'Meet the Press' transcript for May 11, 2008

MR. RUSSERT: Michele, you heard Chris Dodd say he did not think Hillary Clinton would be on the ticket.

MS. NORRIS: Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT: You heard Ted Kennedy say that. It is interesting, those two senior Democrats both sort of throwing cold water on any notion of an Obama-Clinton ticket. Why?

MS. NORRIS: He's been asked about this several times now. You know, it seems like every campaign stop someone asks him this question. He's very delicate in praising Hillary Clinton and her work, but not saying much about this. The animosity between the two campaigns is great right now.

MR. CILLIZZA: Mm-hmm.

MS. NORRIS: And it's hard to see how they could bring the two of them together. I think also when you talk to his team and they talk about what they would want to see in a vice president, if he were to become the nominee, I think they're looking for someone with a bit of experience, because they know that that's the campaign that McCain will plan to run. They want someone who's been in, perhaps, if not in Washington, been in government for a time. And someone who has the ability to help the campaign reach out to independent voters and reach out to Republican voters because they believe, they strongly believe that they can turn predictably Republican states or purplish states and really make them competitive.

MR. RUSSERT: Virginia, Colorado.

MS. NORRIS: Exactly. Kansas, Missouri and Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, that have sort of started to drift into the Demo--or into the Republican category. They think that they can bring those states back so they, I think...

MR. RUSSERT: And Hillary Clinton wouldn't help him in those states?

MS. NORRIS: Not much.

MR. HARWOOD: And they want a minimum of complications and baggage, and those are two things that Hillary Clinton would bring.

MR. CILLIZZA: Tim, I was just going to say, at its core, I think, beyond--we've seen candidates pick people they don't necessarily like because they think it's in their political interest--John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson; Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush--actually think it may go beyond personal animosity, though, I think Michele is right...

MS. NORRIS: Mm.

MR. CILLIZZA: ...that there clearly is. In a campaign this long, it may be inevitable. Barack Obama's core message is change. We need different people, we need different faces. To bring in one of the two faces of the Democratic Party over the last two decades--you could argue longer, but certainly over the last two decades, it goes against the fundamental core message that has helped him beat Senator Clinton.

Now, I do think one thing that's important, he is aware that an olive branch needs to be offered to the Clinton team. My guess would be, if it happens in the form of via vice president, it won't be Hillary Clinton. It'll be a prominent supporter of hers. A name that often comes up and that I think would make the most sense...

MR. HARWOOD: But, Chris...

MR. CILLIZZA: ...Ted Strickland, the governor of Ohio. Yes?

MR. SEIB: You don't bring one of the two faces, you bring both of the faces.

MR. CILLIZZA: Both. Right. Right.

MR. HARWOOD: And that's part of the problem.

MS. NORRIS: Right, and that's part of it, too. That is part of the issue.

MR. CILLIZZA: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: Gerry, this whole debate about race, Hillary Clinton's comments, USA Today about hardworking whites, what has that done to the dynamic between the Obama and Clinton campaigns?

MR. SEIB: It's, it's definitely added to the tensions. There were plenty of tensions there before. I think they were under control until the last couple of weeks. I think those comments at--brought the race question to the surface within the campaigns. You have a lot of tension now between the two campaigns. I think a lot of that will go away, inevitably will go away once there's a nominee, and how the loser loses is going to be very important here. Who says what when it's over will determine whether those kind of comments that, Tim, really sort of live on, or whether they're buried in the middle of June somewhere.

MS. NORRIS: You know, I think that this is a week also, when you talk to people within the party outside the campaigns, where the race issue has really started to give them quite a bit of heartburn. When Hillary Clinton talks about Barack Obama not having strong support among Americans, hardworking Americans, white Americans, the corollary argument that could be made against her is the drop in her support among African Americans. And if she were to become the nominee, there is a real concern that African Americans, who have always been reliable, you know, a part of the electorate for the Democratic Party, would not show up. And if you look at what happened in Ohio in the last election, if John Kerry had improved his performance, his support among African Americans, even only marginally, he might be president today.

MR. RUSSERT: If you have African Americans underperform in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, you do not win.

MS. NORRIS: You don't win.

MR. RUSSERT: You do not carry those states.

MS. NORRIS: You don't win. You don't win.

MR. RUSSERT: And Jim--that's why Jim Clyburn, the congressman from South Carolina, said Hillary Clinton's been losing African Americans 91-to-eight. And if you're the nominee and suddenly try to turn that around, could be difficult.

MR. CILLIZZA: Tim, I just--one thing. I think that what we've seen, and Terry McAuliffe mentioned this, he said there hasn't been an avalanche of superdelegates to Senator Obama yet. We didn't see it right afterward. My understanding is that if Senator Clinton continues down the road of making comments, as Michele pointed out, white voters, comments that are clearly--can be read as damaging to Barack Obama when he is the nominee, you will see more superdelegates come out, major superdelegates, people we know who are on the fence, people who everyone watching today knows. They will come out and end this. That there is a, there is a willingness to let Senator Clinton play this out until June 3rd if it is seen as a graceful exit to her. If it is seen as a, sort of a carpet bombing, I think you will see it end much more quickly.

MR. RUSSERT: You know, it is remarkable when you look back at the macro picture, that this one-term senator from Illinois could defeat Bill and Hillary Clinton, in effect, because it is the Clintons, there's no doubt about it.

Karen Tumulty in Time magazine listed five mistakes Clinton made: one, she misjudged the mood, two, she didn't master the rules; three, she underestimated the caucus states; three, she relied on old money; and five, she never counted on a long haul. And I think there's one other issue that was involved in all this, and we saw it in the exit polls. Amongst Democrats voting in the primaries, in Indiana, a state she carried, is Hillary Clinton honest and trustworthy? Yes, 54; no, 44. In North Carolina, is she honest and trustworthy? No, 49; yes, 49. It was at the core. And I think the Bosnia sniper fire, perhaps the gas tax holiday, things just ate away at that which caused difficulty for her and allowed Obama, with his fundraising ability, to make the case against her.

MR. HARWOOD: I think there's one more issue that was not on that list, and that is she had to run against Barack Obama. We're talking about an exceptionally gifted guy, somebody who, in many ways, embodies the diversity that the United States is moving closer and closer to, somebody in a change year is very, very well positioned to capture that mood. Hillary Clinton was not counting on having to run against Barack Obama. He'd said after he was elected to the Senate that he didn't plan to do it. That was the turning point in the race is Barack Obama and the appeal that he's demonstrated.

MR. SEIB: Yeah. And I think, you know, we're always looking for who made the mistake in the campaign. That's a natural thing to do. But I also think it may just be that the problem was this was a year and a man that have come together, in a way. I mean, I think about 1980, 1980 and Ronald Reagan, they came together at the same time. There may not have been another year before, another year after where Ronald Reagan would have been the phenomenon that he was in 1980. It's hard for Hillary Clinton to make the case for change as well as Barack Obama, and as you said, Chris, this was a year when people want change--is a year when people want change.

MR. CILLIZZA: Tim, you mentioned the gas tax and I just found it fascinating, if you looked at it from a purely political perspective, that--from--let's say it's a congressional race, a governor's race, a Senate race--you had Hillary Clinton saying, "I feel your pain, I understand we need to provide you relief." You had Barack Obama saying, "This is political flimflammery, it won't work. We need a long-term solution." Usually, the direct relief argument wins out. But I think it's exactly what you talked about. People did not believe her, they saw her as a flawed messenger, they did not think she--they, they were open to the argument, which Obama smartly made, "She's selling you a bill of goods." Obama, if you watch the response on the gas tax, he didn't respond with his own plan, he said this is the old politics that we need to be done with. I think that played into voters' doubts about her, and I think that throughout these primaries, we saw her becoming an increasingly flawed messenger. Voters simply didn't believe what she had to say about Barack Obama.

MS. NORRIS: I think it was also perhaps an erratic messenger, because Barack has had a fairly consistent message throughout this campaign and Hillary Clinton, if you go back to Iowa and then look at New Hampshire and then look at Super Tuesday and then look at Ohio, the message has changed with each set of primaries. And so I think that that adds to those numbers, also. People aren't sure exactly what she stands for.

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