E-mail a friendSusan Page
airdate May 21, 2008
Veteran political journalist Susan Page is USA Today's Washington bureau chief. She also guest-hosts NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. Page has covered six presidential elections and four White House administrations and won national awards for her reporting. A native of Wichita, KS, she was a Pulitzer Fellow at Columbia University, where she earned her masters degree. She previously covered the White House and national politics for Newsday and is past president of the White House Correspondents' Association.
Poliltical journalist explains what she thinks will be the three major issues on which Sen. John McCain will challenge Sen. Barack Obama this fall. (1:31)
Susan Page
Tavis: Susan Page is the Washington bureau chief for "USA Today" who's been covering politics for the paper for more than a dozen years now. She's also a past president of the White House Correspondents Association. She joins us tonight from Washington. Susan Page, nice to have you on.
Susan Page: Hey, Tavis, it's great to be back.
Tavis: Glad to have you back. This is kind of - was that Yogi Berra, it's like déjà vu all over again? (Laughter) Obama wins one, Hillary wins one, he moves closer but not enough to close the deal. What do you make of Kentucky and Oregon this week?
Page: Well, a big win for Hillary Clinton in Kentucky. Thirty-five points, you don't really get victories like that usually in primaries and closely fought races like this one, but I don't think it matters. I think in a way it's a kind of hollow victory.
Barack Obama crossed a bigger threshold last night. He now has a majority of the pledge, those elected convention delegates, and he's really within about 40 or 50 superdelegates of clinching this nomination, which it looks like he'll do just in the nick of time. We've only got two more weeks of primaries before this is over.
Tavis: Is that your sense, that these superdelegates are going to get lined up behind him in advance of the final primary on June 3rd?
Page: I think they may well. He's gotten about 60 superdelegates in the last two weeks, even coming off a disappointing show in West Virginia. So I think there is a sense that the party is coalescing behind him.
We talked yesterday to Donna Brazil, who's a very influential superdelegate. She said, "It's time for this to be over, it's time for Democrats to get united behind Barack Obama." She's been influential in part because she hasn't committed to either candidate. And I think that she's speaking for a lot of Democrats who are a little worried about having this fight go on and damage the party's prospects against John McCain in November.
Tavis: Speaking of being worried, though, shouldn't Mr. Obama be worried that if he claims victory too soon, he unnecessarily antagonizes, causes angst, among those Hillary supporters and especially women, who he is going to need in November. Why not let this thing ride out? We've been dealing with this for a year now. What's two more weeks, Susan?
Page: Well, you certainly heard that tone from him last night in his victory speech. He paid tribute to Hillary Clinton, it sounded like he was campaigning for her. He talked about the contribution her campaign had made to his daughters who went with him to Des Moines for that rally last night. So I think he's very conscious of the need to heal some of the wounds in the Democratic Party. And the one voter group that continues to stand most staunchly with Hillary Clinton is women, especially White women 50 and older - women who are just like her.
Tavis: What's your sense of how - let's assume for the moment that he does the right thing, as he intimated at least in his speech last night - he lets her get out of this race on her terms, which basically means this thing is going to ride till June the 3rd. He then claims victory as the Democratic Party nominee. How, then, does he appeal to those women who have so supported Hillary Clinton?
Page: Well, he'll do it in part with her help. I mean, if Hillary Clinton - Hillary Clinton continues to say she'll do everything she can to elect a Democrat in the general election, and that means that she's presumably going to be helping him heal some of those wounds.
You know, he could address it as well by - in his choice of a vice president. Maybe he'll pick Hillary Clinton, maybe he won't. Maybe he'll pick someone who supported Hillary Clinton. That might be one way to bridge this gap in this party.
Tavis: What do you make of these numbers, to the extent that you believe in them, that certainly in Kentucky and West Virginia, they come to mind immediately? You got a whole bunch of White folk, to be blunt about it, who said that if Obama is the nominee, that they're going to switch and support the White male, John McCain.
Page: You know, it's a big concern to Democrats. Almost half of the White Democratic voters in Kentucky said they wouldn't vote for Barack Obama in November. Now some of that is kind of the heat of the moment when you're really supporting your candidate, so those numbers are probably inflated.
But they're not - you can't dismiss them entirely. And while we don't think Kentucky is going to be a targeted swing state in November, those are the same kind of voters that Barack Obama will need to get in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. So he needs to find a way to connect with voters like that and get more of them on his side.
Tavis: Based upon your covering these campaigns, what's your sense of what he can do, if anything, to win over those so-called working class White voters?
Page: It's bread-and-butter issues. When you talk to voters who are working class, who don't have a college education, they want to hear less about hope and more about help. They want to get some help on gas prices and on the home mortgage meltdown. They want really bread-and-butter issues addressed. That's one thing Hillary Clinton has done really effectively in the last couple months.
It's something Barack Obama has focused less on, and I think he needs to do that to get this group of voters.
Tavis: I've said before, Susan, that I think that John McCain, if Obama is his opponent, is going to run his campaign on two things, to be sure. In no particular order, one being experience, the other being patriotism. Tell me if I'm right or wrong and if I'm right, how Obama counters the experience argument and the patriotism argument - even though never mind his not wearing his flag pin on his lapel.
Page: I think that's exactly right. I'd guess I would add a third one: national security, who would keep you safe. You hear that debate already starting between those two candidates.
The patriotism argument's an interesting one. I was at a focus group that the Annenberg Center sponsored. It was in Charlottesville, Virginia last week with 12 independent Virginia voters, and you really heard a lot of concern about Barack Obama's patriotism. Why won't he wear a flag pin? Will he put his hand over his heart when the national anthem is played?
This is an issue I think Barack Obama can put to rest, but he needs to. There is clearly some voters who need to be reassured that he really loves this country. In a way, Jeremiah Wright, I think, his former pastor, has done him a lot of harm on that front. So patriotism, I think definitely an issue, and McCain, of course, has great standing as a military guy, as a POW in the Vietnam War, someone who talks a lot about patriotism and is respected for that.
Security, a big issue. Experience, there are two sides to experience. One is John McCain has a lot of experience; the other is John McCain's pretty old. And if you're talking about a country that wants some change, maybe you'd go with the young guy. Maybe you'd go with a guy who's 46.
Tavis: Maybe I jumped too far or too fast talking about McCain and Obama in the fall, because this thing ain't quite over yet on the Democratic side. So let me just back up one more quick second here. Michigan, Florida - what's going to happen?
Page: Well, we're going to have a meeting of the Democrats Rules and Bylaws Committee. We'll all know that name and the people who are on it by the time this is over. They're going to meet on May 31st. There are some signs that they are moving toward a deal that would give Michigan and Florida some but not all of their delegates - maybe half of their delegates - with a division between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
If there is a deal, that's a sign that Barack Obama thinks his nomination is safely in hand, and that that's something on which he is able to compromise. So we'll see if they do that. If they do that on the 31st, boy, it really clears the deck for June 3rd to be the end of this contest.
Tavis: But obviously, though, he would not agree to anything that would give Hillary Clinton so many more votes. That would make this thing even tighter.
Page: Well, he's not going to do it if he thinks he can't. It's all about winning for both of these candidates, so it depends on superdelegates coming behind him, him feeling confident that he's got this nomination in hand. At that point, I think this gets settled. Boy, if this doesn't get settled and goes to the convention in August, that is disaster for the Democrats.
When we have these credentials fights at conventions like we did for Republicans in 1976 and Democrats in 1980, that is a prescription for disaster when it comes to general elections.
Tavis: And finally, right quick, since you're sitting there with the Capitol dome behind you, one of the stalwarts of the Senate for so many years, Ted Kennedy, what are you hearing - what are they saying on the Hill about what his condition might mean, its impact in the U.S. Senate and for that matter in this Obama campaign, since he is such a huge Obama supporter?
Page: It's such a polarized town here, but I got to say yesterday, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals alike were just stunned by the news of Senator Kennedy's illness. It was really funereal on Capitol Hill. A colleague of mine was up there talking to members of Congress, people in both parties. You saw Senator Byrd get so emotional on the floor of the Senate in talking about his friend Ted Kennedy.
I think it will make a difference in the Senate. Ted Kennedy is somebody who's not just one of the most liberal members of Congress, but one of the members of the Senate best able to reach across party lines and come to deals with people like Orrin Hatch or George W. Bush.
So I think that if he's absent from the Senate there will be a loss there, and I wonder how just the fact that he's fighting his illness might be one more factor really energizing liberal Democrats in this president election.
Tavis: That said - I appreciate that, Susan; all of our thoughts and prayers and best wishes, of course, go to Senator Kennedy in this critical hour. Susan Page, thank you, as always, for your insight. Nice to have you on the program.
Page: Tavis, thank you.
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