WHYY’s Susan Phillips offers her perspective on perhaps the most frequently viewed and heard story that she’s reported on in a long time.
Check out the Columbia Journalism Review to read what it was like to be the other voice on that fateful recording of President Clinton and how one well-known talk radio host called her “an Infobabe.
No. I’m not referring to the famous words of George Tenet who used that phrase to characterize his certainty that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Nor am I making any predictions about Obama’s chances of getting the Democratic nomination.
While the Reverend Wright is making his rounds in the media - again - the Obama campaign is sticking with the game plan what brung ‘em this far.
In this case, it’s portraying the candidate as young and vital and especially adept at the real American past time. The only major sport that had all of its roots here in the good old U.S.A.
I just read perhaps one of the clearest explanations of the general “Democratic platform for health care.” I use that phrase since the writer makes it clear the Obama and Clinton don’t actually differ all that much on this issue but that their presidential ambitions are causing them to nitpick those differences and turn them in major liabilities.
All this seems to do is convince the American public that whichever of them gets the nomination will be carrying a fundamentally flawed health care plan into the general election and possibly beyond.
Why should health care be your number 1 issue? Think about it, even if you are young, in good health, have decent insurance and pretty good job security, there are a number of folks who aren’t. In our screwed up system, more an more of your tax dollars are going to fall through the cracks in our system until there’s little left over for… I don’t know… fixing bridges, mass transit, schools. In short, everything else.
Give it a read. Figure out what they’re proposing. You owe it to yourself.
Apparently, Barack Obama’s campaign ended today and the poor guy didn’t even say anything.
Anyway, that’s my quick read from going through my subscribed blogs and checking out the titles of a number of these posts.
Here’s one of them from the conservative National Review and one from the supposedly “libruhl” media at the Washington Post.
Time for another speech?
It’s been a few days since the campaign whirlwind finished its 6-week stop in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and I’ve had a little time to poke around the internet to see what everyone has to say about what happened and what is going to happen next.
There’s more opinion out there about both of those questions than one person can possibly digest. Heck, The Huffington Post itself seems to have about 20 posts a day on those two subjects alone (overkill, people!)
Thankfully, I found two posts that I’ll share with you that seem to effectively synthesize the “what happened” and “what happens next.”
What do I think?
At the risk of writing something that turns out to be completely wrong, I’ll take a stab.
What happened?
Down 20 pts. early, Obama really had no place to go but up. He threw a ton of money early on into television advertising while Clinton stayed relatively quiet. He did a well-planned 6-day swing that led to a ton of free and somewhat favorable media in local papers and on local television - aside from comments about his bowling. With all of that he closed it to about as close as it was going to get - 4 or 5 points - and the flak over the “cling” comment caused him to give a little bit back.
By then, having inundated the state with advertising already, he wasn’t going to be able to change minds again since everything he added was of marginal value or possibly negative value given the frustration factor. (Just give me back Biggest Loser! I’m sick of these commercials!)
Even if he ran a perfect campaign, all Clinton would have had to do was hold serve to win by 4 or 5.
What happens next?
States in which Obama leads big will go for Obama big with little contesting by Clinton. She’ll say that he was expected to win big the whole time in (insert state here) and that the margin shouldn’t reflect on her electability in the fall, especially since (insert state here) will probably vote for McCain in the fall anyway.
States where the race is close may go to Obama as well. If so, Clinton points to the “closeness” to say that there is still a significant amount of support for her and that it would be wrong for her to bow out before the convention and take away the choice of every person who voted for her. Obviously if she wins those states she’ll point to the fact that the wind may be leaving Obama’s sails and that she’s the candidate with momentum.
In the end, if Obama has the popular vote and the lead among pledge delegates, I think the supers throw in behind him and send the Clinton wing of the Democratic party into its long, Senator-being and lecture-giving, retirement.
There.
A prediction.
Now let’s see what happens.
Here’s one that I know I’ll be right about - no one is going to talk about issues or offer bold new ideas that may inspire me as much as the compressed-air car or universal, single-payer health care.
Reporters are often credited with writing the first draft of history. They’re on the ground while the events that we’ll be talking about in 20 or 30 years are happening. Theirs is often the first view we get of these events and often it’s relayed to us in the polished, objective, neutral-voiced way that a history text book itself uses.
That’s why it’s always great to get a look at reporters personal accounts of what they were doing when those events were happening.
WHYY’s reporters did just that, submitting “Reporters Notebooks” for primary day and night. Elizabeth Fiedler, Kerry Grens, Alexandra Schmidt and Shai Ben-Yaacov provide riveting narratives, written in their own voices, of where they were and what they were seeing and doing.
Here’s a sample of one of Shai’s experiences covering a visit by Chelsea Clinton in the run-up to Election Day:
I’d also like to reflect on covering the run up to the election, during which I covered a campaign stop by Chelsea Clinton in Northeast Philadelphia. As I was sternly informed by Clinton campaign workers, Chelsea is not taking questions. Whether this was a request from Chelsea herself or a calculated move by the campaign, I’m not sure. What I do know is that Chelsea’s “enforcers” weren’t playing around.
At one point, while trying to record an exchange between Chelsea and an excited Hillary supporter, one campaign worker moved in front of me, blocking my microphone with his body and pushing my arm out of the way. Another time I tried to record Chelsea, the same campaign worker pushed my microphone down with his hand. I glanced at him to see what the problem was and virtually had to duck the daggers flying at me from his eyes. While I was eventually able to record Chelsea talking to supporters, I did think: If this is what they don’t want me recording, what exactly would qualify as positive publicity for the campaign?
This account gives some great insight into what the local press corps goes through to try to get the new and interesting, local angles to this campaign.
WHYY’s Susan Phillips, meanwhile, is busy working of an account of her interesting primary day for the Columbia Journalism Review. Stay tuned for a link to that coming soon.
A great regret in my life is not having this on primary election day.
So I found it interesting that following up the piece I wrote yesterday in which I stuck a pin in the balloon of the notion that Ed Rendell should be the vice-presidential nominee, Tom Fitzgerald of PA Politics ‘08 reported on the governor’s response when he was asked about whether he would want such a job:
The gov had this to say: “This campaign reinforced my view I can only work for myself. They were always shoving talking points in my hand - always read them but [ignored them]. I would not be a good number two, and would not be a good cabinet member…I was thinking this is probably the last campaign I will fully immerse myself in…It was a pretty nostalgic night for me.”
Sp again I ask: where does Rendell go in 2010? He’ll certainly want to stay on the scene. Does he follow his wife’s path and get a seat on the federal bench? Does he buy a chain of car washes like Lenny Dykstra? Full-time color analyst for Eagles games?
We’ve been having a lot of fun talking about the politics of the race between Senators Clinton and Obama and posting about President Clinton’s latest hijinks.
It’s important to remember, however, that there are a lot of important issues out there that aren’t getting a lot of play on cable news where most of the talk has been about whether Clinton won with a 10-point margin, an 8.6-point margin or a 9.3-point margin.
While those issues may not be as important as, say, the end of the world, they still deserve more attention than they’re getting. Who knows? Maybe if we do pay more attention to them, we could maybe put off the apocalypse - or at least the Mad Max-ization of the world.
I’ve been saving some of these links from the past couple days so we could discuss them in the cold light of the post-Pennsylvania landscape.
First a couple John McCain proposals. Brian James Kirk takes a look at John McCain’s proposals on the technology front which, Kirk explains, are not so much a plan as they are a bunch of statements to press outlets who are interested in such things. There’s very little surprise here as McCain focuses on unleashing those wonderful market forces and getting rid of taxes on internet transactions and cell phone services. There’s also the usual about a Research and Development Tax Credit, which is, essentially, a tax cut but a tax cut that’s supposed to encourage people to discover things that may not immediately make them a lot of money. Nothing specifically about improving this nation’s broadband capabilities but I’m sure if asked about it the words “market” and “free” will be somewhere in McCain’s answer.
Meanwhile, Salon takes issue with Senator McCain’s gas tax holiday plan. A professor of energy who’s not a big fan sums up his opinion of McCain’s plan:
Politically it’s a great idea for McCain. It hits on two main issues: Gas prices are high and he’s also lowering taxes. For the economy and for society at large, it’s a terrible idea.
Remember when gas was like a buck ten a gallon and Bill Clinton raised the gas tax by 4 cents/gallon to close the budget deficit. (The Salon article reminds us that it was 1993). The backlash was enough to cost at least a few congress people their seats. Horrors! How can we survive if we have to pay $1.14 for gas!
Turns out that the 50-cent or 1-dollar per gallon hike would have been a pretty good idea back then and may have put us in a pretty good spot right about now. Where’s my damn time machine?!
The professor, Christopher Knittel, even explains how we can raise the gas tax without letting people know it’s being raised and make it less regressive.
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Bob Herbert at The New York Times wants to remind us that in all of the shot drinking and beer swilling being done by the candidates, they may have lost sight of some sobering facts about the state of education in this country.
Herbert uses one of my favorite phrases - “The nation’s future may depend on _________” I’m curious what you think the nation’s future depends on but for now, we’ll go with his idea that education is the answer. The column is full of the kinds of statistics that I would want all of the presidential candidates repeating to us every freakin’ day:
I’ve heard it said that Rome fell as its people were slowly poisoned by lead in their drinking water. America’s lead - now that we’ve taken care of paint - will be our general disdain for and ambivalence towards quality education. But hey, the president was on Deal or No Deal.
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Meanwhile, also at NYT, Paul Krugman, who is awesome by the way, points out that health insurance is getting so expensive that even health insurance companies are starting to feel the pinch. BECAUSE NO ONE IS BUYING HEALTH INSURANCE. So much for that free market fixing everything.
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At least our nation’s veterans should be getting an extra boost to cover the costs of their education, right?
Apparently not during an election year.
Senator Jim Webb (D-VA), my dark horse candidate for vice-president, has a bill in the Senate that would expand the G.I. bill and bring it in line with higher tuition, room, board and book costs. Other senators, including John McCain, and congressmen and women, seeking their own legislative victory, are putting their own similar bills out there.
C’mon folks! Just work together.
Take a bite out of these issues. We’ll be back with more tomorrow.
I’m not entirely sure who Election Journal is but they did a nice job of reporting throughout the day on potential election improprieties and, at the very least, took a lot of video.
Do you have your own video to share or story to tell? Let us know in the comments.
Dan Pohlig
WHYY
