Originally posted by Biff McFume: Also too, let's say that this comes down to two toxic factors -- Barack wins the popular vote, but Hillary wins with superdelegates and by "cheating" and seating the FL and MI delegates.
At that point, all of those Obama supporters have every reason to be outraged and feel disenfranchised.
If that happens, and I have never voted Republican in my life, I will vote for John McCain.
What if Hillary chooses Obama for VP?
If she wins the nomination by cheating, I hardly think that Barack will sign up for the job.
Originally posted by Biff McFume: Also too, let's say that this comes down to two toxic factors -- Barack wins the popular vote, but Hillary wins with superdelegates and by "cheating" and seating the FL and MI delegates.
At that point, all of those Obama supporters have every reason to be outraged and feel disenfranchised.
If that happens, and I have never voted Republican in my life, I will vote for John McCain.
This is exactly the problem with Obama voters. You want your hero or nobody.
You say you stand for change, and then freely admit you'd rather vote for John McCain than Hillary Clinton. This clearly shows that you don't really care about issues or moving the country in a new direction. All you care about is the iconicism of a particular individual.
You are clearly not somebody to be taken seriously.
Obviously, you didn't read my full post.
I said that if this comes down to Barack Obama winning the popular vote and the delegate vote, but then Hillary Clinton (a) twists arms and gets the superdelegates behind her, and (b) bitches and moans and changes the rule mid-game and gets the delegates from MI and FL seated, then, no, I will not vote for her in the general election, because that is slimy.
If Hillary wins the delegate count fair and square, then I will support her.
There is a distinction.
Part of being a Democrat is being outraged about the "stolen" election of 2000 with what happened in FL, and encouraging voters to not be disenfranchised,and to play by the fair and square rules.
If she has to put her ego ahead of Democratic principles, then, no, there is no way I am going to support her.
It's really unclear to me how Hillary is going to "steal" the nomination.
How exactly is she going to "twist the arms" of the superdelegates? They're some of the most powerful Democrats in the country and they'll vote the way they want to vote - for whatever reason, be it for the party, for their loyalty to a nominee, or for their own personal interest. They're not children, and she can't make them do anything. And just like all the other pledged delegates, their votes count.
Given how close this race is, Florida and Michigan should have a voice in the process and there's nothing wrong with her advocating for them. If the DNC decides to re-do the primaries, or to seat half of them, or to seat them the way they are now, that's the DNC's decision. Not hers.
So how exactly is Hillary going to break the rules and steal this nomination?
What you really mean is for some doubltess irrational reason you hate Hillary, are voting for Obama b/c you're voting against her (as you've said in this thread already) and you are willing to invent some bogus, nonsensical scenario in which she could subvert the rules to win the nomination. All just because you want to continue to have a reason to hate her.
Posts: 2088 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: August 08, 2003
Good pointsR2684. For some individuals, vitriole for an individual seems to take priority over the issues; issues such as equal rights and freedoms for everyone.
Posts: 2441 | Location: at a football game | Registered: January 31, 2007
If the DNC decides to do a "do over" on the MI and FL primaries and lets all of the candidates go into those states to campaign and actually be on the ballot, and Hillary posts the same numbers there, then fine. She wins.
If, however, Hillary advocates that the delegates from those states be seated after she first advocated for them not to be seated, and then suddenly saw that she was in trouble, and couldn't win outright, that's cheating. That's changing the rules in the middle of the game, and it's showing that she's a snake who can't be trusted.
As for the whole superdelegate thing -- I'm sorry that you think that the presidency should be decided by Washington's power brokers, but I do not.
I think that, at the end of the day, the superdelegates will do the right thing and back the candidate who has won the most pledged delegates.
But if Hillary is behind in the pledged delegate vote, and the only way she can win is by winning with the superdelegates, that does not make me feel like she's some kind of agent of change.
It makes me feel like she is a power broker who is more interested in protecting the status quo than being really provocative with new ideas.
You are REALLY missing the point on what I'm saying here, aren't you?
My main point is that, for me, all that matters is the pledged delegate count. If America can hold primaries all across the country, and Barack Obama is ahead, but the only way Hillary can win the nomination is either by flip-flopping and forcing the DNC to change its rules on MI and FL, or by winning with superdelegates, I will NOT vote for her, since I don't think that that is a principled victory.
That is just lame. I hope very few people just vote with their party every time no matter what mook gets the nomination. I am registered Democrat and in the three elections I was able to vote in for President I have voted for the Democratic nominee... though I have voted for Republicans in other offices. That does not mean, and will never mean, that I will vote for someone I think incomepetent, foolish, lacking in leadership ability, etc just because of my party affiliation.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: pacinofan,
Posts: 13052 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
It's not that I'm missing your point, it's that you have yet to make a point.
So basically, you just think superdelegates shouldn't exist (Unless they vote for your guy, of course). Well they do exist, and their votes count just like every other delegate. And for your information, nearly all of the superdelegates are elected officials: Governors, Senators, Representatives, and other people who have been democratically elected to office. It's not as if these people are the Karl Roves of the world. Furthermore, just like you and I, they have the right to vote for the person they think most qualified to be President. They should not be compelled to bend with any trend they don't believe in.
Pledged delegate count may be the only thing that matters to you, but that's not how the system works. A win with superdelegates is still a fair win. And guess what? Obama knows that, and wants those delegates as badly as Hillary does.
Again, Hillary cannot "force" the DNC to do anything. If they make a decision to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan, that's their decision.
You simply can't accuse someone of cheating who plays by the rules because you don't like the rules. But I suspect even your supposed dislike of the rules is really what all your other arguments have been - a spurious channeling of your irrational, personal hatred for Hillary Clinton.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: R2684,
Posts: 2088 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: August 08, 2003
Originally posted by R2684: It's not that I'm missing your point, it's that you have yet to make a point.
So basically, you just think superdelegates shouldn't exist (Unless they vote for your guy, of course). Well they do exist, and their votes count just like every other delegate. And for your information, nearly all of the superdelegates are elected officials: Governors, Senators, Representatives, and other people who have been democratically elected to office. It's not as if these people are the Karl Roves of the world. Furthermore, just like you and I, they have the right to vote for the person they think most qualified to be President. They should not be compelled to bend with any trend they don't believe in.
Pledged delegate count may be the only thing that matters to you, but that's not how the system works. A win with superdelegates is still a fair win. And guess what? Obama knows that, and wants those delegates as badly as Hillary does.
Again, Hillary cannot "force" the DNC to do anything. If they make a decision to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan, that's their decision.
You simply can't accuse someone of cheating who plays by the rules because you don't like the rules. But I suspect even your supposed dislike of the rules is really what all your other arguments have been - a spurious channeling of your irrational, personal hatred for Hillary Clinton.
Do you not agree though that a win by superdelegates, without the popular vote, may be disastrous and hurt the chances of the nominee to actually win the Presidential election?
This message has been edited. Last edited by: pacinofan,
Posts: 13052 | Location: Phoenix, AZ | Registered: February 02, 2003
I'm a Democrat because I think that being a Democrat actually means something.
Hell yes, I want to protect a woman's right to choose, and I want to protect the environment, and I want to encourage stem cell research.
All of those are wonderful, noble goals.
But I'm also a Democrat because I believe that the Democrats have more principles than the Republicans.
When George W. Bush took office by virtue of the Supreme Court and disenfranchising Florida voters, and did so without winning the national popular vote, Democrats were outraged.
Rightfully so.
And now, we are faced with a situation where we have a candidate who is flip-flopping on her position on MI and FL, who surreptiously campaigned in FL, even though she signed a pledge not to, and who could possibly win the nomination thanks to her longer standing connections with party insiders -- even though, as it stands, her opponent is winning both the popular vote and the delegate count.
And suddenly, Democrats are supposed to be okay with that?
I realize that my stand is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but there is no way that I can, with a straight face, condemn the Republicans for what they did in 2000, and then turn around and applaud Hillary for doing the exact same thing in 2008 -- i.e. blatantly ignoring the will of the people and the rules of the game.
Originally posted by pacinofan: That is just lame. I hope very few people just vote with their party every time no matter what mook gets the nomination. I am registered Democrat and in the three elections I was able to vote in for President I have voted for the Democratic nominee... though I have voted for Republicans in other offices. That does not mean, and will never mean, that I will vote for someone I think incomepetent, foolish, lacking in leadership ability, etc.
No. It is not lame.
I am mainly talking about the 2008 Presidential election. I am not talking about any other political office.
This is the main problem with the Democratic party.
Registered Democrats are too open minded.
Registered Republicans are more cult like and much more loyal.
Posts: 10131 | Location: New York | Registered: August 18, 2001
And, for the record, I started out as a Hillary supporter.
I think that she's tough, that she's capable, and that she is quite possibly one of the smartest women ever in the history of politics.
But then came South Carolina, and the Clintons came out with all of their dirty tricks and their smarm and their race cards and their scare tactics, and I developed a totally booze-free hangover.
Frank Rich wrote an op-ed recently that catches how I feel EXACTLY:
Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War By FRANK RICH WHAT if a presidential candidate held what she billed as "the largest, most interactive town hall in political history" on national television, and no one noticed?
The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton's elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.
The same news media that constantly revisited the Oprah-Caroline-Maria rally in California ignored "Voices Across America: A National Town Hall." The Clinton campaign would no doubt attribute this to press bias, but it scrupulously designed the event to avoid making news. Like the scripted "Ask President Bush" sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions ("What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?") merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out.
But I'm glad I watched every minute, right up until Mrs. Clinton was abruptly cut off in midsentence so Hallmark could resume its previously scheduled programming (a movie promising "A Season for Miracles," aptly enough). However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What's more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.
For a campaign that began with tightly monitored Web "chats" and then planted questions at its earlier town-hall meetings, a Bush-style pseudo-event like the Hallmark special is nothing new, of course. What's remarkable is that instead of learning from these mistakes, Mrs. Clinton's handlers keep doubling down.
Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of "Mission Accomplished." Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was "the Potemkin village of victory celebrations."
The Hallmark show, enacted on an anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992, was equally desperate. If the point was to generate donations or excitement, the effect was the reverse. A campaign operative, speaking on MSNBC, claimed that 250,000 viewers had seen an online incarnation of the event in addition to "who knows how many" Hallmark channel viewers. Who knows, indeed? What we do know is that by then the "Yes We Can" Obama video fronted by the hip-hop vocalist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas had been averaging roughly a million YouTube views a day. (Cost to the Obama campaign: zero.)
Two days after her town-hall extravaganza, Mrs. Clinton revealed the $5 million loan she had made to her own campaign to survive a month in which the Obama operation had raised $32 million to her $13.5 million. That poignant confession led to a spike in contributions that Mr. Obama also topped. Though Tuesday was largely a draw in popular votes and delegates, every other indicator, from the candidates' real and virtual crowds to hard cash, points to a steadily widening Obama-Clinton gap. The Clinton campaign might be an imploding Potemkin village itself were it not for the fungible profits from Bill Clinton's murky post-presidency business deals. (The Clintons, unlike Mr. Obama, have not released their income-tax returns.)
The campaign's other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. This was all too apparent in the Hallmark show. In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically diverse cast members — young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members — African-Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meeting's nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton's top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner, whether to toss a softball or ask about the Clintons' own recent misadventures in racial politics.
The Clinton camp does not leave such matters to chance. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. In October, seven months after the two candidates' dueling church perorations in Selma, USA Today found Hillary Clinton leading Mr. Obama among African-American Democrats by a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent. But once black voters met Mr. Obama and started to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign's other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), "the black candidate" (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Mr. Clinton himself).
The result? Black America has largely deserted the Clintons. In her California primary victory, Mrs. Clinton drew only 19 percent of the black vote. The campaign saw this coming and so saw no percentage in bestowing precious minutes of prime-time television on African-American queries.
That time went instead to the Hispanic population that was still in play in Super Tuesday's voting in the West. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a cameo, and one of the satellite meetings was held in the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. There's nothing wrong with that. It's smart politics, especially since Mr. Obama has been behind the curve in wooing this constituency.
But the wholesale substitution of Hispanics for blacks on the Hallmark show is tainted by a creepy racial back story. Last month a Hispanic pollster employed by the Clinton campaign pitted the two groups against each other by telling The New Yorker that Hispanic voters have "not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates." Mrs. Clinton then seconded the motion by telling Tim Russert in a debate that her pollster was "making a historical statement."
It wasn't an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign's decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to "undermine one of Obama's central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types."
If that was the intent, it didn't work. Mrs. Clinton did pile up her expected large margin among Latino voters in California. But her tight grip on that electorate is loosening. Mr. Obama, who captured only 26 percent of Hispanic voters in Nevada last month, did better than that in every state on Tuesday, reaching 41 percent in Arizona and 53 percent in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign's attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week. Though Mrs. Clinton won California by almost 10 percentage points, among whites she beat Mr. Obama by only 3 points.
The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That's why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn't even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton's assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn't matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote "is not going to count for anything."
Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats' chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an "arrangement" if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn't rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?
A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.
If they put her over the top, it's a fair win. The popular vote does not matter in nominating a candidate, the delegate count does. It works that way for a reason. We've seen Presidents lose the popular vote and win the election for hundreds of years now because our system is set up that way for a reason.
I know this much: I am certainly not going to vote for a person because I think they have the best chance to win, I'm going to vote for the person who I think is best for the job. It's what everyone should do, including the superdelegates. If that leads to a lot of Obama voters being disillusioned and staying home in November, then those people have given up their right to participate in our democracy for the sake of hero-worship, which is certainly not what our country is supposed to be about.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: R2684,
Posts: 2088 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: August 08, 2003
If they put her over the top, it's a fair win. The popular vote does not matter in nominating a candidate, the delegate count does. It works that way for a reason. We've seen Presidents lose the popular vote and win the election for hundreds of years now because our system is set up that way for a reason.
I know this much: I am certainly not going to vote for a person because I think they have the best chance to win, I'm going to vote for the person who I think is best for the job. It's what everyone should do, including the superdelegates. If that leads to a lot of Obama voters being disillusioned and staying home in November, then those people have given up their right to participate in our democracy for the sake of hero-worship, which is certainly not what our country is supposed to be about.
The delegate count...which Barack Obama currently leads.
I highly doubt, btw, that the superdelegates will end up being so foolish as to buck the pledged delegates.
Prognosticators are saying that, given the thrashing that Clinton received yesterday (and the woman was SHELLACKED in the Potomac primaries), Barack Obama has reached such heights on the delegate count, that Hillary Clinton will need to get up to 60% in the upcoming primary states to have a shot at catching up.
Granted, though, one should never write a Clinton obituary.
After all, look at how tough it was to knock off Rasputin?
See the reference in Peggy Noonan's article:
Can Mrs. Clinton Lose? By PEGGY NOONAN February 8, 2008
If Hillary Clinton loses, does she know how to lose? What will that be, if she loses? Will she just say, "I concede" and go on vacation at a friend's house on an island, and then go back to the Senate and wait?
Is it possible she could be so normal? Politicians lose battles, it's part of what they do, win and lose. But she does not know how to lose. Can she lose with grace? But she does grace the way George W. Bush does nuance.
She often talks about how tough she is. She has fought "the Republican attack machine" that has tried to "stop" her, "end" her, and she knows "how to fight them." She is preoccupied to an unusual degree with toughness. A man so preoccupied would seem weak. But a woman obsessed with how tough she is just may be lethal.
Does her sense of toughness mean that every battle in which she engages must be fought tooth and claw, door to door? Can she recognize the line between burly combat and destructive, never-say-die warfare? I wonder if she is thinking: What will it mean if I win ugly? What if I lose ugly? What will be the implications for my future, the party's future? What will black America, having seen what we did in South Carolina, think forever of me and the party if I do low things to stop this guy on the way to victory? Can I stop, see the lay of the land, imitate grace, withdraw, wait, come back with a roar down the road? Life is long. I am not old. Or is that a reverie she could never have? What does it mean if she could never have it?
We know she is smart. Is she wise? If it comes to it, down the road, can she give a nice speech, thank her supporters, wish Barack Obama well, and vow to campaign for him?
It either gets very ugly now, or we will see unanticipated--and I suspect professionally saving--grace.
I ruminate in this way because something is happening. Mrs. Clinton is losing this thing. It's not one big primary, it's a rolling loss, a daily one, an inch-by-inch deflation. The trends and indices are not in her favor. She is having trouble raising big money, she's funding her campaign with her own wealth, her moral standing within her own party and among her own followers has been dragged down, and the legacy of Clintonism tarnished by what Bill Clinton did in South Carolina. Unfavorable primaries lie ahead. She doesn't have the excitement, the great whoosh of feeling that accompanies a winning campaign. The guy from Chicago who was unknown a year ago continues to gain purchase, to move forward. For a soft little innocent, he's played a tough and knowing inside/outside game.
The day she admitted she'd written herself a check for $5 million, Obama's people crowed they'd just raised $3 million. But then his staff is happy. They're all getting paid.
Political professionals are leery of saying, publicly, that she is losing, because they said it before New Hampshire and turned out to be wrong. Some of them signaled their personal weariness with Clintonism at that time, and fear now, as they report, to look as if they are carrying an agenda. One part of the Clinton mystique maintains: Deep down journalists think she's a political Rasputin who will not be dispatched. Prince Yusupov served him cupcakes laced with cyanide, emptied a revolver, clubbed him, tied him up and threw him in a frozen river. When he floated to the surface they found he'd tried to claw his way from under the ice. That is how reporters see Hillary.
And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!"
* * *
Mr. Obama's achievement on Super Tuesday was solid and reinforced trend lines. The popular vote was a draw, the delegate count a rough draw, but he won 13 states, and when you look at the map he captured the middle of the country from Illinois straight across to Idaho, with a second band, in the northern Midwest, of Minnesota and North Dakota. He won Missouri and Connecticut, in Mrs. Clinton's backyard. He won the Democrats of the red states.
On the wires Wednesday her staff was all but conceding she is not going to win the next primaries. Her superdelegates are coming under pressure that is about to become unrelenting. It was easy for party hacks to cleave to Mrs Clinton when she was inevitable. Now Mr. Obama's people are reportedly calling them saying, Your state voted for me and so did your congressional district. Are you going to jeopardize your career and buck the wishes of the people back home?
Mrs. Clinton is stoking the idea that Mr. Obama is too soft to withstand the dread Republican attack machine. (I nod in tribute to all Democrats who have succeeded in removing the phrase "Republican and Democratic attack machines" from the political lexicon. Both parties have them.) But Mr. Obama will not be easy for Republicans to attack. He will be hard to get at, hard to address. There are many reasons, but a primary one is that the fact of his race will freeze them. No one, no candidate, no party, no heavy-breathing consultant, will want to cross any line--lines that have never been drawn, that are sure to be shifting and not always visible--in approaching the first major-party African-American nominee for president of the United States.
* * *
He is the brilliant young black man as American dream. No consultant, no matter how opportunistic and hungry, will think it easy--or professionally desirable--to take him down in a low manner. If anything, they've learned from the Clintons in South Carolina what that gets you. (I add that yes, there are always freelance mental cases, who exist on both sides and are empowered by modern technology. They'll make their YouTubes. But the mad are ever with us, and this year their work will likely stay subterranean.)
With Mr. Obama the campaign will be about issues. "He'll raise your taxes." He will, and I suspect Americans may vote for him anyway. But the race won't go low.
Mrs. Clinton would be easier for Republicans. With her cavalcade of scandals, they'd be delighted to go at her. They'd get medals for it. Consultants would get rich on it.
The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it's fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He's not Bambi, he's bulletproof.
The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented--"He's too young, he's never run anything, he's not fully baked"--the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones. You can bet on this. Go to the bank on it.
The Democrats continue not to recognize what they have in this guy. Believe me, Republican professionals know. They can tell.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Biff McFume,
I read these Op-Eds everyday, Biff. Not need to post the full text here.
Peggy Noonan is particularly irritating. Her assertion that "Democrats don't recognize what they have in this guy" is borderline insulting - and suggests that we're all just partisan hacks that want nothing more than to see our party's candidate win. We should all get in rank and file and back the winning horse.
Posts: 2088 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: August 08, 2003
Maureen Dowd also makes some great points in her opinion today, especially the one that, while in the White House, Mrs. Clinton's judgment was "poor."
(Mind you, I am a big fan of her in the Senate -- save for that Iraq war vote)
A Flawed Feminist Test By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON
Russell Berman, a young reporter for The New York Sun, trailed Bill Clinton around Maryland all day Sunday. The former president was on his best behavior, irritating the smattering of press.
After Bill’s last speech at Leisure World retirement community in Silver Spring, Berman interviewed two women in the audience.
Elaine Sirkis, 77, an Obama supporter, confided that she just isn’t sure she’s ready for a woman president. Betty Conway, 83, a Hillary supporter, confided that she just isn’t sure she’s ready for a black president.
As Conway walked away, Sirkis smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” she told Berman sweetly about her friend. “She’s a bigot.”
We’re not just in the most vertiginous election of our lives. We’re in another national seminar on gender and race that is teaching us about who we are as we figure out what we want America to be.
It’s not yet clear which prejudice will infect the presidential contest more — misogyny or racism.
Many women I talk to, even those who aren’t particularly fond of Hillary, feel empathy for her, knowing that any woman in a world dominated by men has to walk a tightrope between femininity and masculinity, strength and vulnerability.
They see double standards they hate — when male reporters described Hillary’s laugh as “a cackle” or her voice as “grating,” when Rush Limbaugh goes off on her wrinkles or when male pundits seem gleeful to write her political obituary. Several women I know, who argue with their husbands about Hillary, refer with a shudder to the “Kill the Witch” syndrome.
In a webcast, prestidigitator Penn Jillette talks about a joke he has begun telling in his show. He thinks the thunderous reaction it gets from audiences shows that Hillary no longer has a shot.
The joke goes: “Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it’s not fair, because they’re being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there’s no White Bitch Month.”
Of course, jokes like that — even Jillette admits it’s offensive — are exactly what may give Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even ones who don’t want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated — again.
And since women — and some men — tend to be more protective when she is down, it is impossible to rule out a rally, especially if voters start to see Obama, after his eight-contest rout, as that maddening archetypal figure: the glib golden boy who slides through on charm and a smile.
Those close to Hillary say she’s feeling blue. It’s an unbearable twist of fate to spend all those years in the shadow of one Secretariat, only to have another gallop past while you’re plodding toward the finish line.
I know that the attacks against powerful women can be harsh and personal and unfair, enough to make anyone cry.
But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We’ll never know how much of the backlash is because she’s a woman or because she’s this woman or because of the ick factor of returning to the old Clinton dysfunction.
While Obama aims to transcend race, Hillary often aims to use gender to her advantage, or to excuse mistakes. In 1994, after her intransigence and secrecy-doomed health care plan, she told The Wall Street Journal that she was “a gender Rorschach test.”
“If somebody has a female boss for the first time, and they’ve never experienced that,” she said, “well, maybe they can’t take out their hostility against her so they turn it on me.”
As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.
Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.
As a senator, she was not a leading voice on important issues, and her Iraq vote was about her political viability.
She told New York magazine’s John Heilemann that before Iowa taught her that she had to show her soft side, “I really believed I had to prove in this race from the very beginning that a woman could be president and a woman could be commander in chief. I thought that was my primary mission.”
If Hillary fails, it will be her failure, not ours.
Originally posted by R2684: I read these Op-Eds everyday, Biff. Not need to post the full text here.
Peggy Noonan is particularly irritating. Her assertion that "Democrats don't recognize what they have in this guy" is borderline insulting - and suggests that we're all just partisan hacks that want nothing more than to see our party's candidate win. We should all get in rank and file and back the winning horse.
Democrats are RAGINGLY ready to go to win the White House this time around.
Why else do you think that Dem turnout has been so much higher than Republican turnout in every state so far?
Dems are DESPERATE to take the White House back.
But if it happens because Hillary does more of her slimy games, then it won't happen.
In last night's exit polls, a higher percentage of Hillary supporters said they would vote for Barack, while a much lower number of Barack supporters said that they would be fine with Hillary getting the nod.
It's mostly because, as Barack supporters, we can already smell the filth and that Hillary is going to rely on every smarmy, insider tactic that she can in order to win this thing.
Again, more fanatical Hillary-hating, more bias, less logical argument. I can't have that sort of conversation with you, Biff.
You've resorted to posting the arguments of OpEd columnists because you've run out of your own -- other than Hillary is a b*tch, and Obama has a better chance to beat the Republicans. That may be enough for some people, like you, but not for me.
And please, Biff: don't be so naive: what President hasn't been elected without the help of Washington insiders? And who is really going to need those insiders and heavy weights when it comes to getting things done in DC once in office?
Posts: 2088 | Location: New York, New York | Registered: August 08, 2003
