For Barack Obama it was a daring move: hold a rally last week in the heart of New York, the fortress home of his rival, Senator Hillary Clinton.
It seemed to pay off. As he bounded onto the stage in Manhattan’s Washington Square in front of a packed crowd of 25 000, he beamed his broad smile and shouted: ”Look at this crowd!”
Obama’s gamble seemed to have worked. It generated a swath of newsprint in the Democratic stronghold of the city and was designed to send a message to Clinton that she could not even count on the support of her home turf.
Yet the day after the rally — at which those attending surrendered their email addresses — a message from the Obama campaign popped into inboxes across New York. ”Thanks for coming out last night,” it said, before adding: ”We’re still shy of our goal of 350 000 people giving to the campaign.”
For the fact is Obama’s campaign appears to be caught in the doldrums. Beneath all the endless public appearances, television interviews and the hype of ”Obama-mania” lies a story of a campaign that has completely failed to budge Clinton out of her position as frontrunner. Indeed, Obama has barely moved in the polls since he exploded onto the political scene when he announced his candidacy earlier this year. It is Clinton’s poll numbers that have recently been nudging ever higher, not Obama’s.
Last week Obama — and the other Democratic politicians vying for the presidential nomination — were widely expected to turn on Clinton at the latest public debate. Held in the key state of New Hampshire, it was seen as a chance to knock Clinton off her perch. Yet it passed largely without incident. ”It’s extremely unlikely that Hillary will be denied her party’s nomination,” said the influential New York Post columnist John Podhoretz.
The story of the Democratic race since Obama entered the field has not been one of a fierce battle or the much expected roller-coaster ride. Instead it has been a long, steady march of the Clinton machine, keeping other candidates at arm’s length and building an ever larger lead in the polls. ”There is a long way to go, but at this moment the race remains hers to lose,” said Larry Haas, a political commentator and former official in the Clinton White House.
A survey of recent polls shows Clinton in commanding form compared with all of her rivals. The most recent national polls show her with a lead over Obama that ranges from 14% to 22%. A Gallup survey had her on a whopping 47%, against Obama’s 25% and John Edwards’s meagre 11%. No other Democrat scored more than 5%. Clinton is also ahead by about 20 points in New Hampshire and has recently moved ahead of Edwards in the key first voting state of Iowa, where Edwards has been virtually camped out for the past two years.
In fact, Obama has not led the polls in any state recently, not even South Carolina, where many black voters are expected to back him in his quest to be America’s first black president. That has raised serious questions over whether Obama can actually appeal to black voters. Some of them have been put off by questions over the ”American blackness” of Obama’s background, owing to his mixed parentage of a white Kansan mother and a Kenyan father. In the meantime, Clinton has sought to capitalise on the still huge popularity among many black Americans of her husband’s time in the Oval Office.
However, many experts warn that it is far too early to write Obama off, pointing out that there are three months to go before actual voting takes place. Obama’s campaign still has many positives. He has raised more money faster than any other Democratic candidate in history, including 75 000 new campaign donors since June alone. He also has a huge and committed campaign organisation, including twice as many offices in Iowa as any other candidate. His public rallies are always attended by thousands of supporters, who show an enthusiasm for their candidate which beats that enjoyed by any of his rivals.
Campaign officials play down any sort of worry, saying that a good showing in Iowa will change the nature of the race. But in truth the Obama campaign has hit rocky shores. Though Obama is a powerful public speaker, he is also gaffe-prone — unlike Clinton who seems never to put a foot wrong. Most notoriously, Obama has been taken to task for a comment he made at a rally in rural Iowa. Seeking to express sympathy with poor farmers in Adel, Iowa, Obama asked his audience: ”Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?” The remark was a disaster and it is not hard to see why. Whole Foods is an upscale, organic-only supermarket that does not have a single branch in the entire state, let alone in the tiny town of Adel. Many Iowans — famed for their Midwestern distaste for ”big city” ways — would take pride in not knowing what arugula is or what one should do with it. But a few in Adel may now have some interesting suggestions.
However, the most likely reason for Obama’s failure to break through with ordinary Democratic voters lies not with Obama’s failings, but with the successes of the Clinton campaign.
Though often uninspiring, Clinton’s public appearances and debate performances have been the epitome of slick, smooth professionalism. She has also run a hyper-controlled media operation that has won a reputation for ruthless control of her campaign’s message. It is a far cry from the freewheeling style of her husband’s famous 1992 White House run, where reporters were allowed huge access to the candidate. With Hillary Clinton the watchwords are: control, control, control.
Last week online political magazine Politico reported how Bill Clinton used his influence to kill a GQ magazine story that painted an unflattering portrait of infighting in the Clinton campaign. He reportedly threatened to withdraw his cooperation on another story unless the article about his wife was dropped. The story was later killed. As well as showing the campaign’s hardball attitude, the incident also showed the huge benefits of having Bill Clinton on your side in any political contest. The former president is hugely popular with the Democratic base, has powerful influence with the media and is a campaigning expert. ”He’s the best thing she’s got going for her on some levels. He’s her Karl Rove,” said Professor Trevor Parry-Giles, a Clinton expert at the University of Maryland.
Certainly Clinton has dealt easily with all her challengers so far. Aside from Obama, the only other serious contender appears to be Edwards. The former senator has run a widely praised populist campaign focusing on issues of poverty, labour and the working poor. He has devoted vast amounts of time and most of his resources to Iowa, betting that a good showing there could propel him into the contest as the real rival to Clinton. However, last week Edwards’s campaign, too, was showing signs of sputtering in the face of the Clinton juggernaut. Not only has his long-standing lead in Iowa started to evaporate, but his campaign coffers have started to run out. Now Edwards has had to abandon private fundraising in favour of getting public funding from the federal government. While that guarantees his campaign will survive, it will severely limit his spending power.
But for the moment, of course, no one on the Edwards or Obama campaign is saying that Clinton’s nomination is an inevitability. Nor should they. At this time in 2003’s Democratic race, Vermont governor Howard Dean looked set to be the candidate. He was flush with cash, riding high in the polls and John Kerry’s campaign was almost bankrupt. Yet three months later Dean’s campaign collapsed almost overnight and Kerry romped home in a matter of weeks. Put simply: a lot can happen in the next three months, and all the campaigns remain officially optimistic.
Yet sometimes a glimpse of a more truthful picture emerges from behind the official statements. Last week Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, spoke out at an Iowa meeting. Using the sort of frankness that her husband cannot afford, she warned that without a win in Iowa her husband’s chances would be slim. ”If Barack doesn’t win Iowa, then it’s just a dream,” she told a meeting of Iowa supporters. Campaign officials quickly moved to distance themselves from her comments, saying all that Obama needed was a strong showing in the state, not outright victory. But it is hard to disagree with Michelle Obama’s take. The Obama campaign has had most of the year to knock Clinton out of her frontrunner’s position, and it has failed to land a single blow.
Time is now running out. Iowa is shaping up not just to be Obama’s first stand against Clinton. It could also be his last. – Guardian Unlimited Â