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Final Thoughts on Indiana and N.C.

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This entry was posted on 5/6/2008 8:59 AM and is filed under 2008 Election,All Posts.


Clinton closed with the following ad, shamelessly slamming Obama for his opposition to the notorious gas tax holiday.  To recap:


  • The gas tax holiday, if it was somehow successfully passed by Congress and signed by President Bush within the next few weeks, would save consumers a whopping $28.

  • Neither Congress nor President Bush want anything to do with it.

  • The "holiday" would actually not even save consumers the $28, since once the tax is lifted, demand will rise, and the price of gas will go up.  In fact, since the gas tax "holiday" is only short-term, there is a good chance that enacting it would actually raise gas prices in the long run, since the tax would eventually be reinstated on top of the recently raised non-taxed price. 

Here's Clinton's ad:




It's shameless, it's totally dishonest, it's probably pretty damn effective.  "Obama wants you to keep paying gas taxes"?  This ad deserves a sharp, hard-hitting response.

The Obama campaign coughed up the following:




I'm sorry, but that just doesn't cut it.  This is his big final argument to Indiana and N.C. voters?  "Hillary Clinton's taking the low road"? 

What about a tough, specific response over the gas tax issue?  I don't know, maybe something like "Hillary Clinton is lying to you.  You will never see one dime of that $28 gas tax holiday.  She thinks you're too ignorant to realize it.  I don't."

This ad is so general, so vague, it could have been filmed in any state, in any one of the past primaries.  It seems demographically targeted to no one in particular, except perhaps nice guy Barack Obama.

The ad is one small part of a larger, weaker message that grabbed hold of the Obama campaign in Indiana the last couple weeks.  Had they played it tougher, more specific, the Illinois senator could seriously have had a chance to turn out her lights in Hoosierland, and, coupled with a big win in North Carolina, ended this damn thing.  Now, he'll be lucky to get a split decision tonight, maintaining the status quo, and once again losing the lower-income white voters he so desperately needs to be competitive in the general.

What's most upsetting to me is how the Wednesday-morning quarterbacks are going to continue to press the theme that lower-income white Democrats just won't vote for the black guy.  No doubt that's the case with some of them.  But having grown up in Kentucky, just across the border from Indiana, I know that a great deal of these voters would vote for anyone—white or black, male or female—who sees politics as an engine for creating direct, positive, specific economic change in their lives.  They understandably have a harder time getting excited about someone who treats politics like some grandly orchestrated civics lesson. 

The sad part is that Obama's plans would make that positive impact in their lives, and his natural instinct to negotiate with and win over the other side—rather than bludgeon it to death—makes the likelihood of his program actually getting passed much more possible than Hillary's.  But he can't behave as if he's above making that case aggressively, and expect to win.  And why he's doing that lately is becoming more and more of a mystery to me.

Why are you so damned hesitant to make a meat-and-potatoes case to these voters, Professor Obama?

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