Well, just when I think Clinton has done something straightforward to support the candidate who defeated her for the Democratic presidential nomination, she surprises me. Now, she has released her delegates and more or less invited tnem not to vote for Obama.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today told her delegates they were free to vote for Sen. Barack Obama during tonight’s nominating roll call, but she did not direct them to do so. “I am here to release you as my delegates,” Clinton told her supporters at the Convention Center in Denver. Many responded with shouts of “No, no.” She added, to cheers, “I am not telling you what to do.”
Clinton, who waged a sometimes bitter campaign with Obama through a long series of primaries and caucuses, said she marked her ballot for Obama this morning. “Many other people who sign their ballots will make a different choice,” she said, adding that whatever decision delegates make, “you are to be given the respect and recognition you have earned as delegates for the Democratic Party.”
I’m now thinking that what I took to be an honest effort to do the right thing last night was really just one more deceptive maneuver, made plausible by Clinton’s obvious enjoyment of the limelight. The Clintons are getting really tiresome. I’m going to watch tonight’s speech in an adversarial frame of mine that I don’t think serves my party’s interest at all. And I can’t help wondering how many other Democrats are feeling the way I do.
Gallup polling analysis puts Barack Obama one point ahead of John McCain on the basis of interviews conducted August 24-26 and seems to support the conviction that Obama still leads the race for the presidency while slso suggesting that McCain’s planned Friday announcement of his running mate may dampen Obama’s convention bounce.
Polling also shows that Obama’s support among conservative Democrats is eroding. Perhaps one may hope that Joe Biden and the Clinton endorsement will help Obama here, particularly if the Clintons campaign actively for him. I’m of the opinion that Hillary’s endorsement was straightforward and that the subtext analysis of last night’s speech (which was the best speech I have ever heard her make) is getting pretty silly.
Bill Clinton’s speech tonight will pretty thoroughly upstage Biden, but Biden has signed on to be upstaged in agreeing to run for the vice presidency. Both speeches, Clinton’s and Biden’s as well, should tell us something about what to expect from the next stages of the campaign.
Two developments late Monday may complicate what had been a calm and peaceful security situation for the convention. The local U.S. attorney plans a 4 p.m. press conference Tuesday to answer questions about the arrest of three men on drug and weapons charges in a possible plot to assassinate Barack Obama. Meanwhile, about 100 protesters were subdued by police with pepper spray and non-lethal bullets about 1.5 miles from the Pepsi Center, then arrested for blocking streets and related charges. Federal officials say that neither Obama nor convention-goers were ever in danger from the alleged plot, and police say they remain confident that protesters will not be able to disrupt the convention.
Today’s Gallup polling shows Obama and McCain in a dead heat at 45% each. After watching a good deal of CNN coverage of the DNC last night I’m already hearing James Carville and David Gurgen saying, “See, I told you so!” For me, at least, the convention coverage on CNN and MSNBC last night was not so much biased — I think media folk are reacting to the Clinton’s claim that primary coverage was biased in favor of Obama — so last night’s coverage was not so much biased as it was dominated by political consultancy clichés of the sort that Gurgen and especially Carville are very apt to contribute to any free-wheeling discussion.
It was as though some media sultan had decreed from on high that coverage of the DNC should be critical. And critical it was. The Democrats did almost nothing right, according to these media sages, though Gurgen was more generous than Carville and both had praise for speeches by Ted Kennedy and Michelle Obama. But Jim Leach was yanked off the stage in mid rant by some invisible TV hook, and Claire McCaskill never got on the CNN stage at all as the pundits dismissed her appearance as an unfortunate payback for her support of Obama during the primary campaign.
But I was very pleased with my party’s first convention night. I thought Nancy Pelosi’s opener was fine and the minor speeches were OK, what I heard of them. The business that was done reminded us all that political conventions are the performance of democracy, not just long TV commercials. I was drawn to the commentary of Donna Brazile, who seemed always to smile through the cant, as if to say “Yes, the Obamas do know what they’re doing” as others were vociferously claiming the opposite.
Of course the media love to cover negative stuff. One of the CNN people, I forget who, exclaimed ruefully last night that the Republicans are so good at negative campaigning and the Democrats are so bad. But there’s more interesting polling today showing that Americans prefer Obama to McCain on the economy by a margin of 52% to 40%. And there’s even polling data showing that Obama is ahead on taxes, as this video explains:
So I’m less disheartened than I might have been if all signs seemed to indicate that my guy is truly losing ground. Bad economic times have tended to be good for democrats. And today, I have support form an unexpected quarter, a David Brooks column that agrees with me (more or less). Says Brooks, “The Democrats are in danger of doing to Obama what they did to their last two nominees: burying authentic individuals under a layer of prefab themes.” And Brooks reminds us all of the Iowa Caucuses, which I also remember. It was a heady sight to see all the young folk fill up the room to cast votes for our guy back then.
Michelle Obama was wonderful last night, and Ted Kennedy made me cry. I do so hope he lives to see Obama inaugurated and to ‘get health care done’ with him. I can’t praise Michelle Obama as well as my friend, Sharon Shaw. does. So check out “Michelle rocks” here. I wish there were no negatives to this but fear there are. There are always the Clintons and their surrogates (James Carville is such a surrogate), who still seem bent on upstaging Obama at every turn. And then there’s the lingering shadow of racism, unacknowledged for the most part. Bob Herbert reports this morning on several conversations with voters in the Midwest that have led him to form his “own (very arbitrary) rule of thumb regarding the polls in this election:
Take at least two to three points off of Senator Obama’s poll numbers, and assume a substantial edge for Senator McCain in the breakdown of the undecided vote.
Using that formula, Barack Obama is behind in the national election right now.
If Herbert is right, and democratic primary results from Texas, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia (among other places), suggest that he is, Obama needs to fight back against the other side’s exploitation of his difference. Not by attacking racism but by playing hardball with McCain. As Brooks puts it, Obama gets points as he argues “that McCain is a good man who happens to be out of step with the times.” Of course, the Obama campaign is doing this, just not foregrounding it at the convention, at least not now.
And now for some more good news. A couple of days ago I stopped by an Obama headquarters station here in the city to pick up some bumper stickers and a yard sign and had no luck. They were out of everything and told me that signs and stickers, etc. disappeared as soon as they got them in. “Come back an a couple of days,” they said. “But call before you come.” I was whistling “Happy days are here again,” as I got in my car.
