Des Moines
Coupla thoughts, off the top–I’ve seen Huckabee and Romney; Obama, Clinton and Edwards in the past 48 hours and it just startling how different the quality is between the Democratic and Republican campaigns this year. The Republicans are total amateur hour, tiny crowds, half-crazed bickering among the candidates. No political tradecraft in evidence. Michael Deaver must be spinning in his grave.
The Democrats are drawing huge crowds by comparison–I keep on meeting Republicans who are switching over, sick of Bush, sick of the religious extremists. You not only find them at Obama events, which isn’t so surprising… But also at Clinton and–gasp–Edwards events, too. It feels very much like 1980 in reverse.
When I was here a few weeks ago, it seemed Clinton was slipping. Well, she’s righted herself. That takes a fair amount of fortitude this late in a campaign, but she has simply worked her way back into contention–traveling the state relentlessly, and simply being her wonky self: I compared her to a bran muffin last summer. She’s doing that again…not trying to be “likeable” and not trying to slag her opponents. She gives a tidy, substantive, very effective speech.
I saw Barack Obama yesterday and he seemed to be mailing it in, at least at that event. It may be that he was in hostile turf–Mt. Pleasant, the home town of Former Governor Tom Vilsack, a big Clinton supporter. But his speech didn’t have its normal oomph–and when Obama isn’t transcendent, you begin to notice that he doesn’t have all that much too offer substantively compared to Clinton or Edwards. As I say, this may have been a dud performance–all candidates have them, you can’t be crazy great 100% of the time–and Obama has impressed an awful lot of people in Iowa.
Edwards seems to have jumped the shark. His latest pitch has taken his natural populism over a cliff. It sort of sounds like: The Corporations Are Going To Eat Your Children. Actually what he says is, “We’re not going to let corporate greed steal our children’s future.” Over and over again. There is a strong argument to be made that the natural balance of the American economy has tilted toward the wealthy and the power of entrenched special interests, and needs to be tilted back in the direction of the middle class and poor. Both Clinton and Obama make that argument effectively, and place it in a reasonable context. For example, both say: Yes, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries will try to block universal health insurance, and we’re going to have to beat them. Edwards says, “I will never–never!–sit down at a table with them,” which is just ridiculous. If he wants to pass universal health insurance, he’s going to have to build a coalition that includes or neutralizes much of the business community–if not the insurance and pharmaceutical industries–or it won’t pass. As it is, he just sounds desperate, contentious and unreasonable.
Edwards is also wildly irresponsible on trade. He’s now saying that trade deals have cost “millions of jobs.” They haven’t. NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost. This is demagoguery–implying that if we just shut down the free trade regime, the global economy is going to go away, and stop taking low-value-added manufacturing jobs to other countries. It raises false hopes among the hardest working Americans, which is just disgraceful. It is also slightly out of date: with the weak dollar, exports represents a sector of the economy poised for real growth. A more responsible candidate, who really had the interests of the working class in mind, would emphasize the need for a stronger social safety net, more help for displaced workers and higher taxes to pay for it. Edwards believes in all that, but he’s not saying it these days–he’s choosing, instead, to use the heaviest, ugliest weapons in his arsenal.
I spoke, before and after the speech, to several people in the Edwards audience who had drifted off to other candidates–Richardson, Obama, Clinton–but were coming back to give Edwards another look. (They do that sort of thing in Iowa.) None were impressed. “I wanted to like him,” said Jay Semerad, a former Republican disgusted by the Bush Administration. “But it sounds like he wants to go to war with the corporations instead of the terrorists. I work for a corporation. It’s how I get my health care.”
Jay’s wife, Cheryl, said: “He didn’t hook me. There’s something about all this fighting and anger that puts me off.” She said she was probably going to vote for Clinton.
I spoke with others who felt the same way. This is not to say that Edwards is fading. He still could win Iowa, as could Obama or Clinton. I’ve never seen a race this close. But I do think that when you take Edwards’ latest pitch outside the hothouse of the Democratic party base, it’s not going to have very much appeal. I suspect Clinton and Obama will have better luck connecting with an American majority.