Campaign Diaries

In a night marked by Mark Warner’s disappointingly flat speech, Democrats can thank Brian Schweitzer and Hillary Clinton - as well as the ridiculously low expectations the media (and the McCain campaign) had set for Hillary’s performance.

For months now, everyone has been pointing to all the signs that favor the Democratic Party in 2008 - just as they did in 2006. Bush’s popularity is at record lows, the Republican Party is discredited, the electorate’s partisan affiliations have massively shifted towards the Democratic Party. Under those conditions, for the convention’s keynote speaker to deliver a nonpartisan speech that could just have easily (and with minor twitches) been read at the Republican convention was practically an act of political malpractice.

It’s not as much that Mark Warner’s speech wasn’t good (it would have been under other circumstances) or that it wasn’t well delivered; Warner undoubtedly improved his standing in Virginia and introduced himself to voters across the country. But I am not here to judge the oratory skills of various speakers but their effectiveness in pushing Obama into the White House. My point is that his speech did little to help Democrats and to help Obama. None of this is ultimately to blame Mark Warner; the convention organizers must have known that he would say this, and Warner did nothing that ought to have surprised them.

But it is hard to escape the feeling that Warner’s argument is exactly what Republicans want voters to think and what many of them will no doubt be telling voters next week - forget that we are Republicans and that Obama is a Democrat. For months, the GOP has been worried about how it can best escape the electorate’s viscerally anti-Republican mood; we have been documenting how some of its candidates are literally shunning away from the party label and Gordon Smith’s bipartisan ads are in a category of their own. McCain cannot win if voters think of this election as a choice between a Democrat and a Republican, which is why he has sought to make it about character and style of leadership.

And here comes Mark Warner, boosting McCain’s improbable bid to get voters to forget the candidates’ party labels. Said Warner: “I know we’re at the Democratic Convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn’t matter if it has an R or D next to it. Because this election isn’t about liberal versus conservative. It’s not about left versus right.” That could have worked for Democrats in 94, and could work for the GOP next week. Sure, Warner opposing past and future was meant as a swipe to the Arizona Senator, but does the GOP not also portray itself as the party of the future? What was their efforts to dismiss Obama as a tired ideologue and portray McCain as a pragmatist maverick (the whole point of emphasizing energy issues) if not to claim the future mantle? And even if the past v. future theme becomes central to Barack’s campaign, Warner should have outlined a much clearer case for McCain representing the past.

Hillary Clinton, on the other, did just the opposite. She reminded listeners that she might have had her differences with Barack Obama, but that they are both Democrats running against a Republican: “Whether you voted for me or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.”

Clinton was helped by the ridiculously low expectations that the media has set for her. The McCain campaign’s roll-out of videos using Clinton’s words against Obama as well as the media circus around the Clinton melodrama had made this somewhat of a suspenseful event. What was indeed suspenseful was whether Clinton would succeed in convincing her voters to rally around Obama as much as he needs them to, whether she would figure out which arguments might persuade them most; what was not suspenseful (contrary to the media’s preparations) was whether she would look sincere, try her best and look appeased.

Of course she was going to do the latter: she is a very successful politician who looked wonderfully at ease next to Obama in Unity at the end of June. But given the media drumming up her speech, we were basically led to think that Hillary might just choke up, slip or be unable to say anything in support of the Illinois Senator! Simply by coming out and immediately proclaiming herself “a proud supporter of Barack Obama,” Clinton beat expectations.

Whether she convinced her still-wavering supporters will of course have to be determined with polling data, but I believe she pulled off that task beautifully. Sure, her statement of support did not venture on the personal and she did not vouch for Obama’s experience or character; but it was not up to her to do that. If she had, she might not have sounded as powerful and as sincere as she did tonight by focusing on the substance of what it means to be a Democrat. In the speech’s most crucial moment that is already being played over and over again, Clinton said,

I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?

The very meaning of belonging to a party, Hillary reminded the audience and in particular the 18 million voters who supported her, is to share a set of commitments, beliefs and a desire to work towards goals that are entirely incompatible with the goals of the opposite camp. A figure who is usually described as ultra-partisan, Hillary’s conclusion was simple and it was powerful: for anyone to claim to be supporting her and to then go vote for McCain would be a betrayal of everything Clinton stands for, all the work she has done and all she has fought for over the past 20 months. “You haven’t worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership,” Clinton said, insisting that Obama must become President.

This is exactly the point Clinton needed to drive home - and she did it very convincingly. There have been critics, but the speech was meant to speak to Democrats, not to those who are suspicious of Clinton to start with. Of course, she alone cannot seal the deal, but Clinton is sure to have softened up the most devoted of her supporters and opened them to listening to Joe Biden and Barack Obama with a different mentality over the next two days.

It certainly did not hurt that Clinton went after Bush and McCain forcefully, delivering one of the convention’s memorable one-liners: “With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart.” That preceded a long indictment of McCain’s economic policies:

But we don’t need four more years … of the last eight years.
More economic stagnation … and less affordable health care.
More high gas prices … and less alternative energy.
More jobs getting shipped overseas … and fewer jobs created here.
More skyrocketing debt … home foreclosures … and mounting bills that are crushing our middle class families.
More war … less diplomacy.
More of a government where the privileged come first … and everyone else comes last.
John McCain says the economy is fundamentally sound. John McCain doesn’t think that 47 million people without health insurance is a crisis. John McCain wants to privatize Social Security. And in 2008, he still thinks it’s okay when women don’t earn equal pay for equal work.

Shortly before Clinton went on stage, Brian Schweitzer had taken the stage to deliver an unexpectedly strong speech. (I strongly recommend watching it, here is part 1 and part 2.) Schweitzer would have been a good keynote speaker - he comes from a swing state (never neglect 3 electoral votes), mixed praise for Obama with hits on McCain and fired up delegates in what was a great set-up for Hillary.

He went on the attack in a wonderfully cheerful demeanor that drew energetic cheers and boos from the crowd: “We simply can’t drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain’s backyards, including the ones he can’t even remember.” The delivery was quite strong as he got the crowd into his refrain, repeating that McCain would represent “four more years of the same.” In fact, the crowd’s reaction forced CNN and other network channels that were not covering the speech to start showing it!

That alone was an exploit on a night in which most of the speakers could be as brilliant as they wanted (and many were much more aggressive than had been the case the first night - just look at Dennis Kucinich), but only C-SPAN watchers would see it - and we’re not talking about a group of undecided voters there. We knew networks channels would roll back their coverage, but even cable channels have given up: In the midst of hours and hours of coverage, analysis and previews, CNN and MSNBC only show three or four speeches. Even Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (”For John McCain, there’s no place like home, or a home, or a home”) was seen neither on CNN nor on MSNBC.

Overall, then, the convention’s second night was much like the first: Whatever little effort was made to remind Democrats of their hatred for the Bush Administration to rally them against McCain was not shown on TV. (Only true politicos are likely to have seen Kucinich’s or Sebelius’s addresses or those of pretty much all speakers except Warner, Clinton, Bob Casey and the last moments of Schweitzer.) But the night’s main event - and thus the main goal - was perfectly successful. Yesterday, Michelle Obama introduced herself and her husband to make their story more familiar; today, Hillary Clinton brought her supporters back under the Democratic tent. Tomorrow is Joe Biden’s night, and he will be the first headline speaker whose primary goal ought to be that of an attacker.