Facing polling trends that look like this in Texas, Hillary Clinton pulled out the kitchen sink, wrapped it up with fear, and tossed it at Barack Obama. Today the Clinton campaign released the following ad in Texas aimed at scaring Texans into voting for her next Tuesday:
Within hours Barack Obama responded with the following ad:
With impressive speed Barack Obama’s campaign completely changed the news cycle. Whatever dead cat bounce Hillary Clinton hoped to achieve with her fear-mongering ad was completely neutralized with the Obama ad. The narrative was changed. By the time the evening news came on, the story was about Obama’s swift response to Clinton’s fear tactics.
There are many reasons why Barack Obama is on his way to winning the Democratic nomination. One of them certainly is his well run campaign and their rapid response team.
Facing an almost certain defeat, Clinton has taken to peddling fear to counter Obama’s message of hope. The Democratic voters are however opting for hope over fear. Next Tuesday its quite likely that hope will carry the day in Texas and Vermont. It may even carry the day in Ohio, if the Obama ground game can get the vote out.
UPDATE (2/29/2008 9 PM): It turns out that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is having trouble coming up with examples of Hillary Clinton’s experience where she has been tested by a foreign policy crisis. During a conference call today, Hillary Clinton’s campaign failed to answer this obvious question raised by Hillary Clinton’s own ad. Here’s a video which uses the of the audio from the conference call to make a not too subtle point:
It’s too bad Clinton and her rabid followers have to resort to Republican smear tactics to win. I hope she sues over Texas’s caucus system –the very one she helped establish thirty years ago.
All of this blather only makes Obama stronger.
Time for the Obama Mixtape!
http://obamamixtape.blogspot.com
Robbie, I am sad that Hillary Clinton has resorted to such tactics. She’s an extremely capable person and is at her best when she is not fear-mongering. I was reading her commencement speech from Wellesley just the other day and was wondering where that person went.
Bill Clinton has made an eloquent argument for why people should vote for Obama over Hillary. Hillary Clinton should have remembered Bill’s advice before going so negative:
Mash,
Obama has been strong at least in Austin since last summer. If anything, you’d see Ron Paul bumperstickers AND Obama bumperstickers. I have been very impressed by the style of tv ads from the Obama campaign. Talk about classy AND smooth. The imagery is incredible. There is this one, which is black and white and it has Obama looking pensive, I believe looking down with a white looking house in the background. That’s what you call BAM! Obama in the White House baby!
Whoever is in his campaign, they are incredible. Hope wins over fear, because there is only so much and so long people can sustain wanting to be scared. It’s human nature. Like Robbie said (hey Robster!), of course she’ll want to sue, it is incredibly hypocritical. And yes Mash, it is a shame because she has been a capable politician.. just do not agree with her voting record..
Ingrid (from Austin, Obama town!)
Ingrid, I do think Obama will pull out Texas. This will be quite a feat because only recently he was 20 points behind there. How does the Obama ground game look there? Are you getting calls and mail?
Ohio will be real interesting. The internals in the polls favor Obama even though he looks like he’s behind by a few points. I see shades of Missouri.
Ultimately, I think it comes down to Clinton’s votes on Iraq and Iran. On those two critical votes, she is with George W Bush. And it will not matter how she tries to spin that.
mash, I’ve gotten calls from Moveon.org for house parties (am on their email list) and a recorded phone call from Mayor Winn from the city of Austin asking people to go out and vote and that he’s endorsing Obama. Just an hour ago, I put up an Obama sign in my yard. My friend will go to the caucus tonight and hopefully, tomorrow we’ll all be cheering. Obama has so many endorsements it’s almost insane! Even Independent Texans are officially endorsing him.
Let’s cross our fingers..(oh yeah, and hope!)
Ingrid
I hear the turnout in Houston is huge. How is turnout in Austin? If Obama pulls out Texas after being so far behind in the polls a few weeks ago it will be quite a spectacular run.
Didn’t want to comment here earlier as I didn’t want to believe it: but I guess fear-mongering works (that’s what everybody is saying!).
And so if Hillary does get the nomination, guess who else might want to put “experience” and “phone call at 3 AM” together… AND win the final race?
Shame on her cynicism, shame on the Democratic voters who don’t see through her cynicism!
NiRBashito, unfortunately fear mongering works. But fearmongering in the primaries against another candidate from your own party is pathetic and counterproductive. Clinton wont get the nomination because she cant get enough delegates to beat Obama. She only gained anywhere from 4 to 8 delegates last night from her wins. She was behind Obama by about 150. After the excitement of Clinton’s wins last night subsides, watch the news coverage start to do the sober delegate mathematics in the next few days.
If she were to win the nomination with such fearmongering, she would be the Walter Mondale of 2008. She would be very effective at destroying her own party’s candidate, but would lose the general election in a landslide. The reason: pissed off Democratic voters would stay home. If by some magic, she were the nominee, you can be certain I would be one of those voters who would either stay home or become a McCain Democrat.
Mash,
Apparently, my son’s teacher who lives in San Antonio, decided to vote early since he was not going to be in SA that day and he said that the line was an hour long before he could get in to vote. I don’t know how Austin was actually. My friend who’s son goes to a public school said that at the caucus meeting there were a 100 people. Usually, it’s only about 4 or 5! They ended up picking 12 (or was it 15, sorry, had a rough night sleeping) delegates with the same number of alternates. My friend became one of the delegates. So now, since the Democratic Party here in TX is divided (Ob/Cl), all that information is in their hands and I am so unbelievably suspicious of the party machine.. there are many many people within the dem party who want to keep the status quo. Actually, they are so close to being Republicans it’s scary. My friend said that some democrats here would be considered Republicans up in Michigan. At any rate, I’m holding my breath. sort of. I had some other political thoughts that I will share with you personally since you’re my perfect sounding board. Hope not much bad news is coming out of Bangladesh. Truth be told Mash, I am woefully ignorant on that these days. I hope that at least your family there is safe,
hugs
Ingrid