President Obama is a powerful voice for Hillary Clinton. But all his eloquence and advocacy can’t win an election for her.
Just ask Martha Coakley.
In January 2010, the Massachusetts Democrat lost a high profile special Senate election to Republican Scott Brown, even after Obama spoke these words on her behalf: “If you were fired up in the last election, I need you more fired up in this election… . Understand what’s at stake here… . It’s whether we’re going forwards or backwards.”
Sound familiar? It should. Obama is pressing the same case even more passionately on Clinton’s behalf. Addressing the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation gala dinner in Washington this weekend, the president told the audience he would consider it a “personal insult” if African-Americans didn’t vote for Clinton. What’s at stake, he said, is a candidate who would advance the Obama mission of the past eight years versus one “whose defining principle, the central theme of his candidacy, is opposition to all that we’ve done.” At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last July, he also exhorted delegates to support Clinton and “carry her the same way you carried me.”
But if he couldn’t win a Senate seat for Coakley in Massachusetts — a state that adores him — how can he win the White House for Clinton, in a country divided over his leadership?
There are obvious differences of time and place. Obama’s not a first-term president. As he prepares to leave office after two terms, his current approval rating of over 50 percent is impressive by modern American political standards. But as Donald Trump would note, it’s not Vladimir Putin-solid. And it’s not automatically transferable to another candidate.
Coakley was smart, well versed in policy, and backed by the Democrat establishment. But she failed to connect with voters at that all-important personal level. Sound familiar?
Of course, Massachusetts is not America. It’s bluer. And 2016 is not 2010. Today, there’s even more at stake for Obama. When Massachusetts stunningly sent Brown to Washington, Obama was trying to get the Affordable Care Act through Congress. Now he’s trying to preserve it as the centerpiece of his legacy.
Trump’s not Brown. He’s much smarter and meaner. Also, while Brown ducked the media, Trump loves to tangle with it. And Clinton’s not Coakley. She’s tougher, more experienced, and, like Trump, more willing to say whatever it takes to win.
But she has the same human “connection” problem. And her trust deficit with voters, recently exacerbated by pneumonia-gate, is an added burden.
Clinton nonetheless has time to reconsider lessons learned from a Senate fight that still haunts Massachusetts Democrats. Coakley, like Clinton, didn’t like to engage with the press. She ran an overly cautious campaign that grossly underestimated her opponent’s appeal. She also believed women would back her in the interests of sending the first woman senator from Massachusetts to Washington; not enough did. She wrongly believed the issue of reproductive rights would give her an edge; it didn’t give enough of one. Meanwhile, union leaders backed Coakley, but rank-and-file workers backed Brown. Coakley also went on to lose the Massachusetts gubernatorial race to Republican Charlie Baker in 2014.
And here’s the really important part of that Massachusetts political history lesson. Brown’s no longer a senator from Massachusetts. That’s because Elizabeth Warren beat him in 2012, after Obama urged her to run. In the end, Warren’s principles and convictions were the game-changers. In debates and on the campaign trail, she fearlessly revealed Brown as the empty barn jacket he turned out to be. She has just as fearlessly taken on Trump on Clinton’s behalf.
If Clinton is victorious, she owes thanks to surrogates like Warren and special thanks to Obama, whose backing is critical. But Clinton has to win this race. No one can do it for her.