So, bloodied and at least partially bowed, Barack Obama is finally the putative Democratic nominee. What does he need to do?
Five things, and he needs to start on them quickly. First, Obama needs to redefine himself. Think back to the candidate who gave that powerful announcement-of-candidacy speech in freezing Springfield, Illinois, in February 2007, and who galvanised the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day last November.
Or even the Obama who won the Maryland and Virginia primaries. That was the Obama who really did seem like he could bring the country, or 50-something percent of it, together to face its big challenges and commence a new era in American politics.
Well, he hasn’t seemed as much like that guy lately. The attacks that started in March — over his pastor, his patriotism and whether he can reach white working-class voters — will continue into the autumn. So the toothpaste is out of the tube.
However, now that he won’t be fighting for votes (until November), he can start running commercials and giving speeches that remind people of his good points. He can call on a much broader range of surrogates to vouch for him. He has a number of impressive Republican endorsers — including one of Richard Nixon’s daughters. He needs to get them out on the stump and in television commercials.
Finally, he needs a new stump speech geared toward the general election that will reintroduce his strongest themes and answer the criticisms.
Second, he needs to define John McCain. The Republican nominee has been on the road for weeks now retracing his family history, acting as if he is going to try to do something about poverty and global warming, sharply attacking Obama on foreign policy and much else. He wasn’t getting an avalanche of press as Obama and Clinton duked it out, but the press he was getting was positive.
Obama has to change that. He needs to put McCain on the defensive over his support for the Iraq war and for wanting to keep alive George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy.
The real charge here is ‘flip-flopper”, since McCain originally voted against those cuts. The list of issues on which McCain has changed positions is long and growing — immigration, abortion, even torture. The Obama team needs to show voters that McCain’s campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, has gone to the garage for a major overhaul.
And eventually, the Obama campaign will need to find a way to bring up what we call ‘the age issue”. Polls show significant minorities think McCain is too old to be president: he will be 72 when sworn in if he wins.
This has to be raised delicately, but it’s a fair question and will have to be part of the Democratic campaign.
Third, Obama has to make nice with the Clintons and, especially, Hillary’s supporters. He will need them in a big way in November, and lately up to 40% of them have told pollsters that they would not vote for Obama.
Most of them are probably just being temporarily angry, but the anger is deep and that number is a concern.
He probably won’t offer Clinton the vice-presidency. She has too many negatives and there are better choices. But he is going to have to make some kind of commitment to the Clintons before they will agree to campaign for him and signal to her supporters that they should back Obama.
Fourth, he needs to work more broadly to unite the party. All the other segments that voted for Clinton in larger numbers — especially blue-collar workers and the elderly — need some special love and attention.
He also needs to reach out to Clinton’s major endorsers in Congress and in important states, such as the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, and get them to start spitting out Obama/we’re united talking points as fast as his speechwriters can produce them.
Fifth, he needs to brace himself. We are going to see and hear a lot of outright racist garbage until election day. In April a church in South Carolina posted a sign on its message board: ‘Obama, Osama, hmmm, are they brothers?” This is just the beginning. And it is not even the most sinister aspect of this. That would be the death threats he will undoubtedly receive by the thousands between now and November.
He is going to have to be one tough bird to do this. Lots of Democrats fret that he is not tough enough. I bet those same Democrats would never have thought six months ago that he could beat the mighty Clinton machine, but here he is. So he’s doing something right. —