Friday January 18, 2008
Connecticut political reporters participated Friday morning in a brief, no-follow-up-questions-allowed conference call with David Plouffe, Sen. Barack Obama’s national campaign manager.
It was the kind of no-information session that bodes poorly for voters who might want some substance beyond that famous one-word campaign mantra for 2008: “change.”
Plouffe, in trumpeting his candidate’s first TV commercials to appear in the state Saturday, would not even offer a ballpark estimate of the broadcast buy beyond the boilerplate “substantial.”
It wasn’t too long ago that campaigns weren’t scared to announce the monetary total of a statewide media campaign. But that ended around the time that national Democrats and Republicans started sounding the same and owed their political souls to the same connected industry and business lobbyists.
The format of the conference call was so thoroughly controlled that they allowed no follow-ups from the apparently feared Connecticut newspaper writers. After a question, your mouthpiece went dead. After four reporters asked questions, Plouffe said goodbye, to presumably try to get away with the same controlled access with reporters in other Super DuperTuesday states.
He said there’s “an amazing amount of grassroots activity inConnecticut.” That means that beyond the few thousand bucks for Channel 3 in Hartford and Cablevision in southwestern Connecticut, there’s not too much focus on Connecticut’s meager 60 delegates.
Plouffe (pronounced Ploof and coincidentally rhymed with Proof) said 80 volunteers phone banked in New Haven Thursday night and supporters will be out canvassing this weekend. The TV ads will highlight Obama’s mother’s struggles with healthcare issuesand his proposal to provide $2,500 a year for family health coverage.
“Our message of change and unifying the American people is really resonating in Connecticut,” Plouffe pronounced. Maybe he sees something that’s not apparent to me, who prognosticates here that Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton will split evenly the 60 delegates up for grabs on February 5.
“We consider Connecticut to be a very high priority,” Plouff puffed. He couldn’t say whether the freshman senator from Illinois would visit Connecticut before the February 5 affair, when 22 states will have primaries and delegate caucuses.