Obama Winning Spin War Over Who's Victim In Campaign

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Obama Winning Spin War Over Who's Victim In Campaign
By Greg Sargent - January 24, 2008, 3:57PM
One of the central struggles between the Obama and Hillary campaigns right now is this: Which of the two can successfully persuade voters that he or she is the fair-fighter being victimized by the other's out-of-control aggression? Which of the two can persuade voters that his or her opponent is using a steady stream of vicious, old-style attack politics to prevent history from being made?

Right now -- if media coverage, pundit opinion, and insider chatter among Dems is any guide -- it's hard not to conclude that Obama is winning this particular spin war handily.

At risk of overgeneralizing, much media coverage and commentary right now appears to be hewing closer to the Obama campaign's chosen narrative, which is roughly that the Clinton machine is using every gutter tactic at its disposal to halt the triumph of new politics and the making of history.


Today's Washington Post, for instance, is carrying a front-page piece reporting that Hillary's ad yesterday hitting Obama over his "party of ideas" comment is heightening "unity fears" among prominent Democrats. There's no mention in the article of the ad Obama released yesterday saying Hillary will "say anything" to win. The article also reports that top Democrats are concerned that Big Bad Billary's tactics could result in a "loss of black voters" in a general election. No one seems inclined to ask whether women would be upset at a Hillary loss.

Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, meanwhile, laments that Obama's "professorial and all-too-Stevensonian air" leave him hopelessly unequipped to handle the "two people teaming up against him." And a recent Daily News editorial expressed "distress that the Clintons have crossed the line into attacks." There's been tons more like this, frustrating some Clinton advisers who insist that Obama has managed to go negative on Hillary -- such as in yesterday's ad -- without being tagged in the same way.

"Only a Chicago politician could get away with attacking someone personally and call it the politics of hope," I was told by Democratic National Committeeman and top Hillary fundraiser Robert Zimmerman.

The Clinton camp would have you believe that this can be chalked up purely to the media's desire to "get" the Clintons. "No one has ever lost a media war with the Clintons," longtime Hillary supporter James Carville tells me. "Anybody that goes to the press with any grievance against the Clintons always wins. You can't lose. It's impossible. It's a loaded deck." Bill himself pressed a similar point yesterday, arguing that the press was over-obsessed with his own role.

But I'd argue that a more complex dynamic is at play. Whatever the media's role in this, the fact that this narrative is taking hold can be chalked up to two other factors. The first is that the Obama campaign's very conscious efforts to frame the race this way are working. The second is that this Obama effort has gotten a big assist from the strategic downside of having Bill play such a prominent role. In short, Big Dog's entry, whatever its upsides, has made it far easier for Obama to carve out the role of victim for himself.

That the Obama campaign has worked to squeeze that latter factor for advantage is overwhelmingly clear. There was a very palpable shift in the Obama camp's strategy last week, when after weeks of responding to Bill Clinton's criticism tentatively he went on ABC to hit back at both Clintons and argue that he was facing "two formidable opponents."

The Obama campaign (no advisers were available for comment) has rightly pointed out that Bill's criticism has only grown in volume, forcing them to respond more aggressively. And there's little doubt that Bill's criticism of Obama -- blared through that big megaphone of his -- has been brutally harsh and perhaps helped tip Nevada to Hillary.

At the same time, the lesser told part of this story is that the Obama campaign has very consciously -- and skillfully -- used this development to its tactical advantage, by casting Obama as the David heroically battling against a kind of two-headed Clintonian Goliath. "I can't tell who I'm running against at times," Obama said during the debate, in a refrain that the campaign's been pushing ever since. Much of the press coverage of late has adopted this view and tone.

This is clearly a source of worry to the Hillary camp -- indeed, the Hillary campaign just yanked its negative South Carolina ad. The response it has hatched to this development is to argue that Obama is merely whining about his treatment at the hands of the Clintons and that this raises questions about his toughness for a general election.

"This primary competition is civil compared to what a general election is going to be," Hillary fundraiser Robert Zimmerman said in our interview. "Whatever Obama is facing from Bill and Hillary Clinton does not begin to compare to what the Democratic nominee will face from Republican swift-boat attacks."

The Hillary campaign thinks that the new negative Obama ad released yesterday gives them an opening to shift the dynamic; this morning, Camp Hillary sent out talking points to surrogates asking them to make the case that Obama's new ad revealed him to be willing to traffic in the same negative attacks he's been decrying.

Still, judging broadly by the coverage and punditry, the preferred storyline of choice is: Obama is David; Billary is the two-headed Clintonian Goliath. In other words, for now, Obama is winning this spin war.