The Washington Independent - February 2, 2008

Democrats Make Final Pitch Before Super Tuesday

California Tops Prize List, Serves as Proxy for the Nation

 By Holly Yeager

t’s time to close the deal.

After months of town meetings, long miles on the road and millions raised and spent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama now have just days to make their pitch to voters in 24 states.

The outcome will depend on many things: the institutional strength of Clinton vs the energy of Obama; her promise of universal health care vs his early opposition to the war in Iraq; and which candidate manages to lure voters who had planned to support former Sen. John Edwards.

The Edwards factor was obvious in Thursday night’s debate, the first time Clinton and Obama have gone head-to-head. Each invoked his name several times and tried to show their commitment to continuing his fight against poverty and for better health care.

Recent polls show the race tightening both nationally and in key states, including California. That state is Tuesday’s biggest prize, with 370 delegates at stake — though it is not winner take all. In any case, its diversity and scale make it an ideal for the rest of the country.

Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic strategist in the state, who is neutral in this year’s race, points to Clinton’s strong support among the state’s political establishment — including the mayors of San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland, as well as U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

But Obama’s core message – the need for change, the focus on the future – could be powerful, Carrick said. “Culturally, he’s a pretty good fit for the state.”

Carrick speculated that if California continues the pattern set in earlier states like South Carolina or Iowa, many more young people would go to the polls and they overwhelming support Obama. "If it's an explosive turnout, " Carrick said, "all bets are off."

Joel Kotkin, the author of "California, Inc." and "Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy" and a presidential fellow at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., agreed. "People who are not regular activists, but will get stirred up once in a while," Kotkin said, "are for Obama."

He explained, "Obama has magic, and magic works in California.”

Obama received another boost on Friday when MoveOn.org endorsed him. The Internet-based progressive activist group has 3.2 million members, and 1.7 million of them are in Super-Duper Tuesday states.

Kotkin also pointed out that that state has a history of bucking its establishment. He pointed to Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial victory in 1966, and the success of Proposition 13, an anti-tax ballot initiative, in 1978. “Although Hillary has got the institutional strength," Kotkin said, "sometimes in California, institutional strength is not all that important.”

Amid such competing pressures, the Edwards factor could be particularly important in California, where recent polls show he had been drawing about 10 percent of the vote.

During the debate, Clinton tried to distinguish Obama’s health care plan, which relies on reducing costs, with her own, which provides coverage for every American.

Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, made clear that the campaign sees health care as a way to win over Edwards voters. He told MSNBC that universal coverage “was a fundamental principle to Sen. Edwards and it’s a fundamental principle to Sen. Clinton.”

Clinton has drawn much of her support from working-class Democrats and made economics a central focus of her message, which could position her well to attract the kinds of blue-collar and rural voters who had supported Edwards.

Obama spoke about home foreclosures at a California campaign event on Thursday. At a separate rally, across the country in Delaware, his wife, Michelle, was addressing some of the same issues. "For regular folks, " she told a standing-room-only audience at Delaware State University, "it's gotten harder."

Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network, a progressive think tank, says if Obama is to be successful on Tuesday and beyond, he must put more emphasis on the economy.

“It’s been an enormous strategic failure of their campaign, that they’ve been unable to integrate a core economic argument into their bigger argument about change,” Rosenberg said.

But Obama does have an important new tool that may help him make inroads among working-class Democrats and Latinos: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who was scheduled to campaign for Obama in East Los Angeles and Oakland on Friday.

Kennedy’s work on immigration makes him popular among many Latinos, and Obama made sure to mention him during Thursday’s debate. Older Mexican-Americans also hold warm feelings for Kennedy's late brother, Robert F. Kennedy, a strong advocate for farm workers in the state. Latinos make up 14 percent of the likely voters in California.

A decision by La Opinion, the Los Angeles newspaper that is the leading Spanish-language daily in the United States, to weigh in on the race, a possibility reported Friday by the American Prospect, could also be a major factor.

Kotkin suggested that while older, baby-boom Latinos may prefer Clinton, younger “post-ethnic” Latinos, who could turn out in large numbers, may lean toward Obama. “This mestizo culture might get that someone who is half Kenyan and half Kansan isn’t weird,” he said

Rosenberg, who worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign but is not affiliated with either candidate, said Obama has another important tool: the Internet.

Obama has built an online network of millions of supporters. His video response to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address made the YouTube most-watched list. His campaign, which announced that it brought in a record $32m in January, a record for a primary candidate, said that 90 percent of its donors gave $100 or less.

That Internet reach will be especially useful in the coming stages of the campaign, where candidates don’t have the time to do the kind of on-the-ground campaigning they did in the earlier states. Rosenberg said. “This is a viral tool that doesn’t just raise money. It does neighbor-to-neighbor politics on a scale we have not seen in American history.”

 

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