CLEVELAND, Ohio—So much for feeling honored to share the stage with Barack Obama (as Hillary Clinton said almost sweetly at the University of Texas debate last Tuesday, a comment which many people saw as a valedictory signaling the end of her campaign).
Last night, Hillary Clinton 5.0 was on stage at Cleveland State University, taking on Obama and NBC News moderators with equal venom. There were audible gasps in the campus’s large ballroom, a.k.a. “press file center”, when, seemingly out of nowhere, a furious Clinton snapped after NBC anchor Brian Williams cut off a 16-minute policy debate on health care by asking her about her positions on NAFTA. Clinton, who may have been frustrated that she couldn’t land a decisive blow on health care—her pet issue and one on which her campaign believes she clearly bests Obama—complained that she always gets questioned first. That may be true, but saying so made Clinton seem whiny. Especially since she pointed to a Saturday Night Live skit that many Ohioans likely haven’t seen or heard about to make her case.
The skit, which aired over the weekend and portrayed the press corps as coddling Obama, clearly buoyed the Clinton campaign. But they may be so excited that they’re overrating the value of a single, pro-Hillary SNL sketch. The bottom line is that when Clinton followed her complaint about getting questioned first with a vague and sarcastic snarl that she didn’t “know if anybody saw Saturday Night Live, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow,” she did not come off well.
Not that her campaign staff agrees. “I think a lot of people did see Saturday Night Live and I think she was pointing out that it was just funny that she was getting the first question just like they had illustrated,” chief strategist Mark Penn told journalists who had gathered in the spin room after the debate. “It’s almost become part of popular culture now that she gets the tough, hard questions and I think that if you were gonna pick one phrase that you heard in the debate that phrase would have been, ‘Well, I agree with what she said.’ And you saw Senator Obama say that about both foreign affairs matters, NAFTA, domestic matters—and I think that was probably the phrase of the night.”
Penn said he is not concerned that Clinton might have come across as too negative. Instead, he said, she portrayed herself as serious and a fighter. “It was an extremely strong performance,” Penn said. “The important moments of this debate for the people of Ohio were whether somebody favors universal health care or not and whether somebody’s sending out unfair mailers or not.” (The latter reference is to Obama mailers that Clinton says misrepresent her positions on NAFTA and health care. She lambasted the Illinois senator for sending the mailers during an event in Cincinnati over the weekend).
Despite their conviction that Clinton had a good night, her advisers were reluctant to be specific about their hopes for her on Tuesday, the crucial primary day in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont that could well decide the Democratic nominee. “We’re just looking to be successful in both and we’re going to the convention,” Penn said in the post-debate spin room, though he declined to define success or concede that to be successful the campaign would have to win both of Tuesday’s big-state contests. “There are many ways to judge success,” Penn said. “Let’s see what the voters say—we’re in this all the way.”
For her part, Mandy Grunwald, Clinton’s chief media consultant, said she thought Clinton’s “tone tonight was great. I’ve read 10 blogs already saying that.” Like Penn, however, Grunwald grew less sanguine when a reporter pushed her to define expectations for Tuesday. After several rephrasings from the reporter, who wasn’t giving up, Grunwald finally said she doesn’t forecast “scenarios”, calling it “not productive.”
The big question is whether the more combative Hillary Clinton on display in Cleveland last night will prove productive for the campaign, which badly needs to win Tuesday. Clinton’s aides’ reluctance to play the expectations game notwithstanding, Clinton desperately needs to beat Obama in Ohio and Texas. Her apparent decision to storm into the states with a negative campaign carries huge risks, making an already divisive politician vulnerable to further alienation. Risks and all, Clinton clearly made up her mind to go for broke last night. At one point, America’s news anchor, the mild-mannered Williams, literally cut her off, saying in an annoyed tone, “Television doesn’t stop.” When she kept talking, he practically yelled, “Can you hold that thought?” It’s a good question. With 2012 only four short years away, Clinton has every incentive not to, as Penn puts it, “take it to the convention.” But if backed into a corner will she be capable of “holding that thought?” After watching last night’s debate, it’s hard to be sure.
