STRATHAM, N.H., 11:05 a.m. — Mitt Romney spoke at the local Timberland factory this morning, and guess what? He wants to become president to — wait for it — “bring change”!
In a 20-minute speech, Romney talked about “change” a total of 20 times, challenging Senator Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 and Senator Barack Obama for “change” supremacy.
But Romney’s re-tooled stump speech did have a distinct difference from the “change”-mongering proffered by other candidates in recent days. He tied in his business experience and his status as a Washington outsider as the two traits that make him the right man for change.
The first in a series of spin room interviews following this weekend’s debates.
MANCHESTER, N.H., 10:15 a.m. — Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat and an African-American, said he knows what Senator Barack Obama is going through.
“When I ran for governor of Massachusetts, a state with a very small African-American population, there were people who said about me many of the same things they’re saying about Senator Obama,” Patrick told reporters after the debates Saturday night. “He can’t win, he’s not electable, … he’s not part of the Democratic establishment, it’s not his turn. I got that a lot.”
But in the spin room, Patrick, 51, offered an answer to those complaints.
“One of the things I said to the people of Massachusetts, I say now, and I think Senator Obama is saying it to the people of America, ‘It’s not whose turn it is, it’s whose time it is’,” he said. And Patrick said he is “not surprised” that voters are beginning to agree with him.
“The challenges we’re facing are so profound, and the messages of hope and optimism and unity of purpose that Senator Obama is bringing are so timely that people are prepared to overlook all kinds of differences,” Patrick said.
“I think you saw that in Iowa in a big way,” he added, “and I think you’ll see it in New Hampshire as well.”
SEABROOK, N.H., 2:28 am. — We’re down to one day before the polls open, and for the candidates, it is game time. A few musings from the trail today:
Chris Dodd’s former New Hampshire chair, Joe Keefe, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama, and he was the first speaker at the Obama rally in Manchester on Sunday morning. I wondered if anyone in the audience knew who Dodd was.
I didn’t have much time to dwell on that thought, however. As Keefe walked to the podium and the crowd applauded with polite enthusiasm, a 40-something woman in front of me turned to her neighbor and asked, “Is that Obama?”Mr. Keefe is a white man.
She wasn’t joking, either.
Can someone buy the candidates a wristwatch, please? Senator Hillary Clinton’s rally in Hampton, N.H., was scheduled for 5 p.m. Great, right? At about 5:15 p.m., an aide took the stage and said the senator would be there shortly. At 6 p.m., he came back on stage and promised she would be there in 15 minutes. At 6:45 p.m., nearly two hours late, she finally arrived. I already complained about Senator Obama being tardy for his own rally this morning in Manchester. Apparently an afternoon Obama rally was similarly behind schedule. And John Edwards was chastised for his lateness last month, too. Punctuality is important! Jeez! How can you be president if you can’t even show up within, say, an hour of the right time? You can’t even blame Daylight Savings Time for that! What would Undergraduate Career Services do with these people? Philip Jones would have a field day!
My strategy thus far for determining the precise location of a rally or town hall meeting or whatever here in New Hampshire has been to drive to the high school or college campus or wherever and then just look for the row of satellite trucks, police cars, protesters, etc. (or, failing that, Salon’s Walter Shapiro, who was also at the Obama rally this morning) and then head in that direction. So tonight, I headed to Phillips Exeter Academy to hear former Senator Mike Gravel give a talk, assuming I would be able to find the senator using the above strategy. I forgot that, to the American mainstream media, I am more newsworthy than Mike Gravel at this point. There was no commotion to be found, no media, no nothing.
Luckily, a security guard pointed me in the right direction. It was actually a very nice event — held in the Exeter library, it had the feel of a Master’s Tea. Except without refreshments.
Props to the New Haven media for putting some serious legwork into covering the primaries. First, the New Haven Independent sent a reporter to Iowa to Senator Christopher J. Dodd’s efforts to survive the Iowa caucus.Now, this week, News Channel 8 has been a regular presence here in New Hampshire. I spotted their truck at the debates Saturday night, and chief political correspondent Mark Davis reported live (perhaps the only reporter to do so?) from Hillary Clinton’s rally in Hampton, N.H., on Sunday night. Paparazzi photos below, of course.
Another pseudo-celebrity sighting on Sunday: Dana Milbank ’90 of The Washington Post. I think.
As the News’s fancy digital camera dangled from my neck at the Clinton rally, someone in the press pool approached me and asked if I could introduce her to a certain Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer whom she admired. I knew him from my work at the White House, right? No, I said. You see, as fancy as my camera may look and no matter how many press credentials I’m wearing simultaneously, I do not work at the White House. Until this morning, I did not even know how to turn the flash on my camera on and off.
WASHINGTON, 8:35 p.m. — A new CNN-WMUR poll released this evening shows Senator Barack Obama with a commanding 10-point lead over Senator Hillary Clinton LAW ’73 among likely Democratic primary voters two days before Granite State voters cast their ballots.
The poll, conducted Saturday and today, suggests Obama may be capitalizing on the momentum from his victory in Thursday’s Iowa caucus, in which he defeated the third-place Clinton by eight points. A similar CNN-WMUR tracking poll released yesterday showed Obama and Clinton knotted at 33 percent a piece, with former Senator John Edwards in third, at 20 percent. Today’s poll places Obama at 39 percent, Clinton at 29 percent and Edwards at 16 percent.
Obama uttered that very word 12 times during last night’s debate, but that was nothing compared to this morning’s rally.
On stage, a massive, blue and white banner declared, “Change we can believe in.” Behind the podium, a diverse crowd of 40 supporters stood holding red and white placards that carried either that same message or, “Stand for change.”
But no, that wasn’t enough to drive the message home. (more…)
MANCHESTER, N.H., 9:45 a.m. — I walk into the Palace Theater in downtown Manchester this morning and head to pick up my media credential for a rally scheduled here for Senator Barack Obama.
Two problems, the press aide tells me. First, we’re out of media credentials, because there are so many of you, she says. But you have a camera, so you look like a journalist, so you shouldn’t have a problem, she adds.
“Oh, one more thing,” she says as I was heading into the theater. “Make sure to go outside so your camera can get swept.”
What?
“You know, the Secret Service. They need to let their dog sniff it.”
And sniff it the dog did. All of the photographers and cameramen on hand had to leave their cameras and other equipment in a corner of the theater lobby, lest they be denied entrance to the rally. With our equipment sitting there unguarded — tens of thousands of dollars worth of cameras, I’d guess — we were escorted out of the room while the Secret Service came through with their bomb-sniffing dog.
I guess they had to make sure my Canon was not, well, an actual cannon?
BOSTON, Mass., 4:05 a.m. — 1) Maybe it’s time to stop trying to make these debates hip and tech-savvy. What did Facebook’s “sponsorship” add to the debate other than some pretty lame polls? Couldn’t they have at least done something fun to add the “Facebook touch” on the dry proceedings? Maybe they could have let each candidate write in a status? (“Bill Richardson is wondering what he is doing here.”)
2) I really liked the banter between Hil and Obama throughout the night. Except when Obama said “You are likable enough” to Hilary, I was confused. Was this earnest? Was it an underhanded insult? Was it one of those things you say without really knowing what it means but just because it sort of sounds like the right thing to say in the moment? Was I thinking about the whole thing too much?
3) I don’t think I will be forgetting anytime soon how many years of experience Hillary Clinton has since she managed to mention her THIRTY-FIVE years of experience about thirty-five times.
4) My favorite question was, “What is something you said in a previous debate that you wish you hadn’t said?” Seriously?! Did he expect anyone to actually answer that?! These are politicians! It’s like asking someone on a first date, “So, how did you mess up your past relationships?”
5) There was this wonderful moment when they all started talking at once in response to one of the five thousand questions about “change” when Edwards cracked a smile and – just for a second – I felt like maybe, just maybe, he was realizing just how strange and ridiculous these debates are. Or maybe he was just smiling. It was hard to tell.
WEST CALDWELL, N.J., 2:15 a.m. – Pundits after tonight’s debate concluded, not without good reason, that John Edwards had chosen Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Tom Schaller put it bluntly in his “R.I.P.” post: “The Clinton Era officially ended at 9:34 p.m. EST when Edwards paired with Obama to bury Hillary as a non-agent of change.”
But just minutes ago, in an e-mail flash sent to supporters and received by the News, Edwards seems to have turned against Obama, too. He begins:
“I’m the underdog in this race, running against two $100 million candidates. They’re working feverishly around the clock to try and stop us from getting out our message of change in New Hampshire.”
And here’s his post-spin spin:
“In tonight’s debate, there were two ‘change candidates’ on the stage. But we have very different approaches. I don’t believe you can sit around a table with the drug companies, the insurance companies or the oil corporations, negotiate with them – and then hope they’ll just voluntarily give their power away. You can’t nice them to death – it doesn’t work.”
So much for Edwards as VP, take two. For our young readers, meanwhile, a question: What is this so-called “change” really all about? Who, if any of the candidates, has it right?
MANCHESTER, N.H., 10:04 p.m. — Charles Gibson just mentioned to Senator Barack Obama that he had mentioned the Illinois senator during the Republican debate earlier in the evening. Obama admitted he didn’t catch it — he was flipping between football and the debate, he said.
For the hour before the debate, an ABC News broadcast was piped into the filing center. We bet most of the journalists here — if the reporters in our row are any indication — would have preferred to watch the football game.
Why didn’t we just go online and check the score? Because the Internet was broken. Sweet.
Oh, and the Redskins — the Washington Redskins — lost. Could that be a harbinger for the Washington insiders here in New Hampshire?
MANCHESTER, N.H., 9:40 p.m. — Obama says the American people want a leader who will be “talking straight” to them. Does John McCain get a royalty payment for that?
MANCHESTER, N.H., 9:34 p.m. — The minute-by-minute speaks for itself:
9:26 p.m. | “We’re all advocating for change,” Clinton asserts. But it’s easier said than done, she says, and points to her record. Change, she says, “is a result of very hard work, bringing people together, stating very clearly what your goals are, what your principles are, and then achieving them.”
9:27 p.m. | Oh no she didn’t! Clinton just called Obama a flip-flopper, particularly on healthcare. “I think that’s relevant,” she said. “I think we’re looking for a president we can count on.” Didn’t someone — perhaps a certain Republican? — make that same argument against John Kerry in 2004?
9:32 p.m. | Oh no he didn’t! Bloodbath! Edwards just attacked Clinton for attacking Obama, lamenting that people who support change — like him and Obama — always get beaten up. “That’s not the kind of discussion we should be having,” he said, adding that whenever anyone pushes for change, “the forces of status quo are going to attack.” That’s a not-too-subtle dig at Clinton.
9:34 p.m. | It gets worse! Forget any attempt to be subtle. Edwards says what everyone in the filing center is thinking. “I didn’t see these kind of attacks from Senator Clinton when she was ahead,” he said.
Clinton can’t let that go. “Wait a minute now, I want to respond to this,” she said. “Making change is not about what you believe, it’s not about a speech you make, it’s about working hard.”
9:36 p.m. | Richardson chimes in, and sets the room afire with laughter. “I’ve been in hostage negotiations a lot more civil then this,” he quipped. “Let’s stay positive,” he implores. He notes, for the record, however: “I love change.”
