Sunday, February 10, 2008

Three (Unanswered) Questions for the Campaign

In the aftermath of Obama's Saturday sweep, and with a tough February still lying ahead for the Clinton campaign, here are three questions that may help decide the outcome of the race:

1) Whither Washington?

Yesterday, Democratic voters in Washington State gave Obama a decisive victory, as better than two-thirds caucused in his corner. It was a blowout win, and added to Obama's mounting edge in pledged delegates. But on Tuesday, February 19, they'll do it again. In one of the odder twists to a very strange cycle, Washington will hold its non-binding primary even though it has already allocated all of its delegates. Polling that succesfully pegged the outcome of the caucuses puts Obama's lead among primary voters at a much narrower 50-45%, close enough that the outcome is in doubt. That's because the caucus-goers were younger, more diverse, more affluent, better-educated, and more liberal than the primary electorate.

So who cares? Hillary can win in a rout, and not be any better off for it. Well, not so fast. The fight for superdelegates is increasingly being framed as an argument for legitimacy. Once it became clear to the Clinton campaign that caucuses were unlikely to favor her candidacy, she turned on them with a vengeance, correctly pointing out that they effectively limit participation, draw from a sample of voters that's non-representative of the primary electorate, and tend to tilt toward the more affluent and better-educated. Those arguments can't change the allocation of delegates, but they can play a crucial role in the battle of perceptions. The Clinton campaign is claiming, in essence, that caucus-state victories don't really count. A win, or even a close fight, in Washington State would serve to underscore that argument. It's the first controlled experiment this primary season - run the election both ways, and line the outcomes up side-by-side. Never mind that Hillary had no problem with caucuses when she thought her institutional support would give her an edge, or that she's challenging the rules halfway through the fight. If she can undermine the legitimacy of caucuses, she can use that to argue that Obama's edge among pledged delegates isn't what it seems - and that her lead among delegates awarded in primary states is the one that matters. And that just might sway some superdelegates.

2) Hillary: More like Rudy or Huckabee?

I'm sure that for the Clinton camp, that's a Hobson's choice. But it's an interesting question. Pundits have already made the analogy to Giuliani. Both candidates, looking at a long stretch of contests with unfavorable demographics, chose to spend heavily and contest them on the ground, while publicly protesting that they weren't really trying to win. Instead, they claimed, they were waiting for the contests in larger, more representative states: Florida for Rudy; Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania for Clinton. For Rudy, the strategy proved disasterous - battered by loss after loss, his campaign ceased to look viable to his core voters in his keystone state, and they abandoned him in droves.

But there's another analogue to be found in the Republican race: Mike Huckabee. Hillary, it's increasingly clear, simply can't win a majority of the pledged delegates. In some years, that might be fatal to her chances. But even though Mike Huckabee has no realistic shot at the Republican nomination, a situation far bleaker than the one facing Hillary, he continues to rack up triumphs in states that feature favorable demographics. That's because his core constituencies find the presumptive nominee tough to stomach, and continue to identify both with the candidate and with his message. Hillary is hoping for a similar result - that women, white ethnic voters and the elderly will ignore Obama's edge among pledged delegates and her long string of losses, and vote their hearts. If they do, she can keep the pledged delegate gap small enough to have a shot at winning the convention on the strength of the superdelegate vote.

3) What to make of the Hillary fundraising surge?

It may be the most under-reported story of the week. Since Hillary went public with her fundraising woes and began to make public appeals for help, she's raised more than $10 million from over 100,000 voters. Critics will assail those numbers. Some have voiced open skepticism about the $5 million she loaned her campaign - was it all a ploy for sympathy? Others sneared at yet another show of vulnerability. Obama backers were quick to point out that even this surge leaves her far behind in the race for funds and donors.

But there's more to this story. There's no question that $10 million gives Clinton enough to stay competitive for weeks to come, and the surge in funds shows no sign of abating. The money itself, however, is the least of it. It's a remarkable transformation for a campaign that had relied on institutional endorsements, big-time bundlers, and Washington insiders. Hillary humbled herself, admitted she needed help, and turned to the public. She was met with an overwhelming response. It suggests, once again, that pundits and prognosticators ignore the intensity of the sympathy for Hillary, particularly among women, at their peril. When she's willing to look vulnerable, when she confesses that she can't do it alone, when she tries to build a movement, and most of all, when she returns to her basic narrative of a woman struggling to break through in a man's world, Hillary becomes a tremendously appealing candidate. Her greatest appeal turns out to lie in her struggles - with her husband, with sexism - because these struggles enable ordinary Americans to identify with her. That's why she cleans up among the most economically disadvantaged Americans, among working women, and in rustbelt cities. And, despite his initial obtuseness, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe came to understand this. His aggressive and juvenile fundraising challenge targeting Hillary succeeded in outraising her, but it was a pyrrhic victory. Obama had been outraising her three-to-one beforehand. But Plouffe made it into a contest, a direct challenge to Hillary and her supporters. And, as they have throughout the past month, Hillary's supporters came to her aid precisely when she seemed most vulnerable. Without the Plouffe challenge, Hillary's breakthrough might never have happened. He caught on, after a couple of days, and hasn't released his fundraising totals since. Why spur Hillary's backers to unprecedented levels of support when you're already getting all the money you need?

So has Hillary, at last, managed to transform her campaign into a movement? There are signs she's beginning to understand this dynamic. She's been harping on the Shuster/MSNBC gaffe because it underlines the difficulty that women face running for elective office - a gendered double standard that's all-too-familiar to women of her generation. She's stopped attacking Obama; you can't go on the offensive at the same time you're highlighting your ability to empathize. She's amped up her economic message, in an attempt to transform her campaign into a struggle on behalf of those left behind in a changing economy, glomming on to the Edwards message. Will it be enough? Has her campaign turned a corner? We'll see. In the past, as she rebounded, she again lowered her mask, reverting to carefully-controlled form. How she handles February will likely determine the outcome of her candidacy - and, win or lose, where the Democratic Party goes from here.

If you find this worthwhile, please click the 'recommend this' link, so that other readers can share it. More election and polling analysis is available on my blog (click my name). And, as always, I welcome your comments and corrections.

No comments: