If last week’s Democratic debate in Texas seemed a little too cordial given the political climate, last night’s debate in Cleveland featured some of the conflict the political world craved. This very well may have been Hillary Clinton’s last opportunity to take some rhetorical shots at Barack Obama, and possibly throw him off his game on the national stage, and she seemed anxious to take advantage of the opportunity.
Clinton went after Obama on healthcare. And trade. And Iraq. And direct-mail, the importance of speeches, the importance of supporters, and her general displeasure with campaign tactics. The NYT called it “one of her most pugnacious debate performances of the campaign,” which sounds about right.
The problem, though, is that it’s not at all clear if any of these swings actually connected. Indeed, as far as I can tell, it seemed Obama, who wasn’t at all thrown off his game, seemed to get the better of most of the exchanges.
Take, for example, the discussion over Obama winning praise from Farrakhan, which Obama said he rejects.
CLINTON: I’m just saying that you asked specifically if he would reject it. And there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting. And I think when it comes to this sort of, you know, inflammatory — I have no doubt that everything that Barack just said is absolutely sincere. But I just think, we’ve got to be even stronger. We cannot let anyone in any way say these things because of the implications that they have, which can be so far reaching.
OBAMA: Tim, I have to say I don’t see a difference between denouncing and rejecting. There’s no formal offer of help from Minister Farrakhan that would involve me rejecting it. But if the word “reject” Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word “denounce,” then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.
CLINTON: Good. Good. Excellent. (APPLAUSE)
WILLIAMS: Rare audience outburst on the agreement over rejecting and renouncing.
To me, it sounded like Obama came across as gracious, while Clinton wanted to debate the meaning of the word “reject” — all on an issue few really care about anyway.
For that matter, the lengthy discussion about campaign tactics seemed like a total waste of time, of interest to political insiders, but no one else. Clinton, for example, highlighted an Obama mailing criticizing Clinton’s plan on healthcare mandates. (For the record, I thought it was an awful direct-mail piece, and have said so several times.) Last night, after considerable back and forth, Obama said:
“Now, Senator Clinton has not indicated how she would enforce this mandate. She hasn’t indicated what level of subsidy she would provide to assure that it was, in fact, affordable. And so it is entirely legitimate for us to point out these differences.
“But I think it’s very important to understand the context of this, and that is that Senator Clinton has — her campaign, at least — has constantly sent out negative attacks on us, e-mail, robocalls, flyers, television ads, radio calls.
“And, you know, we haven’t whined about it because I understand that’s the nature of these campaigns, but to suggest somehow that our mailing is somehow different from the kinds of approaches that Senator Clinton has taken throughout this campaign I think is simply not accurate.”
I suspect most people watching would agree. It’s a contested presidential campaign, and the candidates are going to take the occasional cheap shot. Was Obama’s mailing problematic? Sure. Was it considerably worse than some of Clinton’s mailings? Not at all. Does anyone really care about a debate over campaign tactics? I doubt it.
As Noam Scheiber put it, this seemed to be part of a pattern.
When Hillary brought up his vote against an amendment capping credit card interest at 30 percent, he pointed out that the amendment was attached to a horrendous bankruptcy bill, which he opposed and she had once supported. Hillary even tried getting to Obama’s left by claiming he wanted to bomb Pakistan. Obama pointed out that he would only act on actionable intelligence against Al Qaeda targets that the Pakistani government wouldn’t deal with. It made her sound over the top and actually bolstered his general election credentials.
Even on Iraq, Clinton tried to emphasize how similar her voting record is to Obama’s, which only gave Obama another opportunity to remind us who got Iraq right.
“My objections to the war in Iraq were simply — not simply a speech. I was in the midst of a U.S. Senate campaign. It was a high-stakes campaign. I was one of the most vocal opponents of the war, and I was very specific as to why.
“And so when I bring this up, it is not simply to say ‘I told you so,’ but it is to give you an insight in terms of how I would make decisions.
“And the fact was, this was a big strategic blunder. It was not a matter of, well, here is the initial decision, but since then we’ve voted the same way. Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out. The question is, who’s making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch? And the fact is that Senator Clinton often says that she is ready on day one, but in fact she was ready to give in to George Bush on day one on this critical issue. So the same person that she criticizes for having terrible judgment, and we can’t afford to have another one of those, in fact she facilitated and enabled this individual to make a decision that has been strategically damaging to the United States of America.”
What’s more, when Clinton wasn’t going after Obama, she was going after the media — citing a “Saturday Night Live” skit as evidence — for being too tough on her and not tough enough on Obama. It’s not that her argument lacked merit, it’s that the whole series of complaints sounded kind of petty. (Her comments drew the night’s only boos from the audience.)
There’s nothing wrong with going on the offensive, but Clinton has some ground to make up, and few if any of her rhetorical shots seemed to leave her in a better position. In most instances, they seemed to come up short, offering Obama a chance to capitalize.
Overall, I’d say Obama helped himself quite a bit last night, and Clinton came up short. Given who’s winning, that’s not at all what Clinton was hoping for.
What did you think?
