By calling for the Clinton campaign to remove Geraldine Ferraro from
their campaign, the Obama team is doing exactly what Hillary Clinton
wants. Clinton is clearly using what Josh has called the "bitch-slap"
theory of electoral politics: hitting their opponent to demonstrate that he won't
fight.



Clinton's campaign called for Obama to fire Samantha Power because of
her "monster" remark, and  the Obama camp quickly accepted her
resignation. Now that Ferraro has said something equally (or more) insulting,
it's Obama's turn to call for a resignation.



This serves two points:

1. It lowers Obama to the name-calling level. He's now seen as whining
that Clinton surrogates are being mean. Yes, Clinton's response to
Power was the same, but at this point that doesn't matter. She's
dragged him down to the gutter, where she's been for several weeks now.

2. It gives her a chance to pointedly <em>refuse</em> to
remove Ferraro. Obama takes a hit and says, "thank you, may I have
another", whereas Hillary fights for her people even if they're wrong.
Obama may seem weak by contrast, both for accepting Clinton's demand,
and also for having his own demand for Ferraro's ouster rebuffed.



My initial take on the Power resignation was that it was probably the
least bad choice Obama could make, as at least it removed the issue
quickly, rather than leaving it to fester as John Edwards did with
bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan. If you're going to cut
someone loose, you're best to do it qucikly.



Now I'm not so sure. The not-too-subtle message to the superdelegates
is that it Hillary will fight tooth and nail against whatever the GOP
throws at her, whereas Obama may not do so.



If Obama actually keeps enough pressure on Clinton to get her to dump
Ferraro, then the calculus changes, and he may yet win this skirmish.
But while Obama staked out the moral high ground, no one ever claimed
Clinton was running as a candidate of new politics. So she may be less
affected by that pressure, and the more she resists it, the more she
looks like a fighter. It is a game of chicken, and Clinton seems likely
to win this battle.



For Obama, perhaps the best advice comes from the early '80s movie Wargames: the only winning move is not to play.

Ferraro's comments themselves remind me of the ad Jesse Helms ran
against Harvey Gantt, showing a white man's hands tearing up a
rejection notice, implying that the man didn't get a job because racial
preferences gave the job to a black person instead. (Aside - that ad
was apparently the branchild of former Bill Clinton svengali Dick
Morris).

Certainly these racial undertones resonate with some voters, who are
saying to themselves that Ferraro is right. And this probably helps her
in parts of Pennsylvania (recall Ed Rendell's comments that some in his
state would refuse to vote for Obama because of his race).

I can't believe it's an accident that Ferraro's comments came
up just before Mississippi, whose results are support the meme the
Clinton camp is pushing that Obama is the "black" candidate. This
blunts what otherwise would be yet another 20+ point trouncing, albeit
only if you think black voters "don't count". By polarizing the
electorate, Clinton must hope to lessen the sting of losing Mississippi
(and, likely, North Carolina) by marginalizing Obama's wins as being
race-based.

The question remains whether these tactics will actually move
superdelegate support towards Clinton, or, as Nancy Pelosi's comments
yesterday implied, whether they may push more superdelegates away. It's
worth noting that since Super Tuesday, far more superdelegates have
committed to Obama than to Clinton.



It would be deliciously ironic if somehow Clinton made up the pledged
delegate gap (as unlikely as that is), but the superdelegates
overturned that by giving their support to Obama in large part because
of antipathy to her race-baiting tactics.

More likely, however, Obama simply has the math on his side, and gets a strong majority of superdelegates to widen his lead. So while I see Clinton winning the battle here, I still don't see her winning the war. Unless perhaps to her that means beating John McCain in 2012...