Eyes on the Prize

Democrats will not have a good idea who their candidate is at least until April 22, the day of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, and even then, may still not know with certainty until late in the summer. Between now and then, the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a responsibility to the millions of Democrats who have participated in the election to maintain a basic level of civility. This applies equally to the candidates and their staffers and advisors. The sort of personal animosity that motivated Obama’s advisor and Kennedy School professor Samantha Power’s comment last week, calling Clinton a “monster,” simply cannot be tolerated. Otherwise, this race risks devolving into nothing more than a flurry of negative advertising, which hurts the Democrats’ chance of achieving the far more fundamental goal: defeating John McCain in November. Let this not simply be a war of attrition.

It may be hard to imagine now, but Democrats will eventually overcome the impasse at which they currently find themselves and nominate one candidate to head their ticket for the presidential election next November. Although in duration and money spent, the fight to capture the Democratic nomination might seem like the be-all-end-all, what we have seen so far is just the beginning. After the party convention in August, the nominee is will have to fight the real battle—the one for the White House—against John McCain.

To be sure, it would be naïve to expect a primary of this magnitude to remain focused exclusively on policy issues. Considering how little actually separates Clinton and Obama, a campaign of this duration and expense will, in the tensest moments, necessarily involve some level of negative campaigning. Such is simply the case in modern American politics, and we recognize that.

Nonetheless, whatever immediate advantages one Democrat derives from negative campaigning against the other, they are nothing compared with the resulting fallout the party faces in the general election. If the campaign turns in to a gloves-off fight until the Pennsylvania primary, whoever emerges from the rubble will be in a considerably weaker position to face the Republican Party. If it is Hillary Clinton, the vicious campaigning will have served to remind voters of her divisiveness. This certainly seemed the case in South Carolina. If Barack Obama is the candidate, his message of a new, hopeful brand of politics will have been wholly undermined by insult warfare. Not to mention that an extended period of bare-knuckle politics threatens to undo all the energy the Democratic Party has amassed in a campaign that featured both the potential first female president and potentially the first African American.

For Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and senior advisor to Obama’s campaign, calling Clinton a “monster” is to tread in dangerous waters. And she rightfully resigned from the campaign. A comment made by a Clinton spokesman, Howard Wolfson, which compared Obama to Kenneth Starr, the independent investigator who uncovered Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, is hardly better.

Moreover, it does not matter that neither of these comments was made by the candidates themselves. In the game of politics, perception trumps reality, and both of these comments were unfortunately perceived as having come directly from the campaigns. The media portrayal and public perception are such that whether the attacks are accidental or strategic, the effect is just a deleterious for the Democratic Party. For the sake of the party, Clinton and Obama—both the candidates and their staffs—must avoid, as much as possible, regressing into trench warfare from here on out. Right now, it may seem like the nomination is everything, but at the end of the day, both must remember that they are Democrats. They have to keep their eyes on the prize.