12.08.2007

Oprah and health care: The fight over Iowa women

It was a big day for Barack Obama's candidacy today, and all eyes were turned on Oprah Winfrey's campaigning on his behalf in Iowa. Oprah delivered a fiery speech in support of her favored candidate, whom she has been helping for a few months now. And she did so by directly reinforcing his message of overcoming partisanship: "I am not here for partisan beliefs. Over the years I have voted for as many Republicans as I have Democrats. This is not about partisanship for me, this is about a personal belief."

This is great timing for the Obama campaign: First, it helps him monopolize media attention at a crucial time. It's 2 weeks until Christmas when campaigning and caucus coverage will virtually shut down, so its a great advantage for him to grab the entirety of a news cycle for something this positive. This is one less day for Clinton to make her closing arguments heard -- and god knows she really needs to be heard right now.

Second, women have emerged as a group over which Clinton and Obama are surprisingly fighting. Clinton is extremely strong among women everywhere in the country; even when she was sliding in NH and nationally, she barely slipped up in the female vote. But things have been very different in Iowa, where Obama is often stronger among women than he is among men. If he manages to carry the female vote, Clinton's usual strong-point, it might be very hard for Hillary to get anywhere in Iowa. And bringing Oprah on the trail is obviously a big asset for him to conquer the female vote.

That Clinton is very aware of this threat was obvious by her choice to bring out her mother on the campaign trail for the first time. Along with Chelsea, the Rodham women toured Iowa today. Clinton's strongest group -- and the one she needs to preserve more in the next three weeks -- is women older than 50, a group that makes up a disproportionate number of caucus-goers.

Clinton is also betting that Iowa Democrats will come to care more about this display of familial unity than a celebrity endorsement. And Clinton might have a point, at least in Iowa. Caucus goers here are notoriously immune to endorsements (so many major endorsements went to Dean here in the closing weeks of the 2004 campaign: Al Gore certainly, but remember how much buzz Dean got from Senator Harkin's unexpected endorsement, as well as Jimmy Carter's quasi-endorsement the night before the caucuses).

The unexpected fight over the female vote is also evident from Clinton's relentless focus on health care in the past two weeks. She is constantly harassing Obama for the deficiencies of his health care plan, and she is getting some big help from Paul Krugman's New York Times column. Obama's campaign went full-force after Krugman this week, attacking him personally instead of keeping the discussion between him and Clinton, and that is angering a lot of progressives for whom Krugman remains a reference.

Krugman responded today in yet another critical column that is likely to bring even more attention to the weakness of Obama's health care plan. Excerpts:

Lately Mr. Obama has been stressing his differences with his rivals by attacking their plans from the right — which means that he has been giving credence to false talking points that will be used against any Democratic health care plan a couple of years from now...
My main concern right now is with Mr. Obama’s rhetoric: by echoing the talking points of those who oppose any form of universal health care, he’s making the task of any future president who tries to deliver universal care considerably more difficult...
The debate over mandates has reinforced the uncomfortable sense among some health reformers that Mr. Obama just isn’t that serious about achieving universal care — that he introduced a plan because he had to, but that every time there’s a hard choice to be made he comes down on the side of doing less.

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