The Clinton strategy
Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 4:35 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
The Clinton campaign held a conference call today to talk celebrate the New York senator's three wins last night, to talk about the importance of allowing the race for the nomination to continue and re-state their belief that Clinton has the best chance of holding up under Republican attacks without getting pushed off course.
Chief Strategist Mark Penn said he would put Wyoming and Mississippi, the next two states to vote, “in what I call the challenging category for us,” because Obama has “some very significant leads,” but he downplayed Mississippi in pushing the campaign's argument that Clinton does best in the states that matter, the blue states and noting that he couldn't remember the last time Mississippi went Democratic in a presidential race.
Top aide Harold Ickes predicted she would do well in Pennsylvania. “I think that we had what might be characterized as a dry spell for the last, prior to last night,” he said. “We think that we have turned the corner in the campaign. We think that the solid results of last night augur well for the future.”
He also noted he would leave the predictions to Penn, before going on to make predictions. “I think that she is going to do very, very well in Pennsylvania, for example,” Ickes said, “and she is going to continue to hold her own in a number of other states, to win some, to hold her own in others. Overall, she'll be adding to her count on delegates, and we expect that by the end of this, she and Sen. Obama will be very close to one another.”
Ickes argued Clinton could put together wins in states like Arkansas, New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio and Florida to win enough electoral votes in a general election to clinch the presidency, and Penn said Clinton's strength among women and Latinos would help push her to victory as the nominee in November.
Penn said he believed the questions they had raised about whether Obama was truly committed to changing NAFTA had had a “significant impact” on the race in Ohio. When asked whether continuing to hit the Illinois senator on this and other issues to convince superdelegates he couldn't win in the general election would be palatable to Democrats, Ickes argued the point of the nominating process was to vet the nominee.
“The party is making the most important decision it makes,” he said, “that is who will be our nominee in the fall, and we have an obligation as delegates to that convention, of which I'm one, to make sure that we try to figure out who will be the strongest candidate to take on John McCain and the Republican attack machine, which will turn on full force once our nominee emerges. So this is not a question of trying to damage somebody; this is a question of trying to fully understand all of the particular aspects of each of the candidates.”
He further argued that Clinton had been vetted for the last 15 years and that too much was unknown about Obama. He raised questions once again about the Illinois senator's relationship with real estate developer Tony Rezko, who is on trial for corruption. Penn added that Obama's support had fallen significantly after only a few days of questioning on these issues.
On the issue of the superdelegates who could ultimately decide the nominee, Ickes argued they should wait and watch as the race develops.
“The uncommitted superdelegates, or automatic delegates, are standing back,” Ickes said. “They're keeping their powder dry, and they're watching this process unfold. I mean there's another 12 states to vote, another 600-plus delegates to elect, another three months to go before Puerto Rico finalizes the process, and there's a ways to-- they're watching and waiting.”
Penn would not give further comment on suggestions Clinton made this morning in television interviews that she might consider sharing the ticket with Obama.
The call began with statements by Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Chuck Schumer of New York. Bayh pressed the importance of allowing the race to continue so that more people's voices can be heard. Indiana votes on May 6.
Schumer continued the fighting theme of recent days. “Hillary wins people over,” the senior senator from New York said. “She doesn't do it in a dramatic way. She doesn't do it, you know, with one speech or something like that. She rather just works and works and works and she focuses on things people care about; she knows how to talk to their concerns.”
