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Democrats worry about gains made by GOP ticket

BY NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON AND CRAIG GORDON | nia.henderson@newsday.com; craig.gordon@newsday.com

September 11, 2008

While Barack Obama spent yesterday explaining lipstick, pigs and politics, many Democrats spent the day nervous that their White House takeover plans were coming undone by a Palin-powered ticket.

Republicans quickly seized on Obama's lipstick-on-a-pig comments about John McCain's policies, claiming Obama was actually calling McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, a pig.

But Obama pushed back hard and stood by his analogy yesterday, accusing the Republicans of peddling lies and playing swift-boat-style politics.

"This is sort of silly season in politics, not that there is a non-silly season in politics, but in Illinois the expression connotes that if you have a bad idea - in this case I was talking about John McCain's economic plans - that just calling them change, calling it something different, doesn't make it better. Hence, lipstick on a pig is still a pig," he said on the David Letterman show last night.

Still, even with his latest defense, some Democrats worried that Obama's campaign has been too passive - effectively ceding front-page coverage of the race to McCain and Palin for the last 10 days, since the GOP convention. Some said they even noticed a change in Obama's demeanor - from cool and confident to, in the words of one Democrat, "somewhat deflated" by the tightening polls.

Of Palin, Obama told Letterman: "There is no doubt that she's been a phenomenon, as somebody who used to be on the cover of Time and Newsweek ... those were the days," he said with mock sadness. "She's on a wild ride and there's no doubt that she's energized the base."

One problem for Obama is that any attempt to attack Palin seems out of character for voters drawn to him by the sense that he is a different kind of politician. "He's supposed to be above the fray. That's why people wanted him, " said one Democratic strategist.

But it seems the Palin pick has left the Obama campaign with no clear strategy - it has gone from belittling her mayoral experience to congratulating her for making history, and from not naming her to talking about her at every turn.

"I don't think they should be talking about Palin at all," said Steve Elmendorf, a top strategist in John Kerry's 2004 campaign, who believes Obama running mate Joe Biden should step up the attacks on McCain.

Jennifer Palmieri, another Democratic strategist and Kerry veteran, said Obama needs to do something to change the current story line - perhaps by going back to his convention-speech strategy of confronting the GOP attacks about his positions and his personality directly.

She also said she believes McCain's campaign might have "jumped the shark" - overplayed its hand - by blowing the lipstick comment out of proportion. "Republicans are trying to force us into an alternative universe where the 72-year-old who voted with Bush 90 percent of the time is the candidate for change, and the son of a single mom who was on food stamps is the elitist," she said.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, due to campaign in Ohio for Obama Sunday, agreed the recent flare-up over lipstick and pigs was much ado about nothing. "The Republicans need to lift up the dialogue in this campaign, and to ... stop with the distractions from what's really at stake in the election, because the election really is about a choice," she said.

This afternoon, Obama is to meet in Harlem with Bill Clinton, their first one-on-one of the campaign. Obama said Clinton will hit the stump for him this fall. "There's nobody smarter in politics," Obama told Letterman. One strategist said the Illinois senator could learn from Clinton's smash-mouth style.

"Bill was a pretty tough guy when he ran and Bill didn't take anything," said George Arzt, a New York consultant who worked on Clinton campaigns. "People are looking to Obama to be a tough leader, not the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter."