I just finished listening to the podcast of the November 10 edition of NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She was talking to Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker Magazine, who has been covering the Obama campaign for the last 2 years. Terry asked Ryan what the Obama campaign insiders now say about the effect on their campaign of the long and tough primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Lizza said that everyone in the campaign was unanimous about the overwhelmingly beneficial effect of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy on their eventual victory. Having potentially damaging issues, such as Rev. Wright, brought up during the primary season made them easier to deal with than if they had been brought up for the first time just before the general election. Also the Obama Campaign’s internal polling showed that, thanks to the lengthy primary campaign, by the time of the nominating conventions the public had a much clearer picture of who Obama was than they did of McCain, who had an easier and shorter path to the nomination.
Back in February many blogs, including this one, were worried that Hillary Clinton, by continuing her doomed campaign, ran the risk of lessening Barack Obama’s chances of winning in November. It now appears that we were wrong about that. Mea culpa.
Of course we were not the only ones that had worries at that time that turned out to be unfounded. Remember that Hillary Clinton and her supporters were claiming the McCain and the Republicans would be tougher and have more damaging and more difficult-to-deal-with attacks against Obama than he was currently facing from her in the primaries. That turned out not to be true. McCain refused to allow his campaign to even mention Rev. Wright, because he did not want to play the race card.
2 comments:
Dave,
I believe that the long primary fight was a benefit for Obama only because he is so cool, professional, and positive. If he had made the typical two or three mistakes that candidates usually make in a long campaign, then our fears would have sadly been realized.
Daniel
I always thought the long campaign would help both Obama and Clinton. It revealed the Democrats as the grown up party, the one that talked about the issues, and whose candidates looked like thoughtful statesmen, while JOhn McCain and his campaign were pushed to the side, out of the spotlight. The best thing for the Obama campaign was Katie Couric's interview. If she hadn't uncovered the real Sarah Palin, the country might have been banboozled into electing a mediocre, ex-military legacy candidate with questionable ethics, and his vice-prez, an intelletual lightweight and personality, instead of a uniquely qualified and extraordinary leader paired with a hard-working everyman with extensive foreign policy experience.
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