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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
What I got right and wrong in 12 months that changed the world.
By Joan Walsh
Read more: Joan Walsh, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Iowa, New Hampshire, Opinion, Barack Obama, 2008 election, 2008
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
Barack Obama, right, and Hillary Rodham Clinton leave a news conference in Chicago, Dec. 1.
Dec. 29, 2008 | I landed in Des Moines, Iowa, late on Jan. 1, 2008, with the awful feeling I was playing catch-up on the biggest political story of my lifetime: the surging candidacy of Barack Obama to be our first African-American president. In hindsight, I can see a lot of things clearly. It wasn't a good sign for Hillary Clinton, the supposed front-runner, that while Obama volunteers were boasting of all the new young voters they'd added to the process, the Clinton folks were bragging that they'd stocked up on snow shovels to get their elderly supporters out of their homes and to the caucus sites. The night before the vote, in our hotel lobby, we ran into former President Bill Clinton, who was not yet the irascible finger-wagger he'd become after a few of his wife's losses. I asked him what would happen Thursday, and he shrugged. He said he didn't know, it depended on who turned out, but he didn't sound optimistic.
It didn't snow Jan. 3; the shiny new Clinton shovels stayed in the garage. But the shiny new voters electrified by the Obama campaign came out, for real. The caucus site I covered more than doubled its 2004 turnout; Obama crushed Clinton and John Edwards there and in the rest of the state. The race was far from over, of course; Clinton's resurrection in New Hampshire would reanimate a Democratic rivalry for the ages. But that Iowa surprise contained all the makings of Obama's eventual primary victory, and I didn't see it coming till it was upon us. Even after Iowa, I didn't fully grasp the Obama phenomenon. What did I almost miss, and why did I almost miss it?
'Tis the time of year to take stock, and I thought it was worth looking at what I got wrong, and right, in this amazing 12 months. It was a huge thrill and something of a blur for me. As the first presidential race I covered with a blog as well as frequent television appearances, it certainly gave me more chances than ever before to get things wrong, and right. Consider this my accountability moment and also a way of clearing my thinking for the epic four years ahead.
But before I list all the things I got wrong, and some of them were whoppers, here are a few things I got right. I promise it won't take too long.
Hillary Clinton didn't destroy Obama or the Democratic Party; in fact, she made him a better candidate. She didn't march on to Denver, demand that the superdelegates back her, caucus the PUMAs to reject Obama on the floor of the convention, or run against McCain and Obama as an independent. Remember those paranoid scenarios? I had to go on "Hardball" Wednesday, June 4, the day after the final two Democratic primaries, and my friends David Corn and Chris Matthews were hyperventilating because Clinton had failed to drop out. She had split the day's contests, taking South Dakota while Obama won Montana, but Obama had effectively clinched the nomination. I told Corn and Matthews calmly, over and over, that she wouldn't destroy the party, that she'd do the right thing. Unfortunately, the transcript is no longer online, but it mainly went like this:
Corn: It was all about Hillary, all about Eve. What she said was, "I still have a decision to make." She really doesn‘t. The one decision she has is whether she will blow apart the party by contesting Obama‘s claim on the nomination.
Walsh: And she will not do that.
Corn: Or going ahead and getting beyond. She said she had a decision to make. Where is the decision? There is no decision here if she will be gracious and do the right thing.
Walsh: Of course she‘s going to be gracious. David, do you really think she‘s going to blow up the party?
Corn: Wait a second: "Write to me and tell me what you think I should do." What type of false hope is that?
Walsh: What is wrong with listening to your supporters?
Corn: What is the decision here? This decision is either to support Barack Obama and do what she said already, work for the Democratic nominee, or to try to play games.
Walsh: Everybody knows she will do that.
And, of course, she did: A few hours later, she announced her concession event in Washington that was also planned as a thank you to her supporters -- and held on a Saturday to make it easier for them to get off work and attend.
Similarly, I argued more than once that the 50-state primary battle was good for Democrats, a practical version of Howard Dean's 50-state strategy even if it made the good doctor green around the gills watching. Obama has said it himself more than once. The weekend before the election, I took the time to compare two Obama speeches given in Columbus, Ohio, nine months apart, and found that the later speech featured a much more dialed-in, solutions-focused, populist Obama -- who'd borrowed at least some of his new stump speech from working-class Hillary. Clinton's unlikely appeal to working-class Democrats (which should never have been taken for granted, since she spent many years being caricatured as the ugly face of elitist liberal feminism) helped Obama chart the electoral course that would win Nov. 4.
There was no Bradley effect, and no "black-brown tension" on Election Day. I wrote in January that the big Latino margins for Clinton weren't a sign of brown-black tension or racism, but evidence that Latino voters just didn't know Obama as well as they knew Clinton. They liked Hillary, with whom they had a 20-year relationship through her husband and her own eight-year Senate career, but they would happily vote for Obama in the general. Sure enough, come Nov. 4, Latinos liked Obama just fine. They supported him 2-1 over McCain. Obama's huge gains among the burgeoning Latino electorate were one of the most impressive achievements of this election and may have the most enduring effect on the long-term fortunes of the Democratic Party.
Similarly, predictions that a secret well of white racism would swamp Obama were unfounded. In Salon, in late October, pollster Paul Maslin advised readers to believe the polls that indicated Obama had a comfortable lead. He was right. The polls were accurate. And Obama beat John Kerry's national total among white voters by 2 points.
Obama wasn't the über-progressive his lefty supporters claimed. There really wasn't a dime's worth of difference between him and Hillary on 99 percent of serious issues. His FISA vote in July, and his decision to keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates, prove one of my unprovable but firm beliefs from the primary season: Had he been a U.S. senator, not an Illinois state senator from liberal Hyde Park, Barack Obama would have voted in 2002 for the Authorization for Use of Military Force, just as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry and John Edwards did. At any rate, Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, said it best in an open letter to progressives on Dec. 7: Suckers! No, what he really said in "A Message to Obama's Progressive Critics," was:
This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making. Some believe the appointments generally aren't progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn't the way he thinks and it's not likely the way he will lead.
It's fascinating, now that I've become a passionate Obama admirer, to find that a lot of his early acolytes on the left are already mad at him. David Corn himself laid out their disappointment recently in a Washington Post Op-Ed, "This Wasn't Quite the Change We Pictured." I think you can understand a lot of the political dynamics playing out today by looking back, soberly, at the ups and down of the primary campaign, particularly at how the left projected its own hopes and dreams on Obama. The left believed he was a great progressive savior sent to rescue the country not only from George Bush, but from a boring, centrist, hawkish Clinton restoration. It's clear they weren't looking clearly at Obama.
