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The Battle for Pennsylvania

Swing-State Campaign Bitter and Unsavory for Democrats

By Cordula Meyer, Gregor Peter Schmitz and Gabor Steingart

The United States is experiencing the longest and toughest presidential primary season in its history. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are tearing each other down and inadvertently giving Republican John McCain's campaign a boost. Are the Democrats killing their prospects for the White House?

Even in an election campaign in which vast exaggerations are the rule, there is the occasional moment of truth. One of those moments happened last Wednesday evening in the small theater of Philadelphia's historic Constitution Center, when the camera lights went out after a 90-minute TV debate. The 425 invited guests sat in the semidarkness, truly alone for the first time with Hillary Clinton, 60, and Barack Obama, 46. What the audience then witnessed was a display of the deep divisions within the Democratic Party.

The credits had hardly ended before the two challengers switched off their permanent smiles and turned away from each other, quickly and silently, as if their physical proximity were too much to bear. They spoke to their aides in whispers. Clinton hugged her daughter. The two watched each other's every movement out of the corners of their eyes, and when they left the set there were no goodbyes.

Earlier, with the cameras still running, Obama spoke of a "defining moment" in this primary, in which a woman is running against an African-American for the first time in history. In reality, however, the contest between these two rivals is characterized by bitterness, their coarse treatment of each other and an irreconcilable abrasiveness of tone. It seems that America's Democrats don't need an adversary; they have each other.

Fighting Dwarves

Ironically, the Democrats entered the campaign in higher spirits and with more optimism than they had seen in a long time, buoyed by the sensational prospect of a promising female presidential candidate and the first black man with the potential to actually win the presidency in what would be a triumph against racism. The Republican contenders, on the other hand, seemed like characters in a 1950s film: a collection of older men in poorly tailored suits. Many Democrats were filled with the sense that it was their race to lose, and they were convinced that the Republican candidates' political proximity to current President George W. Bush would be enough to destroy their prospects.

But then Clinton suffered a series of primary defeats, leading to a turnaround in the Democratic race. The contest, exciting until recently, has since become increasingly bitter and unsavory, painting the Democratic candidates as small-minded and ugly, and shrinking them down to the size of fighting dwarves.

Many people now see Hillary, a heroine until recently, as nothing but malignant. Obama, a messianic figure until recently, now sometimes comes across as a helpless altar boy, especially when he is asked, for the umpteenth time, to explain his relationship to the now-notorious pastor of Chicago's Trinity Church. Yes, he says, he liked and respected the man. No, he hastens to add, he does not embrace his angry tirades against America.

Clinton is pouncing relentlessly on every ambiguous statement coming from her opponent. In one instance, Obama, speaking to an audience at a private event, tried to explain the bitterness of people living in rural and small-town Pennsylvania, by saying that their frustration with their poor economic situation leads them to "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." These voters, he said, are not open to his message of change and hope. A blogger attending the event leaked Obama's (undoubtedly accurate) comments.

Since then, Clinton has taken to criticizing her fellow Democrat for being, as she calls it, "out of touch." Instead of giving in to party leaders' suggestions that she tone down her rhetoric, Clinton has only amplified her military toughness.

"Some of you might be thinking to yourself, my God, is this woman tough," she told a group of union leaders at the Washington Hilton last Wednesday. "To tell you the truth," she added, buoyantly, "that impression is perfectly justified: I am tough." In these difficult times America, she told her audience, needs a president who can be tough and unrelenting.

The union leaders could hardly sit still for excitement. Clinton's tough demeanor is apparently more to their liking than the more conciliatory tone taken by Obama, who had spoken to them a day earlier.

A Movie That's Lasted too Long

But Obama has also changed in response to Clinton's constant barrage of attacks. His playful and sometimes almost prancing demeanor has disappeared. He seems sadder and more serious than he was three months ago, despite the fact that he is leading in all key categories: in the number of state primaries won, total votes and party delegates in his column.

Nevertheless, Obama's lead is too narrow to bring the torturously long primary season to an end after the primaries in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and in North Carolina on May 6. Besides, Hillary Clinton may not back down easily. If the race continues until the Democratic Party convention in late August, Obama's fate will be in the hands of the superdelegates -- about 800 representatives of the political establishment who are free to vote for either Clinton or Obama.

The whole thing is like a movie that's lasted too long, Obama recently complained.

Whoever ends up winning the Democratic nomination will enter the general election weakened. The presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, simply has to repeat whatever Clinton says about Obama or Obama says about Hillary. Clinton supporters call Obama too elitist, inexperienced, unpatriotic, too soft and too black. Meanwhile, those in Obama's camp deride Hillary as hard-hearted, disingenuous, unscrupulous and dishonest. Besides, they add, she is married to a man who is at least her equal when it comes to being hard-hearted, disingenuous, unscrupulous and dishonest.

The last Democratic television debate before the Pennsylvania primary was literally bristling with spite. "He is out of touch with reality," Clinton said. "She isn't really credible," Obama shot back. "He doesn't respect other people's convictions," Clinton said. "Now she is trying to attack me with the same injuries that were inflicted on her." For more than half of the 90-minute debate, the two candidates asked each other questions like: "Why don't you wear a US flag pin on your lapel?" Clinton, asking the question, was referring to Obama.