This was not a good week for Obama. After the Clintons' goal-line stand on Tuesday, they took possession of the ball and they've pushed down the field some. The question now is whether the Obama camp will find an effective way to push back.
I was disappointed at Obama's allowing the Samantha Power's "monster" comment to be exploited by the Clintons in the way they did. Power apologized, and that should have been enough. I think the Obama camp's calculated that defending Power wasn't worth the fight and better to take the hit and move on, but it makes it look as though the Clintons are dictating the direction of this contest now rather than Obama, and he really needs to take control.
It's as if Obama, because he has the lead, is going into the fourth quarter with a 'prevent defense': give up the small stuff, but don't give up the big play. The Obama camp wanted to prevent the Power issue from becoming a big play; they gave up a ten-yard gain, rather than risking giving up a touchdown. But while the prevent defense takes time off the clock, it very often allows the other team to chip away at one's lead and get back into the game. I've always disliked it as a strategy and always feel a certain degree of dismay when the team I'm rooting for uses it. It's a strategy focused on playing not to lose rather than playing to win, and it essentially gives control of the game to the other team. It makes the team using this defense look weak and ineffectual, even if in the end the team using it gets the W.
The Clintons have figured out that their reputation for playing slimeball is what it is, and it can't hurt them much more than it already has. So if they have to live with the negatives, they might as well exploit the positives. They've figured out that Obama's greatest vulnerability lies in his wanting so badly to protect his reputation for not playing slimeball. So the Clintons are saying to themselves: "Fine, if he won't push back, we'll just keep pushing and see where it gets us. We have nothing to lose."
It seemed for awhile that Obama's just ignoring Clinton might work. I think it did with Clinton's Farrakhan attack during the debate, but it ceases to work if it makes him look weak. Obama cannot afford to look weak. That's the principal Clinton strategy from here to the end of the game: The Clintons will do everything they can to raise doubts about Obama's strength and toughness. He can't allow them to succeed, because he has to think ahead to the fight with McCain. He can't allow himself to be branded as weak in the broad public perception. Americans will vote for Big Daddy if they are not sufficiently confident in the valor and potency of the Young Hero.
And if the counterattack comes, the Clintons put in place a strategy to blunt it. That's my read on the otherwise bizarre 'Obama is like Ken Starr' accusation. It's not about the relatively mild attacks initiated by the Obama camp in the past, it's about preventing more hard-hitting attacks in the future. The Starr accusation was a shot across the bow announcing that if Obama mounts a hard-hitting counterattack, the Clintons will shout that they are being victimized by tactics made infamous by the right-wing smear machine.
I don't know that the public will buy into such a tactic by the Clintons, but if there's one thing we've learned from Karl Rove, the best way to inoculate yourself from the accusations of you opponent is to accuse your opponent first, and do it louder, no matter how baseless the accusation. It doesn't matter how ridiculously exaggerated the accusation, it keeps the opponent on the defensive and blunts his counterattacks. It's effective because it establishes in the public imagination a moral equivalency between the minor infraction of the opponent with the deliberately egregious infraction committed by one's own camp. It has the advantage also of outraging and flustering the opponent when the media buys into the moral equivalency because of its misguided effort to be fair in providing equal treatment to both parties.
The people paying attention understand what's going on, but most people are not paying attention. This prevent-defense strategy sets a tone, and it makes the person using it look weak. I understand why Obama doesn't want to be pulled into a knife fight, but sometimes you can't walk away, and you get hacked up if you don't find a way to fight back. He's got to figure out how to develop a more effective defense, and to hit back hard in ways that make a statement that he will not be pushed around, but neither will he dragged into the game played on Clinton's terms. That's a tall order, but I'll be sorely disappointed if he doesn't find a way to do it. He will probably win this fight with Clinton, but he might be so weakened from all the bloodletting that he won't have much left for the fight with McCain.
P.S. I like Samantha Power a lot, and I hope this is but a temporary suspension, and that she will be back on the team later.
UPDATE: It's reassuring that Obama is back into the old blowout pattern in Wyoming. It suggests that at least for some Democrats, the Hillary offensive didn't mean much. It may have been a bad week for BO, but not that bad, not game-changing bad.
The problem for Obama seems to be these states with large, urban, blue-collar Catholic populations. I suspect they think that Obama is too fancy-pants-slick for their tastes. I'm beginning to come around to think that this demographic explanation is probably the best one to explain Clinton's resilience in states like Ohio and Rhode Island.
I know this type Hillary supporter well: my wife is one of that tribe, a blue-collar, Bronx Italian girl who has been Hillary all the way, until recently. My son and I--mostly my son--have been able to make the case to her that there is more to Obama than the trendiness. The people in this tribe don't change their minds easily, and they get very contrarian about people they perceive as the trendy choice. All kinds of red flags go up for them.
I don't know anything about Pennsylvania, but I suspect that there are a lot of Ohio, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island blue-collar types in PA who will stand stubbornly for Hillary. I thought Obama's wins in Maine and Maryland were a signal that she was losing her grip on that constituency, but alas, it does not appear so.