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Why Obama Can’t Close the Deal

April 23rd, 2008
By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor


Pennsylvania had the possibility of turning a corner in one direction or another, but it didn’t happen. Things might have really gotten interesting if Clinton had surged ahead and grabbed a large number of delegates. Yet not only did that fail to happen, but Obama failed to deliver a knockout punch. Why? I was reading one possible explanation at The Lady Logician which gives us a clue.

As we have seen in the last 10 days, Senator Obama has bought into the “Obamassiah” meme - hook, line and sinker. His sense of “predestination” has been a decided detriment as he just does not have the thick skin needed to trade punches with the Clinton’s AND the national media. Maybe if he had stayed around Illinois state politics a little longer and mixed it up with Mayor Daley a little more often, he might have developed a thicker skin. As it is, many have already opined that if Sen. Obama can not handle the give and take of a national campaign, what will he do when he is faced with a hostile Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

This post should be read in full, but it highlights many of the same questions addressed in this post at Huffington.

To all Super Delegates: you decide who is riskier as a general election candidate. The candidate whose negatives, driven by the right-wing hate machine in the 1990s in particular, are all out there and already taken into account. Or a candidate who is still virtually unknown to most of the electorate, with Republicans clearly looking forward to filling in the blanks with the facts about his record of which many general election voters still are not aware.

Obama has had much going for him, but at this point I have begun to wonder if Hillary and Barack are not in a race to see who can elect John McCain the fastest. Check out the posts linked above for some fresh perspective.



This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 9 Comments

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    Let me see. He came into the race in pennsylvania with a 25 point disadvantage and the machine working furious for Hillary.
    Hillary has been employing republican tactics while Obama, who already has won this thing unofficially, has to be the party uniter and not piss off her supporters.
    The press has been merciless.
    Pennsylvania is the second oldest state bordering on NY.
    shake and pour.
    Wait. by all rights Obama should have been blown out. In reality the race ended up pretty much where it was before the primary. Only now Clinton cannot win the pledged delegate count.
    wow.
    • ^
    • v
    I lose more and more respect for The Clinton's and their cadre (like Davis and Carville) every day.

    Hillary is the undisputed winner of the least informed segment of the electorate.

    I am old my self, and I see so many people opposing Obama because he is the future.

    Well, Obama isn't the future. Obama is the present.

    It is time for Davis and the other Clinton Apologists to let America move forward. Hillary means a return to The Clinton's vs. The World; Hillary means a return to Democrats losing Governorships and State Houses; Hillary means a return of the loss to the Democrats of both the US SEnate and US House of Representatives; Hillary means a return to The Clinton's taking less than 50% of the popular vote and accomplishing very little; Hillary means a return to 24 hour a day War Room where the object is the survival of The Clinton's.

    America has had enough of Lanny Davis, Bill Clinton, and Hillary.
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    I reject the whole premise of this post. Hillary still has a lot of strong supporters. Many of them long for the first woman President. Others deeply love the Clintons from the 1990s. And others just like her tenacity. Those voters happened to be concentrated among older, whiter and more female demographics, and especially in the working class. And PA and OH have a LOT of older, white working class women. Obama did as well as he could in PA given the demographics. He won't "closer her out" because the demographics won't allow it at this point. He only needs 22% of remaining superdelegates to win. That shouldn't be too difficult, but it will take time. Be patient!
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    "Hillary is the undisputed winner of the least informed segment of the electorate."

    And this from an apparent supporter of the "new breed of politician".

    If you win, the only thing you can count on is being the 51% of the otherwise great divide this time. Don't count on much getting done this time around either.
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    I don't get this post either. Or really I don't get the "he dislikes personal attacks" and therefore he can't negotiate with Kim Jong-Il part of the quoted material. Is there any connection at all between these two things? Unless one thinks the next President is going to have an extended campaign season with Kim as leader of the Crazy Party, there's no connection.
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    And I'm sorry, but is Obama actually unknown to most of the voting electorate? He's in the face of pretty much everyone all the time, having spent millions of campaign dollars in state after state and being in the news every single day. Sure he's not as famous as the Clintons, but I bet he's as well known as McCain -- and 10 times more than Biden, Richardson, or Dodd, who are all top notch candidates.
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    I hesitate to bring this up, but I suspect that what some voters mean when they say 'unkndown' is that Obama is the first Afro-Ameican presidential candidate to campaign in their neighborhood.
    I was dumbfounded to hear (Charlie Rose) how many admitted - openly - in post-voting interviews that they wouldn't vote for Obama because he is black. Apparently, we haven't come quite as far as was initially hoped.
    Since this has a lot to do with age, (the same wasn't true among younger voters) you can see how it augments Clinton's popularity with older voters.

    When we talk about Obama's ability to 'connect, that has to be considered as one factor, - not a tremendous factor, but a factor, neverthelss. I don't remember the percentage cited; it was in the 5 to 15% range, I think. That's only those who acmitted it. It makes you wonder about the ones not being totally honest about it.
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    • v
    Hold on, you're saying that Bill Clinton's Special Counsel during the Lewinsky years (known as the "garbage man") who was also a friend of Hillary's in college thinks that Hillary is the stronger candidate? You don't say!
    • ^
    • v
    How come Clinton can't close the deal?

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