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Barack Obama’s Mistake: Will Turn Down Future Debates

August 18th, 2007
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is on the verge of making a huge political mistake:

Inundated by dozens of invitations, Sen. Barack Obama will turn down requests to join future debates and forums this fall, his Democratic presidential campaign announced Saturday.

Obama will honor his commitment to eight more debates (five sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, one by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision and two in Iowa), but he does not plan to accept many invitations for forums, where the candidates appear sequentially.

If he does this, consider him now a leading Vice Presidential candidate. Just look at what groups will have a chance to look at the others but will be told, in effect, that they really don’t quite stack up when it comes to the highly popular Senator’s time allotment:

The announcement could affect such key Democratic constituencies as the Congressional Black Caucus, Iowa AARP and League of Conservation Voters, campaign sources confirmed.

And there’s always an explanation that makes absolutely sense — providing you’re an avid Obama supporter:

“Unfortunately, we simply cannot run the kind of campaign we want and need to, engaging with voters in the early states and February 5, if our schedule is dictated by dozens of forums and debates,” campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement.

“Ultimately, the one group left out of the current schedule is the voters, and they are the ones who ask the toughest questions and most deserve to have those questions answered face to face.

“We simply cannot continue to hopscotch from forum to forum and run a campaign true to the bottom-up movement for change that propelled Barack into this race.”

The problem with this is that the realities of the way campaigns work mean that if he doesn’t appear he will rightfully be charged with……not being there when it mattered enough for his opponents to show up.

Others can then say he’s ducking the issues.

It will be argued (rightfully or wrongfully) that he’s avoiding these additional forums because he has gotten into hot political water due to some of his statements.

The issue is not the CONTENT of the statements he makes in debates — but that delivering boilerplate speeches to voters is a lot easier then going into risky multiple-candidate forums that where there’s a chance he could get more pesky, tough questions that could give his opponents a) a legitimate opening b) a chance to mis-characterize something into an opening.

All of which suggests that in terms of national political campaign strategy, Obama is not quite ready for prime time.

News that he’ll skip some of these forums should be making Hillary Clinton smile. And why not? She’s not desperate for campaign funds (no matter how much Obama already has). She’s ahead of him in the polls and news about him skipping events, other candidates pointing to him not being there, and angering the event organizers aren’t going to drive his numbers up.

Additionally, video of what Hillary says during these forums will get wide news coverage — and all future news stories that quote her or others will note to readers/viewers that Barack Obama declined to show up.

Obama can control his message better via scripted speeches if he skips more events. But some Democratic and other voters will raise their eyebrows at a candidate too busy (or they will conclude afraid) to appear with other candidates at key forums.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey:
Will these debates even happen if Obama declines to participate? Other candidates, especially John Edwards, would probably jump at the chance for national television coverage. However, having debates without the #2 candidate will take the luster off of the event and limit its impact among voters. Obama is, after all, the “rock star” of the Democratic primaries, and having a Democratic debate without him would be like a Rolling Stones concert without Keith Richards, only a little more incoherent.
Read his whole post.



This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Debates, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, 2008 Elections, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 
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