I think he needs to show that he can push back hard against a determined opponent, as he’ll have to do in the general election.
I think he also needs to show that he can deal with a ruthless opponent. Not all of Clinton’s attacks are against Obama’s qualifications. There’s the nagging issue of poaching delegates, changing the rules for FL and MI after the fact, and playing other technicalities. Fair or unfair, he needs to address these.
Please share widely!
The fact that the Clinton campaign has not repudiated her and has not dismissed her from the campaign bodes far worse for Clinton than it does for Obama. Ferraro continues to dig deeper and deeper and the fact that she has had to go to Bill O’Reilly for sanctuary even further discredits her and the campaign.
With regard to this issue, there is no need for Obama to fan the flames and do much more than he’s already done. The media is doing enough of that.
It’s hard to imagine that anyone but the most die-hard HRC supporters will stay on board much longer as the campaign goes through its last desperate attempts to win by jettisoning African Americans as well as the Democrats in over half of the 50 states.
Especially since the campaign has failed to reject the comments adequately, fueling suspicions that they were using the episode to bolster support from anti-affirmative action whites. This is a pretty far-reaching perception, true or not.
i was just responding with the recent fact that conflicts with your opine “has not dismissed her from the campaign”.
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p>for the record, the comment was disgusting and just downright amazingly stupid. based on other things i’ve read that ferraro has said recently, i tend to think that this was the work of one overly self-important hasbeen pol, and not reflective of the campaign itself. you would say the same of the lame-brained people who have had to leave obama’s campaign too, i’ll wager.
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p>but either way, i do agree that clinton should repudiate it unequivocally. sometimes such repudiations take several days to formulate, as with obama’s mcclurken debacle. thus, according to me, we’re in that grace period, and any stomping on clinton today is premature.
… my God, she’s crazy.
…he just can’t connect. Ferraro’s comments, tax returns, all this inside baseball stuff is his attempt to hit back. As I said a long time ago, Axelrod’s main weakness is his inability to react, and we’re seeing it here. When forced off his Happy Sailor talk, Axelrod doesn’t know where to go, so once again the opponent is the main story.
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p>As long as McCain runs as poor a campaign as Kerry Healey or Hillary Clinton post 2/5, Obama’s all set. If not, watch out.
the O campaign has totally lost control of the narrative of this race.
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p>every time they respond to these ‘small-bore’ controversies they are intensified and they distract from his above-it-all message.
I agree that you raise an important question. I was also concerned about this with Deval Patrick, but luckily he was running in a strongly Democratic state against an incompetent opponent so my concern was misplaced. Obama, of course, will not have that luxury, so I think he needs to learn to hit back with more quickness and force.
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p>I’ve gotten increasingly concerned over the past couple weeks that if Obama gets the nomination, he’ll be another Dukakis/Kerry, not hitting back quickly and allowing himself to be defined in a negative way early. As much as Obama’s strongest supporters might not want to hear it, he’s going to have to prove he can fight before he can seal the deal with a lot of Democrats.
even Jesus wasn’t afraid to smash a few money-changer’s stools in the temple. being positive doesn’t necessitate passivity.
It was traditionally kibosh to bring money with the image of a secular leader (such as was inscribed on Roman currency) to the Jewish temple. The solution was to trade that legal money for traditional shekels that could only be used within the Temple usually to buy animals to sacrifice. Of course, this was done with the Jewish elders’ permission in order to carefully follow the law of Judaism. This money changing allowed devout Jews to offer a sacrifice in their holy of holies.
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p>Jesus’ action disrupted that ability.
as long as everyone realizes that i wasn’t trying to imply by my comment that i think anyone should be keeping jews out of anything.
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p>to repeat: obama simply needs to learn that he positivity doesn’t necessitate passivity. he is in danger of looking like a pushover. clinton has never been in danger of this. people pick up on these things, and vote based upon them. obama needs a speech writer/advisor to help him deal with these situations – an iron fist in velvet glove. the whiny stuff aint cuttin it.
I don’t see that. But then I’m really not in to fighting as a paradigm.
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p>I hope he lets her pitch all the crap in her sink until she looks like a frantic fool. She already does, to me, and that’s partly because he’s let her carry on like a spoilt brat.
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p>You think people don’t recognize a spoilt brat when they see one?
but as someone above has mentioned, obama looks very much like someone that a swiftboating ploy will work well on. we don’t need another wimpy kerry-type candidate. and i’ve got news for you, politics is a “fighting paradigm”. you may not be into it, but obama has signed up for it. he needs to show that he can be strong and firm without being nasty or whining. if he can’t do that when up against clinton, i shudder to think of how he’ll be obliterated by the GOP. because they are, most definately into fighting as a paradigm, and they’re damn good at it.
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p>Strong. Firm. Not nasty, not whining. Effectively framed.
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p>How about the turnaround on the response to the 3am call ad?
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p>(By the way- the girl in the Clinton ad is an Obama supporter)
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p>And the verbal follow-up:
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p>
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p>Strong, firm, not nasty, no whining.
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p>Obama has also used humor to disarm some attacks, which is an excellent method if you can pull it off (Obama generally can), because it makes the attacker look ridiculous.
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p>Now, the Obama campaign did get nailed by l’affaire NAFTA, and that is a concern. That had the hallmarks of a classic smear tactic, Obama’s campaign did not handle it deftly, and very likely lost votes in OH as a result. They will need to do better next time.
he has had some deft moments. if he hadn’t you wouldn’t still be supporting him! what i’m saying is that despite his finer responses, there is a perception by some that he isn’t firm enough and seems to too frequently be on the defensive. You may thing that perception is baseless, but as always with perceptions, they exist and must be soberly considered if they are pervasive enough.
will change slowly. Better than fast, I say. Let people get their true measure of the guy, not be yanked back and forth. They’ll figure out that steady makes a better leader than all this hot under the collar stuff.
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p>Obama appears to not be the hot under the collar type. The country needs someone like this now.
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p>I still believe people will recognize that.
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p>They’ve got quite a few more months to get the point.
although i am nominally a clinton supporter, there are things i like about the guy. i do want to see him hold his own, if not grow as a candidate.
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p>btw, if clinton doesn’t respond more forcefully and in reasonable time frame to the multiple displays of ferraro bigotry, well, it is actually a deal-breaker for me. and i’m saying this as a clinton delegate. and…i’m not the sort to be shy and retiring at caucuses*…
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p>legislative district caucuses coming up april 5th.
It just casts the story in such a different light once one knows the context, is all.
as far as I’m concerned, is that of Deval Patrick during the gubernatorial.
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p>He took so long choosing his moment, as I recall, that many of us (including me) were afraid he was going to let himself get creamed. But his timing was really perfect.
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p>Turns out his silence was really just handing Healey more rope. His measured, forceful response, coming from him (not campaign surrogates) came across as more in sorrow than anger and very credible.
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p>It may be too late for Obama to follow suit. Plenty of weeks left in the campaign, though.
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p>By the way: Neither of them seem to be running particularly disciplined operations at this point. Lets hope the winner learns ow to do that by September.
can you remind us more of the details of the deval-healey golden moment? i honestly don’t recall how it went.
Sorry, no links tonight (late for me), but we discussed it here a bunch. Healey had done the scary-black-man-in-a-parking-garage commercial, she had been a broken record on LeGuere and her operatives had dressed in orange jumpsuits and gone to his house as Convicts for Patrick (and, I think, John Walsh’s house, or am I confused?)–really piling it on.
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p>There had been outrage, but I don’t recall the typical gambit where surrogates demand an apology and there’s back and forth, etc. Consequently, by the time Patrick returned fire, there was too much to apologize for–impossible to spin it by saying, Not authorized, or, Not intended that way, etc.
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p>By responding at that point, and not in kind (no shaky camera’d spots of preppies stalking voters), he was showing strength, not climbing into the gutter with her. She on the other hand was hoist on her own petard.
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p>It’s not at all a perfect analogy with Clinton (however hardcore Obamatarians may feel about it), but the dynamic of a “positive” politician having to grapple with negative ads is real. His people profit from studying that campaign.
I’m not sure how the Obama campaign can manage a similar feat, but thanks for the reminder of Deval’s great response.
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p>When Obama asks for an apology it makes him look weak, IMO. We don’t handle bullies by asking for them to stop and apologize. (Clinton hasn’t quite become a bully, but McCain and the GOP sure will be, and if he can’t handle Clinton, how will he handle Fox news and Al Queda?)
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p>I suspect part of the answer is in gaining control of the campaign narrative. That’s hard to do, since the press wants to focus on mud.
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p>I really think this is a very difficult problem to solve, and I don’t know of many examples of positive campaigns surviving this.
“… if you’d come down off that high horse of yours sometime and see how it actually works in the street I’d be happy to show you around.”