Democrats "playing with fire" in presidential race, party leader warns

Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen has a message for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (one that the New York Times, with an eye mainly on her, also delivered today): Tone it down.

The Maryland congressman, who as the fellow charged with expanding the party's House majority this fall has a particular interest in the political climate, revealed he had let both the Clinton and Obama campaigns know of his "concern that the increasingly negative tone in the primary could hurt our prospects in November -- not just for the eventual nominee but also for our congressional candidates."

Continued rancor "will make it more difficult to heal the wound," said Van Hollen, who has remained neutral in the primary campaign. "It means we spend more time beating up on each other and less time drawing the distinction between the Democratic position on issues and John McCain as a continuation of the Bush era. ... I do think we're playing with fire."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, another Marylander who also is neutral, described the tenor of the race between Clinton and Obama as "probably not much different than the tone of a normal campaign for president of the United States.

"What is not normal at all," he added, is that the competitors embody two major Democratic constituencies -- African Americans and women.

"Therefore, groups are offended, as opposed to ...

just individual candidates," he said. "I would hope the candidates would keep it positive. I think their differences are minimal."

Van Hollen said a consensus had grown around Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean's call for undeclared superdelegates to make there preferences known by July 1.

"I strongly support Howard Dean's call," he said. "I think it would be a big mistake to take a divided party into the convention in Denver and have these divisions play out on national television."

Hear The Times' Washington Bureau Chief Doyle McManus discuss Tuesday's election and the next step in the Democratic presidential competition in the video just below.

-- Matthew Hay Brown

Matthew Hay Brown of the Baltimore Sun writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau.

Comments

[BJ]

All the headlines in today's news screams for the Media/Press, tv "analysts" & commentators to STOP IMPOSING THEIR VIEWS on voters! EVERY POLL these pundits have taken have been dead wrong.

The bias of tv commentators & analysts on CNN & MSNBC towards OBAMA is so unparalleled! Their spin on everything favoring Obama has caused the public to think that even when Obama lost... he still won!?

YOU are REPORTERS... so report and stop spinning the news! CLINTON WON... her fund-raising has brought in $10M in 1-day!!! How can you say none of this has makes a difference in the race for the nomination? IF anything, it means that OBAMA CANNOT win the general elections, where electoral votes are counted. Not delegate votes, not the popular vote, not the number of caucuses won.

She won ALL the big States that have the MOST electoral votes. This translates to her being more electable than Obama! No matter how you spin this, this is absolute.

[keith]

Chris Van Hollen? Who cares what that chowderhead thinks? This is the brass ring, either you go for it or you don't. Congressional seats don't mean anything if you're trying to be POTUS, that puts you in the history books.
I'm not an HRC fan but this kind of thing is just stupid.

[starr]

I just cannot understabd these democrats who want to dump Hillary and crown Obama. She is a better campaigner and has won all big states. Big mistate is that the democratic leaders think that all big states are automatically become blue states in general election.
Don't forget Dukakas.

[stacey]

Listen folks, it is imperative that we follow the rules, regardless. Otherwise what example are we setting as a prominent country. Although, many people don't feel that Obama is qualified, he is still leading in polls--that has to count for much. If he leads by superdelegates, then he must be rightfully nominated.

[frank carter]

if it comes down to McCain and Clinton for the general elections I'm sitting this one for the first time of my life. I can't believe people haven't had enough of Bush jr, and Hillary, those 8 years of the Clinton in the white house was a joke...you can see how Bill is acting now, you haven't seen nothing yet wait until she is elected...it will be the Soap opera once a again or as the world turns. I say if people are not serious about their country then, let;s go for broke either we elect Bomb, Bomb Iran or back to the soap opera a the 3AM...

[Marks]

Hillbots,

I'm for the contest to continue, so no Clinton supporter think she got it taken away from her.

She has to be leading the primary before her fantasy argument about how states will vote in the general election. You people are inferring her supporters won't vote for Obama.

The battle is Democrats vs Republicans keep that in mind.
Everybody against Bush. Democrats don't flip for McSame!

Pennsylvania exit polls, some it showed, more Clinton supporters would vote for McCain if she loses.

Democrats in every state where the primaries and caucus have occurred are energized.

Democrats want the White House and to be in charge of the next Supreme Court Justices. 2 are nearing retirement if they want.

There are other issues Democrats need to be in charge of. Every flipper to McCain gives him a better chance.

It's going to be more contestable in red states no doubt.

Her matrix spin using Michigan and Florida delegates is senseless. They will be counted eventually, but not now.

It's likely Michigan and Florida delegates will be split evenly between them. It's the fault of those states.

So stop rabble rousing Hilllary's arguments until she has a true lead on Obama in popular vote. She's not catching him in delegates.

This is a delegate race in the Democratic party system.

Super Delegates could choose her only if she has a lead in the popular vote.

Bill tried to spin Hillary would be winning under Republican party rules.

By 2012 both can join the Republican party.

Hillary made statements in past years about need to abolish the electoral system.

Now she's using the electoral system argument to better benefit her chances in these primaries, that is also senseless.

[Derek]

Hillary Clinton has run a disorganized campagne which speaks volumes relative to her leadership ability.

Hillary is also a reputed stone cold liar. Elections cannot and will not be won by a candidate who only apeals to the old and uneducated.

Those are the same people who brought us Bush.

[mike]

The big states argument Hillary is promoting is very offensive to more than half this nation and will result in her resounding defeat should she some how get the nomination.

[jennifer potenciano]

it's easy for anyone to pontificate on anything under the sun. it's fun for any person to lambast somebody from his high horse. but try to get off such high horse, & do some dirty, hard work on the ground, like doing a little research on one's object of derision--& the reality, the bitter truth sinks in.

fairness demands more than cheap talk. at times, it is a quid pro quo thing, giving as much as you're getting.

that is obama's quandary. he started off like he were some crusader on his high horse, slaying every dragon he sighted, every 'monster' he came across with, arming himself with his much-vaunted allegedly righteous political agenda, and wrapping himself with his insufferable holier-than-thou conceit .

yet he forgot to kill, firstly, the demons within himself. (know thyself, the great sage, socrates, advised us eons ago.)

subsequent, even past, events have shown him to be not the lily-white, clean-as-a-whistle, spotlless reformer that he initially painted himself to be.

read the expose on obama by jonathan kaufman of the wall street journal; or the news feature on obama's canard about his fight against lobbyists, when he helps himself to their wallets & lines his pockets w/ the same dirty money he supposedly detests. or read on about the in-depth reportage on obama's long-time carousel with shady characters whom during sunny days he once regarded as friends.

(surely, if you ponder on these highly revealing articles, you wouldn't say these writers are mean-spirited, fiendish obama opponents out to do him in, politically, would you?)

& then the bitter truth about this veteran chicago-trained illinois politician hits you like a wrecker's ball in the face. obama is the consummate machiavellian, dr. jekyl/mr. hyde politician that he publicly refuses to care to admit, though his deeds--& even utterances, sometimes subconsciously--prove its veracity.

hiding behind the veneer of a world-reforming do-gooder, obama succeeded, for a while, to pull most people's legs. till this very minute, not a few doubt he is a certified liberal out to change america & the ways it is ordered. even in the snobbish intellectual, supposedly liberal circles in mainstream media, obama has succeeded in cultivating this political persona.

yet the facts speak for themselves.

i have bad news for you, obama die-hards. obama isn't just what he flaunts himself to be, but its opposite, a dyed-in-the-wool, typical opportunistic, machiavellian politician who'll use every trick in the book to get what he wants.

for instance, his favorite shibboleths, his constant refrain on "change" and "hope" were proven to be just tired, shopworn, rehashed political clichés that he used in his old illinois days as a local politician being trained in the art of demagoguery & dirty politics.

i remember reading somewhere hitler's lesson that, to succeed in politics, one must first of all, be a glib-tongued speaker, a well-polished orator who can sweep people off their feet. when hitler spoke, it is said that his audience got into a trance, spellbound by the power of his words.)

thus, when journalists write stories about obama's quirks of character, or point to the serious inconsistencies in his political track record, or when a few critics of this consummate illinois politician take him to task, is it such a big bother to ask his fanatical, reverential followers not to slay the bearers of bad news?

for doing so makes these fanatics habitual and biased suckers for everything that obama says or does.

in this atmosphere, how can there be rational thinking & debate on his alleged advocacies? how can one expand the universe of discourse if the demigods of the much-vaunted freedom of speech & of the press prescribe prior restraint or self-censorship, when they outright label any unfavorable dissertation on obama as "distractions," "divisive," "unfruitful," & completely "negative," parroting those tired obama buzzwords?

but such is the law of nature, such is how life progresses. by the power of conflicting, adversarial opinions in the free market of ideas, one arrives at the truth--& what's best for society.

i have always believed that had this virtue of intellectual honesty been evident before september 11, 2001, the fateful twin towers american tragedy would not have happened. (as an aside, i thank my lucky stars that my mother was lucky enough to have visited the world trade center just a day--september 10, 2001--before it got "obliterated.")

seen in this light, the world, especially the peace-loving peoples of the world, have much to thank the washington post for for publishing, in toto, the side of the hamas as enunciated by one of its top officials dr. mahmoud al-zahar, in the op-ed pages of its april 17, 2008 edition.

for subsequent events proved that such noble act had brought some pressure on warring parties (israel & the fatah, too) in the middle east to bear on their peoples' desires to forge a genuine peace pact among their leaders. how many more killings could be averted if we at least let "warriors" get their wrath off their chests through ventilation in the press of their gripes?

i should say the press ought to apply the same rule-of-thumb in vetting hillary clinton & barack obama in their contentious democratic nominating contest. nothing should be made sacrosanct in this national, nay international, debate, not barack, not hillary, not any of their utterances. for to favor one over the other smacks not only of bias, but of disservice to the people's desire for intellectual honesty &, farfetched as it may seem to be, to our quest for an authentic peace throughout the world, so that the recurrence of tragedies such as 9-11 & the holocaust or the rise of fascist regimes (as in a number of 3rd world countries today) may be prevented. ****

[jonathanR]

Steny:

I am a white male, not a woman or an african american, and I am VERY OFFENDED by this whole contest.

One more thing-

How can the SuperDelegates be leaders and sit back and be neutral?

The time to lead is exactly at the time when things are coming apart, and boy, are things coming apart!!

[Mara]

I've never heard of these guys, but who cares? At least someone is adult enough (besides the NYT) to stand up and say "enough." But it needs to go further. When is someone going to take Clinton aside and tell her that it is a staggeringly dangerous idea for an American political candidate to threaten to "obliterate" Iran through nuclear power within the next 10 years, as she did on network TV yesterday? This has been covered by virtually every major international newspaper. It is astounding that an American politician, one whose intellect I once respected would set a diplomatic position for our nation - at a time when she is calling for an end to the war in Iraq. Who does she believe will be killed and dismembered? Robots? Does she realize that there are millions of innocent Iranians, including women and children?

[Shawn]

As a registered independent, who has been a financial supporter of Obama since 2006, I can only say this: If he can't handle to polite attacks of the Clinton camp, he will be obliterated by the Republic destruction machine armed by the progeny of Karl Rove and aimed by a bona-fide America War Hero with a wicked sense of humor and a strong sense of history.

At this point, based on his inability to close this primary race, I'm not sure Obama's capable of the fortitude which we have historically seen from both McCain and Hillary Clinton. His performance over the past 8 weeks certinaly doesn't give independent voters great confidence.

This is not high school - whoever wins this election will inherent two horrible wars, an economic meltdown, a banking system that is potentially beyond repair, a dollar valuation and interest rate that may make it nearly impossible to finance continued government borrowing, a crippling national debt, the collapse of the American social net, a health care fiasco, the derision of the international community and a horribly uneducated young populous entering the workforce. This will make the task of campaigning, grueling as it may be, appear, in retrospect, to have been a cake walk. If Obama can't manage to win over the core of his party, how on Earth can we believe he can convince, um say, the Shia-led government in Iraq to share power with Sunnis?

Perhaps it's the lack of real battle hardened experience (PT 109 ring a bell?) that is the reason why Obama is looking less and less like the new JFK..... and more and more like the next Al Gore....

[Joe]

Hey Hillbots - I'm really tired of your totally bogus "she won big states so she'll win in the fall" argument. Primary electorates and general election electorates are two entirely different beasts. Obama won more red states than Clinton - so does that mean he's going to win them in the fall? Only if there's a complete blowout. You want facts about electability? How about the fact that every poll - EVERY poll - shows Obama doing better against McCain? How about the fact that of the three remaining candidates only Clinton has negative ratings over 50%?

The duplicitious, manufactured and inconsistent arguments of the Clinton campaign show her and her husband to be devoid of principles. One of her advisors just praised Fox News - FOX NEWS! - so lavishly they're running his endorsement as an ad! She actively sought, and received, the endorsement of the billionaire whose funding of the Arkansas Project led to her husband's impeachment, yet she denounced MoveOn.org - an organization that was founded to support her husband during that impeachment!!!

I'm as liberal a Democrat as they come, and sadly, over the past four months, I've come to realize that almost everything the right wing said about the Clintons over the past sixteen years is true. They are not Democrats, they are Clintoncrats, willing to destroy the party for their own per$onal gain, perfectly happy to let McCain win if it means Hillary gets another shot in 2012. As unthinkable as it would have been for me as recently as four months ago, I'm beginning to think that if it's McCain versus Clinton, I'm going to have to vote for McCain.

[goldenstate]

If Obama and McCain don't appeal to you in November, write in the candidate of your choice. It's as simple as that.

[Larry]

The "Big States" argument of Hillary's that this makes her more electable is pure nonsense. It's the electoral college that counts. There isn't an electoral analyst or pundit that thinks that California, New York or Massachusetts won't go for the Democratic Party nominee, regardless of whether it's Clinton or Obama. Regardless of who won Texas (slim popular vote lead to Clinton, delegates - which count more in the nomination - to Obama), no one seriously thinks that Texas is in play for the general election, and it will go for McCain. If you look at the "swing" states, and ignore those that held caucuses, Obama took the primaries in states such as Wisconsin, Virginia and Missouri. Clinton has taken the primaries in Ohio and Pennsylvania. New Jersey (Clinton) and Connecticut (Obama) may be in play on the margins, but probably not this year and they will both go Democratic. Hillary took Arizona, but does anyone seriously think she would beat McCain there in November? But there's probably actually some chance that Obama could beat McCain in Georgia, if somewhat unlikely. Michigan and Florida would ordinarily also provide some insight, but not this time for reasons of their own doing. If you expand this to caucus states, Obama took states that may be in play, such as Iowa and Minnesota, demonstrating a superior ground game. But in the general election, these states will lean Democratic regardless of who the nominee is. Same with Washington, another Obama caucus win.
Bottom line: the electoral college map looks promising but competitive for Democratic party, regardless of who the nominee is, and the Democratic nominee will take the same "big states" regardless of whether it is Clinton or Obama - assuming the contest doesn't continue to spiral downward in slander and cripple Democratic chances.