Competing Endorsements and Parallel Narratives
By Bud White on May 5, 2008 at 7:57 PM in Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Clinton, Current Affairs, Daily Kos, Electability, Gas Prices, Indiana, North Carolina, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Superdelegates, White People
As the campaign for the nomination heads into the final days before North Carolina and Indiana, both campaigns are attempting to control the narrative prior to the voting. Obama is failing miserably. The Clinton campaign so fully controls the narrative now that it’s virtually a presidency-in-waiting, with bully pulpit and podium to boot (more on that below). So on Thursday, in another Judas moment and in a failed attempt to salvage Obama, Joe Andrew, former Democratic chair appointed by President Clinton, switched from Hillary to Obama. The Big Orange Kool-Aid (herein BOKA) triumphantly announced that:
It’s a high-profile, high-level signal to other super delegates that it’s okay to switch to Obama in order to finally bring about the inevitable conclusion. … The dam was holding, but it has now sprung a leak. The whole thing now threatens to collapse.
If it were still February, BOKA may have been correct in his assessment. However, as Jerome Armstrong correctly points out about Obama supporters:
They are stuck in February and early March, when they saw Obama as the second coming of 50-state campaigner that would move us beyond the battleground days. That’s not the Obama of late April.
There are two parallel, related narratives replicating in the media and the national consciousness, and neither are good for Obama. The first, of course, is the Rev. Wright debacle. Like the DNA in a virus, the Wright narrative replicates other mini-narratives: it tells us that Obama is rapidly losing working class whites, his overall poll numbers are dropping dramatically, and that Obama as a candidate is fatigued and confused, a candidacy sputtering. Additionally, his campaign has been caught sending out an amateurish polling memo and embarrassing letters to Oregon voters talking about their beautiful Great Lakes.
The other narrative is Hillary’s Gas-Tax plan, panned by critics but loved by voters. This media virus spreads additional information: Hillary cares about and connects with average voters, she responds to the country’s needs now and, most importantly, she is controlling the narrative of the election; long gone are the days of sniper fire in Bosnia. We read about a focused and energized Hillary who puts in 16 hour days and leaves the press corps exhausted and in awe. Hillary is in far better shape now than she was heading into Pennsylvania. Her campaign is a presidency-in-waiting.
This brings us back to Joe Andrew. He literally penned his letter of support at his mommy’s table, wringing his hands over the hard-fought nomination contest, throwing in every tired Obama cliché he could remember (I suggest a four year break on the words audacity and hope), and begging Democrats to stop voting and start buying into Obama. Instead of coming across as a dam breaking like BOKA suggested, the Andrew endorsement was more like a thud, and in an exquisite example of the parallel narratives, Hillary announced her own group of DNC’s chairs arguing for her candidacy:
The signatories, all previously announced Clinton supporters, were: Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, Don Fowler, Kenneth Curtis, Charles Manatt, Debra DeLee, Steven Grossman and the family of the late Ron Brown.
“Hillary can win our party’s nomination,” the former leaders wrote. She is neck and neck with her opponent in Indiana and North Carolina. Both states have sizable voting blocs that resemble constituencies who supported Hillary by large margins in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other contests.”
The letter concluded with an understated appeal: “We encourage you to continue to fully consider Hillary Clinton and the fact that she is qualified and accomplished. Too much is at stake for us not to consider deeply the choice we must make for our Party and our country.”
Long gone are the days when we read stories about in-fighting and a lack of focus in Hillary’s campaign. This campaign is now a lean, nimble machine capable of beating both Obama and McCain. It’s Obama who is in the shit storm, and that’s not a good place to be prior to a big contest.
by Ronald Scott
* More novels by 
* 
(
)
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
