On Eve of Primary, Clinton Camp Tenses Up
PHILADELPHIA -- With the Pennsylvania primary tomorrow and with polls narrowing between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, times on the trail are tense, the days are long and the candidate overworked.
Clinton has been campaigning fiercely in all parts of Pennsylvania over the last few days, including five stops on Saturday, four stops yesterday and each day beginning early in the morning and ending with a return to the hotel well into the early morning.
Clinton's voice is growing hoarse, yet her appearance remains crisp. Throughout this campaign, Clinton has exhibited an enormous amount of stamina and she is now having to go even further as she fights to stay alive in her hunt for the nomination. And although Clinton is expected to win Pennsylvania, though perhaps by a smaller margin than predicted weeks ago, it is clear through her vigorous campaign schedule that she is unwilling to take any chances.
But the candidates aren't the only ones having to endure the grueling schedules and the now 15-month long campaign, Clinton's staff has also had to work overtime to try to get their candidate elected under some increasingly difficult odds. But as the days go by, and as the campaign heats up, tensions rise. So much so that Clinton's staff often forgets to see the forest through the trees, focusing attention on minute details rather than seeing the big picture.
As expected, oftentimes during the mundane, day-to-day observations of a presidential campaign, new things tend to stick out. At a rally this weekend, for example, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, a small town outside of Philadelphia, it was apparent that a few new songs had been added to the now very familiar playlist of music the campaign uses to jazz up crowds before Clinton takes the stage.
The song was "Invisible Touch" by Genesis and, as it played, the lyrics caught the attention of a few reporters as they seemed highly unfavorable to the candidate such as:
"Well, I don't really know her, I only know her name / But she crawls under your skin, you're never quite the same / And now I know / She's got something you just can't trust / It's something mysterious / And now it seems I'm falling, falling for her..."
and:
"She don't like losing, to her it's still a game / And though she will mess up your life / You'll want her just the same, and now I know..."
A report I wrote after the song was played over the weekend was immediately flagged by the campaign. A few aides, in a brief, heated encounter later, told me the song choice was not theirs, but rather an outside vendor charged with the sound system at the event had chosen the song. After speaking with a vendor at an event following that discussion, the man assured me he has nothing to do with the music selection and even showed me the iPod the campaign handed him with the pre-programmed music for him to play.
The next day, the song resurfaced at a campaign rally in Bethlehem, to the notice of reporters. The song was soon cut short. The campaign later admitted they were unaware that the song had been added to the playlist, but no further explanation was provided.
Although this is a relatively small and harmless example, it illustrates how a minute detail can often get in the way of the larger picture, on a day when Obama had launched an assault over Clinton's health care plan and her ties to lobbyists. The campaign seemed noticeably agitated about the report hours after it was posted.
But as this heated campaign continues to remain close – so close in fact that no one writing this story in September would have ever imagined Clinton being deadlocked in a race with Obama – it is understandable that tempers will flare. And with the Pennsylvania race tightening, it is also understandable why Clinton's staff is worried - even paranoid - that any bit of bad news, even if it is over the poor choice of a simple campaign song, could create a negative news cycle from which she would be unable to recover.