I suppose it’s only natural for partisans in a presidential campaign to look across the aisle and wonder, “Which one of our candidates would the other side least like to face?” It’s hardly a foolproof way of looking at a race — partisans give head-fakes, and more importantly, they can be wrong.
Having said that, I found this item from the National Review’s Byron York pretty interesting.
I went to Barack Obama’s rally [in Columbia, South Carolina] on Sunday night, with a Republican friend who had never seen the Illinois senator in action before. Watching the crowd of more than 3,000 fill up the convention center, watching the people send up waves of energy to Obama, and watching him play off that energy in a speech that was one of the best political performances anyone has seen this year, my Republican friend said, simply, “Oh, s—t.” He recalled the scene from Jaws, in which the small seaside town’s sheriff realizes how big the shark he’s tracking truly is, and says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” What my friend didn’t have to say was that he was deeply worried that Republicans just don’t have a bigger boat. […]
Watching Obama perform at the convention center Sunday night, it’s easy to understand why Bill Clinton is walking around with a look of red-faced frustration these days. Obama represents a mortal threat to his wife’s candidacy, and, given the identity politics that prevail in the Democratic Party, it will be hard to cut his legs out from under him without appearing racist. But there’s no doubt that some Republicans are hoping the Clintons will succeed. Running against the man on stage at the convention center would be a hard, hard campaign, requiring a very big boat.
At a minimum, this seems to create a selling point for Obama. John McCain enjoys telling Republicans that he’s the one candidate Dems don’t want to face. Some find it persuasive, others don’t, but rank-and-file Republicans certainly consider this when weighing the candidates’ merits.
In this sense, I suspect if the Obama campaign sent around York’s column, it might reinforce a similar argument.
Now, it’s fair to say that it’s an over-simplification to tell Dems, “Vote for the one Republicans are afraid of.” That said, there’s something to this, isn’t there? It’s not unreasonable for Dems to hesitate before nominating the candidate Republicans want to face, is it?
I’m reminded of an item the LAT ran several months ago about the 2004 race. Before John Kerry started winning all the contests, Karl Rove, Matt Dowd, and Bush’s political team sized up the Democratic field and concluded that John Edwards was the guy they didn’t want to see get the nomination. As a result, Bush’s operation immediately went after Kerry.
Their thinking went like this, Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party’s nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists actually feared most.
Unlike Kerry, who had been in public service for decades, Edwards was a political newcomer and lacked a long record that could be attacked. And, unlike former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who had been the front-runner but whose campaign was collapsing in Iowa, Edwards couldn’t easily be painted as “nutty.”
If that sounds implausibly convoluted, consider Dowd’s own words: “Whomever we attacked was going to be emboldened in Democratic primary voters’ minds. So we started attacking John Kerry a lot in the end of January because we were very worried about John Edwards.”
Nicolle Wallace, the 2004 Bush campaign communications director, confirmed all of this and said Rove was so worried about Edwards, BC04 “refused” to even respond to Edwards’ attacks on Bush, not wanting to make him seem like a threat.
Fast forward four years. Republicans are going after Clinton quite a bit, as York’s piece demonstrates they seem pretty nervous about Obama, and they disregard Edwards as uncompetitive.
From where I sit, I see a few possible scenarios:
* Republicans are attacking Clinton for the same reasons Rove & Co. attacked Kerry — they want to face her in November.
* Republicans are attacking Clinton because they fear her as a general-election candidate, and are trying to create negative narratives now to lay the groundwork for the rest of the year.
* Republicans are holding their fire on Obama for the same reasons Rove & Co. ignored Edwards — they don’t want to face him in November.
* Republicans are holding their fire on Obama because they want him to get the nomination, at which point they’ll swiftboat the hell out of him.
It’s worth noting, of course, that the Republicans may be entirely wrong. (It’s been known to happen on occasion.) They may think it’d be easy to defeat Hillary, when she may win in a landslide. They may think Obama would be tough to beat, when the opposite could be true. Who knows; it’s all speculative anyway.
The point I’m weighing here is whether, and to what extent, Dems should care about who Republicans want to face. I’m all ears.