Obama’s message of hope is gone

The Democratic primary fight has been nasty for quite some time now. The biggest casualty of that contest now seems to be Barack Obama’s message of hope. As this thing drags on and on, it is clear that both candidates are now duking it out by pandering to the masses with negative campaigning. One thought that with Mark Penn out of the Clinton campaign, things might turn to the positive side, but they continue down the path of dirty old politics.

On Time magazine’s blog “Swampland,” Joe Klein writes the following about the campaign in Pennsylvania:

I’ve spent the weekend with the Democrats–yesterday with Obama, today with Clinton. I’ll have a lot more to say about the race in my print column this week…but a few quick notes from Pennsylvania:

Substance: Both Clinton’s and Obama’s stump speeches have collapsed into blatant pandering. Obama doesn’t talk about hope much anymore. He’s spending a lot of time attacking Clinton for being part of the DC lobbying, special interest and same old politics culture. Then he makes his offers–mostly on things he can’t do anything about (loss of manufacturing jobs) or won’t have much money for (middle class tax cuts). He leavens this, happily, with some hard truths about how long it will take to reduce energy costs (although the truth is, energy prices are more likely to go up than go down) and how difficult it will be to get something like health insurance reform through Congress. Clinton has honed her pitch to almost pure laundry list: she’s got a program for everything–and blithely plays into the lower gas tax dreams of her audiences, as well as their protectionist fantasies and panders flat-out to the teachers’ unions by saying that she’s going to end No Child Left Behind (a flawed piece of legislation, but is she, like, against basic reading and math standards?) All in all, pretty depressing. Both these candidates were far more eloquent and substantive in the month before Iowa. (Clinton, for example, has honed her excellent alt-energy pitch down to one semi-comprehensible sentence about “green jobs.”)

Energy: Obama seems either bummed or pissed or exhausted. He could be near death and still be a pretty good speaker, but he’s very much off his game right now. Clinton, by contrast, is on fire–as energetic and passionate as I’ve seen her.

For Obama supporters, this is pretty dreadful news because it diminishes from his appeal to Independent voters and reduces potential voter turnout come November if he is the Democratic nominee.

Who woulda thunk it, but the Republicans have a good shot at the White House this year. The Democrats look like a train wreck. Whoever wins the nomination on the Democratic side is likely to be hobbled permanently. The Tonya Harding option has had its effect.