The Schultz Report: Hillary “goes for broke”

Today marks the debut of a new feature at MinMon–our weekly podcast interview with longtime Minnesota political analyst David Schultz. On our inaugural broadcast, Schultz talks about the remarkable events of Tuesday past and the changing tenor of the increasingly brutal Democratic nomination fight. When the shooting stops, he says, it will after all come down to the superdelegates. “I think one of the things we need to start looking at is the second campaign,” he offers, “the campaign for the superdelegates, to try to shore them up and hold them in a certain position. If I were a superdelegate, I would probably want to be in the witness protection program. Because I’m going to get an enormous amount of pressure.”

Listen: David Schultz on the post-Tuesday Democratic race (11:59)

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Some excerpts of Schultz’s remarks:

On Hillary’s late surge in Ohio and Texas tracking polls:

“There’s pretty good polling evidence that indicated people who made their decision in the last three days broke overwhelmingly for Clinton. And in the last four or five days, Clinton went very negative. One of her ads was the 3 a.m. [spot]. If you wake up at 3 a.m. and there’s a crisis, who you gonna call? Sort of like Ghostbusters.… There were also concerns about her using other kinds of personal attacks against Obama. There’s a little bit of irony in that back in the ’90s, she and her husband coined the phrase ‘the politics of personal destruction’ when it was [used] against the president. She seems very adept in the last few days at using the same type of personal attacks against Obama.

Continued: Click read more…“And Obama made some missteps of his own, particularly in comments about NAFTA and how he approached NAFTA…. This is particularly damaging… There is the allegation being pushed both by Clinton and by John McCain at this point, that he’s too green, that he’s a rookie in terms of international affairs, and to have him kind of trip up in terms of making these back-channel comments with the Canadian embassy, whatever they might have been, kind of makes it look like he’s got Andy, Barney and Floyd working with him on his campaign. This becomes very, very damaging for him where the issue is about experience and skill in foreign policy. That seems to be sticking in the polling data–that people ARE concerned he may not have enough experience in that area.”

On Clinton’s calling Obama less qualified to be president than John McCain:

“[Clinton's] attacks on Obama in the last couple of weeks really are setting the pace for what the Republicans will eventually say against Obama, were he to get the nomination. Think about it. First off, she has aligned herself with the Republicans with that statement, but second, she has a quote that can be used against Obama if he were to be the nominee. That’s going to be very damaging, having the Republicans use Hillary Clinton’s own quote against him. But her comment raises a far more troubling issue, which to some people appears to be her winner-take-all approach to trying to win the presidency… It’s the use of rhetoric, use of tactics, use of commercials, to go for broke.

“I think you can explain that in a couple of ways. First, at age 60, I think this is her last shot at running for the presidency. Yes, John McCain is 72, so she’s got theoretically 12 more years. But if Obama were to get the nomination and win, it’s four to eight years before she can run for president again. My suspicion is, her time has passed [then]…. I think she views this as her one shot, so go for broke. Second is her belief that the longer she stays in this campaign, the better her chances of winning. She’s hoping for Barack Obama screwing up, but also that somewhere along the line, the media collectively will turn against him…. It’s a long-haul strategy.”