Unless the Democratic Party convention’s show-of-unity is truly overwhelming, the Democratic gathering is now turning into what seems to be Democrats shooting themselves in the foot and the Clinton camp shooting the party via a growing number of news stories that you usually don’t see during most national political conventions. Even contentious ones.
For instance, you don’t usually hear about key advisers of a major Democratic candidate who didn’t get the final nod skipping town when their rival who won it gives the major acceptance speech. You do now:
A number of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top advisers will not be staying in Denver long enough to hear Barack Obama accept the nomination for president, according to sources familiar with their schedules.
Clinton will deliver her speech Tuesday night. She will hold a private meeting with her top financial supporters Wednesday at noon, and will thank her delegates at an event that afternoon. Former president Bill Clinton will speak that night. Several of Hillary Clinton’s supporters are then planning to leave town. Among them, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton’s campaign chairman, and longtime supporters Steve Rattner and Maureen White. Another of Clinton’s top New York fundraisers, Alan Patricof, did not make the trip to Denver.
Robert Zimmerman, a Clinton supporter who is trying now to navigate between the two camps, will be staying for Obama’s speech. But he said in an interview that it would be unrealistic to expect there would not still be some tension between the two camps — he noted that the same was true with supporters of Gary Hart and, to a lesser extent, Howard Dean.
But check clips and go back to books such as The Making of the President series. You won’t find many instance such as this. The media will be blasted by some Democrats for focusing on the negative story rather than doing print or video-spin stenography but it is indeed a story — and one that in the end is not going to help Hillary Clinton’s longtime career.
Writes Congressional Quarterly’s Craig Crawford:
The Democratic convention now teeters on the brink of a media disaster thanks to real news that threatens to distract reporters from the scripted show.
And wouldn’t you know, it’s all about the Clintons. The trouble with the news-free nature of modern conventions is how anything unplanned can instantly get of hand with thousands of reporters in town vying for every morsel of something different.
He cites the various press reports, plus a new McCain campaign ad that features a Clinton supporter saying she’s going to vote for John McCain. And what continues to be striking is that the Clinton camp’s ire and opposition is sparked less by political agenda or angry policy differences than anger over losing, bruised egos and political payback. Crawford again:
Clinton left it to the Obama camp to spin the angle that she was not vetted because she did not want to produce documents without a guarantee of serious consideration. If that’s true, you can well imagine that, without such assurances, she was not going to produce just about the only thing left that the world doesn’t know about the Clintons — the potentially controversial lists of donors to her husband’s presidential library.
Whatever the cause, the appearance of Clinton getting dissed by Obama opened Pandora’s Box for her enthusiasts. And it gave the media what they can never resist – a nasty fight involving the Clintons.
Who would have thought that the Clintons, who had once been considered the Democratic Party’s power couple and virtual party workhorses, would be increasingly leaving themselves open to charges that they sandbagged their party and all of the people running for other offices who need a strong vote at the top in November?
Meanwhile, some reports earlier suggested that Clinton would release her delegates to vote for Obama. Perhaps those were accurate but the reality is: she pointedly says she will release her delegates but not recommend for whom they should vote.
“I will be telling my delegates that I will vote for Barack Obama,” she said. “How they vote is a more personal decision. They want to have their chance to vote for me. That is what traditionally happens … some people are having to make up their minds because there are arguments pulling them both ways.”
Many of Clinton’s delegates have already made up their minds. Some of her pledged delegates will vote for the one that brung them. Many of her superdelegates — particularly those with substantial African-American constituencies — have already said they’ll vote for Obama. Reps. Anthony Weiner (who’s running for mayor of New York) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are both in that category.
But her decision not to decide puts others in a tough position, torn betewen their loyalty to her and their eye to the future.
All of this is likely being watched by Obama’s passionate supporters and could pose a huge problem for Clinton if Obama loses and she runs in 2012. The increasingly big collection of Clinton-related convention stories show a couple and staff that is at-best appearing to drag its heels and at-worst not wanting to pull out all stops for party unity — or to even ensure an outward show of unity. So if she runs in 2012, she’ll likely start out with a huge reservoir of bad will within her own party.
But are all of these stories accurate or could they be overblown and sensationalized? The Washington Post’s latest piece focuses on Cinton’s formal call for party unity. The LA Times’ blog sees Clinton’s appearance today differently than some other reports:
But Hillary Clinton, who spoke for only 10 minutes, was a study in support. To that end, she occasionally lapsed into the strained folksiness that sometimes afflicted her on the campaign trail: “Why is this important? Well, I don’t want to live through another Republican administration, I don’t know about you. Goodness, you know, how many times can you yell at the TV screen?”
She said was looking forward to increasing the number of Senate Democrats next year, to give “President Obama … a filibuster-proof Senate.”
Finally, she alluded to the TV ads that John McCain has been running, with primary season footage of Clinton criticizing Obama.
“Let me state what I think about their tactics and these ads,” she said. “I’m Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message!
On the other hand, the Clintons have been in politics a long time. The Politico story, her advisers leaving early, the comments about her delegates — all will be taken as signals of what the Clintons really feel. And the Clinton aren’t sending out the signal so far for Democrats to bury the hatchets in places other than each others’ heads.
They know how to send out signals.
And the signals being sent out — reflected in media reports — are beginning to form a pattern that will not be lost on her supporters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.