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Last month, as the Senate engaged in one of its least deliberative exercises, the annual “vote-a-rama” of seemingly endless budget votes extending into the wee hours of the morning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was not about to confine his attention to the mind-numbing skirmishes on the floor. Instead, his home-state friend and perhaps strongest Hill ally, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., had made his Capitol office available so that Obama could meet with uncommitted superdelegates to lobby for their support for the presidential nomination.

For Obama, using his downtime this way was a no-brainer because the superdelegates—elected officials and party leaders—will ultimately play a decisive role in selecting the Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who also was on hand for the voting marathon, was doing her own presidential politicking.

Besides just focusing on the uncommitteds, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., suggested that Obama should also meet with the 13 senators who had already endorsed him, Durbin recalled in a recent interview. These lawmakers had plunged into the high-stakes battle by backing Obama over his more-senior rival, and as politically experienced as they are, they still wanted some reassurances about the state of his campaign. So Obama’s supporters trooped into a bigger room near the Senate floor to hear him make his case.

“This is a room that is bristling with political talent and ambition and experience—[Sen. Edward] Kennedy and Kerry and all the rest of us who have been around the park a little bit,” Durbin said. “We all have an idea [about the campaign] and anxiety as we sat down in this room to meet.”

Obama, however, allayed their concerns. “What really struck me was how quickly Barack calmed the audience, reassured us, and told us his strategy to the satisfaction of everybody in the room,” Durbin recounted. “There was a real feeling there that he had a grip on what would lie ahead and a plan that would succeed.”

It is telling that even as Obama leads Clinton in the popular vote, in states won, and in pledged delegates, battle-scarred senators who support him still required some hand-holding. Other Democrats share their anxiety. Especially after the thumping Obama took in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary—a 9-point loss—still more questions are being raised about whether he could effectively deal with the fierce lines of attack that he would face in a general election campaign, a barrage that would be unlike anything he has endured in his political career.

“I don’t think we know yet whether he can take a punch,” observed Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on Public Life at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). Guillory, a former reporter who has written extensively about politics, added, “I think that is what is making a lot of Democrats nervous.”

During his April 16 debate with Clinton in Philadelphia, Obama addressed such concerns. “Look, there is no doubt that the Republicans will attack either of us,” he said. “What I’ve been able to display during the course of this primary is that I can take a punch. I’ve taken some pretty good ones from Senator Clinton.”

Still, as sharp as Clinton’s criticisms have been, her shots are nothing compared with what Republicans would fire Obama’s way if he wins the nomination, according to veterans of other campaigns.

“The stuff Hillary has laid out there has been rinky-dink stuff,” said David Rudd, a political strategist and former executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Obama has “been able to laugh it off and say, ‘That’s politics as usual; that’s why I am running—to stop all that stuff.’ In the Democratic primaries, it is much easier to do that than it is with the general electorate.”

Leon Panetta, who was President Clinton’s chief of staff and has endorsed Hillary Clinton, agreed. “He has not faced the kind of firestorm that he is going to face should he get the nomination,” Panetta said.

New Lines of Attack

Even Clinton’s repeated pounding of Obama as “elitist” and “out of touch”—because of his remarks that small-town residents “get bitter” and “cling” to guns or religion in response to lost jobs—doesn’t impress grizzled campaign warriors as especially tough. She was simply “using his own words [against] him—she’s not doing opposition research, or looking up his votes and saying he’s the most liberal senator, or that kind of thing,” a Democratic operative noted, referring to Obama’s ranking as the most liberal senator in National Journal’s 2007 vote ratings.

And Clinton has not pursued other lines of attack against Obama that surely would come in the fall campaign—whether from Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, or from outside groups such as the “527s” that trashed Kerry in the 2004 election.

For example, Clinton, except when asked by reporters, has stayed away from the explosive controversy involving Obama’s longtime (but now retired) pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In response to questions, Clinton has said she would have left her church if her own minister had used such inflammatory rhetoric as Wright, who during sermons said “goddamn America” and suggested that the United States was to blame for provoking the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the Philadelphia debate, she noted, “As leaders, we have a choice who we associate with.”

Clinton could have pushed the issue much harder by running ads featuring Wright’s incendiary words, or by pointedly asking why Obama remained in the pews for 20 years, took his children there, and contributed generously to the church. But such tactics would have risked alienating African-Americans, a core Democratic constituency.

Similarly, Clinton has not made an issue of Michelle Obama’s remarks that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am proud of my country”; that the United States is “just downright mean”; and that most Americans’ lives have “gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.” Nor has Clinton attacked Obama’s controversial votes on such issues as abortion and guns during his eight years in the Illinois Senate. And after knocking Obama during a January 21 debate for his dealings with Tony Rezko—a Chicago property developer who is a friend and contributor but has been indicted for fraud—Clinton has not highlighted this issue in ads.

“There is a whole set of attacks that he is going to get that we haven’t seen yet, because there is a difference between a general election and a primary,” said Mark Mellman, a veteran Democratic pollster.

Obama’s supporters insist, though, that he could not have risen so quickly out of the rough-and-tumble of Chicago politics to assume the lead in the presidential nomination battle had he not demonstrated a strength and resilience that will serve him well in the fall.

Asked if Obama could stand the heat of a general election campaign, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., a staunch Obama supporter, replied, “I guess you really can’t be sure, but he has done everything else so well that I have every confidence that he will do this well, too.”

“I wouldn’t minimize the punches that he has taken,” Daschle added. “The Clintons threw everything they had at him. Everything. They would have thrown even more if they could. The only thing they left out was the kitchen sink. You saw just how well he survived it.”

But conservatives who have been involved in past presidential contests see plenty of openings still left to exploit. “There are two types of attacks: issues attacks and character attacks,” said Chris Lacivita, one of the architects of the 2004 “Swift Boat” strategy that questioned Kerry’s Vietnam War service. “On the issues side, they haven’t touched Obama because all of his votes are to the left. And Hillary Clinton can’t touch that because that is the Democrat Party base. Once Middle America finds out how left Obama really is, it changes everything.”

Two Story Lines

Two very different narratives come up in discussions about Obama’s stunningly fast rise to the top. The first suggests that he benefited from so much good fortune during his earlier political races—initially for an Illinois Senate seat and then for his U.S. Senate seat—that he may not be sufficiently battle-tested.

“He has had such an incredible ride that he hasn’t really had a tough campaign, and frankly, even this [presidential nomination battle] hasn’t been tough in terms of press coverage, scandals, or in terms having to respond quickly or die,” said Joe Trippi, who was a top strategist to presidential candidate John Edwards. “I don’t know if we know how they would respond to a Swift Boat kind of attack—it doesn’t mean they can’t; we just don’t know if they can or not.”

The second story line is that anybody who can prevail in the hothouse of Chicago politics, where Obama began as a community organizer, and then take on the Clinton machine is ready for whatever the Republicans have in store.

“The whole notion [of] ‘Are we tough enough?’ … seems to have forgotten the fact that we happen to be [beating] the greatest Democratic political dynasty in the last 25 years,” said Robert Gibbs, Obama’s communications director. “I will use Barack’s line, ‘He may be skinny but he’s tough.’ You don’t survive in Chicago politics by being a beanbag.”

Still, the story line that Obama has enjoyed a no-sweat political ascent has some foundation. The only especially difficult election contest he faced was in 2000, when as a state senator he took on Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., in an ill-fated primary challenge. Obama got clobbered, winning only 30 percent of the vote.

During his first foray into politics, when he ran for the Illinois Senate in 1996, various would-be opponents either withdrew or were knocked off the ballot. Ultimately, Obama faced no primary opposition and easily won the general election in the overwhelmingly Democratic district.

Similarly, in Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate race for the seat of retiring GOP incumbent Peter Fitzgerald, the campaigns of potentially formidable rival candidates unexpectedly imploded. In the eight-candidate Democratic primary, Wall Street millionaire Blair Hull self-financed his way into the lead until revelations surfaced that his former wife had described him in their messy divorce as “a violent man with an ungovernable temper.” Dan Hynes, another early front-runner, was accused of campaign finance improprieties and ran a poor effort, as detailed in David Mendell’s book Obama: From Promise to Power. Obama won 53 percent of the vote—29 percent more than second-place finisher Hynes.

Emerging from the eight-candidate Republican primary was Jack Ryan, a handsome, articulate candidate with a compelling life story. After graduating from Harvard law and business schools and becoming a wealthy investment banker, he left Wall Street to teach inner-city children. But Ryan’s candidacy, like Hull’s, was doomed when divorce papers were ordered unsealed, revealing that he had pressed his wife to attend sex clubs in Paris and have sex with him among strangers.

Obama wound up facing Alan Keyes, who didn’t even live in Illinois. Keyes, who had twice lost Senate bids in Maryland and twice lost runs for the GOP presidential nomination, was an ardent conservative who didn’t have a prayer in left-leaning Illinois. And by that late point in the campaign, Obama had already shone in the national spotlight as the widely hailed keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He demolished Keyes, gaining some 70 percent of the vote.

But Obama’s supporters and others who have followed his political career dismiss the notion that he cakewalked to Washington. He overcame huge obstacles as a little-known candidate with an enormous funding disadvantage, they say, and he took a courageous stance against a U.S. invasion of Iraq at a time when that was not the popular position.

“There is this popular myth that he got to be a U.S. senator just by good luck and well-wishes,” Gibbs said. “Let’s start with the fact that it’s 2002 and the guy’s name is Barack Obama. He opposes a war that’s at 70-some percent [public approval] and takes on a guy [Hull] who is going to spend $30 million.”

Gibbs noted that several other primary candidates were seemingly better positioned than Obama to take advantage of Hull’s self-destruction: Hynes, the Illinois comptroller and son of a Chicago ward alderman who had the backing of nearly every county party chairman in the state; Gery Chico, a former school board president; and Maria Pappas, the Cook County treasurer. “Largely because people just remember that he won 53 percent of the vote in the primary, they forget that he started out at 5 percent or 6 percent,” Gibbs said.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., one of Obama’s most vocal Hill supporters, noted that he “was not given much of a chance at the beginning of that race.… To dismiss his ascension to the U.S. Senate as a fluke is patently unfair. He ran a very, very strong campaign there.… Nobody can say Chicago is not tough. Chicago is very tough.”

Durbin also argued that Obama didn’t have an easy glide into public office. Those who say he has “never taken a hard punch in a campaign” overlook the fact that “he took a hard punch and went down with Bobby Rush,” Durbin said.

“In his first race for the state Senate, there was a wrinkle where he was really tested,” Durbin recalled. “The incumbent [Alice Palmer], who was stepping aside to run for Congress so he could run, changed her mind and announced that she was getting back in the [state Senate] race.” Palmer’s supporters asked Obama to withdraw so she could hold on to her seat; after he refused and one of his supporters challenged the legality of her nominating petitions, she ultimately backed out. “There was a moment where this fellow who had never been elected to anything showed some grit and stuck with it,” Durbin said.

Durbin acknowledged that Obama outmatched Keyes, noting that Obama later told him he regretted not having to face a more formidable opponent. “He said, ‘I was ready to beat Jack Ryan. I was ready to beat a credible candidate. I ended up with Alan Keyes. I wanted to win this fair and square. I ended up with an interloper who people didn’t take seriously,’ ” Durbin said, adding, “You can’t blame him for that.”

Ideological Battles

Conservative political strategists see plenty of ammunition that has not been fired in the Democratic nomination battle. “Obama is a target of opportunity,” Lacivita said. “He is a target-rich environment. It is about finding the right message [about his candidacy] that is believable and doesn’t overreach and communicates an issue that the people are worried about and that people are concerned about and that, quite frankly, is relevant.”

When pressed about what fodder Republican opponents might use against Obama, Lacivita mentioned Rezko, the indicted developer. Obama has acknowledged that he made a mistake in purchasing land next to his house from Rezko’s wife in 2005, when it was widely known that Rezko was being investigated for fraud. The deal reportedly saved Obama hundreds of thousands of dollars. He responded to the controversy by giving a chunk of Rezko’s campaign donations to charity. “There has not been a whole lot of due diligence and follow-up on that whole issue,” Lacivita contended. “It stinks to high heaven.”

Gibbs noted that earlier this year, Obama spent 75 to 90 minutes each with the editorial boards of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune and responded to nearly 100 questions on this issue. “He has admitted, in his words, it was ‘a boneheaded thing’ to do. It just proves he’s not infallible,” Gibbs said. “I’m pretty sure that if you lined up the bad decisions that we have made involving people who have contributed to our political campaigns, there are fewer of those bad decisions with Barack Obama than with either of the other two [presidential candidates].”

Republican opponents are also likely to highlight Obama’s positions on abortion and guns to paint him as a staunch liberal. Conservative strategist Ralph Reed said that if foes combined Obama’s background as a “product of the Chicago Democratic political machine, with all the Rezko stuff—there is more to come on that front—with a very liberal voting record, most of which has not been thoroughly vetted … what you end up with is somebody who, while a very affable and likable person on a personal level, is out of the mainstream and way out on the left on a whole range of values issues.”

In a February 28 column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., decried what he described as Obama’s votes in the Illinois Senate against legislation providing medical care to “a live child born as a result of an abortion.” “Let’s be clear about what Obama did, once in 2003 and twice before that. He effectively voted for infanticide,” Santorum wrote. “He voted to allow doctors to deny medically appropriate treatment or, worse yet, [to] actively kill a completely delivered living baby.”

Gibbs countered that the legislation contained language that would have overturned the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortions. Santorum blistered that argument. “Justifying the killing of newborn babies is deeply troubling, but just as striking is his rigid adherence to doctrinaire liberalism,” he wrote.

It doesn’t take much imagination to picture graphic ads slamming Obama on the abortion issue. But his campaign could counter by turning to the candidate who defeated Santorum two years ago, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who opposes abortion but has endorsed Obama.

“When it comes to issues that are very difficult for Americans to come together on … his voice may be the quietest in the room, but the most reasoned and the one directed at bringing people together,” Casey said. “He and I disagree about [abortion] but we can agree on a lot. We agree on family planning. We agree on aid to pregnant women.” Casey added, “There’s no question it will be a rough, tough general election, but I think he can transcend a lot of things, just as he already has.”

And McCaskill is equally adamant that the usual conservative playbook will not prevail this year. “If Republican operatives believe that they can get down and dirty and succeed in this race, they are going to make a huge miscalculation,” she said. “The American public is on to them.”

Wright Redux

The only snapshot of Obama’s ability to deal with real political adversity in his presidential campaign comes from the Jeremiah Wright controversy. As clips of the reverend’s vitriolic comments began airing in March on YouTube and the cable networks, the Obama campaign faced its biggest crisis, one that could have been devastating to his candidacy.

The senator responded by deciding that he had to address the issue of race head-on, contrary to his previous efforts to downplay it. In his generally well-received March 18 speech, Obama denounced Wright’s words but did not disavow the man. His minister’s comments, Obama said, “were not only wrong but divisive.” Wright’s rhetoric reflected his experiences in the 1950s and 1960s, Obama said, but failed to recognize that America had made great progress. Still, Obama also praised the preacher who had brought him to Christianity and had baptized his two children. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said.

Reed jumped on that last comment, charging, “It suggested Obama equated Jeremiah Wright’s views with his loyalty to his own ethnic community. I think a lot of people disagree.” Commentator Juan Williams recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal that when Obama “finds it easy to sit in Rev. Wright’s pews and nod along with wacky and bitterly divisive racial rhetoric, it does call his judgment into question. And it reveals a continuing crisis in racial leadership.”

Reed’s and Williams’s critiques may well be a preview of the fall campaign. In interviews, more than a half-dozen Democratic politicians, strategists, and operatives praised Obama’s speech but also said that he had better buckle up, because the fallout from Wright’s words will reverberate until Election Day if the senator from Illinois is the nominee.

“I don’t think the issue is put to rest, but I think he did a very good job handling it,” said Tad Devine, who was the chief political consultant to Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign and is neutral this year. “It’s a live issue. It’s got videotape. It’s an explosive subject matter. It is something that penetrates very easily with people.”

Panetta agreed. “The Republicans are not going to let that go,” he said. “Obama is going to have to figure out how he is going to deal with it, because this has to be at the top of the list of the Republican hit machine in terms of how they are going to try to Swift Boat him.”

Robert Shrum, a longtime Democratic strategist who is also neutral this year, observed that this campaign may parallel that of 1992, when Bill Clinton had to deal with a series of accusations, including questions about how he had avoided service in Vietnam, but ultimately put it all behind him.

“McCain won’t do it, but the Republican satellite groups will put Reverend Wright on television,” Shrum said. “I think it is a lot like the Bill Clinton draft records in 1992. It came out and it hurt him some in the primaries, along with the other stuff, but by the time of the general election … people just dismissed it and said this election is about my job, about health care, and a whole set of other issues.”

Obama echoed those sentiments when asked in the Philadelphia debate about what he would do if Wright’s sermons were repeatedly played on TV in the general election campaign. He replied that he had “absolute confidence” that the American people would rally around his campaign because they agree with his proposals on issues that matter to them.

“The notion that somehow the American people are going to be distracted once again by comments not made by me but by somebody who is associated with me, [comments] that I’ve disowned, I think doesn’t give the American people enough credit,” Obama said.

Obama’s strategy is based on the belief that the public has moved beyond point-counterpoint, “gotcha” politics that focuses on issues such as whether he wears a U.S. flag pin on his lapel, rather than on issues that make a difference in people’s lives. Ironically, some see similarities to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign against President Carter, when Reagan batted away various attacks with a smile and a shrug instead of a detailed rebuttal.

“My guess is, [Obama] is going to have to approach all this stuff sort of like Reagan did with Carter—‘There you go again’ sort of responses—and see if it works,” said Democratic strategist Rudd. “It has worked in the primary. But I don’t know that it works under a Swift Boat kind of assault. It may. He may be able to stand above it.”

Still, Democrats’ nervousness about Obama’s candidacy is evident. “I think all of us on the Democratic side would feel a helluva lot more comfortable,” Panetta said, “if we had seen him come through a real firestorm of some kind during his career in which he had to stare down the prospect of something ending his political career—had to face it directly in the eye and overcome it.”