And so, once again, the Clintons have displayed their unique capacity to mire us in their personal drama. There is no denying that the “handling” of Bill and Hillary has been a significant distraction for the Obama team at this convention.
But will it matter in November?
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s rip-snorting critique of John McCain and the Bush administration’s policies says no. The senator is a professional. She did what she had to do Tuesday night and will do what she needs to do this fall.
“No way. No how. No McCain,” she told an adoring audience.
Democrats want to win. Vital segments in her party — young people and African-Americans, in particular — have an emotional investment in this election. Clinton knows that if she is blamed for a November defeat, she’ll be a pariah.
And yes, Clinton is a partisan. She cares about what will happen to America under four more years of Republican rule.
Needs to attract women voters
“Jobs lost, houses gone, falling wages, rising prices. The Supreme Court in a right-wing headlock. . . . Money borrowed from the Chinese to buy oil from the Saudis,” she warned the delegates.
“There are some disaffected Clinton voters, yes, but this mania about disunity in the Democratic Party really is a media creation,” said Clinton’s former campaign manager, Geoffrey Garin.
“The Republicans have far more serious problems to deal with. . . . They still have a moderate and conservative wing that hate each other,” he said.
And “the piece not covered, while all this other stuff is going on, is that the Obama camp is building a campaign organization that would make Karl Rove drool,” he said. “There is nothing close to it in the history of American politics.”
Which is not to say that Obama does not have work to do.
In a recent CNN poll of Clinton supporters, 27 percent said they intend to vote for John McCain. The Obama campaign will be hurt if Clinton donors won’t open their wallets. And Garin admits that the nominee has not converted the white working families that voted for Clinton in the Appalachian precincts of electoral prizes such as Ohio and Virginia.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut noted that some groups of women voters are not embracing the Democratic ticket. Older white women in particular are skeptics, she said. So are college-educated female baby boomers — “the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits,” as Clinton called them — who saw Clinton as their special champion.
“It is real personal,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois. “Older women saw her as the last chance in their political lifetime to elect a woman president. They’re hurt. . . . It will take them a little longer.”
Exploiting issues
But “letting John McCain choose the next Supreme Court justice is not in the interest of women — or men,” Durbin said. As McCain has noted, the next president may select “two or three” Supreme Court justices.
And Cecile Richards, daughter of the late Texas Gov. Ann Richards, reminded the delegates that McCain “has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.”
If feminist issues don’t keep women in the Democratic camp, DeLauro said, the economy will.
“While everyone is feeling a faltering economy, women feel it with greater force,” she said.
Republican pollsters who help conduct the bipartisan Battleground Poll were stunned this month to discover that nearly half of those polled have had to deal with job loss among their immediate family members, co-workers and friends.
“This is a staggering figure and reflects the view that this is an economy . . . where many are experiencing real loss,” the GOP pollsters reported.
On one thing the Democrats ruefully agreed. They had let the Republicans exploit the Clinton drama.
“You have to give kudos to the McCain campaign for spinning this thing as a distraction the Obama campaign has had to deal with,” said Democratic pollster Ed Reilly.
