Is Obama the latest victim of the Bradley effect?
UPDATE : Probably not. As Matt Yglesias pointed out in this graph, the polling numbers for Obama and Edwards were pretty accurate. The only big surprise was Hillary’s last minute surge in support.
I’m fascinated by the way the Clinton campaign is dealing with the challenge of changing their message in the four days between Iowa and New Hampshire. Hillary’s newest line seems to be that all three Democratic candidates are agents of “change” (anyone tired of hearing that word yet?), but that she’s the only one who can actually accomplish that change. It’s a twist on her “demand it, hope for it, work hard for it” line, but her rhetoric doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.
For example, here’s a revealing line in her latest stump speech from Ezra Klein :
Clinton now has this line where she says (slight paraphrase, as I’m hand-transcribing), “Let’s be serious about change. Change isn’t voting for the PATRIOT Act then criticizing it. Change isn’t saying you won’t take lobbyist money then appointing a lobbyist as head of your New Hampshire campaign. Change isn’t bragging about passing the Patient’s Bill of Rights when it never passed. Change isn’t talking about your opposition to the Iraq War then voting for more funding.”Those are attacks on, in order, Edwards, Obama, Edwards, and Obama. But what’s interesting about the charges is the direction in which they point. On each of the relevant issues there, Hillary is on the wrong side of her own rhetoric. She voted for the PATRIOT Act. She voted for the war. She takes lobbyist money and defends their contributions. And she voted for the PBR, and also couldn’t pass it. None are issues that give her any advantage.
An even more telling example of the pot calling the kettle black is this contradiction in Hillary’s depressing (as Obama put it) claim that Obama and Edwards offer “false hopes”.
I suppose that in pure campaigning terms, Kevin Drum’s right and Hillary Clinton’s complaints about Barack Obama and John Edwards raising “false hopes” was a gaffe. But I think it’s an interesting theme, and sort of wish she would explore it in a more rigorous and thorough way.The trouble is that as is, she’s raising essentially the same hopes as her competitors — hopes of fundamental change in health care and energy policy…It’s true that high aspirations and inspiring rhetoric won’t produce fundamental policy shifts. It’s also true that getting really outraged won’t produce fundamental policy shifts. But neither will Clinton’s years of experience — you can see it in her own list of legislative accomplishments as Senator and First Lady, there’s just nothing in there of remotely the sort of scale that she’s now promising.
So if it’s true that Edwards and Obama are raising false hopes, then so is she.
While some may consider Hillary’s “false hopes” line a gaffe, the truly depressing thing seems to be that it’s a pretty accurate reflection of her feelings.
Hillary was asked about Obama’s rejoinder that there’s something vaguely un-American about dismissing hopes as false, and that it doesn’t jibe with the careers of figures like like John F. Kennedy and King.“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done.”
Ugghhh….this reminds me of the Mr. Show sketch in which they tried to solicit hate mail :
The Clinton implosion continues. In the past two days, Hillary Clinton has expressed anger and sadness. Granted, some of you might argue “Her supposed ‘anger’ during Saturday’s debate was completely exaggerated.” or “Hillary didn’t burst into tears the way the Republican leader in the Senate does every time someone mentions Iraq.”, but that’s all beside the point. I don’t know if we can afford to have a commander-in-chief that expresses emotion (in public!).
As an aside, if Hillary really wants to compete with Obama, she needs to stop acting so stiff and be a bit more “likeable“, but not in a way that exposes her to any criticism. At least, that’s what I gather from the punditocracy’s ‘”conventional wisdom” that insists that she open herself up to voters but treats her like a emotionally-fragile bitch when she acts like a normal human being.
I’ve always been skeptical about the Obama phenomenon. Maybe I’m just jaded from 2004, but I really doubted that Obama could actually turn his enthusiastic support into actual votes. Needless to say, Obama’s victory in Iowa was pretty damn impressive. As I look around, I see indicator after indicator that Obama’s popularity goes beyond a fluke primary win in a midwestern state. For example, check out how many people have sat through his Iowa victory speech in the last three days :
Okay, so my predictions were mostly wrong, but there were a lot of genuine shockers last night.
Obama - Despite any pre-caucus polls predicting a victory, his win was a remarkable achievement. I’m still shocked that he was able to drag his coalition of young people and undecideds to the caucuses.
John Edwards - A strong finish, but he wasn’t able to sneak up the middle between Obama and Clinton. His campaign gambled so much on Iowa that even with a strong second place finish the lack of a win pretty much ends his campaign. He’ll definitely try to use his victory over Clinton to gain some momentum going into New Hampshire, but Edwards’ chances of winning are all but dead. With Obama’s victory, I thin Edwards is going to start bleeding support, which will be more bad news for…
Hillary Clinton - Yikes. What a disaster. Front runners aren’t supposed to come in third place in a two-person race. Though Edwards beat her by a hair, a mathematical fluke adds insult to injury by making her loss seem worse at first glance, even though there aren’t that many delegates between the 29% and 30% showings of Clinton and Edwards. She needs to destroy Obama to regain her footing, but Obama’s got the momentum now and doesn’t have to worry about retooling his campaign strategy in the next four days. To be honest, I’m relieved to see her lose because I think she’d have the hardest time beating…
Mike Huckabee - It was an easy call, but I still can’t see him winning the nomination. The campaign against Huckabee by the GOP establishment is going to be nasty and he doesn’t have the rural, conservative voters to fall back on in New Hampshire. It was easy to see why Iowa Republicans preferred his folksy personality to the robotic Ward Cleaver of the race…
Mitt Romney - He did better than I expected, but considering the amount of money he’s sunk into this race, his loss was a huge blow. I could still see him turning things around in NH, but mostly because the Republican establishment wants a candidate who won’t rock the boat and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be…
John McCain - He should have been the “not one of those religious nuts” candidate, but couldn’t catch up in time. I predicted he would win mostly because I expected a bigger loss by Romney and never in a million years would have guessed that McCain would be splitting the “not a front-runner” support with a surge from….
Fred Thompson - Where the hell did that come from? Were the second rounds in the caucuses filled with people saying “He’s an actor like Reagan!”. Very weird. Speaking of weird…
Ron Paul - Impressive finish. He even kicked Rudy’s ass. When I saw that he came in fifth place, the first thing I thought of was Joe Lieberman’s boast that he was in a “three-way tie for third place”. So it looks like Paul’s got some “Joementum” now.
With the Iowa caucuses hours away, here’s my guesses as to how the primaries will play out. Although these are simply guesses tinted by my own biases and unsupportable by empirical evidence, I’ll resist the urge to label these “conventional wisdom”. Since I’m the same guy who called “bullshit” on a poll predicting a Kerry win in Iowa four years ago, take the following with a grain of salt.
On the Democratic side, I think Edwards is gonna take Iowa in an upset. The first round of caucusing may resemble the polls we’ve seen, but I think Edwards is going to be a much more attractive second pick candidate than Clinton or Obama. I can’t imagine Hillary would be a popular second round pick. People already know a lot about her and have made up their minds before caucusing. Of the top three, I think her support is as solid as it’s gonna get. Obama, on the other hand, is a much more charismatic presence on the campaign trail, but I doubt that his caucus-going supporters will be able to impress undecideds with platitudes about “hope” and “change”.
Another thing working in Edwards favor is that Iowa has been framed as a two-person race for a while between Clinton and Obama. The caucuses four years ago were also a two way race between Dean (who placed a distant third) and Gephardt (who dropped out that night). If this year plays out the same way, Edwards could sneak up the middle as a choice that combines some of the most appealing qualities of the top two. While he hasn’t been around Washington as long as Clinton, his role in the 2004 campaign gives him a one-up in the “experience” area against Obama (whose last election was against a candidate nobody expected to win). On the other hand, when it comes to Obama’s “Audacity of Hope” campaign-style, Edwards campaign is every bit as status-quo shattering and would provide just as great a contrast with the Clinton campaign.
If Edwards does win in Iowa, I think it’ll mark the beginning of the end for Obama. For one, it would give the press a new storyline about the Obama campaign being a well-funded hype machine that couldn’t translate its enthusiasm into votes (like Dean in ‘04). Moreover, it’ll give the Edwards campaign a breath of fresh air and go a long way towards establishing him as the “not-Hillary candidate” (though I could easily see the same working in reverse if Obama beats Edwards).
On the Republican side, I think Ron Paul is going to win because he’s the only candidate that cares about the constitution and freedom. Also, his supporters rented him a blimp.
Okay, let’s try this again…
On the Republican side, I think Huckabee is going to probably win Iowa by default. More important than Huckabee winning, though, is that I think Mitt Romney is going to get crushed. Not just because he’s a transparent phony who’s trying to buy the election (which caucus-goers will resent), but he really sucks at pandering to his base. He’s terrible at it. For example, check out how he slammed Huckabee earlier today :
Mitt Romney, who is spending the final day before the caucuses jetting around Iowa, is hitting rival Mike Huckabee for abandoning the Hawkeye State on caucus eve to make an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.“Well, frankly my focus is on the caucuses here in Iowa. I think Mike is more concerned about the caucus in Los Angeles,” Romney told voters at Bettendorf Middle School.
Any decent Republican strategist would see Huckabee’s caucus-eve trip as a golden opportunity to bash Hollywood and kiss Iowans asses by referring to their neck of the woods as the “real America”, but the best Romney could come up with was some clumsy statement about “the caucus in Los Angeles”. Huh??
Another thing working against Romney is that he’s a Mormon. Although most conservative voters would have a hard time admitting to a pollster that they think the LDS church is a weird (I prefer to think of it as a fanfic version of Christianity), I think a lot of Iowans who might otherwise vote for Mitt will find convenient reasons not to support him. While his flip-flopping may be the official reason for his fall, I think old-fashioned religious bigotry will be his undoing. Since he decided to make his faith a selling point in the campaign, his downfall will be hilarious to watch. Live by the cross, die by the cross.
The other big news on the GOP side will be McCain having a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa that will position him to win New Hampshire and turn the GOP primary into a two-man race with Huckabee. Giuliani’s irrelevance in the early primaries will leave him virtually shut out of the press coverage aside from the occasional “Where are they now?” piece. Like the Dems four years ago, Republicans are in an “anyone but ____” mode and will ultimately go with the candidate they think has the strongest chance of beating the Democrats. That’s why I think “Maverick” McCain is going to beat Huckabee because the corporate whores who own the GOP won’t allow the nominee to be some hick who might raise taxes.
…then again, I could be wrong.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about my support of medical marijuana :
I can understand why advocates would try to find ways around the racist, elitist, hypocritical, and mostly evil “war” on drugs. Even worse, the FDA has been notorious in their unwillingness to even consider approving marijuana for pharmaceutical use. That said, going the state’s rights route towards legalization was pretty wrongheaded at the outset. Even when these laws originally passed, there was always a feeling of “civil disobedience” in the air. The inevitable conflict with federal law was a ticking clock that hung over every “cannabis club” in the country.
. . .
I think the “war” on drugs is awful, but I thought we were talking about the ways marijuana helps ease the enormous pain and suffering of cancer patients. Yes, the two issues are related, but nobody should be exploiting the sympathy for the terminally ill to piggyback the larger, but tangential, issue of the excessive criminalization of narcotics onto this particular fight.
. . .
A far more reasonable approach would be for Congress to pass an amendment to the Controlled Substances Act that would move marijuana from its Schedule I status to Schedule II. While getting Congress to relax drug laws may seem like a pipe dream, the real world implications would be to simply move pot from the class that includes LSD and heroin to the one that includes cocaine, morphine, and crystal meth. While this probably wouldn’t do much to satisfy the “Legalize It!” crowd, it should give doctors the leeway to prescribe the drug for their patients, open the door to FDA approval, and subject it to more than enough regulations to keep the drug out of the hands of recreational users.
Unfortunately, as The Raw Story notes, the overlap between medical marijuana advocates and those who seek to decriminalize recreational use has lead to “chaos” :
In September, the DEA raided the California Healthcare Collective in Modesto and arrested the store’s chief financial officer, Luke Scarmazzo. “They handcuffed me and put me on my kitchen table,” Scarmazzo told 60 Minutes. “One of them … said ‘you knew I’d be coming soon.’”Scarmazzo acknowledged that he had been earning $13,000 a month for running the dispensary but insisted “I was working a lot of hours.” Scarmazzo’s lawyer described his client’s situation as a case of “selective prosecution,” because the 26-year-old Scarmazzo is also a hiphop artist, with a widely distributed Internet video in which he appears as a high-living drug dealer, chanting “Fuck the feds.”
Complicating the legal situation, California’s pot shops have admittedly become an easy source of supply for people who just want to get high. According to 60 Minutes, the California law was originally intended to provide access only to the most needy, but in an attempt not to exclude any category of illness, it wound up with language so broad that it covers ever the vaguest complaint of pain. Now anyone with a note from their doctor can buy medical marijuana, and some doctors even advertise for patients in alternative papers.
“Fuck the feds”…really mature. This kind of shit is an embarrassment and it completely undermines the movement to allow medicinal use of marijuana.
I’ve had friends with cancer who swear by marijuana as the perfect drug to treat the side effects of chemo (it relieves pain, controls nausea, and increases appetite). Yet it’s hard to make the broader case that the FDA should evaluate marijuana when the most visible examples of the drug in action are “clubs” that intentionally blur the line between medicinal and recreational use. How can you convince the government that marijuana is a safe and effective way to relieve suffering when it’s most visible advocates seem to be spending their time helping provide legal weed to people who are more interested in marijuana’s extra-curricular effects. It would be nice if the medical marijuana dispensaries would take the responsibility to crack down on recreational users and realize that centers for the distribution of controlled substances for medical use are pharmacies, not social gatherings.
