Under normal circumstances, presidential candidates host town-hall meetings so they can answer voters’ questions and present their ideas. They don’t usually invite their rival to share a stage.
But these, my friends, are not normal circumstances.
In an unusual move, Hillary is inviting Barack Obama to appear with her side by side at a town hall meeting in Maine this weekend, when both are scheduled to be campaigning in the state.
In a statement sent only to local reporters in Maine that someone forwarded our way, Hillary said: “With both of us in the state — I would like to invite him to join me for a joint town hall Saturday morning in Orono, ME, so that the people of Maine have a clear idea of the differences between us.”
“It’s time for the people of this country and the caucus goers of Maine to pick a President,” Hillary continues. “I hope Senator Obama will accept my invitation to help them do just that.”
Spin from the Clinton campaign’s perspective: Aren’t we gracious? What other campaign would consider sharing our time and our stage with our intra-party opponent?
Spin from the Obama campaign’s perspective: Given the Clinton campaign’s financial troubles, they’ve apparently decided that gaining publicity through a media stunt is easier than buying ad time.
On a related note, the Clinton campaign is still pushing those debates pretty hard.
Hillary campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle has sent an open letter to the Obama camp, stepping up their debate challenge. The letter argues that voters should get to see more than a single one-on-one debate between the two, and that the two of them should have one debate a week for the next five weeks starting this weekend.
One particular proposed venue would definitely be a sticking point with a lot of Democratic activists: “Senator Clinton believes voters should have more than one opportunity to see the candidates discuss the issues and has accepted five debates between now and March 4th from CNN, MSNBC, WJLA, ABC and Fox News.”
The Obama campaign seems unimpressed.
Mr. Obama said most of that fighting would be done on the ground in the next voting states, not in debates. When asked whether he would accept the invitation from Mrs. Clinton to attend four more debates in the coming weeks, he laughed.
“I don’t think anybody is clamoring for more debates,” he said. “We’ve had 18 debates so far. I think we’ve had 10 more than we’ve had in the last Democratic contest.”
He said he would agree to at least one debate, but noted, “It’s very important for me to spend time with voters.”
I guess the next the next argument we’ll hear is that after 18 debates and about a dozen joint candidate forums, Obama is “afraid to go up against Clinton.”