Ugly Coverage

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 7, 2008 8:48 AM

The media narrative for this next phase of the Democratic campaign is now set, as firmly as if the top players had secretly hammered out a memo over drinks at the Palm.

Hint: It's not, what a great race! Nor is it, what a remarkable comeback for Hillary Clinton! Or even, I always wanted to cover a Puerto Rico primary!

No, the plot line is that Hillary went "negative," thereby extending the race, screwing up our vacation plans, boring America to death and--this is the important part--sending the Democratic Party to the very gates of hell.

Check it out. The Hillary/Obama contest is "increasingly brutal" (Boston Globe); in danger of "tearing the party apart" (L.A. Times); a "political party trying to destroy itself" (New York Post); the "most cutthroat political campaign in years" (Boston Herald); "depressing and distressing" (Time), and facing a "nightmarish scenario" (Baltimore Sun) that "will heighten racial, ethnic, gender, and class divisions" (Politico).

Wow--is it sending the stock market plunging, too? Jeopardizing national security? Ruining the basketball season?

I'm sorry, but this is over the top. I've covered a lot of campaigns, and this isn't even close to the kind of nastiness that has erupted in the past. It's not in the same league as a typical congressional race where the rivals hurl personal charges, call each other liars and run ads morphing the opponent into Osama bin Laden. It's a healthy political debate that's being fought out mainly on substantive issues, along with the usual distractions about tax returns, indicted fundraisers and the like.

Even the red-phone ad doesn't so much as mention Barack Obama's name.

Now there is certainly the possibility that the race could turn ugly, disrupt the convention and leave one side or the other angry that their candidate was robbed through superdelegate chicanery. But we're not there yet, except in the eyes of some journalists who love the idea of a smackdown almost as much as they love the idea of Barack and Hillary making up and running together.

Michelle Cottle has the good sense to agree with my argument in this New Republic piece:

"Enough with all the whining. Also enough with all the smack talk about how there must be something seriously wrong with Hillary/Obama as a candidate or s/he would have been able to close the deal by now. Horsefeathers. This isn't a primary in which Democratic voters are having a hard time making up their minds because both candidates are so disappointing. That's what's happening with the other team. Democrats' problem is that they have two candidates who are firing up the electorate, as seen in the consistently high turnout at the polls and the jaw-dropping fund-raising figures. ($30 million and $50 million in just one month? John McCain would kill for that kind of trouble.)

"And when did we all get so damn delicate about campaign ads and critical fliers? I swear, all those hyperventilating pundits comparing Hillary's 3 a.m. ad to LBJ's 'Daisy' ad make me long for the days of forced institutionalization. Seriously. Time to adjust your meds, guys. LBJ cut from a little girl plucking daisy petals to images of a giant mushroom cloud and a direct warning from Johnson, in that god-awful Texas twang of his, that 'the stakes are too high' not to vote for him. Hillary's ad doesn't even have scary music. Maybe it reminds certain political insiders of (gasp!) past Republican ads, but boo-freakin'-hoo.

"Barack's a big boy, and even if you don't agree with the obsessive debate about his 'experience,' there's no question that we should take an interest in how the man takes a punch. Similarly, all those mailers trashing Hillary's health care mandate that Obama took such grief for: fair game. She's had more than a decade to come up with a satisfactory response to Harry and Louise. Now is the time to show she's learned how to deflect/defuse such criticisms.

"All things considered, this has not been an ugly primary."

I must admit, though, that aides really ratcheted up the rhetoric yesterday. As Slate reports, Obama adviser David Axelrod "spooled out a string of accusations about her undisclosed tax returns and White House records as if he'd been holding his breath for the last 12 months. In fact, he has. This was a public attack unlike any the campaign has issued before. 'She is a habitual nondiscloser,' said Axelrod, even as he criticized the Clinton campaign for running a 'scorched earth' series of attacks on Obama recently."

"The next day, Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, followed with the political equivalent of Godwin's law by charging that the Obama campaign was imitating Ken Starr. At this rate, the campaigns will be trading expletives by April (that's already happening inside the Clinton campaign)."

That last reference is to a lengthy WP examination by Peter Baker and Anne Kornblut of how the Clintonites all hate each other. For those who missed it, this will give you the flavor:

" '[Expletive] you!' Ickes shouted.

" '[Expletive] you!' Penn replied.

" '[Expletive] you!' Ickes shouted again."

The rest is detail.

Conservatives, oddly enough, have been more likely to credit HRC, such as National Review Editor Rich Lowry:

"I couldn't help but be delighted by Hillary's comeback and not for calculating, this-will-divide-the-Democrats reasons. I truly admire politicians (well, except maybe for Mike Huckabee) who keep on going even though everyone counts them out. The disdain directed toward Hillary by the elite media was unmistakable, and I'm glad she fought through it (in the process ruining the vacation plans of countless journalists who wanted nothing more than for her to get out of the way). I directed my share of disdain at Hillary, and thought her Cleveland debate performance was so pathetic, it had to signal the beginning of the end . . .

"We saw Tuesday night that 'Yes, we can' doesn't have quite the same resonance when you've just suffered two big losses. How long before some journalists start writing that Obama's oratory is boring? What Obama has to worry about is the Sanjaya effect. Young girls swooned for him when the crooner was on American Idol and he was swarmed as the hottest celebrity at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last year. Now, if anyone remembers who he was, they have to wonder, ' What the hell was that all about?'

"Obama's a talented guy with formidable advantages in the nomination contest still, but when people are routinely fainting at your rallies, it's probably a sign that you're a craze, which is wonderful--while it lasts."

Obama as pet rock? Hula hoop? Overpriced iPhone? The man has gotten millions of votes.

Hillary also gets some huzzahs from the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes:

"Hillary Clinton has emerged as a disciplined and far more effective candidate when her campaign is on the verge of collapse. She becomes more focused and energized, tougher, meaner, and, oddly enough, more appealing. And of course she then survives.

"At times, she appears downright schizophrenic. On the one hand, she tears up, she plays the victim of unfair accusations, and she moans about how harshly politics treats her. On the other, she storms ahead aggressively, runs sharply negative TV ads, and blisters Barack Obama with charges. The Los Angeles Times put this headline on a front-page story that explained her victories in Ohio and Texas: 'Going negative proved positive in comeback.'

"Though not in so many words, Clinton sends this message to America: I'm going to be in your face, imposing myself on you, making demands, and never letting up, until you elect me president. I'll never go away until you do. The single adjective that best describes her is relentless. In presidential politics, this is a very helpful trait."

At American Prospect, Ezra Klein says Hillary faces the prospect of a kamikaze mission:

"Clinton's problem now is that she doesn't need to beat Obama, she has to convince the superdelegates to beat Obama for her. And this requires a different sort of argument. Even under assumptions very favorable to Clinton, Obama is likely to end the primaries with 100 or so more pledged delegates than she has. Her only hope is that the party elders, the so-called superdelegates, will grow so uncomfortable with Obama's weaknesses that they'll intervene on her behalf, risking the ire of their constituents, the fury of African-American voters who feel betrayed by their party, and a convention storyline that blames a smoke-filled backroom for overturning the will of the voters. That's a tall order.

"To convince them to do so, she'll need to fatally wound Obama. But attacking that ferociously will destroy her candidacy, too, and infuriate superdelegates who see her irreversibly bloodying the Democrats' likely nominee and thus hurting the party's chances for victory. What she really needs is for Obama to independently collapse, so the superdelegates have a reason to turn on him. But that's exceedingly unlikely."

But what if the "will of the voters" amounts to, say, 50 delegates out of 2,000?

Of course, we can always blame the news media, as Open Left poster Mike Lux does:

"Congratulations to the traditional media. You've given Barack a pretty good ride overall, but when you realized this cash cow, ratings-spiking, newspaper-selling race might end, you turned on him with a vengeance. You had a good night last night, as our race keeps going, and you got to announce your hero McCain as the official GOP nominee all on the same night."

With a "vengeance"? I've seen vengeance, buddy, and this ain't it.

Maybe what we need is--more debates! The prospect makes Tom Bevan groan at Real Clear Politics:

"Here's an unbearably haughty 881 words from the schoolmarms at the New York Times editorial page complaining about the 'tone' of the campaign and suggesting what we really need is more debate of the issues.

"But we've had 20 debates. The most in history. In fact, we've had so much debate that any reasonably well informed person can recite verbatim the candidates' positions on issues from trade to taxes to Iraq. Giving the candidates more opportunities to offer their canned responses to issues hardly makes things better -- especially when there is little no to difference between the two in any area of policy. How many more times do we have to watch Clinton and Obama argue over the niggling nuances of their healthcare proposals, for example? The mere thought makes me want to self-medicate heavily.

"Say what you want about Hillary Clinton's 'kitchen sink' strategy - and set aside whether you think a protracted fight between Clinton and Obama is damaging to the party and/or helpful to John McCain (both unknowable, by the way, despite the instant CW) - at least with the '3 am' ad Clinton finally succeeded in drawing some sort of contrast with Obama in the final days leading up to March 4th, and she put him under the kind of intense scrutiny he's sure to get from the Republicans if he's the nominee.

"If there's an indictment to be made here, it's not over a 'lack of debate.' Place the blame where it belongs: on a process that is way too long, too drawn out, and yet is still expected to feed the media beast day in and day out for the better part of two years. This is what you get."

Barack, meanwhile, is a fundraising machine:

"The campaign of Sen. Barack Obama announced that it had raised $55 million in February, $20 million more than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and an apparent record for a single month," the LAT reports.

At Americablog, John Aravosis jumps on Obama's latest criticism:

"So is that why Hillary isn't releasing her returns? Because she knows that sometimes tax returns hide things that might appear (or be) scandalous? But even that argument doesn't make sense since Hillary has promised to release her returns AFTER she becomes the nominee. That means that she has no privacy interest in her tax returns, she's going to let the public see them soon anyway, but she simply doesn't want Democratic voters to get the chance to have her tax returns inform their vote during the primaries.

"See, here's how it works. Hillary's tax returns could have something foul-smelling in them, like her 10,000% profit on the cattle-futures. If she releases her returns now, it gives you and me and every other Democratic voter the chance to judge her on what's in her returns, and vote accordingly. But if she waits until after she becomes the nominee, she knows she has us by the, uh, cattle-futures. As a Democrat, I might not vote for Hillary in the primary if I see something fishy in her tax returns. But in the general election, of course I'm going to vote for Hillary, regardless of what's in her returns."

And speaking of that sort of thing, the Washington Times raises questions about how Bill Clinton made $700,000 by selling nonpublic stock he was given for a single speech.