Chicago – To some Democrats, former President Bill Clinton is the party’s campaigner-in-chief. And if there’s any place a big gun is needed, it’s here in Chicago, where Democrats, represented by the lackluster and scandal-plagued Alexi Giannoulias, are in grave danger of losing a Senate seat to Republican Rep. Mark Kirk. And not just any Senate seat — at stake is the seat formerly occupied by Barack Obama himself, a trophy Democrats would hate to lose. So on Tuesday, with the hours until Election Day ebbing away, the campaigner-in-chief came to the rescue.
The problem was, it wasn’t entirely clear how much Clinton really wanted to help Democrats, and especially Obama, win next week’s elections. In the course of a one-hour speech, Clinton, whose wife lost a bitter nomination battle to Obama just two years ago and might still be considering another run for the White House, offered faint praise for the current president and a steady stream of criticism for Democrats, who he said have failed to communicate their message to the voters. If Clinton, who also seemed deeply concerned with defending his own record as president, had simply wanted to fire up the troubled party faithful here, he could have delivered a rousing defense of Obama and his party. Instead, his message was at best mixed, and at the end a listener could not be entirely sure whether Clinton truly believes Democrats deserve to win in November.
The event began like any other Clinton appearance: he was late, first a half-hour, then an hour, then 90 minutes. As a crowd of several hundred party activists, volunteers, and labor organizers milled around a ballroom at the posh Palmer House Hotel, a woman in the audience tried to breathe a little life into a group that had nothing to do but wait.
“Fired up!” she shouted. “Ready to go!”
A few people scattered around the room joined in. “Fired up! Ready to go!” After several more turns, perhaps half the crowd was chanting. But the enthusiasm never spread all around.
Dissatisfied, the woman tried again a few moments later. “Yes we can!” she yelled. “Yes we can!”
This time, maybe a half-dozen people joined in before it fizzled out altogether. Nobody cared; they were too busy with other things.
Finally, Clinton appeared. He got an enthusiastic reception, but as he spoke, it seemed that he, too, was having trouble getting fired up about his party’s prospects.
Clinton explained that he had originally “planned to do a handful of events for people who supported Hillary when she ran for president.” It was a slightly off-key beginning, since, of course, Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in that race was Barack Obama. Things went a little more off-key when Clinton offered an assessment of Obama and Democratic leaders that would barely qualify as faint praise: “I personally believe both the president and the Congress have done a better job than most people think they have done,” Clinton said. It’s safe to say that won’t end up in a Democratic campaign commercial.
Clinton then lectured Democrats about the weaknesses of their campaign so far. The party has achieved significant things on issues like the stimulus, health care and education, he said, but the public doesn’t fully appreciate what’s been done. For example, Democrats extended the period of time in which student loan recipients can pay back their debt, meaning new graduates will not have to make career choices based on their indebtedness. That achievement alone would help fire up the youth vote, Clinton lectured the audience, but Democrats haven’t made enough of it.
After the speech, in an impromptu interview with ABC News, Clinton said, “It’s what happened to me in ’94,” meaning that today’s political atmosphere is similar to the time he famously lost both houses of Congress to Republicans in his first midterm election. Bringing up that disastrous defeat is a comparison that cannot have been welcome in Democratic circles. Then, in what appeared to be a clear jab at the White House, Clinton agreed to campaign on behalf of Frank Caprio, the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island who was snubbed by President Obama and who later said that Obama can “take his endorsement and shove it.” Caprio endorsed Hillary Clinton over Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary; now, Clinton’s endorsement of Caprio sends the signal that he’s not necessarily on the same page with the president.
Clinton also spent plenty of time bashing the GOP. He portrayed Republicans as determined to destroy the American middle class and turn back the clock not just a few decades but more than a century. “Do you want to build a 21st Century modern economy?” he asked. “Or do you really want to take this country back to the 19th Century to the era of the robber barons, when there was no middle class in America?” That’s what Republicans want to do, he said.
As Clinton told it, the chief villains in this Republican drive to take America back are — no surprise — former Bush White House aide Karl Rove and a shadowy network of Republican millionaires and billionaires. “Karl Rove and his crowd,” Clinton said, have created political organizations with “phony names and anonymous donors…why don’t these people want you to know who they are?”
Clinton repeatedly told the crowd to “follow the money.” Want to know why Republicans hope to repeal Obamacare? “Follow the money.” Want to know why Republicans want to turn back or slow any number of recent Democratic initiatives? “Follow the money.” “If they elect Republicans, they’ll make a lot more money,” Clinton said of those anonymous donors. “They’re paying for something. This is an investment for them.”
If Clinton had talked only about Republicans, his performance would have been entirely conventional and unremarkable. But his remarks about his own party left the impression that he believes Democrats, including President Obama, have failed to make their case to the American people. There’s no doubt Clinton, the campaigner-in-chief, is spending a lot of time making appearances for Democrats. Whether he truly wants them to win is another question.
