Clinton Though her campaign did put out an effective video at the very start (the very night of the debate):

(which was one of her better moments)

They very quickly went into the whining mode. Here is something from a campaign e-mail:

Dear ollie,

If you saw the debate Tuesday night, or if you’ve seen the news coverage since, then

you know that this campaign has entered a new phase.

On that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one. Candidates who had pledged

the politics of hope practiced the politics of pile on instead. Her opponents tried a

whole host of attacks on Hillary.

She is one strong woman. She came through it well. But Hillary’s going to need your

help.

Her opponents, trying to boost their falling poll numbers, started attacking Hillary

weeks ago on the stump. Now they’re doing it in the debates. And soon they’ll begin a

barrage of negative TV ads and mailings in the early primary and caucus states.

But Hillary knows that voters want real change — not more negative attacks. And

with just 60 days left before the Iowa caucuses, now is the time to show her that you

are right there with her.

Will you help Hillary with your contribution today?

Thank you for standing with Hillary at this critical moment in the campaign.

Video:

Now, in my opinion, this was a bad response. She got hammered on the Daily Kos for trying to use this tactic (which did play well with some feminists (scroll to the comments)

She caught some heat from her competitors for trying to use this tactic:

Democrat Barack Obama accused rival Hillary Clinton on Friday of hiding behind her gender after her campaign complained six male candidates engaged in “the politics of pile on” at a debate.

Obama, the only black candidate in the U.S. presidential race, told NBC’s “Today” show that Clinton is widely viewed as a tough figure in national politics.

“So it doesn’t make sense for her, after having run that way for eight months, the first time that people start challenging her point of view, that suddenly she backs off and says: ‘Don’t pick on me,”‘ he said.

“That is not, obviously, how we would expect her to operate if she were president,” he said.

Clinton, the front-runner to be her party’s candidate in the November 2008 election, had a rocky performance at a debate on Tuesday in Philadelphia and her rivals pounced on what they called evasive answers.

In response, the Clinton campaign had put together a Web video after the debate entitled “The Politics of Pile On” that showed her male rivals singling her out.

On Thursday, New York Sen. Clinton told students at her alma mater, Wellesley College, outside Boston, that, “In so many ways, this all-women’s college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics.”

John Edwards brought some heat as well:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Today, Edwards for President communications

director Chris Kofinis released the following statement on Senator Clinton’s

post-debate damage control efforts:

“All the distractions in the world won’t undo the fact that on Tuesday night millions

of Americans saw John Edwards speak honestly and directly, while Senator Clinton

once again took multiple positions on multiple issues. We understand that the

Clinton campaign isn’t happy about that, but instead of smoke and mirrors, how

about some truth-telling? Forty-eight hours after the debate, we have lots of excuses,

but we still don’t have a yes or no answer to a yes or no question.

“That’s not the ‘politics of piling on,’ it’s the politics of parsing.

“After seven years of George Bush, the American people deserve better — they deserve

the truth.”

Today, Clinton returned to her “well, they are taking shots at me because I am the leader” stance, which frankly suits her better.

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said on Friday her male rivals attacked her at a debate this week not because she is a woman but because she is winning the race to be the party’s presidential candidate.

As bickering among the rival camps intensified, Clinton denied hiding behind her gender even as she was accused of doing just that by rival Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Clinton was asked if she thought other Democrats were taking aim at her at Tuesday night’s debate because she is a woman.

“No, I don’t think they are piling on because I am a woman,” she said. “They are piling on because I am winning.”

Clinton was in Concord registering to run in the state’s political primary, traditionally one of the first nominating contests. [...]

Now THAT is more like it; though I am backing Obama, I don’t want a weakened Hillary Clinton, in case she wins the nomination (as she may well).

Also, Bill Clinton chimed in on the records issue:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton on Friday called accusations that he and his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton are delaying the release of records from his administration as “breathtakingly misleading.”

In the most recent Democratic presidential candidate debate, Sen. Clinton’s rivals criticized the front-runner for a 2002 letter written by her husband to the National Archives requesting certain documents from his administration be withheld.

The former president said the letter was, in fact, asking the archives to speed up the release of his records with a provision that he be allowed to review any documents being released to ensure they do not disclose certain sensitive or private information.

Those parameters, according to Clinton, included information about national security, passed-over candidates for presidential appointments, private correspondence between him and his family and other personal conversations.

“I signed a routine letter to the archives five years ago to accelerate the release of my records, which five years later in a different context is misrepresented as an attempt to block information on my wife,” Clinton told reporters after a speech to Microsoft Corp employees.

“The whole thing was a total canard,” he said. “It was breathtakingly misleading.”

Clinton said the archives already have released more than 1 million documents from his presidency including many from his wife’s failed attempts at health-care reform.

Obama and Edwards
Now, of course, Edwards is starting to challenge Obama as the best “not-Hillary” alternative.

John Edwards is trying to build on his strong debate performance by shoving aside

Barack Obama as the Democrats’ top alternative to Hillary Clinton.

“For the better part of 10 months or so, the press has pretty much showcased this race

as a Clinton-Obama campaign,” Joe Trippi, a top Edwards adviser, told the Daily

News. “The clear choice really is Clinton and Edwards.”

At Tuesday night’s debate, Edwards hammered Clinton more aggressively than any

of her other rivals, portraying her as an evasive, double-speaking, waffling,

status-quo Washington insider.

In a debate scorecard circulated to reporters, the Edwards campaign touted the former

North Carolina senator as the “true heavyweight” on challenging his rivals “to tell the

truth on the issues that matter.”

“The rest of the contenders? Well, let’s just say that even the best hype machines can’t

disguise a real featherweight,” it said in a clear shot at Obama.

Asked about Obama’s performance at Tuesday’s debate, Trippi said sarcastically, “I

thought he whaled on her, didn’t he?”

Top Obama officials declined yesterday to comment. Edwards’ “aggression comes

with the risk of alienating voters,” said Fordham University political scientist Costas

Panagopoulos. And Obama “can free-ride on someone else being the attack dog.”

So, what to expect from the Republicans? This is a sample:

On February 27, 2001, two members of the American Gold Star Mothers, an organization of women who’ve lost sons or daughters in combat, dropped by the temporary basement offices of the new junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. They didn’t have an appointment, and the office, which had been up and running for barely a month, was a bit discombobulated. The two women wanted to talk to the senator about a bill pending in the Senate that would provide annuities for the parents of those killed, but they were told that Clinton wasn’t in the office and that the relevant staff members were otherwise engaged. The organization later submitted a formal request in writing for a meeting, which Clinton granted, meeting and posing for pictures with four members of the group.

But the story doesn’t end there. In May of that year, the right-wing website NewsMax, a clearinghouse for innuendo and rumor, ran a short item with the headline “Hillary Snubs Gold Star Mothers.” Reporting via hearsay–a comment relayed to someone who then recounted it to the column’s author–the article claimed that Clinton and her staff “simply refused” to meet with the Gold Star Mothers, making hers the “only office” in the Senate that snubbed the group.

At first the item didn’t attract much attention, but it quickly morphed into an e-mail that started ricocheting across the Internet. “Bet this never hits the TV news!” began one version. “According to NewsMax.com there was only one politician in DC who refused to meet with these ladies. Can you guess which politician that might be?… None other than the Queen herself–the Hildebeast, Hillary Clinton.” [...]