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Tuesday 6 January 2009

Obama needs to be nice enough

If one was looking for a moment when the tide began to turn in Hillary’s favour in New Hampshire, Barack Obama telling her cuttingly at the debate there that she was “likeable enough” would have to be right up there. It was mean-spirited and fostered the impression that Hillary was not just being defeated but humiliated which made people—especially women—so sympathetic to her when she choked up under the stress of the campaign a couple of days later. Obama, though, doesn’t seem to have realised how important it is to appear nice to Hillary and appeared to turn his back on her at the State of the Union.

One of the things about Hillary that voters can relate to is her quest for acceptance. Anytime Obama plays into the narrative that the cool kids are beating up on her he helps her. Now, the Obama campaign claim that by not approaching her last night during the State of the Union he was merely trying to avoid an awkward moment, it would also be understandable if Obama had little time for the Clintons after their tactics in South Carolina. But if Obama is to win, it is crucial that he doesn’t allow a sympathy vote for Hillary to develop as it did in New Hampshire.

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