Not Over Yet
While I’m disappointed with last night’s results, I have to admit that I share Kos’s enthusiasm for the Democratic nomination process. While John McCain is calling all of his lobbyist cronies begging for campaign cash, the Democrats are still traveling around the country building up campaign infrastructure that will serve them well in the general election.
Having said that, as this process has continued, I’ve pretty much lost most of my respect for Hillary Clinton. Compared to McCain she’s a saint, but I’ve found her campaign’s strategy of throwing every scurrilous charge they can think of at their opponent while whining about how the press treats them to be disgraceful and pathetic respectively. A lot of Democratic partisans love the fact that the Clintons fight dirty (“don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”), but I’m not so partisan that I’m enamored of cheap shots and overall nastiness when it’s done by “our side”. Maybe I’d feel differently if Bill and Hillary had a history of using these sorts of tricks to achieve progressive goals, but the past 16 years of Washington experience has been marked by foolish decisions and shameless pandering. It’s telling that the same Hillary Clinton that has spent her entire Senate career giving George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt is eager to assume the worst regarding every bit of dirt her campaign can dig up about Barack Obama.
As far as where things go next, it’s still clear to me that Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a shot at getting the nomination for herself. Last night’s wins barely scratched the surface of Obama’s pledged delegate lead. Her only real chances are to beat Obama by margins that she’s thus far been incapable of amassing or cross her fingers and hope that Obama is brought down by some scandal (gotta love the irony that the Whitewater couple might be pinning their hopes on an equally vague real estate pseudo-scandal). Other than those two options, the only others are that she might win with help from superdelegates or the delegates from Florida/Michigan. If either of those two things happened, I’d have a hard time supporting her as nominee (I’m not a big fan of political coups).
When the math isn’t there for her to beat Obama in the pledged delegate race, I don’t really see what she’s accomplishing by staying in the race. In order to catch up to Obama in pledged delegates, she needs to beat him by roughly 60/40 across the board, but Clinton hasn’t cracked 60% anywhere besides Arkansas. Meanwhile, Obama has beaten Clinton by +60% margins thirteen times. Even if she wins every remaining primary, Clinton hasn’t shown the level of support necessary to turn this thing around.
At this point, I think Clinton’s goal isn’t to win the nomination but to chip away at the Obama’s support until she can maneuver her way into the VP slot. The month and a half between now and the Pennsylvania primary is going to feel like an eternity.
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Greg,
I’ve been tooling around the blogs for the last couple of hours, looking for something that really duplicated my feelings about last night. So far, this post hits all of the main points, for me.
I’ve seen people I normally respect and agree with miss the point entirely and call for calm and dismiss any worry about the developments of last night and today. I can’t believe anyone not completely in the Hillary tank could view these developments with anything but dismay.
I feel presonally far from sanguine at the prospect of a candidate with no realistic chance of getting the nomination selfishly pressing on using the tactics of, and drawing support from, people I am completely opposed to.
We’ve seen an explosion of enthusiasm on the progressive side of the equation this year unlike anything I can remember personally, and yet here they are, the same crew that backed her husband as he jettisoned large parts of the party’s identity in an attempt to stay in office, ready to throw this all away for the same reason.Typical Clintonian short sightedness.
I have doubts it will work. If anything, I think any such efforts would likely push the superdelegates more towards Obama’s camp, but if she has to pull something like that simply to get the nomination, it will be a slow motion disaster for the party in the long term. Even if she wins, many people newly brought into the process will walk away badly disillusioned.
The impact on the African American voters will be dreadful, as well. Absent a major ideological chage, the Republican party isn’t going to be welcoming them in any large numbers anytime soon, but if they lose faith in the processes of the Democrats, it will hurt us, and them, well into the future.
Comment by Michael Harrington — March 5, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
The dirty slanderous tactics used by the Clinton camp and echoed thru the media are the same tactics used against Dennis Kucinich,they were effective and accepted practice.Now that these methods are deployed against a more popular candidate we hear objections,this treatment was fine for Dennis Kucinich,better for a candidate like Ron Paul,but suddenly unacceptible for Senator Obama.I too,find the tactics being used against Senator Obama disgusting,it was just as disgusting for some former candidates and their supporters.The acceptance and participation in the use of these tactics against former candidates,leaves no room for crying foul this late in the primary…….
Comment by pogo — March 6, 2008 @ 9:47 am
At this point, I think Clinton’s goal isn’t to win the nomination but to chip away at the Obama’s support until she can maneuver her way into the VP slot.
If Obama is as unqualified for president as Hillary contends, then why would she consider being his running mate? It completely undercuts her arguments. She would be joining a team that she has no confidence in.
Comment by Doobie — March 6, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
This could be my teenage ignorance and love of comedy shows, perhaps her knew “funnier”and “fighting” victom side is what got the voters. I started to see a major change in how she was acting and it seemed like she was the democrat’s “great white hope”, and that her assistant started to write half decent jokes [she sure as hell didn't make those up]. Apparently that is appealing to people.
Also, I can’t help but hate Saturday Night Live now.They have been so frightfully biased to her and skewing the debatge re-enactments to the point of a 180 degree flip. Both times they made her seem persecuted, and clearly she was not. She just wants more time, like how she used to get in the begining of the debates, remember when CNN was loving her as if she was the president, but now she is not getting it. They made Obama sound like a retarded Yogi bear who had no opinion or intelligence, which is completely false! And then Hillary went on the show and somehow people like her now. She is the same woman she was before.
I hope that the next primaries will be different.
Comment by Jim — March 6, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
I’m with ya… yep, I’m with ya… Hillary as VP? Ya lost me. This will NEVER happen. Never never never. You think Obama’s handlers will allow Bill Clinton back into the White House? Folks would compare them even more than they already will. No, can’t happen.
Comment by Jeb — March 12, 2008 @ 5:57 am