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Obama has not won

March 26, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis
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I’ve had it with media trying to kick Hillary Clinton out of this race. It is not over. And Barack Obama has not won, not by a long shot.

Obama, just like Clinton, will depend on the super delegates to get the nomination. Obama, just like Clinton, stands virtually no chance of getting to the convention the winner from elected delegates.

Obama and his camp are speaking out of both sides of their mouth about the party’s nominating system. On the one hand, we have Nancy Pelosi and others arguing that Obama should get the lion’s share of the super delegates because he’s ahead in the popular vote — though he has just over 50 percent of it. (And here are big Clinton and Democratic donors protesting Pelosi’s early call of the election before it is over.) But the voting isn’t over yet. And that’s not how the system was designed. If we land at the convention with no clear winner, then the point of the super delegates — the legacy of the smoke-filled back room, the party’s safety valve to prevent another George McGovern — is to do what’s best for the party and to try to get a winner in November. That is the system. Not fair, you whine?

Well, there is nothing fair about disenfranchising the voters of Florida and Michigan. There is nothing fair about Obama himself arguing that, hey, that’s the system and so they shouldn’t come to the convention. There’s nothing smart about this, either, because this will surely alienate voters in two key swing states. But we have Howard (the loser) Dean to thank for that as well as Obama himself.

Go to the CNN delegate calculator and run some scenarios. If Clinton took 60 percent of the remaining vote, she’d come to the convention with 1827 delegates, Obama with 1846. With 60 percent of the super delegates, she’d get 2032, enough to win. Not possible? No, it’s not. So let’s say that Obama gets 60 percent of the votes left — also not possible; he’d get to the convention with 1961 delegates, still not a winner. Let’s be more reasonable. Let’s say Obama gets 55 percent of the remaining vote and 50 percent of the super delegates, which is about his fair share given his current votes; he still lands with 2105 delegates, not enough.

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So why do I hear that it’s unfair for Clinton to rely on super delegates when Obama relies on them as well? Because there’s nothing fair in love and war, especially media love.

Why does Politico declare Clinton toast? Michael Scherer at Time.com says it’s nothing less than link-whoring. Or influence peddling. Or maybe they just hate Clinton. But they’d never admit that.

Why should anyone be calling for Clinton to drop out of the race? Obama hasn’t won. Indeed, the latest Rasmussen poll says equal numbers of voters — 22 percent in each case — say that Clinton and Obama should drop out. And, of course, we have today’s Gallup Poll saying that 28 percent of Clinton voters will switch to McCain if she does not win vs. 19 percent of Obama voters. You could say that’s not fair or it’s sour grapes — or it’s democracy.

It’s an election. Let the voters vote, all of them. It ain’t over till it’s over.

: LATER: I just got scolded in the comments for not disclosing my Clinton affiliation, though I ve done it a score of times and it should be neon-obvious in this post. But fine: I voted for Clinton and hope to have the chance to do so again. There.

One picture…

March 26, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis
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By Matt Davies, via Make Them Accountable.

The politics of politics

March 18, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis
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I wish someone other than William Kristol had said that and that he had gotten his facts straight:

The more you learn about him, the more Obama seems to be a conventionally opportunistic politician, impressively smart and disciplined, who has put together a good political career and a terrific presidential campaign. But there’s not much audacity of hope there. There’s the calculation of ambition, and the construction of artifice, mixed in with a dash of deceit — all covered over with the great conceit that this campaign, and this candidate, are different. . . .

With no particular dog in the Democratic fight, many conservatives have tended to think it would be good for the country if Obama were to win the Democratic nomination, freeing us from the dreary prospect of the return of the House of Clinton. Now I wonder. Might the country be better off with the cynicism of the Clintons than the conceit of Obama?

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Peter Daou, Clinton’s online adviser, sent an email to a bunch of bloggers arguing that Obama’s playing the negative game, too:

I want to address a pervasive misconception, namely, that Senator Obama hasn’t run a negative campaign against Hillary. I think it’s time to put that misconception to rest.

The truth is that for months, the Obama campaign has been attacking Hillary, impugning her character and calling into question her lifetime of public service. And now the Chicago Tribune reports that Senator Obama is preparing a “full assault” on her “over ethics and transparency.” To those who contend that Senator Obama is the clear frontrunner, I ask, to what end this “full assault” on Hillary?

On CNN last Tuesday, Senator Obama said, “Well, look, Wolf, I think if you watch how we have conducted our campaign, we’ve been very measured in terms of how we talk about Senator Clinton. … I have been careful to say, that I think that Senator Clinton is a capable person and that should she win the nomination, obviously, I would support her. You know, I’m not sure that we have been getting that same approach from the Clinton campaign.”

The facts of this election stand in stark contrast to that statement. Senator Obama and his senior campaign officials have engaged in a systematic effort to question Hillary’s integrity, credibility, and character. They have portrayed her as someone who would put her personal gain ahead of the lives of our troops, someone who would say or do anything to win an election, someone who is dishonest, divisive and disingenuous. They have adopted shop-worn anti-Clinton talking points, dusted them off and unleashed a torrent of unfounded character attacks against her. Among other things, they have described Hillary – and her campaign – as: “Disingenuous” … “Too polarizing to win” …’Divisive’ … “Untruthful” … “Dishonest” … ‘Calculating’ … “Saying and doing whatever it takes to win” … “Attempting to deceive the American people” … “One of the most secretive politicians in America” … “Literally willing to do anything to win” … “Playing politics with war” [Each of those lines is a link in his email to the quote; I’m too lazy to copy them all over -ed]

To top it off, they have blanketed big states with false radio ads and negative mailers — ads and mailers that experts have debunked time and time again. They have distributed health care brochures using Republican framing. They have tried to draw a nexus between Hillary’s votes and the death of her friend Benazir Bhutto. And one of Senator Obama’s top advisers (who has since left the campaign) recently called Hillary “a monster.”

This “full assault” on Hillary comes from the very top of the Obama campaign, not surrogates and supporters.. . . .

This is a hard-fought campaign – as it should be. Like any candidate for elected office, Hillary has made clear why she thinks she would do a better job than her opponent. She has laid out comprehensive policy proposals, put forth her 35-year record of accomplishment, and spent countless days introducing herself to voters across the country. She has said that she is far better prepared to take on John McCain on national security. She has contended that she is the candidate with the experience to confront the GOP attack machine. She has argued that she is more electable. She has said that Senator Obama’s words are not matched by actions. And she has challenged him to live up to core Democratic values and goals such as universal health care. . . .

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I look forward to hearing Obama’s speech today about race. I hope he will say that criticism is not racism. And questions are not all negative. I hope he will urge a return to substantive discussion of issues, not personality and victimhood.

Playing the race ace

March 11, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis
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The New York Times op-ed page has now crossed the line I was hoping would not be crossed in a piece by Orlando Patterson that makes criticizing Barack Obama or questioning his qualifications — both the essence of campaign debate — tantamount to racism. We have crossed into a land where political discussion is politically incorrect. He says:

I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad — as I see it — is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.

Oh, for God’s sakes, the images could also remind me of Peter Pan and children being protected from the youthful scamp by the shaggy dog.

Oh, and what would solve this problem in Patterson’s view? Not casting a blonde child. Being blonde is a problem.

He concludes:

It is possible that what I saw in the ad is different from what Mrs. Clinton and her operatives saw and intended. But as I watched it again and again I could not help but think of the sorry pass to which we may have come — that someone could be trading on the darkened memories of a twisted past that Mr. Obama has struggled to transcend.

Yes, and as I read this sorry piece again and again and saw its clear intention of painting Hillary Clinton as a racist, I could not help but think that it is a sad day when a Harvard professor and the New York Times sink to playing the race card in this election, turning political debate into victimization.

In this, the age of offense, let me say, I’m offended.

Questions are not attacks

March 7, 2008 by Jeff Jarvis
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Hillary Clinton’s ringing phone commercial has been called an attack ad. It’s not. Since when is questioning a candidate’s qualifications and comparing them to your own an attack? If even discussion of experience and ability becomes politically incorrect, our politics are in deep trouble. Qualifications and policies should be the essence of a campaign.

I heard that commercial referred to as an attack ad when I was interviewed the other night for More 4 news in London and I see it again in David Brooks’ column today. No, an attack ad is one the goes after character instead of qualification, one that tries to create scandal as political leverage, one that’s nasty rather than informative. We know attack ads when we see them. This is no attack ad.

Brooks is arguing that Obama’s campaign faces a fundamental choice: to continue to argue that he can bring a politics of reconciliation to Washington or to lose that, the essence of his campaign, and go on the attack. If, indeed, the Obama camp launches attack ads, that’s true.

But let’s not mistake substantive debate for attack. It’s legitimate for Clinton to question Obama’s experience and abilities in foreign affairs. And it’s legitimate for Obama to question various of Clinton’s qualification. And I do wish they’d discuss differences on issues and policies at every opportunity. Out of that debate comes a better election.

I’ll define the Obama campaign’s problem a bit differently from Brooks: They will be drawn to specifics on both qualifications and policies now, specifics they have masterfully avoided so far in their puffy clouds of rhetoric.

Brooks argues that the lesson here may be that you can’t change politics. That may well be true. But I don’t think Obama is teaching us that lesson. I’ve been saying that he has been running the ultimate political campaign, one built on political rhetoric and style over substance. But Brooks comes around to nearly this view at the end:

In short, a candidate should never betray the core theory of his campaign, or head down a road that leads to that betrayal. Barack Obama doesn’t have an impressive record of experience or a unique policy profile. New politics is all he’s got. He loses that, and he loses everything. Every day that he looks conventional is a bad day for him.

Besides, the real softness of the campaign is not that Obama is a wimp. It’s that he has never explained how this new politics would actually produce bread-and-butter benefits to people in places like Youngstown and Altoona.

If he can’t explain that, he’s going to lose at some point anyway.

So if he is forced to explain that and if he does it well, it could actually be good for him. Depends on what he has to say. And now we have five months to hear it. I think that’s a good thing for the campaign.

(Repeated disclosure: I voted for Clinton.)