Can Obama win if Ferraro stays?

I was appalled yesterday by the comments of Geraldine Ferraro regarding Barack Obama’s standing in the Democratic race.

“I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against.

“For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.

“And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

(From ABC News.)

So, let me sum up: the media hates women, loves African-American men (who have all the advantages), and the country is too stupid to think through the message of hope that the Obama campaign delivers.

The race-baiting got even louder when the Obama campaign responded, calling the Clinton campaign to task for the comments of Ferarro, a Clinton campaign finance chair. Ferraro was quoted by CNN as saying:

“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says, ‘Let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world,’ you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” she told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, California. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

This morning, Ferraro appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America, taking the defiance to yet another level.

“I am sorry that people think this was a racist comment,” Ferraro said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America.”

She declined to apologize directly for the firestorm she created when she told a newspaper last week that “if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.”

She told Sawyer she was “absolutely not” sorry for what she said.

That the Clinton campaign hasn’t fired Ferraro would indicate that this might not be a simple case of a surrogate making comments that “veer off into the personal.” Given Ferarro’s history of similar comments, it looks more today like a calculated strategy to further inject race into the campaign, and to do so at arm’s length from the candidate. The Clinton campaign response to Obama’s denunciation of Ferraro’s comments was telling:

In January, NBC’s Tim Russert confronted Senator Barack Obama with a four page memo from his campaign characterizing statements they claimed the Clinton Campaign had made about race. Asked in hindsight whether he regretted pushing this story, Senator Obama said :

“Well, not only in hindsight, but going forward. I think that, as Hillary said, our supporters, our staff, get overzealous. They start saying things that I would not say. And it is my responsibility to make sure that we’re setting a clear tone in our campaign, and I take that responsibility very seriously, which is why I spoke yesterday and sent a message in case people were not clear that what we want to do is make sure that we focus on the issues.”

We agreed then. We agree today. Supporters from both campaigns will get overzealous. Senator Clinton today reiterated that when asked about Geraldine Ferraro’s recent comments:

“I do not agree with that and you know it’s regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides say things that veer off into the personal. We ought to keep this focused on the issues. That’s what this campaign should be about.”

Senator Obama’s campaign staff seems to have forgotten his pledge. We have not. And, we reject these false, personal and politically calculated attacks on the eve of a primary. This campaign should be about the leadership we need for a better future and these attacks serve only to divide the Democratic Party and the American people.

Let’s take another pause here to, again, unspool this message. According to the Clinton campaign, Obama should let Ferraro’s comments lie, as he’s “pledged” to focus on the issues and take “very seriously” the tone of the campaign. Bear in mind that this is a pledge he kept when accepting Samantha Power’s resignation for straying from the issues into the personal.

To say that the Clinton campaign’s verbal thrust-and-parry has taken a Kafkaesque turn would understate the otherworldly focus of their response. It’s classic (and, some might say, masterly) context-bending to fire off an indignant response that focuses on the secondary context of a quote - the “pledge” to keep the campaign narrative centered the issues - when the primary context is the responsibility of the candidates to enforce that focus. Today, Clinton has done nothing to convey her sense of responsibility for “setting a clear tone” in the campaign. If the Clinton campaign agrees with the real context of Obama’s quote, Ferraro’s comments should be both denounced and rejected, and Ferraro’s role in the campaign should be terminated. That neither have happened points to a less-than-subtle concurrence with Ferraro’s racist comments. That, in turn, seems to indicate a quiet sense in the Clinton campaign that they can, in some way, actually benefit from the dustup.

It also points to what appears to be a growing flaw in the Obama campaign: the inability of his communications staff to stanch the “kitchen sink” strategy. Ferarro’s comments and the Clinton campaign response to Obama’s concerns have effectively blunted his two strongest victories in the past seven days: the resounding wins in Wyoming and Mississippi and the resulting negation of Clinton’s delegate gains in last week’s contests. That the comments haven’t been effectively condemned by the Obama camp leaves them on the table, an invitation to those in rural Pennsylvania who would scorn affirmative action to support the candidate who tacitly understands that scorn. In short, the Obama campaign is at risk of being steamrolled by the win-at-all-costs actions of the Clinton campaign. His aspirational high-road campaign is perilously close to being obscured by the dark clouds of the politics-as-usual Clinton communications team.

As an observer, I can only offer suggestions on how to stop the momentum of the Clinton communications staff. But, I think it can be done, and done permanently, in one fell swoop. It will take the type of dramatic action we haven’t seen from the Obama campaign, but action that’s consistent with his message of change.

In my view, the Obama campaign should:

1. Call a press conference with the candidate himself.
2. Begin that press conference by quoting his own statements from the January debate, exactly as presented by the Clinton campaign’s response.
3. Refocus those comments to their original context: that candidates should take the responsibility for the tone of their own campaigns “very seriously.”
4. Remind the media that when Austen Goolsby and Samantha Power took actions and made statements that were inconsistent with the message of the Obama campaign, their relationship with the campaign was ended.
5. Re-iterate that though those decisions were tough, they are the types of decisions that have to be made by leaders.
6. Emphasize that the leaders in the Obama campaign, Obama included, understood that action, rather than words, was necessary in those cases.
7. Question why Senator Clinton has not taken action to “denounce and reject” the divisive statements of Geraldine Ferraro.
8. Emphasize that if Senator Clinton viewed the divisive language of her surrogates as a negative to her campaign, she would have removed Ferraro without prompting from the Obama campaign. “That she has not done so, choosing to respond with words rather than actions, clearly indicates that she sees some political benefit in Ms. Ferraro’s message.”
9. “This is but one element of the change upon which this candidacy and this campaign have been based: ripping from our party and our politics the page in the playbook that says it’s okay to divide our constituents along the lines of gender, class and race; that winning is more important than how the game is played; that the quiet arrogance of believing ‘I have to win because I have the only real solutions’ is a means that in and of itself destroys the end. While I can’t attribute Ms. Ferraro’s comments directly to the Clinton campaign, it’s clear by their inaction that that page still exists in their playbook.”
10. “On a personal note, I was not a child of affirmative action. I was not simply given the privilege that Ms. Ferraro’s comments so condescendingly imply. I have worked hard in school, as a husband and father, in my community, in the Illinois Senate, and in the US Senate. That I’m able to stand here today is a statement about the opportunities afforded to Americans who can dedicate their words and their actions to a cause they believe in. As the child of immigrants, that’s an ethic Ms. Ferraro clearly understands. While I respect her leadership and her groundbreaking stature in the Democratic party, that stature is, in fact, what makes these comments both divisive and, I think, dangerous. The tacit approval of this divisiveness by the Clinton campaign should be rejected and denounced immediately, by actions rather than words. As we’ve already demonstrated, It’s what leaders do.”

Clearly, the idea is to continue along the high road, emphasizing the ideals so clearly expressed by the campaign to this point. But, there also has to be an underlying sense of toughness and quiet, focused outrage that hasn’t yet been displayed. And, the Obama campaign has to hold Clinton accountable for her own attacks of “actions not words” and “ready to lead from day one.” If Ferraro resigns, Obama wins the skirmish. If she doesn’t, Obama still wins by pointing out the politics of the past in the form of the Clinton campaign. “Actions not words” and “the leadership to make the tough decisions” have to be the key talking points.

And, here’s the real rub. The Clinton campaign has presented Obama with this perfect opportunity to display his own unique brand of toughness with integrity. Doing so, in this way, would take the media by surprise, refocusing the coverage on his message and away from her kitchen sink strategy. That would create the opening, however temporary, to talk about the issues important to voters in Pennsylvania.

Frankly, I’m no longer certain that Obama can survive the Big Mo of the Clinton communications team. They’ve begun to gut his staff from a distance and have drawn him out of his message of change. Ferraro’s comments were so over the top that the opening exists to reframe the discussion favorably, but only if he seizes the opportunity quickly. If he doesn’t, a moment to definitively retake control of the campaign will be gone.

If he can’t do that with an opening this large, will he get another chance?