Clinton and Biden: topline thoughts

I’ll admit it, I sold President Clinton a little short today.

When asked about my thoughts (biases, really) going in to the Wednesday night speech, I wrote this:

The Dem Party of Bill Clinton circa 1992,3,4,5,6 is not the Dem Party of BHO 2008. The Big Dawg may not love that, may even be bitter (imo) that he is not being given more credit (earned or not) for what he "accomplished" in the 90s, but both Clintons know that what is best for them is what's best for the Democratic Party this cycle--and that is the election of Obama-Biden this November.

Bill might not give the best speech of his career, but he will embrace BHO in word and spirit--at least for public consumption.

But Bill Clinton exceeded my expectations by a goodly amount. First, Clinton wholly embraced the Obama candidacy, with lots of full-throated “I support Barack Obama,” “Barack Obama is the man for this job,” and “Barack Obama is ready to be the president of the United States.”

Clinton neglected—wisely—to say that Obama would be ready on “day one.”

My favorite lines from the Big Dawg’s speech (transcribed from scratch-pad notes):

Barack Obama knows the world will be more impressed with the power of our example than the examples of our power.

and

America can do better, and Barack Obama will do better.

Joe Biden met my expectations, but maybe just barely.

I have often thought of Biden as an informed speaker, but not so much a great orator (I don’t think I am alone here). Tonight’s speech basically confirmed that belief. It had the “red meat” that every anchor and pundit told us that this speech must contain, but it didn’t soar rhetorically. It was a little long, and peppered with those much too over-used call and repetition lines, which have mostly failed (as they did here) ever since Al Gore trotted out “It’s time for him to go” back in 1992.

Joe Biden’s best moment—and, again, I am sure I am not alone here—was his “Freudian slip,” accidentally calling John McCain “George.”

Biden—along with so many at this convention—stressed that John McCain just represents a continuation of the failed Bush Administration. Polls show that this argument tracks very well with voters. In this case, I am happy that the Dems are poll-driven.

On electability

I have never been one to push electability as a deciding factor in a political race. It’s sort of an absurd game to try to guess what’s in the hearts and minds of others. If everyone would go to polls and vote for the candidate they honestly think is the best choice, then that alone would make him or her electable.

But what if the other side (as I will call Republicans for the sake of argument and comity) tips their hand? What if they basically telegraph whom they would love to square off against, and, conversely, whom worries them—does that change the role of electability as an evaluative criterion?

I don’t think it is a great analytical leap to say that most Republican strategists are prepping for a campaign against Senator Clinton—and I have to think they are fine with that (well, as fine as you could be working for a Republican this election cycle—that can’t be fun). Clinton is an intensely known quantity with a long and well-documented track record in the public eye. Plenty of people like HRC, sure, and indeed feel a keen affinity for her, but plenty really and truly don’t. Nationally, Sen. Clinton has the highest negatives of any top tier candidate—and those numbers have proven remarkably stable throughout this overlong campaign season.

Like I said, she is a known quantity. There are not a lot of people out there who say, “I just don’t know enough about Hillary to make up my mind.”

There’s not a lot of room on the upside, and, theoretically, there’s not a lot of room on the downside, either.

Except that there kind of is. . . .

It is relatively easy to measure what people think, but not always as easy to predict what people will do. But I’m going to take a crack at it, anyway.

The Republican brand is a mess. At present, it is now hard to see what Republicans can stand for in a public sense. Standing by Bush ain’t gonna get it done. Talking about Iraq is not something any of them would want to do. Cutting taxes is an old standby, but with so many current and looming economic crises, and the gap between rich and poor so gaping that even the establishment media occasionally has to sit up and take notice, that old saw seems elitist and irresponsible. Even immigration, supposedly the Republican’s wedge issue, is, in reality, a disaster in the making: polls show most voters don’t think this is a top concern, and the hatemongering nativist bigotry will likely drive more voters to their opponents than it will galvanize any faux-populist groundswell.

The only thing I can see unifying the Republicans next fall is fear and loathing—an nothing seems to turn up the bass on the Republican noise box (and turn out the base for a Republican candidate) like the looming specter of another Clinton in the White House.

Honestly, part of me just doesn’t get this. A thinking Republican (work with me on this, OK?) would notice that President Bill took his party a great big step to the right when he emerged on the national scene. Just think, under Big Dawg, we had such anti-progressive legislation as welfare reform—which was nothing but a Republican pipe dream only years earlier.

And Bill Clinton ran a coattail-free presidency, expending little of his political capital to help his party down-ticket. Under the leadership of Clinton 42, Democrats managed to do something they hadn’t done in some 40 years: lose control of both houses of Congress.

It took a decade of hard work and a really, really bad Republican in the White House to undo that horror (if you can call this current Democratic majority a real undoing).

Maybe it’s that President Clinton appropriated so many of the GOP’s positions, and did it in such a charming way, that has so many Republicans tearing at their clothes every time they hear his name. Or, maybe it’s just that he was so damn charming.

There is no doubting Bill Clinton’s great personal charisma, and when he is sandwiched between Prescott’s progeny and the progeny’s progeny, William Jefferson looks like a fucking god among men. (Hush, you!)

Of course, Hillary is not Bill. She has a bit less charisma, and actually stands a tad further to right (in my humble opinion). But to Republicans, it’s as if she were the wrong kind of second coming.

So, to my earlier point, the best way to unify the Republican Brand is to give them something to be against—and if you have seen the Republican debates or if you watch or listen to rightwing news/talk/blather, then you know they just love being against Hillary Clinton.

Then there’s the other side. Our side. It has long been the contention that the left-leaning base of the Democratic Party would accept a more centrist candidate for national office because, well, because of that electability issue. In theory, you gotta win over some of the middle, right? If you are to the left of the Democratic nominee, where you gonna go?

Unfortunately, many elections over the last two decades have taught us that while the party faithful might not always have somewhere else to go (Ralph Nader not withstanding), they pretty much always have some place to stay: home.

It is not sufficient to expect a voter to cast his or her ballot for the lesser of two evils, or the closer of two ideologies, because contemporary voters don’t always do that. All too often, the uninspired voter writes off the whole process. They don’t vote against you, sure, but they don’t vote for you, either. Much of the time, they just don’t vote.

While there is much to hope for in the candidacies of any of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, some capture that hope better than others. And some do it worse. To my mind, Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the latter category.

As HRC works overtime to win the general election without first winning the primary, she has taken to couching almost every one of her positions in a vast array of buzzwords and qualifying phrases. I find so little of what she says to be daring or inspired, and, so, I find almost none of it inspiring.

I fear other voters might feel the same way. And while I will be at the polls next November pulling the lever (yes, we still do that in New York) for a Democrat, no matter who it is, because this one is that important, I can easily envision others who just won’t bother. I can because I have met them.

Believe it or not, even here in liberal and engaged New York City, I have spoken with people who think this is all a big game. . . or a big bore. Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton—it’s just an amusement for the powerful corporate interests that really rule the world. (I am not making this up.) George W. Bush isn’t running this time, so they don’t have to worry about him, and they haven’t paid much attention to anyone else.

Democrats need a candidate that will get these people to pay attention. One that will get them, and people all over the country like them, excited. One that will articulate a message in such a way that it will inspire people who don’t normally think elections matter. One who can bring a cause to people who don’t often think there is a reason to vote. One who can give hope to people who don’t believe that what they do at the polls has any consequence.

So far, which is for far too long, Senator Clinton has not been that candidate.

Which brings us back to electability. Again, not a good reason in-and-of itself to choose a candidate—electability is just not an issue like Iraq, or healthcare, or poverty are issues. But, after eight years of horrific leadership, electability is not a non-issue, either. This is an election Democrats want to win; this is an election Democrats have to win.

And win up and down the ticket, I might add.

And, if that’s the way you see it, too, well, then Hillary Clinton is honestly not the best choice. Honestly.


(Oh, and, as to which candidate does worry Republican strategists, well, there is this.)


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean we all don’t think you’d a make a lousy president

Writing in today’s New York Times, Maureen Dowd (I know, I can’t believe I’m referencing her column, either) describes how surprised she was to see Sen. Hillary Clinton stray from her practiced unflappability.

[O]n Sunday in New Hampton, Iowa, Hillary lost her cool at last. Sparring with a voter on Iran, she sounded defensive and paranoid.

A Democrat, Randall Rolph, asked Senator Clinton why he should back her when she did not learn her lesson after voting to authorize W. to use force in Iraq. He did not understand how she could have voted yea to urge W. to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, possibly setting the stage for more Cheney chicanery.

Hillary said that “labeling them a terrorist organization gives us the authority to impose sanctions on their leadership. ...I consider that part of a very robust diplomatic effort.”

Fearful that her questioner was an enemy spy creeping into her perfect little world, she suggested that he had been put up to the question and did not have his information right.

“I take exception,” Mr. Rolph insisted. “This is my own research. ... I’m offended that you would suggest that.”

Hillary apologized and said that she had been asked “the very same question in three other places.”

Though Clinton’s vote on Lieberman-Kyl is worth every column inch of criticism that MoDo and I can heap upon her, I want to remark on a related issue—this idea that because Mr. Rolph had the same question as three others on the campaign trail, he, as Hillary saw it, had to have been put up to it. Perhaps space limitations prevented Dowd from expanding upon this, so let me express outrage for the both of us.

Does it strike anyone else out there as odd that Sen. Clinton’s first reaction to being asked repeatedly about her unsavory vote is to assume that there is some coordinated and, thus, insincere campaign to “get” her rather than to understand that a large number in her own party were seriously troubled by her position?

For my part, “odd” isn’t the half of it.

It shows me—once again—that HRC’s default position is a political one. Instead of thinking that her questioner—questioners—found her vote an example of poor judgment, or to be wrongheaded or just plain wrong, the Senator assumes that her antagonists are staging a political spectacle. Instead of thinking that Mr. Rolph is in sympathy with others who asked the same question, Ms. Clinton thinks he is in league with them. Instead of understanding that some voters have a core belief, Hillary can only see that they might have a coordinated strategy.

The Junior Senator from New York can’t grasp any of that because it is completely alien to her way of thinking. The reasoning of a Randall Rolph—that a yea vote on Lieberman-Kyl is bad for the country—is too abstract for Clinton. As Hilary sees it, her vote was good for her candidacy.

In her final analysis, Dowd sees plenty that backs this up:

When Hillary voted to let W. use force in Iraq, she didn’t even read the intelligence estimate. She wasn’t trying to do the right thing. She was trying to do the opportunistic thing. She felt she could not run for president, as a woman, if she played the peacenik.

By throwing in with Joe Lieberman and the conservative hawks on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard issue, she once more overcompensated in a cynical way.

This does not bode particularly well for Clinton the candidate—in the primaries or the general election. As MoDo puts it, “Voters seem more concerned with Hillary’s political expediency—which the vote underscored—than with her ability to be manly.”

But, as bad as this looks for candidate Clinton, it makes for an even more troubling picture of the possible president. A vote like the one on Iran, and the reasoning behind it, doesn’t show leadership—or at least not the kind that is going to lead us out of the morass in which we now find ourselves.

It was that other Clinton, you know the one, that triangulated his way to and through a two-term presidency. Along the way, he lost his party control of both houses of Congress, failed to reform healthcare, succeeded in deforming welfare, signed the death warrant for a diverse establishment media, and gave years of life to a largely unprincipled (oh, I’m sorry, “pragmatic”) group of sell-outs called the Democratic Leadership Council. Bill Clinton’s personal strategic success came at the expense of his party’s popular appeal. Big Dawg may have won his prize, but, under his leadership, the Democrats lost their way.

It has taken the democratic wing of the Democratic Party the better part of this decade to recover (or begin to recover). After two terms of Clinton’s successor, it will take the US much longer. If the party and the country are both to flourish, our next president needs boots on the ground, not fingers in the wind.

But Hillary Clinton’s triangulation 2.0 won’t mobilize the party faithful (or the body politic, for that matter) the way hating George W. Bush has. I’m not even sure it will win her many extra votes. If the Bush years have taught us nothing, they have taught us that values are tough to finesse, that cynicism breeds cynicism, and that standing for something beats sitting on the fence.

If a President Hillary Clinton wants to accomplish any of the things on which she is campaigning (besides making war on Iran)—if she is going to drawdown US forces in Iraq, restore integrity to government, cover the uninsured, or help the poor—then she is going to have to spend some political capital, take some risks, and make a stand. She is going to have to choose definable sides rather than shoot for the amorphous middle. She is going to have to teach and she is going to have to lead.

The way HRC is voting, talking, and campaigning, I don’t get the feeling she is ready to do any of that. Worse, I’m not sure she understands that she has to.

No, Senator Clinton, I’m not out to get you; I just don’t get your thinking.

And neither does MoDo.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos)

You can’t have one without the other

Forgive me, this story originally broke last week, but I tend not to link to things that I can only find on Politico. Now that I’ve just heard it confirmed by another source who knows enough to know, here goes:

According to Politico, GQ magazine spiked an upcoming article by Josh Green (staff writer for the Atlantic Monthly) that pulled back the curtain on infighting within the presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton. The reason: The Clintons threatened to cut off access to former president Bill—slated to be cover boy for the December issue—if GQ ran the story on Hillary (and her campaign).

Despite internal protests, GQ editor Jim Nelson met the Clinton campaign’s demands, which had been delivered by Bill Clinton’s spokesman, Jay Carson, several sources familiar with the conversations said.

. . . .

“I don’t really get into the inner workings of the magazine, but I can tell you that yes, we did kill a Hillary piece. We kill pieces all the time for a variety of reasons,” Nelson said in an e-mail to Politico.

Appearing on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show on Monday, GQ writer Robert Draper (author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush) said that he had no knowledge any specifics beyond what has been reported since he was not involved with this story, but he could confirm that there was an article on Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and that it was killed over a threatened embargo of Bill.

Back to Politico for the money quote:

The campaign’s transaction with GQ opens a curtain on the Clinton campaign’s hard-nosed media strategy, which is far closer in its unromantic view of the press to the campaigns of George W. Bush than to that of Bill Clinton’s free-wheeling 1992 campaign.

Indeed. While I have much fault to find with GQ for allowing itself to be intimidated by the Clintons (remember, it’s a symbiotic relationship—celebrities need the press in order to push their messages as much as the press needs celebrities in order to push paper), I am not worried about Jim Nelson running for president anytime soon. I am really disturbed by the Senator’s behavior, however, because beyond revealing Hillary Clinton’s cynical, Bush-like view of the media, I think this little story sheds an unfavorable light on her also Bush-like desire for absolute secrecy and loyalty.

The way a candidate runs a campaign is a window on how he or she might function as president. Sen. Obama, for instance, while talking about being a change agent, has been overly tentative; increasingly so as he has solidified his top tier status, and that worries me.

And Hillary Clinton’s campaign is confirming far too many of my doubts about her. She continues to “triangulate”—looking to politically optimize every position rather than standing firmly behind core Democratic (or, for that matter, personal) beliefs. She talks a lot, but says little; after a Clinton speech/performance, I might be impressed with her diction and apparent understanding of “the issues,” but again, I am left with no impression whatsoever about where she stands on “the issues”—except, perhaps, the impression that she is skirting them (no pun intended).

Finally, the GQ flap confirms one of my biggest fears about an HRC presidency: Of all the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Clinton is the one I think is least likely to operate in the sunlight, entertain a diversity of ideas, and give back the powers stolen from the other branches of government by the self-imagined Unitary Executive Bush.

As disturbing as the carrot and stick approach is as a press strategy, in our celebrity-driven, hyper consolidated mediascape, it might actually work. However, the same approach, when used to manage White House staff, a domestic initiative, or foreign policy, would be an absolute disaster.

That, frankly, is the far more important lesson Hillary Clinton should learn from George W. Bush.

From the way that Clinton is running her campaign, however, I have a bad feeling that she will not learn. With us now watching her campaign more and more, I would hope that we, the voters, will.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos and The Seminal)