My Campaign Memories

THE PENN SPIN
Las Vegas — January 2008
The Democratic race has already turned ugly. Through surrogates, the desperate Clinton campaign made very public whispers about Obama's teenage drug use and circulated e-mails accusing him of being a Muslim bent on "destroying America from the inside and out." Arguing the virtues of being a "doer" instead of a "talker," Hillary went into race-tense South Carolina after having mentioned casually that "it took a president" to make Martin Luther King's civil rights dream a reality.

It's classic dog-whistle race politics that has spread like a cancer across the Internet. The mainstream media, meanwhile, are eagerly swallowing like so many delicious Scooby Snacks the campaign's innocuous-sounding attempts to reduce the entire race to an idiotic farm metaphor, pushing "workhorse" Hillary over "show horse" Obama.

Now, after a debate in Las Vegas, I'm listening to Hillary Clinton's porcine top adviser, Mark Penn, ramble on in this preposterous vein and wondering how long this lunacy can possibly go on.

"Senator Clinton is a workhorse," Penn is saying. "She's an absolute workhorse."

"Are you implying," snaps one reporter, "that Barack Obama is not a workhorse?"

This is what qualifies as a tough question on the campaign trail. The press performance in this election year would ultimately prove to be the worst of all time by miles and miles. Example: After thousands of reporters sat around for months on end listening first to Hillary's and then John McCain's people blather on about Obama's connection to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, it would take David Letterman — David Letterman! — to challenge either candidate on the matter. "Are they driving cross-country?" Letterman asked, after finally having gotten McCain to squirm about his own relationship with equivalent extremist G. Gordon Liddy.

In a society of grown-ups, Brian Williams and Katie Couric and Wolf Blitzer would have done that from the start. But they didn't — they treated the mudslinging like it wasn't vile horseshit to be laughed at, but something real to be discussed with furrowed brows, debated. So it persisted.

Penn smiles at the querying reporter. "All I'm saying," he says, "is that Senator Hillary Clinton is a workhorse."

A different reporter next to me shakes his head. "A horse?" he whispers. "What the fuck am I going to do with that?"

HILLARY RAGE
Philadelphia — April 2008
On my way to the bathroom at Clinton's celebration in the Park Hyatt ballroom on Pennsylvania primary night, I'm stopped by a woman in her late 40s/early 50s, long gray hair and some kind of corduroy vest with Hillary buttons all over it. She asks me if I'm that guy from Rolling Stone.

This question doesn't have as obvious an answer as you might think. Already in this race I've had some shocking moments with Hillary supporters. In Washington, a woman I wasn't even interviewing stepped in front of me and gave me the finger when she overheard a question about Hillary's trade policies I was asking someone else. An offhand description of Hillary's "flabby" arms in one article led to an online flap with ancient plastic-surgery survivor/sex novelist Erica Jong — who contended the description proved I secretly wanted to fuck the unattainable mother Hillary represented — which in turn led to an avalanche of angry mail that continued all through the summer. Here in Philly, I consider trying to pass myself off as George Stephanopoulos, but it's too late, this woman is not going to buy it.

"I just want to say, fucking fuck you!" she says.

Then she starts laying into (in order): me, sexism and Obama. Now, I get the anger toward me, and toward the media in general. But the anger of Clinton supporters toward Obama, whose worst offense to date was calling Hillary "likable enough," is as mysterious as it is powerful. When I ask this woman what her issue with Obama is, she says, "His health plan would leave 15 million people uninsured!"

The woman is shaking with anger.

"And that has you this mad?" I ask. "Were you this angry with every other Democrat who didn't deliver health insurance?"

"He's a liar!" she says. "He promised universal health insurance. It's not universal!"

The "missing 15 million" is basically the only real policy difference between Hillary, who proposes a complete mandate for health insurance, and Obama, whose proposal covers only children. In the overall scheme of things, it's a policy difference so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye — but the Clinton campaign has managed to steer the genuinely bloodcurdling rage of millions into this tiny crevice. There is even an online petition started by Hillary supporters to raise a dollar for every American Obama left uninsured. Online chatter on the topic recalls Armenian-Azerbaijani ethnic invective.

"Obama is becoming cockier by the day," one Hillary supporter writes. "I cannot wait until the day he falls. I have no mercy." Another gloats about the "punk" being "exposed," saying, "WHAT AUDACITY! Fifteen million people left out and his response is 'Some people can't afford it.'"