That afternoon, the Clinton campaign issued a statement calling for a cease-fire over race. “We differ on a lot of things,” Hillary said. “And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where we stand. But when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity, when it comes to our heroes—President John F. Kennedy and Dr. King—Senator Obama and I are on the same side.” The Obama campaign, seeming to anticipate a Clinton campaign truce, put out Obama’s own statement just before hers was issued. “I think that Bill Clinton and Hillary have historically and consistently been on the right side of civil rights issues,” Obama said. “I think that they care about the African-American community, they care about all Americans, and they want to see equal rights and equal justice in this country.”
On January 22, three days after her victory in Nevada, Hillary Clinton and Kennedy spoke again. He was still troubled by the tone of the campaign. Over the previous week, Bill Clinton and Obama had been fighting another war of words—this time over Ronald Reagan’s legacy. Kennedy was fed up. He told Hillary he had great respect for her but that the country needed to be lifted up and the current campaign was not achieving that. She told Kennedy the Republicans would eviscerate Obama in a general election. He had not been vetted, she insisted.
Bill Clinton also called Kennedy. He had been behaving himself since his “fairy tale” comment, he told Kennedy, but the purpose of the call was to amplify Hillary’s arguments that Obama was vulnerable in the general election, a risk for the Democrats. Kennedy again said he was concerned by the negative tone of the campaign. He feared it could split the party and depress Democratic turnout in the fall, enough to endanger the party’s chances of winning back the White House. Clinton said he was calling from South Carolina. He said Obama was likely to win, but told Kennedy, “We’re giving it a battle.”
Though Kennedy had ended his call with Hillary Clinton telling her he would get back to her before he did anything about an endorsement, the Clintons were now convinced he would not support her. The former president believed race trumped gender in Kennedy’s endorsement calculus, although Kennedy associates said that was not the case. They said he was drawn to Obama because he believed Obama might be able to transcend race and move the country toward a less divisive politics. Kennedy associates soon began receiving calls and messages—prompted, they were certain, by the Clintons—from Democrats in Massachusetts, from donors, from members of the Massachusetts delegation, all urging Kennedy to remain neutral. But by then, Kennedy’s mind was set. He told friends that, whether Obama won or lost in South Carolina, he would endorse him.
On Thursday, January 24, two days before the primary, he called Obama to say he was ready to endorse. He told Obama that at the beginning of the campaign he was looking for somebody to inspire the nation, and how impressed he had been by Obama’s emphasis after his Iowa victory on the importance of ending the longtime divisions within the country. Obama’s inspiration was what the country needed, he said, adding, “You’re the man.” But his endorsement came with conditions. Kennedy wanted a commitment from Obama that as president he would push for universal health care. He wanted it to be a first priority of an Obama administration. Obama agreed.
As Kennedy was reaching his final decision to endorse, his niece Caroline was planning to announce her support for Obama in a Sunday New York Times op-ed article. The news of Caroline’s pending endorsement broke on the day of the South Carolina primary, just as Obama was being declared the winner. The timing, and her words, gave the endorsement far more power than any of Obama’s advisers had anticipated. “Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president,” she began. “This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.”
She continued, “It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country—just as we did in 1960. . . . Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning. . . . I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president—not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
The day that Caroline’s endorsement was published, Ted Kennedy began to call members of his family to tell them of his plans. Almost instantly word of his decision to endorse Obama was leaked to the cable networks. Kennedy called Hillary but could not reach her. He did reach Bill Clinton. The call was brief. Then, minutes later, Bill Clinton called back, asking for a detailed explanation. Kennedy went through the reasons: how he had not seen someone in many, many years inspire people, particularly young people, the way Obama did; how it was not an endorsement against Hillary but only a statement of support for Obama and what he had tapped into and what that seemed to represent for the future of the country. Kennedy could hear the former president scribbling rapidly, apparently taking notes on the call. That made Kennedy nervous. His fear was that in some way Clinton loyalists might try to cast his endorsement as more racial politics in an effort to diminish its impact. Clinton was convinced that race was the reason Kennedy had sided with Obama.
The full story of those many phone calls may never be known. The two sides have sharply conflicting memories about some parts of the discussions, and the more time that elapses, the less each side wants to revisit them. But they had a profound impact on shaping the Democratic race at a pivotal moment.
The public endorsement came the next day at American University in Washington. When they met in the holding room before the rally, Obama and Kennedy initially exchanged no words, only a long and affectionate hug. Both Ted and Caroline Kennedy were at the rally with many members of the Kennedy family. As Roger Simon of Politico wrote that day, “It was not just an endorsement, it was a rebuke.” Kennedy told the audience, “He is a fighter who cares passionately about the causes he believes in without demonizing those who hold a different view. He is tough-minded, but he also has an uncommon capacity to appeal to the better angels of our nature.”
A Kennedy adviser remembered Obama saying, emotionally, that this was the greatest day of his life. That may have been an overstatement. But with his South Carolina victory and the blessing of the Kennedys, he was now far better positioned for the twenty-two-state mega-event on Super Tuesday, only eight days away.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
King Caucus
“By the time our first staffer landed in Idaho, Idahoans for Obama had already figured out the caucus rules and put them together . . . on how to caucus in Idaho.”
—Jon Carson, Obama’s national field director
No one understood the dangers and opportunities posed by Super Tuesday better than David Plouffe. He had been worrying about February 5th for months. Slight and intense, Plouffe ran the Obama operation from campaign headquarters in Chicago and was the yin to Axelrod’s yang. Axelrod, who oversaw the Obama message and traveled with him, attracted far more attention, but Plouffe was every bit his equal.
Like Obama, Plouffe was unflappable. Colleagues joked that his emotional range ran from A to B. He had come up through Dick Gephardt’s political operation, had run the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and later became a partner in Axelrod’s consulting firm. When he was drafted as campaign manager, he did not know Obama well, certainly not the way Axelrod did, but his tenacity and belief in the power of organizing fit ideally with Obama’s “No Drama Obama” campaign. It was Plouffe who authorized the ambitious organizing plan for Iowa, and Plouffe again who set in motion the plans that wo
uld help Obama survive Super Tuesday.
At Obama headquarters, Super Tuesday had long been seen as the most challenging day of the nomination battle, ready-made for Clinton’s candidacy—a virtual national primary where name recognition alone gave her a huge head start. Plouffe knew that, because of the demands of the four early states, Obama would have little time to devote to Super Tuesday until just before voting began and feared a potential burying ground. Certainly the Clinton camp viewed it as the pivotal day. Many of her advisers believed she could sew up the contest.
Later, Plouffe said, “As we began to figure out February 5th, it was clear that we had two goals: try to win as many states as we could, try to win as many delegates as we could.” He had a third goal: “candidly, just survive it.”
The stampede of states to the front of the nominating calendar created the single biggest day in the history of presidential politics. Every state wanted to play kingmaker by holding its contest as early as possible, and twenty-two (plus American Samoa) scheduled events for February 5th, including such megastates as California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey. Together they accounted for 1,681 of the 3,253 pledged delegates at stake. Six of those states—mostly small ones—held caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
Ironically, the Democratic National Committee had spent a year trying in vain to avoid such a pileup. The effort to change the process grew out of long-standing complaints that Iowa and New Hampshire—two small and largely white states—had far too much influence in determining the nominee of a party as racially and economically diverse as the Democrats. In 2004 DNC officials created a commission to review the entire system. The awkwardly named Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling emerged with a messy compromise: Iowa and New Hampshire would continue to hold the first caucus and primary contests. To mollify critics, the commission authorized Nevada to hold a caucus between Iowa and New Hampshire, and South Carolina to hold a primary a week after New Hampshire. No contest could be held earlier than January 14, the commission recommended, and no other states would be authorized to hold one before February 5.
The goal was admirable, even if ultimately unmet: to reverse the trend toward earlier and earlier presidential campaigns, with earlier and earlier outcomes. That had meant nominations were sometimes settled before most states had a chance to vote. Critics recalled earlier election-year calendars that seemed more sensible, for both candidates and voters. The primaries and caucuses started later and stretched over a period of months. Now everything happened early—and all at once.
By the late spring of 2007, it became clear there was a mad dash among the states to schedule events on February 5, and all the campaigns were obsessed with the demands of Super Tuesday. The DNC schedule depended on the cooperation of individual states, where politicians had their own views about when to schedule their primaries. That was not to be the case. Florida wanted an even bigger voice for its primary and voted to move the date from February 5 to January 29. That triggered a chain reaction from South Carolina to Iowa to Michigan to New Hampshire, bringing even more chaos to the calendar and fears that Iowa or New Hampshire might leapfrog everyone to schedule their contest in December 2007. Iowa came close; it set January 3 for its caucuses.
Party officials looked the other way as Iowa and New Hampshire set earlier dates. But the decisions by Florida and Michigan to move their contests to January represented a serious challenge to the DNC’s authority. To Plouffe, Florida’s move was a real obstacle to Obama’s winning the nomination. A Florida primary on February 5 was enough of a problem—one more populous state that would heighten Clinton’s inherent advantages. But a January 29 primary was far worse. Plouffe liked the idea of South Carolina being the last contest before Super Tuesday. He believed Obama could win the state—narrowly—and that a victory there would provide Obama with modest momentum as the candidates turned toward February 5. Now Florida threatened that scenario.
With the Obama campaign cheering them on, DNC officials moved to sanction Florida and then Michigan. Plouffe wanted no halfway solutions. He and others in the campaign began pushing behind the scenes, talking to DNC officials, to members of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, to state party officials and others around the country. He wanted to make sure the two states were treated equally and severely. Plouffe was thrilled at the outcome. In his mind, South Carolina was always the contest that he believed could provide the boost Obama needed to get through Super Tuesday. But, as he explained, “We knew that if Florida was on the twenty-ninth and it was a real contest, South Carolina was going to be a blip. . . . So we spent weeks and weeks and hours and hours on this . . . work[ing] every angle we could to make sure that that argument on the rules committee was, you’ve got to have the full sanction, both for the clarity of the contest but also because there’s all these other states lining up to move up.” It was a case, as he candidly acknowledged, “where our own interest merged with the interest of the DNC to block other states from moving up.”
On August 25, 2007, the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, anxious to send a signal to other potential rule breakers, stripped Florida of its delegates to the national convention. Florida’s January 29 primary would have no bearing on the nomination. The committee also signaled that it would do the same to Michigan if it moved its primary to January 15 (as it later did). Among those on the committee who voted for the stiff sanctions was Harold Ickes. Despite his position in the Clinton campaign, Ickes had a deeply held view that the nominating process was out of control. He believed the national party had to step in to prevent further chaos.
The party sanctions marked step one in a pair of events that locked in a calendar far less favorable to Clinton. The second step, initiated by politicians in the early states, was to get all the candidates to agree not to campaign or advertise in either Florida or Michigan. Richardson, Dodd, and Biden agreed immediately. They couldn’t afford to spend time or money outside the early states anyway. The day before Labor Day, Edwards and Obama also signed on. Clinton initially resisted, but later that day said she would abide by the agreement. For her it was an agonizing decision. She knew that the other candidates were motivated by pure self-interest. They were out to deny her potentially easy victories. Wiping out Michigan and Florida would help the others, but could hurt her. Nevertheless, she accepted the argument from her advisers that, given her weaknesses in Iowa, she could not afford to anger the activists there.
The February 5th calendar was a giant puzzle, a mix of big and small states, primaries and caucuses. The Obama campaign concluded early on that investing in the caucus states could pay big dividends. Caucus states were generally smaller and had far fewer delegates than marquee states like California or New York, and except for Iowa, played a minor role in the nominating process. Turnout at these events was also traditionally low. But they could be organized for relatively small amounts of money.
Strategically, Obama’s advisers anticipated that the four earliest contests might not produce a clear winner. Thus they should prepare for a campaign that extended into Super Tuesday and beyond. The nomination contest would then become a battle for delegates, and the first major test for Obama would be to prevent Clinton from amassing too many delegates on Super Tuesday.
Democratic rules were deliberately complex. The party allocated delegates in each state based on both the vote statewide and by congressional districts. The formulas for distributing delegates seemed confusing to outsiders but were clear to anyone who understood the system. Jeff Berman, a lawyer who oversaw Obama’s delegate operations, had a shrewd understanding of how the delegate selection process worked. In the summer of 2007, he assembled a group of seventy-five lawyers to research the rules governing primaries and caucuses in all the states. To educate his colleagues, in meetings and memos, he cited two of Clinton’s best Super Tuesday states, New Jersey and New York. Most congressional districts awarded three to six delegates. In New Jersey, ten districts awarded three d
elegates. Obama would need just 16.7 percent of the vote to win one delegate; to get the second delegate would mean winning 50.1 percent. A minimal effort in those districts would guarantee a third of the delegates. In New York, twenty-three of the twenty-nine districts awarded five delegates. Winning 30.1 percent of the vote assured Obama of two delegates, meaning he could win nearly 40 percent of the delegates in Clinton’s home state by competing hard in New York. The rules assured a virtual stalemate between two evenly balanced candidates.
With this in mind, Plouffe began to implement what he hoped would be a survival strategy for February 5. That assumed a split decision coming out of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina—as the results proved.
Clinton’s senior campaign advisers’ interpretation of the Democratic rules and the balance between primaries and caucuses plagued her disorganized team. As the campaign went into its tailspin in early 2008 and the sniping began, one story in particular became legendary. There was a meeting in the late summer at Mark Penn’s house at which the electoral calendar was under discussion. Several inquiries by Penn about the potential impact of winning California suggested to Ickes that Penn believed a victory in the state would virtually lock up the nomination because it would mean such a large number of delegates. Ickes, who rarely made an effort to hide his contempt for Penn, spoke up. “Could it be that the vaunted chief strategist of the vaunted Clinton campaign does not understand proportional representation?” he asked mockingly.
The Battle for America 2008 Page 22
