Kautzman's AP GO PO Blog

Ellen Goodman
Boston Globe
October 9, 2007

BOSTON – Here in New England, we have an unofficial fifth season.

It’s known as Foliage Season, the color-coded time of year when those not otherwise preoccupied with the Red Sox indulge in the benign spectator sport of leaf peeping.

I am not surprised that presidential politics also has its unofficial season. This is the High Risk Season, a danger zone for front-runners when the media attention is not on the inevitability of falling leaves but the possibility of falling stars.

All summer the story line was Hillary Clinton’s steady-as-you-go campaign. After one debate or another, she was described as “commanding,” “knowledgeable,” “experienced.” Now even Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson are pleading their case for the Republican nomination on the claim that they alone can beat Hillary.

This image of a candidate who’s passed the presidential readiness test wooed more voters to her side. She’s now leading the Democratic field by 33 points. But this hasn’t endeared her to political reporters. The one reliable media bias, we know, is not pro-liberal or pro-conservative, pro-Democrat or pro-Republican. It is pro-knockdown-drag-out campaign.

Lights, camera, action, please. Sweetheart, get me rewrite, or at least something to write about.

Thus we now enter the season when the journalistic pack, including those who rail against pack journalism, howls in anxiety at the prospect of a front-runner loping to the finish line. The colors are changing and the headlines are, too. They now read: “Can Clinton Be Stopped?” “Can Clinton’s ‘Inevitability’ Be Erased?” “How to Stop Hillary.” And “Clinton Leads Now, But Race Isn’t Over.”

Well, right, the race isn’t over. The voting hasn’t even begun. But maybe we can stop reading the maple leaves for a moment and take in a larger view of the landscape.

We are heirs and heiresses to a century of speculation on whether Americans would ever vote for a woman. I have a Wonder Woman poster from 1943 imagining the first woman president … 1,000 years in the future.

When Hillary Clinton first entered the race, the story line had a pink border. Those same headlines asked and asked and asked: “Is the Country Ready for a Woman President?” The buzz about the former first lady was about being the first woman.

It’s pretty stunning that in less than a year, the question has morphed from whether a woman is “electable” to whether she’s “stoppable.”

It’s even more remarkable that Hillary is now seen less as the woman candidate than the establishment candidate.

I began noticing the de-gendering – forgive the word – of Hillary Clinton last March. About then, the right wing’s favorite “radical feminist socialist” was becoming the left wing’s “politics as usual.” Now, as the High Risk Season opens, she’s framed less for making history than for perpetuating a dynasty. After a millennium as political outsiders, how is it possible that the serious female contender is cast – and even castigated – as the insider? As Hillary would say, “Hello?”

Remember that Clinton has not escaped the pink microscope. Who can forget the V-neck that launched a thousand treatises on the meaning of cleavage? Now cleavage coverage has been followed by cackle coverage, those endless deconstructions of her laugh.

The stakes and styles are still different for women. The late Elizabeth Janeway once predicted that the first woman president would be a Republican. She’d defuse her sex by conservatism. Hillary is no Republican, nor is she Margaret Thatcher. But women walk a fine line to erase a gender line.

So this is where Clinton is … walking that line. While Obama gets praise for making history, she gets points for experience. When Edwards outflanks her on the left, this “polarizing figure” settles deeper into the comforting center. It’s the best place for a woman in the general election.

But at the same time the media are clamoring for action – Can Hillary Be Stopped? – many Democratic primary voters are just plain clamoring. So there’s some danger in typecasting the first woman as the old guard. This is an emblem of our era. We’ve gone straight from pre-feminism to post-feminism without stopping along the way to experience the real thing.

A woman in politics was once automatically seen as a change agent, but too much of an outsider to entrust with the Oval Office. We’ve still never had a woman president. But the case against Hillary is that she’s too much of an insider?

Hillary Clinton: politics as usual. Or maybe life as usual. First you struggle to get into the establishment and then you get dismissed as too establishment. There’s got to be a touch of irony in this seasonal affective disorder. If, that is, any woman still dares to cackle.

Candidates Stay Away, but Others Say State’s Voice Should Match Its Size
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; A06

DEARBORN, Mich., Oct. 8 — For Debbie Dingell and Sen. Carl M. Levin, the standoff has been brewing for years. The Michigan Democrats have long worked, mostly behind the scenes, to change an electoral calendar that places vast importance on results in Iowa and New Hampshire, states that bear little resemblance to the industrial heartland.

“There’s just no possible justification for one or two states that are not particularly representative to have a dominant role in this process. It’s not fair to other states,” Levin said in a telephone interview. “Why the hell do New Hampshire and Iowa have a claim to the attention to their issues?”

Republican presidential candidates will be standing on a Dearborn stage Tuesday afternoon, discussing manufacturing, jobs and the U.S. economy. Democrats, meanwhile, are shunning Michigan in retaliation for the state’s decision to elbow its way into the early primary lineup. When Michigan moved its primary to Jan. 15, leaders in New Hampshire and Iowa leaned on the Democratic principals to stay away.

The result is a tangle, with the Democratic National Committee vowing not to seat any convention delegates Michigan chooses that day and Democratic presidential candidates facing a deadline of Tuesday to decide whether to remain on the ballot here.

Those behind Michigan’s move are warning candidates that removing their names would be risky.

“We are going January 15,” Dingell, a Democratic national committeewoman and the wife of Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), declared after a fiery speech here Friday. “No matter what, people are going to pay attention to what happens on January 15 . . . even if it’s a beauty contest.”

Meanwhile, Republican contenders are campaigning actively in a state in which their race looks wide open.

“We couldn’t have planned it better ourselves,” said Bill Nowling, the state GOP spokesman. “While they’re busy shooting themselves in the foot, I’m not going to disturb them.”

Before the leapfrogging began, it appeared that Iowa would hold its caucuses on Jan. 14, followed five days later by caucuses in Nevada. New Hampshire would preserve its customary premier primary slot on Jan. 22, and South Carolina would hold its primary Jan. 29.

The candidates planned their travel, staffing and media buys accordingly, but then Florida made a move.

Defying the DNC, Florida moved its primary to Jan. 29, which prompted South Carolina Republicans to jump to Jan. 19 and retain their state’s distinction as the first Southern state to vote. New Hampshire law requires the state’s primary to be at least seven days before any similar contest, so Secretary of State William M. Gardner declared that the vote would move up by at least a week. That gave Michigan its opening.

After the 2004 election, the DNC agreed to review the schedule with an eye toward tempering the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire. It added Nevada and South Carolina, states with more Hispanic and black voters, respectively, as the second and fourth stops on the primary tour.

Michigan’s political leaders were disappointed not to be added to the first four but went along, expecting that other states would abide by the new calendar. When the dates started to shift — and particularly when Gardner said New Hampshire would move up — they considered the deal broken.

Levin and Debbie Dingell took their case to DNC Chairman Howard Dean last month, complaining that he was standing by silently as New Hampshire broke its promise. They asked Dean to urge Democrats not to campaign there.

“Someone,” the two wrote, “has to take on New Hampshire’s transparent effort to violate the DNC rules and to maintain its privileged position.”

Instead, the DNC warned Michigan that any delegates chosen Jan. 15 would not be seated at next summer’s convention in Denver, the same punishment that Florida Democrats are suing the party over. Rules and schedules are essential, one DNC official said, to ensure “fairness and predictability.”

“I don’t see anything we can do,” the official said, “without all hell breaking loose.”

As a practical matter, no Democratic nominee wants a floor fight over Florida and Michigan delegates, state officials say.

“The Democratic candidates are too smart not to find a way to campaign in Michigan and Florida,” Levin said, “and they’re not that self-destructive.”

In Dearborn, Debbie Dingell won cheers when she told hundreds of union workers at a state AFSCME gathering that Michigan voters have been forced “for too long” to size up the candidates from afar.

In a spirited call-and-response, she asked workers whether they would rather see Democratic candidates in Michigan talking about manufacturing, jobs and their future, “instead of talking about wood-burning stoves in the middle of New Hampshire in winter.”

Danny Craig is on board. “We’ve earned the right to move up,” said the longtime union activist from Detroit.

“We’ve got two small states, not industrial states, deciding who should be the candidate leading the charge and setting the terms of the debate,” said Craig, who also believes the Democrats’ avoidance of Michigan will be lost on regular voters. “I don’t think the public will understand. I think it’s a bad decision.”

Stacie Dineen, an AFSCME representative from Kalamazoo, sees the issue in different terms. Noting that Michigan initially planned to choose delegates by caucus, she is dismayed that caucuses underwritten by the political parties will be replaced by a far more costly primary paid for by taxpayers.

“We don’t have to be the first dog on the block. I just think the timing is terrible to do that. We should be focused on the here and now,” Dineen said. “The next thing you know, we’ll be voting before Christmas.”