Smerky Slams "Obama-Rama"

Philadelphia’s resident right-wing know-it-all Michael Smerconish concocted this yesterday in the Inquirer…

On the morning after Hillary Rodham Clinton's upset victory in New Hampshire, I spoke to MSNBC host Chris Matthews. He said that after anchoring coverage on MSNBC, he had been up all night talking to the NBC pollsters, trying to figure out how the pre-vote polls all got it wrong in projecting a double-digit win for Barack Obama.

Matthews wondered how they had been dead right in Iowa, and on the Republican side, but wrong with the Democrats.

I think the following from this story about HRC’s New Hampshire win is pretty close to the mark…

In the end, though, key voting blocs were there for Clinton - or were not there for Obama, depending on how the campaign frames it. According to exit polling conducted by The Associated Press and the networks, far more women voted than men; Clinton won 45 percent of them compared to 36 for Obama.

Also according to exit polls, only half as many New Hampshire voters under 30 turned out as in Iowa, depriving Obama of crucial support.

And I honestly believe that Clinton benefited from that lame-brained “iron my shirt” stunt those idiot radio people in Boston pulled, with HRC handling that moronic example of utter sexism like the pro that she is. On the one hand, it showed her as more “human” to the voters (and yes, maybe the “crying moment” also), but on the other hand, I don’t want to contemplate the notion that it takes a gimmick to get people to vote who otherwise would not have bothered (though I’m sure that’s true…sigh, and of course,we can't really claim our votes are secure anyway without a paper backup, can we?).

Update: I should have noted the following from here...

More than half of New Hampshire's elections administrators hand count paper ballots in public at the polling place, with a public chain of custody. The rest of New Hampshire's towns and cities use Diebold voting machines to count votes in secret, with a secret chain of custody...still no way to run an election, though, my note).

And back to his column...of course, Smerky saw (the N.H. result) differently (and to pretend that Matthews is objective towards HRC in any way is laughable when you consider this – no wonder he was apoplectic at Obama’s loss)…

"All I can tell you," Matthews said, "is that people did something inside the voting booth that was different than what they told the pollsters."

The host of Hardball was being diplomatic. Let me be more straightforward: Voters lied to the pollsters, and they did so because of race. I know. I saw it firsthand, in 1987, right here in Philadelphia.

For the benefit of anyone not from this area, I should note that Smerky is going to give us a bit of a history lesson in his eyes that will show how utterly provincial he is. And this is an easy trap for the punditocracy to fall into…

That year, I was Frank Rizzo's political director in his bid to retake City Hall. He had been defeated by W. Wilson Goode four years prior in a Democratic primary and was now taking another shot as a Republican. Marty Weinberg, Rizzo's campaign manager, believed Rizzo could make up the small margin by which he'd lost to Goode among Democrats in 1983 if, in 1987, the city's then 200,000 Republicans were added to the mix.

We in the Rizzo campaign always believed the election was impossible to poll because of race. As with Obama, Goode was what we would now call "the P.C. choice," although I don't know whether political correctness was yet an expression we used.

Which, to Smerky, is the greatest evil of all, as we know (I’m surprised the Inky didn’t let him plug his book here that protests it)…

By that I mean that Goode was certainly the more publicly acceptable, fashionable choice. In certain quarters, voters were reluctant to admit publicly their desire, much less their willingness, to vote for Rizzo.

That may be because Frank Rizzo was perhaps the most divisive mayor in the history of Philadelphia, pledging not to raise taxes and then signing into law the highest increase Philadelphia had seen to its onerous city wage tax; he also survived a recall petition because he tried to change the city charter and run for a third term, and he was political damaged by a scandal that ensued when it was found that he lied concerning a patronage scheme involving Democratic party boss Peter Camiel - the atrocity of the PGW takeover was another blemish (aside from the senior citizen discounts by that gas utility – all of this and more is recounted here…I’ll always wonder what would have happened had he won in ’91, though – also, his son is really a “stand up” guy).

On Election Night in 1987, I had the heady experience (for a 25-year-old) of being a spokesman for the Rizzo campaign. Simultaneous with the closing of the polls at 8 p.m., I was scheduled to do a live shot on TV with veteran anchor Larry Kane. Minutes before, Kane told me that the Channel 10 pollster predicted there would be a blowout win for Goode - with 70 percent of the vote! Kane also told me, and informed the Goode campaign, that he was refusing to publicize the poll because he knew it was incorrect.

"When I saw that lopsided tally, I knew people were lying," Kane told me last week.

The polling data were never aired. Goode beat Rizzo by just 2 points. And the pollster was fired.

Kane reminded me that the same thing occurred with former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, who was the odds-on favorite to win the California gubernatorial election in 1982 but lost, and lost again in 1986. In his honor, the tendency of white voters to say one thing and vote another is sometimes called "the Bradley effect."

Now this is where it starts to get interesting…

I was reflecting on all of this when Chris Matthews gave me his analysis of the New Hampshire vote. Why were polls more accurate about the outcome in Iowa? Because Iowa voted by caucus, meaning, in a public forum. But New Hampshire voted inside a ballot booth. With a curtain! Iowa voters knew they would be publicly accountable for their votes, so they were stuck. New Hampshire voted in anonymity.

So…somehow Iowa voters were “stuck” with voting for Obama because they couldn’t hide their vote? That’s a pretty pathetic commentary on Iowa voters. Somehow I think they would have just opted for HRC outright, then (in '87, there was only one Democrat on the ticket in Philadelphia, but Iowa had a choice).

Why is what I saw locally in 1987 reemerging nationally in 2008? Obama's campaign has been a juggernaut, in part because he has been the recipient of a free ride by the media, creating a sense of inevitability that he will be the first African American to be nominated by either party. To be opposed to that movement on substantive, issue-oriented grounds is nevertheless to risk being thought a racist. Rather than run that risk, voters choose the easier path of lying to a pollster. Even when anonymity is guaranteed.

That “free ride by the media” comment is truly laughable, when you consider the unbelievably ugly partisan smears Obama has had to overcome primarily from Smerky’s acolytes at Faux News; they basically tried to “strangle Obama’s candidacy in its crib,” if you will, but thankfully they failed.

And it’s also funny that Smerky says that about Obama but forgets this moment when he praised the Illinois senator.

The same dynamic makes the media reluctant to put Obama under the microscope.

Just look at what happened to Bill Clinton. In New Hampshire, he talked in substantive terms about what he believes to be inconsistencies in Obama's record pertaining to Iraq: "It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, 'Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted with the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war, and you took that speech you are now running on off your Web site in 2004, and there is no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since.' Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I have ever seen."

Reacting to that comment, Donna Brazile told Wolf Blitzer on CNN that "I will tell you, as an African American, I find his tone and his words to be very depressing."

The only thing I’ll say in Smerky’s defense a bit here is that I think Obama has gotten all of the mileage he can out of his entirely correct vote to oppose the Iraq war (and while I think Bill Clinton is going through more than a little semantic gyrations trying to spin Obama’s words against him, it is waay too funny to see Smerky defending The Big Dog; anyone who doubts that our corporate media wants to see HRC running against whatever Repug emerges must also believe in the tooth fairy).

What exactly did (Brazile) mean by "as an African American"? That had nothing to do with Bill Clinton's substantive comment about Obama and Iraq. Are Obama opponents supposed to be muzzled at this stage, forbidden to use the words fairy tale to question his meteoric rise against the backdrop of little media due diligence? One thing is certain: When pundits start speaking as members of a particular race, public discourse will diminish and suffer.

Smerky should communicate that to Ruben Navarrette, Jr., who uses his ethnicity to bait Democrats/liberals/progressives every chance he gets (re: "Clinton doesn't deserve that kind of (Hispanic) support" here).

Bill Clinton was right. I hope the media drop their double standard and fully vet Obama's candidacy. This hands-off stuff only adds to an atmosphere in which voters who don't like Obama fear to admit it. It all but forces voters to be hypocritical. As long as Obama gets a free ride, 2008 will be the year of the Bradley effect.

That remains to be seen; I think there will be some of “the Bradley effect,” but naïve liberal that I am, I honestly believe this country is ready for a candidate who will stand up for their interests (primarily John Edwards, who of course is dutifully ignored here by Smerky) as opposed to automatically endorsing those who would do the bidding of this country’s corpocracy at every turn, and I think that will outweigh the issues of racism and sexism in this election which, sadly, are very much alive.

One more thing: Smerky’s comparison of Obama to former Philadelphia mayor Wilson Goode (recalling 1987) is almost too outrageous for words. Aside from basic problems in elocution, Goode suffered from a chronic inability to crunch numbers (a big problem as former managing director) as well as the baggage from the 1985 MOVE disaster, in which Goode thought the image of an entire block of West Philadelphia row homes going up in smoke was merely “snow on his TV set.” Rizzo clearly tried to capitalize on that in the ’87 contest, but his own baggage was too much to overcome also (though an election result that close in a city with the substantial Democratic majority enjoyed by Philadelphia is an accomplishment, I’ll admit).

Maybe instead of complaining about Obama getting “a free ride from the media,” Smerky could practice some actual journalism and inform his readership regarding Obama’s policy positions on the economy, the climate crisis, education, the legitimate fight against terrorism – even illegal immigration (red meat for Smerky’s primarily freeper audience). But I guess that’s too much to ask from “a mover and shaker of public opinion” who would rather engage in barely supported speculation that amounts to mud slinging.

Stick to telling us the tales of your beard, and other related tripe next time, OK? And leave legitimate analysis to the bloggers and select “traditional” media sources, since apparently we are the only ones who can provide it in this election.

Update: By the way, concerning New Hampshire, Smerky may want to take a look at this.