Charney Research article: Did She Do Enough?

Did She Do Enough?

by Craig Charney

Hillary Clinton gave perhaps the best speech of her political career last night, as the Democratic National Convention in Denver was awash with white “Hillary” signs and blue ones with “Hillary,” “Obama,” and “Unity” on them. The question is: will it undo the damage that Senator Clinton, the presidential candidate, did in the primaries to Barack Obama, who will be crowned tomorrow night as the Democratic nominee?

Clinton’s oratory was powerful and impressive. She proclaimed her pride in being a mother, Democrat, and Obama supporter. She urged a vote for Obama a dozen times and attacked Republican nominee-to-be John McCain by name just as often.

She told supporters thinking of voting for McCain that the campaign was not about her, but rather about the issues and views they shared. She spoke forcefully, with confidence and clarity, but also with feeling, touching most of those in the hall and bringing her supporters to the brink of tears. Even Michelle Obama, the prospective candidate’s wife — with whom her relations have been tense — was visibly touched by her remarks.

Yet something was missing from the speech: praise for Barack Obama as a potential president — or retreat from some of Mrs. Clinton’s criticisms of him during the hard-fought and often bitter nomination fight. As Republican political consultant Alex Castellanos noted on CNN, essentially, her appeal to vote for Obama was that he is the lesser of two evils.

This matters because of the damage done by two months of negative ads and comments from the Clinton camp after it was clear in late February that they had lost the race. This hard negative turn included attacks on Obama’s readiness to lead on national security issues, his responsiveness to middle class concerns, and (at one particularly low point) a hint that he might be a Muslim rather than a Christian.

At the time it was noted that some of Clinton's ads and comments were so harsh that they could be used by McCain in the general election. Now he's doing just that. Last night he ran an ad quoting her attacks on Obama on CNN right after Clinton’s speech. He’s just released a reprise of her “3 a.m.” ad — using a video clip from Clinton’s ad of the sleeping child and quoting her comparing Obama's qualifications unfavorably to McCain’s. (“Hillary’s right,” it cheekily proclaims.) These come after weeks where the Republican has driven home the same themes in speeches and ads.

Obama was seriously wounded by Clinton's attacks in the primaries — and McCain has kept him bleeding. From March through May, as Clinton hammered Obama, his negatives climbed substantially, softening him up. Since, as McCain has pressed similar charges, Obama’s lead has shrunk or evaporated in national polls.

Obama is having his biggest problems in two groups: Hillary Democrats and white Independent men.

Stan Greenberg’s latest poll shows Obama losing ground among white college women and under-performing relative to other Democrats among older unmarried white women and white non-college Democrats — all Clinton constituencies. Both that poll and the new battleground poll by Celinda Lake and Brian Tringali show a sharp drop in Obama support among male independents, an important swing group.

The polls reveal the link between Obama's slippage and the Clinton / McCain attacks. In another recent study, Greenberg returned to McComb County, Michigan, where he famously dissected the anxieties of Reagan Democrats two decades ago. He found white workers there worried about Obama’s race, middle class sympathies, and national security qualifications — the veins Clinton and McCain have worked.

Among independents, Tringali showed that McCain has overtaken Obama on “sharing your values” and energy worries since May, gained ground on “representing middle-class values” and moved further ahead on leadership — all themes linked to his attacks. Voters themselves underline how the ads and speeches have affected them. In the Battleground poll, independents said they were more likely to vote for McCain by 2 points and less likely to vote for Obama by 8, based on what they had read and heard about them.

Unlike the more conspiratorially minded, I do not believe that the Clintonites deliberately strewed tacks in Obama's path to help McCain defeat him. I know and have worked with many of them. It is just not in the character of these partisan Democrats to help elect a Republican president.

What I do think is that in late February, Clinton herself and many of the very smart people working with her simply could not accept they had lost to the upstart from Illinois. Their difficulty in recognizing that quitting time had come was reinforced by her wins in several later big-state primaries (Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana) and wishful thinking about a rescue from the Michigan and Florida delegations or super-delegates. The media's reluctance to declare the race over — due both to their embarrassment at proclaiming Clinton prematurely dead on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and their interest in a horse-race to hold viewers and readers — also helped her continue despite her hopeless prospects and deepening debt.

Some immediate reactions to Clinton's convention speech have argued that she has done all that might be expected to expunge the effects of her earlier remarks. She could not be expected to retract her views or proclaim ones she did not hold. The emphatic tone of her support for Obama and attacks on McCain, along with her direct appeal to her supporters, should win over those who are winnable. Attacks on fellow party members in the primaries have usually been forgotten by the fall in any case.

However, Clinton should — and could — have done more. Few, if any, prior Democratic presidential primary attacks been so direct and personal, or driven home by millions of dollars of ads and thousands of on-air repetitions in the closing weeks of the nomination campaign. None, to my knowledge, have been so seamlessly picked up by Republicans.

Without embarrassing herself, Clinton could have praised Obama for consistent opposition to the Iraq war, developing a more comprehensive health-care plan, or growing to understand working-class concerns better over the campaign. At the least she could have said that in the heat of the campaign she had said things she hadn't really meant about him. Calling out McCain on quoting her in the ads could also have helped take away their sting. An endorsement of Obama or an attack on McCain, no matter how ringing, may not erase the specific doubts about Obama that Clinton helped awaken.

So the weeks to come, besides the intense battle between Obama and McCain, will feature another fascinating struggle: Hillary Clinton vs. Senator Clinton. Will her efforts on the Democratic nominee’s behalf strengthen or undermine his credibility — and hers? Stay tuned.

Craig Charney is president of Charney Research, a New York polling firm.

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