John Baer: As Clinton & Obama parry, the mash of negative ads ferments

NOW THAT the Democratic fight is down to he's an unpatriotic racist / she's an unrepentant liar - and, I'd remind y'all, I wrote in January this thing's headed toward self-destruction - will Pennsylvania provide the coup de grace?

What image or quote emerges here to follow the "winner" into the fall?

Remember, whoever claws through this race/gender/truth-telling tussle goes against a GOP with a pretty good record of knocking down Dems.

(Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry all enjoyed leads in the spring of their respective years. Only a Clinton survived. An omen?)

For starters, racial politics and PA are perfect together since aside from Philly and Pittsburgh we're mostly mayonnaise.

Our own Hillary-backing Guv - who likes to appeal to our better angels unless it conflicts with his political objectives - said some whites here won't vote black.

(He also said, on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," we're electing a president, "not someone whose goal is to unify the country."

(Yeah, I mean, God forbid.)

So to scare the bejesus out of the majority (the state's just 10.7 percent black, below the national average), maybe an ad with Rev. Wright railing against America, maybe cut with clips of Malcolm X voicing similar thoughts, you know, for good measure?

See, PA? Not a "typical white person" like you and me.

Oh and, by the way, where's Obama's flag lapel pin?

The ad comes, of course, not from Clinton's camp but from some group the Clintons can disavow, with Hillary saying Barack's not racist "as far as I know."

Such images and baiting can return in October.

But, hey, Obama's not without weapons.

I see Sinbad (the comedian, not the sailor) in city ads laughing and telling of traveling with Hillary in Bosnia.

This was one of her First Lady foreign policy "experience" excursions she describes as including ducking sniper fire and running for cover.

But Sinbad tells the Washington Post the only "red-phone" moment on the '96 trip was deciding where to eat.

I'm no ad-man, but Sinbad's a funny dude and I suspect somebody can produce a memorable and, for Hillary, personally degrading spot.

Questions of what she says and what she did can resurface come fall.

Then, as a colleague calls it, there's the "naftiness" around NAFTA.

Worked for her in Ohio. Maybe he can use it in PA.

Hillary's White House schedules seem to contradict her assertions she opposed the trade agreement "from the very beginning" and question her "shame-on-you" finger-wagging at Obama for saying otherwise.

Records show she pushed NAFTA in four White House meetings before the bill passed in November '93, so Obama's camp calls her Ohio anti-NAFTA claims basically "consumer fraud."

On a press conference call Friday, Clinton aide Phil Singer was asked if Hillary ever advocated for NAFTA.

He said she "raised a number of concerns."

Pressed if she ever advocated or opposed it, he said, "I wasn't in the administration . . . I wasn't there."

Her campaign uses former Bill Clinton advisor David Gergen in defense. But what Gergen says is there's "some justification" for her side, saying she's "never been a great backer for NAFTA," which, excuse me, isn't quite the same as opposing it from the beginning.

I ask Obama manager David Plouffe if we'll see NAFTA ads.

(PA has 830,000 union workers, according to U.S. Labor Department data released last month; only two states, California and New York, have more, and NAFTA's a huge union issue.)

Plouffe says Hillary's made "misleading statements" and "we're certainly going to make that case."

I picture an animated Pinocchio ad.

I also picture John McCain sitting back enjoying the show, probably thinking lofty thoughts like, "My friends, God bless America." *

Send e-mail to baerj@phillynews.com.

For recent columns, go to

http://go.philly.com/baer.