August 27, 2008

8/27: Did Hillary's Speech Work?

It's interesting -- although perhaps not surprising -- that liberal and conservative bloggers had completely different reactions to Hillary Clinton's DNC speeech. The netroots had an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Clinton's speech. One liberal blogger writes that Clinton "nailed it" while another praises the speech as "a dagger through [John] McCain's political heart". Even Barack Obama partisans who criticized Clinton's tactics during the primary believe that she gave an excellent speech.

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, believe that Clinton "did the bare minimum" for Obama in her speech. They're arguing that her words about Obama were "perfunctory" and that "she did not praise him at all". Righty bloggers are also noting -- with evident glee -- that Bill Clinton will not be attending Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field.

It's obviously in the interest of liberal bloggers for Clinton to have delivered an effective speech that will convince many of her disgruntled supporters to vote for Obama. Likewise, it's obviously in the interest of conservative bloggers for Clinton to have delivered a half-hearted endorsement of Obama that will do little to sway her diehard fans. So we'll probably have to wait for polling to tell us whether or not Clinton's speech was truly effective.

CLINTON: Bravo, Hillary!

Liberal bloggers loved Clinton's speech:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Rising to the occasion, Hillary Clinton was perfect. I'm quite convinced she would've been our nominee had she voted against [George W.] Bush's war in Iraq, and she would've been a great nominee."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "It's hard to pick out the best quotes from Hillary's speech tonight because the whole damn thing was so good."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "I don't think 'hit it out of the park' begins to describe the speech."
• FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver: "I wish I had a more substantive, less rah-rah reaction for you, but I really think she just accomplished everything that she needed to, and did so in style."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Hillary was terrific...She just nailed the speech. Nailed it."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "If the idiots in the media keep playing up the Clinton/Obama rift after this, they are hopeless."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "That was quite a speech. It occurred to me as she built to the conclusion in the last few minutes, that the pre-2008 Hillary Clinton would not have been capable of that speech. That's not a dig. But she grew incredibly as a candidate over the course of this campaign. And this was an immensely powerful delivery, and a richly woven together speech. The beginning seemed fine but not remarkable. But it slowly built into something very powerful."
• Crooks and Liars' SilentPatriot: "Hillary did everything she came to do Tuesday night, and she did it with sincerity and style. She acknowledged her incredible, historic run and many supporters, while drawing a clear contrast between the policies of Obama/Clinton and those of Bush/McCain. She came to convincingly make the case to all her holdouts know that Obama is the only candidate in the race who will fight for their values. And she succeeded wildly. Bravo."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "What a speech! In that moment, at that time, just an unbelievable speech. [...] Here's my bottom line, after tonight, the Republicans hate Hillary again. It was a dagger through McCain's political heart."

TAPPED's Sam Boyd was initially critical of Clinton's speech: "Clinton's case against McCain [is] pretty strong, and that's good for Democrats. But without a strong pro-Obama message it reinforces the sense that Obama is the lesser of two evils that dominates her speech. Sure, that's probably what she thinks, but it hardly seems like the best job she could have done to convince her strongest supporters."

Later, Boyd seemed to rethink his view: "On second thought, maybe simply ignoring Obama and ripping McCain was the best approach. After all, her hardest core supporters probably aren't going to be convinced that Obama is awesome. And, as an anti-McCain speech, it was great. Plus on purely aesthetic grounds, it was the best speech I've ever seen her give."

CLINTON II: It's Not About Me...

Liberal bloggers particularly liked the following line from Clinton's speech:

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

• digby: "It's a very effective line and a generous one. She showed leadership there by explicitly challenging her most ardent followers to look beyond her. That's not easy for politicians to do."
• The Huffington Post's Cenk Uygur: "That is the winning line. That's the one that showed me that she genuinely did her best to actually convince her followers that they had to support Barack Obama. That's not a half-hearted effort. That's a line designed to win people over to her argument, not over to her personally."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "[This line] was a powerful reminder that Clinton's values and priorities are more important than one candidate or one campaign. It was an obvious argument that Clinton made eloquently -- it won't honor Clinton to betray her vision for a stronger nation. To support her is to support her agenda, and Obama shares her agenda."
• Obsidian Wings' publius: "[This] was by far her most intellectually interesting point. She was essentially calling on her supporters' better angels -- she was being their conscience and their voice of reason. [...] You know, these political speeches have a lot of BS -- and it's hard for a cynical audience to be moved by them either intellectually or emotionally. But I keep finding that line staying with me, lingering in my head. It was a powerful point -- and I hope it gets coverage. If Obama consolidates Democrats, he wins. And that line does more for that goal than the rest of Hillary's speech combined."

CLINTON III: The Bare Minimum

Most conservative bloggers believe that Clinton didn't praise Obama enough in her speech and that her speech did little to sell Obama to her disgruntled supporters:

• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "Hillary was passionate about the issues, but her talk of Obama and McCain was perfunctory. She endorsed Obama -- but she didn't embrace Obama..."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "There was no real praise for Barack Obama in that speech. [...] She did not praise him at all. It was pro forma rhetoric."
• NRO's Rich Lowry: "You can imagine Bill and Hillary, when the speech was being drafted, putting the stuff about Obama on a scale, and calibrating it word for word, syllable by syllable, until they had reached the perfect bare minimum about Obama. [...] What's so great about Barack Obama? He happens to be a member of the same party as Bill Clinton. Nothing she said tonight will be incompatible with what she'll want to say if Obama loses in November: 'Told you so.'"
• The Next Right's Soren Dayton: "She basically said that Democrats should vote for Barack Obama because they agree with him. [...] There is still no audio-visual rebutal to Hillary's 'Not Ready' statements that she made in debates that has become the Republican communications rallying cry. She and Bill did their duty as Democrats, but are leaving enough out that Republicans, Hillary supporters, and independents have something to chew on."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "At the risk of sowing discord in the Democratic ranks, allow me to offer that Hillary did not do all that she could have done for Barack Obama. Indeed, she did the bare minimum. The speech was only a success for Obama if you considered it a possibility that she would come out and explicitly endorse McCain. Think of it this way -- she and Obama have been senate colleagues for four years and spent 18 months together on the campaign trail. And she still couldn't manage to offer a single anecdote of why she liked him or thought he should be president? Every time she said 'Barack Obama,' you could have slid in 'Our Generic Nominee' and the speech would have worked just as well. If she really was into all this team player stuff, she would have told America why she now appreciates the error of her ways and knows that Barack Obama should be taking that 3-in-the-morning phone call."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "As far as I can tell, Hillary continued to play the game that's she played brilliantly, so far. She said she supports Barack, and told everyone to vote for him...without offering any real reasons why they should, reasons that might inadvertantly convince someone actually to do it. Her words of support, of course, allow her to ask anyone who doubts her commitment, Well, what else was I supposed to say? But as a shrewd politician -- and the wife of a very shrewd politician -- she knows the objectives of a political convention: To give the country a comfort level with a candidate on a personal level, along with good, solid reasons that he is not just the better choice -- but the best one for the country at this particular time. Her speech advanced neither objective for Obama."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "This will serve as a good launch pad for her 2012 presidential run if John McCain wins. I'm also sure it will help with party unity. But while it was a good night for her, it's hard to see what it will do to convince undecided voters that Barack Obama should be president."

A few conservative bloggers thought the speech was somewhat effective:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Will [the speech] be effective? Time will tell, but I believe this speech will go at least a significant way towards convincing her supporters to remain in the tent. It may take a few days for that to become apparent, but I'd expect a slow drift of Hillary dead-enders to return to Barack Obama."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "I think she did as much for Obama as he could have hoped for. Clinton's core feminist supports (the 'sisterhood of the traveling pants suits,' as she called them tonight) will very likely fall into line, barring some major misstep by Obama (my guess is that they would have eventually gotten behind Obama even with a lesser speech, they really have no place else to go). The folks who voted for Clinton because they don't like Obama will continue to consider their options, but not because there was anything Clinton could have said, but didn't say, to win them over."

CLINTON IV: Ah, Smell The Disunity!

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about the following remarks made yesterday by Bill Clinton (which some have interpreted as a shot at Obama):

"The former president, speaking in Denver, posed a hypothetical question in which he seemed to suggest that that the Democratic Party was making a mistake in choosing Obama as its presidential nominee.

He said: 'Suppose for example you're a voter. And you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?'

Then, perhaps mindful of how his off-the-cuff remarks might be taken, Clinton added after a pause: 'This has nothing to do with what's going on now.'"

• Michelle Malkin: "Bill Clinton twists the knife in Barack's back. Yowch. Chicago thug mafia, meet Arkansas thug mafia. Long live Democrat party unity!"
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Tell me again that Bill Clinton's on board. [...] Oh, did Obama cause himself some headaches when he didn't even go through the motions of vetting [Hillary]..."

Conservative bloggers are also buzzing about reports that Clinton will not attend Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco Field:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "I don't believe it for a minute; it's simply too petulant, even for him, and too dangerous a signal to the PUMAs for party bigwigs to let him get away with it. But how unspeakably awesome is it that this is what the top of Drudge looks like as Her Majesty is taking the stage at the convention? [...] We owe him one, don't we?"
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "However rousing Hillary Clinton's speech sought to be in praising Barack Obama, the fact remains that you can judge the Clintons better by looking at their actions rather than listening to their words. Again, it bears repeating: Bill Clinton would not be throwing a fit if Hillary Clinton told him not to and told him that throwing a fit would hurt her politically by making her look less than loyal."

OBAMA: Ayers, Ayers, Ayers

Conservative bloggers are keeping up a steady stream of buzz about Obama's relationship with the ex-Weather Underground member, William Ayers:

• Malkin: "The Chicago bully tactics aren't going to work. While Obama sics his lawyers and Kossack minions on TV stations that dare to air an independent ad about his close relationship with Weather Underground terrorist-turned-academic Bill Ayers, the truth is seeping out. [...] Obama can wrap himself in the flag and attempt to gag his critics, but his false portrayal of Ayers as just a guy in the neighborhood is not going to fly. Obama's friend is America's enemy. And America deserves to know."
• RedState's Leon H. Wolf: "Barack Obama really, really does not like it when you point out that his political career was launched in the home of unrepentant (although incompetent) terrorist Bill Ayers. He dislikes it so much, he wants to have the people who are doing it thrown in jail. Seriously."
• Mirengoff: "By defending Ayers, Obama made his connection to Ayers a legitimate, though still tangential, issue. He thus finds himself the subject of an ad about the connection. The ad is powerful, but Obama's reaction to it -- calling on the government to curtail the right of citizens to air the ad -- seems over-the-top."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Obama's dodge -- that Ayers' crimes were done when he was a boy -- doesn't begin to address his close working relationship and friendship with the terrorist whose views on America are deeply repulsive to the vast majority of Americans. Like he did with [Jeremiah] Wright, Obama will now try and persuade the public that this isn't the Ayers that he knew, but the voters aren't fools. The Rosen interview and the SDS Reunion Tapes from November 2007 tell us that Ayers has never hidden who he is or what he believes. Obama knew. And as with Jeremiah Wright, Obama didn't care. Until the voters noticed."

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION: Race, Gender, And All That Good Stuff

DENVER -- Yesterday we attended a fascinating panel discussion hosted by The Hispanic Institute and The Common Good. The discussion was titled "Culture Wars: the role of Race, Gender, Ethnicity, Religion and values in the Fall Campaign" and was moderated by NBC's Dan Abrams. The nine panelists included several current and former Dem office-holders, one conservative pundit (MSNBC's Tucker Carlson), and the netroots' own Markos Moulitsas (who describes the experience here). We don't have enough space to describe the entire discussion, but we'd like to briefly summarize two key exchanges concerning the disgruntled Clinton supporters who are receiving so much media attention this week.

Midway through the discussion, Abrams asked the panelists about the disaffected Clinton supporters who call themselves PUMAs (an acronym which stands for "Party Unity My Ass"). Moulitsas responded by questioning whether PUMAs are truly Democrats: "These PUMAs are tooling around in Hummers. A lot of them voted for George Bush twice. And we're supposed to believe that they're 'disgruntled Democrats'?"

Moulitsas also questioned whether PUMAs can truly be considered supporters of Hillary Clinton, since they're working against her stated goal of electing Obama president. Moulitsas said: "These people who purport to be fighting in her name aren't following her wishes, so maybe they're not actually supporters of Hillary Clinton."

During the Q&A following the discussion, one of the questioners asked the panelists why they had spent so much time dwelling on the Dem primary when the general election was already in full swing. Abrams defended his decision to ask so many Clinton-related questions on the grounds that McCain had made Clinton an issue in the campaign by using her in his ads.

At this point Moulitsas interjected that McCain's Clinton-themed ads are rarely broadcast and that they're intended to be played and re-played by cable news pundits, who therefore play a crucial role in amplifying the ads' message. Moulitsas told Abrams (paraphrasing): "There are three of those McCain ads [featuring Clinton]. Two of them have only aired on the networks. So you guys are doing McCain's work for him." Moulitsas' remarks drew vigorous applause from the audience.

DLC Chair Harold Ford, Jr. responded to Moulitsas by pointing out that polls indicate that roughly 25% of Clinton supporters currently support McCain -- which, he argued, could cost Obama the election. Ford also noted that Obama has fallen two points behind McCain in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll, which marks the first time that Obama has trailed McCain since early June.

"Those numbers are real," Ford said, arguing that Obama's inability to win over certain Clinton supporters is a legitimate topic that's worthy of discussion.

It should be noted that many liberal bloggers agree with Moulitsas that the McCain camp is manipulating the media by creating Hillary-themed ads with tiny or non-existent TV buys:

• The New Republic's Jason Zengerle: "Eve [Fairbanks] asks whether the McCain campaign will release a new Hillary ad every day this week. Of course it will -- so long as we in the media keep linking to the ads and doing news segments about them on TV. I'd love to know from our readers in these 'key battleground states' where the ads are supposed to air whether they've actually seen any of them on TV, other than the times they've seen reports about them on CNN and Fox and MSNBC."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "The majority of these 'YouTube ads' are designed solely to get media attention, not to be seriously used as part of the campaign. If they were podcasts, or blog posts, or flyers, or email blasts, the media would ignore them if their purpose were so transparent. I mean, who cares about a flyer produced in small quantities and handed out only to the media? But if it's video, it's news! [...] So I'd say this: cable news stations need to stop being played for suckers. Unless a campaign says it's committed to a serious ad buy for the video in question, it's time to quit playing the game. Wise up and treat 'em the same way you treat attack email blasts."

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder is one reporter who seems to agree with Drum: "This is why I've stopped reporting on the new McCain-Hillary ads: They're almost video press releases...running on fumes..."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Never Saw This Coming

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates:

"Spike Lee On MSNBC was hilarious. One thing that I was reminded of. Spike was asked if he ever thought he'd see this day. He responded 'Never.' That is the difference between black men/women and white women. I think a large number of Hillary supporters believe that a white woman could actually be nominated, and Hillary seemed perfectly set up for it. She's also been known among feminists since her college days.

But, as much as Barack came out of nowhere for the country, he completely snuck up on black folks. We never saw this coming. I think that explains a lot of the bitterness. It's not like we've been waiting 30 years for this. A 'black president' was the sort of thing you used as a punchline, or as like a cultural symbol of something. But we didn't really think about it as a literal reality. I would not have been surprised -- or particularly upset -- if I had died without their ever being a black president. But that's the trouble with expectations. I may be now."

LEST WE FORGET: Well, We Did Invent American Cheese...

From Overheard in the Office:

Boss: "Whoever invented cheese is a great American."
Employee: "Cheese wasn't invented by an American."
Boss: "Well, whoever did invent it should be made an American."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at August 27, 2008 01:12 PM