Aaron Belkin: A Brilliant Democratic Sucker-Punch?

by Aaron Belkin [courtesy of Politics on HuffingtonPost.com]

Sure, hindsight is 20-20. But after watching Hillary and Bill Clinton's speeches over the past two nights, you have to believe that their rousing endorsements of Barack Obama were inevitable. There was simply no way that the Clintons - perhaps the most strategic, committed Democrats in the country - were going to squander their prime time slots and invite permanent reputations as poor losers by offering lukewarm praise.

The Clintons were eloquent, gracious and glowing. They left no doubt that they will work hard to elect Obama. And that they hope and expect their supporters to do the same.

All of which raises a sneaking suspicion. Did Democrats allow word of the Clinton-Obama rift to spread before the convention, or perhaps even fan the flames, knowing full-well that the so-called "tensions" would be healed beautifully in a masterful display of unity and grace?

Maybe the rift was real. Maybe the stars happened to align in just the right way. Maybe the Democrats got lucky. Maybe the Clinton really were planning on delivering passive aggressive or nasty speeches.

Yet whether intentional or not, it now seems clear that pre-convention media obsession with the Clinton-Obama rift raised the stakes of the first several nights of the convention, created a sense of drama, boosted viewership, made the roll-call vote seem even more stupendous, and generated a round of highly-favorable post-speech media coverage about party unity.

And the icing on the cake, of course, is how ridiculous the McCain camp now looks for having rolled out a round of ads emphasizing Hillary Clinton's criticisms of Obama.

This does beg the question of whether the candidate who lacked the smarts to oppose the Iraq war, understand the importance of Afghanistan, keep the distinction between Sunni and Shi'a straight, etc., might have just fallen face-first into a tactical sucker punch.