Time to Go
- 05.07.2008 - 6:01 PMThe evidence is overwhelming that Barack Obama will be the nominee. We are entering the stage where clearly devoted supporters are quietly urging Hillary Clinton to think about leaving the race. Yes, there are good reasons to remain and some good advice to help her carry on–if she could look forward to some great opportunity to upset Obama’s momentum. But that, I think, has already passed, or never happened. So on she plods, but the race is over. Come May 20 when Oregon votes (or May 31 when the DNC settles the delegate dispute over Michigan and Florida, or June 3 when the primaries end) it will officially be over.
Along the way she earned the respect of unlikely critics–from the Clinton-hating Maureen Dowd to various Republicans. She earned it through her sheer force of will, her determination to transform herself into a working-class champion and to bludgeon anyone in her way. (Not exactly the “new politics” everyone says they like.)
And that may be part of her odd legacy: to disprove the theory that you can rise above politics, float on clouds of rhetoric, and appeal to everyone’s better selves. What she showed is you have to go out and beat your opponent. Obama, in order to win, had to get off his pedestal, delve into policy, knock her around on trustworthiness concerns, and remind voters that for all his faults, she had more.
So it’s little wonder John McCain can’t conceal his admiration for Hillary. (Who else is as tenacious? Who else fights on despite the catcalls from the party’s base?) But he’d be wise to learn some of the lessons she absorbed too late: out-organize the opposition, get a change message, and establish rapport with those Reagan Democrats. (And, of course, never take Bill Clinton out in public. But McCain, lucky for him, won’t have that problem.)
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May 7th, 2008 at 7:15 PM
McCain may be taking your advice on the “change” theme:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/05/mccain_channels_obama.asp
May 7th, 2008 at 9:06 PM
Dear Ms. Rubin:
Outside of New York, normal people call these supposedly admirable traits in Hillary’s character something else; more succinct and accurate.
A blind lust for power.
Calling her refusal to give up anything else is simply putting lipstick on a pig and calling it pretty.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:04 PM
I look for McCain to run a notably and perhaps even historically stupid campaign. It will be Bob Dole redux.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:10 AM
Is it really over? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
If Obama is the nominee, and that’s what the media has been breathlessly proclaiming for 3 months now, why haven’t the Super Delegates ended this? They can end it whenever they want? Why have they not done so? Why have they sat back and let their nominee lose in OH and PA?
Why are they going to sit back and let their nominee get blown out in WV by 30 pts and in KY by 30 pts?
Do they know that the last democrat to win the WH without WV was Woodrow Wilson in 1916?
That if Al Gore had won WV he’d have been President regardless of FL? That Bill won WV twice, the only democrat to win it multiple times besides FDR ever. That not JFK is the only democrat to win without winning WV and KY since Wilson in 1916 and that was in the closest election ever and one that LBJ and the Daley machine had to steal for him.
Why would they let their nominee suffer? They can end it now. Why haven’t they done so?
Don’t they know that he’s going to be embarrassed? The nominee of the party getting walloped in 2 key swing states, further cementing his failures to win over white voters.
What about the 400-500K votes that Hillary stands to net from Puerto Rico and its estimated 2M+ turnout?
Hillary will lead in the popular vote as of the morning of June 2nd.
She will lead among total democrats who’ve voted with Obama’s margins coming from Independents and Republicans. Even his delegate lead will have been based on his gaming of the undemocratic caucuses and his 90%+ of the black vote. She will have beaten him in CA, TX, NY, FL, OH, PA, MI and NJ. She will have crushed him among key voting blocs of hispanics, white women, blue collar voters, jews, seniors, white men, catholics, and others.
Even after the media went gaga for him and proclaimed him the nominee back in Feb, and after he outraised and outspent her 3-1, she will have beat him in the key swing states of OH and PA, she will have destroyed him in the key swing states of WV and KY.
Why won’t the party end it? Why are leaders like Reid and Pelosi and Dean and Gore and Edwards and others afraid to back Obama? Why are they so afraid of Bill and Hillary?
What will the media reaction be when their golden boy loses by 30+ 2 weeks in a row and Hillary overtakes him in the popular vote after smashing him in Puerto Rico? After that gives her all she needs to go all the way to Denver? This will not officially be over until Thursday, August 28th.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:19 AM
Cajun, that must be one of the most delusional, out-of-it rants I’ve ever seen
May 8th, 2008 at 6:57 AM
Jennifer, your post of 5-7-08 at 8:20 a.m. gave some reasons why OB will be a weak candidate in November and anyhow will not satisfy many traditional Democrats. But that post did not mention, as I recall, Hilary’s claim that leaving out Florida and Michigan, large population states, compared to South Dakota and New Hampshire, for example, is undemocratic. In fact, it might delegitimize any OB nomination victory based on superdelegates and on voters early in the year who were not aware of his unsavory associations with Rev Wright, Rashid Khalidi, bill ayers, tony Rezko, etc.
I hope that Hilary goes on at least as long as her money holds out. I don’t especially like Hilary but compared to OB she is honesty personified. OB’s whole persona, at least in the first months of the campaign, was a fake, pretending to be untainted with Washington corruption, not part of the bad old Washington crowd, representing “Change” & “Hope”, etc. In fact, his ties with tony rezko look like the typical shady politician’s piggish corruption. Actually, it’s worse because rezko is himself tied to the murderous, Judeophobic Syrian tyranny of Assad Junior. Then, there’s OB’s friendship with Khalidi, a scion of an old Jerusalem Arab-Muslim family that served in high posts in the Ottoman imperial government. The proclivity of the Khalidis for making anti-Israel, anti-Zionist propaganda has been notorious since the 1930s at least [consider Walid Khalidi who also enjoyed British patronage]. The hostility to Israel of Rev Wright needs no further discussion from me.
However, the most sinister shadow cast by any of OB’s associations is the role of Zbig Brzezinski, who caused so much harm to the world in his previous Washington role as jimmy carter’s national insecurity advisor [Parenthetically, Zbig’s presence looming over OB clearly belies OB’s “naive, fresh, innocent, young, uncorrupted” persona.]. Then there’s Robert Malley and other old State Department hacks on OB’s team. The threat that an OB presidency represents to peace justifies encouraging Hilary to continue, in my view, although I am no great admirer of her or of Bill.
Maybe the Dem party establishment is wondering how OB can be seen as a legitimate Dem candidate when:
1) so much about him was unknown when he won his early victories on empty, if uplifting rhetoric [that is, on demagoguery]; and
2) Florida and Michigan were not counted, whereas they would be important for a Dem victory in November. Maybe Hilary has the majority of popular vote within the Dem party if FL & MI are counted.
3) OB has alienated or cannot attract or hold much of the traditional Dem constituency.
If McCain can effectively distance himself from Bush, and I think he can, then he would be a formidable opponent. If McC and the two Dems really want to distance themselves from Bush, they might point out Bush’s harmful policy regarding Israel which sees Abu Mazen as a “moderate” and viable “peace partner” for Israel. How can Bush presume to set a timetable or deadline for an agreement, when the mass media, schools, mosques, etc under Abu Mazen’s own control continue to agitate against Israel in racist ways, also employing traditional Muslim Judeophobic themes. I am not talking about Hamas but about Abu Mazen. The best thing about the “Roadmap” was that it pointed to the threat to peace represented by the ideological agitation against Israel in the PA, as I have mentioned, and that it set ending this agitation as a precondition for negotiations, with another precondition being disarming the armed gangs of Fatah and Hamas. If any of the 3 major candidates came out against Bush’s “peace policy,” that would surely distance him/her from Bush.
In the dismal picture of the 2008 presidential contest, maybe the best bet for the Dem establishment would be to ask both OB and Hilary to step down in favor of Al Gore who, they still claim, really won in 2000.