'Meet the Press' transcript for March 30, 2008

Coming next, Obama and Clinton toe-to-toe, the Democratic primary campaign goes on.  Is it hurting the party's chances this November?  The New York Times' David Brooks, The New Republic's Peter Beinart coming up right here only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  Our political roundtable, David Brooks of The New York Times, Peter Beinart of Time magazine, The New Republic and the Council on Foreign Relations after this station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  Peter Beinart, David Brooks, welcome both.

Mr. Brooks, you stirred things up on Tuesday with this column, and here it is.  "The Long Defeat.  Hillary Clinton's presidential prospects continue to dim.  The door is closing.  Night is coming.  The end, however, is not near.

"Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Politico that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination.  Now she's probably down to a 5 percent chance.  Five percent.

"Let's take a look at what she's going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance.  ...  For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along and in its Verdun-like pattern.  There will be steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism.  The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound."

You think that Hillary Clinton should, in effect, get out.

MR. DAVID BROOKS:  I think she should slow down the campaign, run what Mike Huckabee ran, a dignified campaign, not attacking her opponents, go through North Carolina and then get out.  She really has very little opportunity to win.  The Jeremiah Wright thing was big, the big scandal, the biggest thing Barack Obama's faced really in months.  It didn't hurt him.  We now have the polling results from poll after poll.  It's clear it didn't hurt him.  The voters were not shaken off him.  The--Michigan and Florida are not going to revote, the superdelegates are never going to overrule the pledge delegates, so her chances are really small.  And so what happens is the war is going to take control.  Howard Dean talking about July 1st, three more months of this? That means we're not in the eighth inning of this race, we're in the fourth inning.  We're halfway there, and for three more months we're going to go after each other.  And, as I wrote, they're not going to go after each other on policy issues because the policy issues, they're not really big differences and they've exhausted them.  This race is different from every other Democratic race because it's about race and gender, ultimately, and personality.  So they're going to fixate on those three things, and they're going to make the party look pretty bad.  And, you know, Howard Dean has asked them to, to wrap this thing up.  When Howard Dean is your voice of sanity and moderation, you're a party in trouble.  So they, they really got to straighten this out.

MR. RUSSERT:  There are some people who disagree, obviously.  Here is one, Friday, in North Carolina.

(Videotape)

FMR. PRES. BILL CLINTON:  All these people tell you, "Oh, we need to shut this thing down now.  The Democrats are so divided." That's a bunch of bull.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  I think we beeped out maybe the second half.  And the candidate herself had this to say to The Washington Post yesterday, and I'll read it.

"In her most definitive comments to date on the subject, Sen.  Hillary Clinton sought Saturday to put to rest any notion that she will drop out of the presidential race, pledging in an interview to not only compete in all the remaining primaries, but also continue until there is a resolution of the disqualified results in Florida and Michigan.

"`I know there are some people who want to shut this down.  I think they're wrong.  ...  I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan.  And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention - that's what credentials committees are for.' ...

"Asked if there was a scenario in which she would drop out before the last primaries on June 3, Clinton said no.  `I am committed to competing everywhere that there is an election.'"

There you have it.

MR. BROOKS:  Credentials fight.  Is this what the Democratic Party really wants?  What happened this week?  Her approval ratings are now at their seven-year low.  This has begun to hurt her, in particular, but it's begun to hurt the entire party.  Barack Obama used to lead among independent votes against John McCain.  Now, according to some polls, John McCain leads among independent voters.  This is going to go on, and people are going to wonder "Do we really trust these people to run the country?" Now, I still think it's a Democratic year, they still have the advantage, but we've spent the last six or seven years making--the Republicans have been making it clear that they're chumps.  We've forgotten how the Democratic Party can be chumps.  And they're, they're going to be bringing out the worst in each other and we're going to say, "Are these people going to really manage the entire health care system?" I mean, these people couldn't run a--I was saying the other day, they couldn't run a bordello in a gold rush.  So it's just going to bring out the worst of the party and diminish the prestige of the party and particularly the prestige of the two candidates.

MR. RUSSERT:  Peter, way back in January you seemed to foresee this might be coming in an article you wrote for the, for The Washington Post.  And let me read it to you and our viewers.

MR. BROOKS:  So it's just going to bring out the worst of the party and diminish the prestige of the party and particularly the prestige of the two candidates.

MR. RUSSERT:  Peter, way back in January you seemed to foresee this might be coming in an article you wrote for the, for The Washington Post.  And let me read it to you and our viewers.  "The tone of the Obama-Clinton race has pundits worried.  `The concern is this bitter campaign could end up hurting whoever the nominee is.' ...

"[But] bitter primary contests don't necessarily hurt candidates in the general election.  In a 1998 study, the University of New Mexico's Lonna Rae Atkeson found that when you control for other factors, divisive presidential primaries have a `marginal or even nonexistent effect in understanding general election outcomes.' ...

"It's quite possible, therefore, that Obama and Clinton would actually be stronger general-election candidates than if their path through the primaries had been a cakewalk.  Both are bringing new voters into the Democratic Party in droves.  ...  Some of those new voters will be alienated if their candidate loses, of course, but it's a good bet that most of them will be like the Deaniacs [of 2004] and stick with the party's nominee come fall.

"The reason is simple:  Obama and Clinton are much closer to each other ideologically than either is to any potential Republican.  When primary voters stay home or defect across party lines in the general election, it's usually because they think their party's nominee is no better than the other side's."

Since that time, John McCain has emerged as the presumptive Republican nominee.  Does that change your thinking?

MR. BEINART:  No, it really doesn't.  I think Barack Obama is actually a stronger candidate, just as David was saying, today, than he was a few months ago.  He has weathered this Jeremiah Wright scandal, which was the biggest problem of his campaign.  It's better for him that it came out now.  Imagine if we only learned about Jeremiah Wright in October.  He has shown that he can take a punch, he's shown that he knows how to respond to a Swift Boat-style attack and I think he's actually become a better candidate because these primaries have been so tough.

MR. RUSSERT:  Pat Leahy, the Democratic senator from Vermont, supporter of Barack Obama, gave a radio interview on Friday.  Let's listen.

(Audiotape, March 28, 2008)

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT):  There is no way that Senator Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination.  She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama.  ...  I am very concerned.  I mean, John McCain, who has been making one gaffe after another, is getting a free ride on it because Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have to fight with each other.  I think that her criticism is hurting him more than anything John McCain has said.

(End audiotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Peter, Pat Leahy's saying that Hillary Clinton's comments about Barack Obama, not measuring up as commander in chief and so forth, hurting Obama more than anything McCain has said about Obama.

MR. BEINART:  I don't think that's true.  I think, in fact, that Barack Obama is a stronger general election candidate today than he was.  And the general problem is you can't ask Hillary Clinton to drop out, it seems to me, reasonably, if she's winning states.  If she starts to lose states, I think there's no question she will be out of this race.  If she loses Pennsylvania on April 22, if she loses Indiana, certainly, on May 6.  Maybe even if she just loses North Carolina on May 6.  But if, in the unlikely event that she manages to win these states, it's going to be very difficult to tell her to drop out.

MR. RUSSERT:  Democratic conventions in '68, '72, '80, badly divided.  All three times, they lost the general election.

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