Legal Commentary

Why Hillary's Florida Gambit Worked

By Big Tent Democrat

Josh Marshall argued it did not:

Just in terms of managing the news cycle I think what the Clinton folks would have been looking for are two things -- big pictures of Hillary smiling, preferably above the fold, thus suggesting victory and some mention of her margin. But I don't see either anywhere. Perhaps the print front pages will play this differently. But on balance I suspect they didn't get as much juice out of this as they wanted or expected.

This seems pretty blinded analysis to me. What was the purpose of the Florida gambit? I would say principally it was to change the headline away from Obama's Big Mo/Kennedy talk. Can Josh HONESTLY say this did not change it? Of course it did. But I think it succeeded in a larger way, much more so than I expected. I will explain on the flip.

First, Hillary Clinton was on television last night. Barack Obama was not. Hillary Clinton got to have her stump speech covered then did interviews where she got to restate the rationale of her campaign. She changed the subject from South Carolina and the Kennedys and got the story to be about her.

Second, the hostility of the Media towards her was again manifested in petty ways. This always has a backlash favorable to the Clintons. Josh is a Big Media blogger so he seems blinded to this. And indeed, he is very hostile to the Clintons now so, in a way, he is part of that effect.

Third, and this is something you will likely hear for the next few days - the Florida results, delegates or no, reveal that Obama still has a problem breaking into key demographics. Indeed, his share of the white, African American and Latino vote was similar to his shares in South Carolina. The difference was the makeup of the electorate. The rest of the country is more like Florida than South Carolina.

What I am saying is Obama has a lot of work to do if he is going to win this race.

But the bottom line is this - the headlines about the Democratic race were changed last night. No South Carolina. No Ted Kennedy. No Jesse Jackson. Heck, no Bill Clinton. And that was the most important goal for the Clinton campaign last night.

The Clinton campaign's Florida gambit worked.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 30, 2008 (boomark / email).