Opinion: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the race to Fox News

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in at least one race this week: The slow crawl to be first to sit down for interviews with Fox News’ marquee talk-show hosts ahead of next week’s primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.
Obama was on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with Chris Wallace over the weekend, 772 days after the candidate promised to appear. Clinton followed three days later with a taped appearance Wednesday on ‘The O’Reilly Factor.’ Our colleague Matea Gold explores the change of heart in today’s paper, and the interesting question of why the two Democratic presidential contenders decided to talk with hosts on a network they had joined in boycotting in August, when they refused to take part in the Fox-sponsored Nevada debate.

Back then, Obama and Clinton were wooing Democratic activists, who tend to be liberal. But with the nomination fight locked in a stalemate and likely to be determined by the superdelegates, the candidates need more than ever to show they can win in November, which means appealing to moderates and conservatives.

And in Indiana and North Carolina, they’re fighting for votes in electorates less liberal than in California or New York. There, the fight is for ‘rural working-class voters’ who ‘have a lot more leverage over the contest than, say, progressive-minded Obama donors in Silicon Valley,’ Dante Scala, a University of New Hampshire political analyst, told the Ticket. ‘That’s why they avoided Fox early, and now are there late.’

Wait -- politicians acting out of political expediency? My, this is a historic race, isn’t it?

-- Scott Martelle