The former First Lady has been helped by a stunningly unlucky news cycle for Obama. For starters, his friend and fund-raiser, the indicted Chicago Democratic power broker Antoin (Tony) Rezko, began his federal fraud trial on Monday. While the Rezko probe and criminal proceedings are several years old, the timing of the trial’s start is beyond inopportune for the Illinois senator. On a conference call Tuesday morning, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson pointed out that an Obama staffer sat in on the Rezko trial Monday taking notes, which he called “rather curious,” noting that the “Obama campaign was concerned enough they had a staff member dispatched to court.”
Then there’s the broadening flap over allegations that Obama’s chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told Canadian officials to disregard Obama’s protectionist trade message as pure campaign rhetoric. A Canadian government memo obtained by the Associated Press says that Canadian officials believed Goolsbee told them that Obama’s promises to revamp trade policy were “more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.” Obama’s campaign has said that the Canadian officials misconstrued Goolsbee’s comments.
But the story has given Clinton ammunition to fire at Obama, who has criticized Clinton’s previous support of NAFTA, a treaty unpopular in Ohio’s factory towns. Wolfson laced into Obama for what he has taken to calling “NAFTA-gate” and demanded that his campaign make Goolsbee available to answer questions.
It’s hard to miss that Clinton’s advisers smell blood in the water, even as they protect their own legacies by selectively leaking reputation-enhancing tidbits to reporters lest their candidate fail miserably on Tuesday. “Polls show an extremely active and competitive race in both Ohio and Texas,” Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn told reporters on a conference call Monday. “We feel there are some very good reasons here why we’ll be successful in the two states.” But over the weekend Penn issued a none-too-subtle statement to the Los Angeles Times minimizing his role in the campaign-which some observers took as a sign of dissent within the Clinton camp. Penn later told reporters his comments to the L.A. Times had been taken out of context.
Penn and Wolfson also trumpeted the success of Clinton’s criticism that Obama is too inexperienced to effectively protect the country from terror and other outside threats. Clinton just launched a new ad in Texas highlighting Obama’s failure to “hold even one hearing” on Afghanistan while serving as chairman of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that has oversight of NATO and its anti-Al Qaeda operations. The ad promises, “Hillary Clinton will never be too busy to defend our national security” and notes that Obama was “too busy running for president” to do his job.
All these developments add up to a momentum shift, according to Clinton’s hopeful advisers. “We’ve seen a tipping point,” Penn said. In light of the polls, which show a dead heat in Texas, and Clinton’s tendency to rebound just when her candidacy seems to be dead, Tuesday’s election returns could be fraught with drama. The campaign will hold a rare election-night bash in Columbus, Ohio, before departing for Washington Tuesday night.
If Clinton doesn’t score much needed wins Tuesday? While it’s been previously suggested by her own campaign that Ohio and Texas are “must-win” states, Clinton’s not acting like a candidate considering withdrawal. The campaign will likely spend Wednesday at her headquarters in Arlington, Va., where Clinton and her advisers will presumably pore over returns and make big decisions. It’s easy to imagine that increasingly angst-filled Democratic Party officials could pay a visit to Clinton headquarters, too.
When asked on Tuesday about Gov. Bill Richardson’s comments that whoever has the most delegates Wednesday morning should be the nominee, Clinton said, “This is a long process … My husband didn’t get the nomination wrapped up until June. That has been the tradition, that it usually lasted longer, into the early summer. This is a very close race, and we’re just taking it day by day. It’s a long road to the nomination.”
