Clinton's debt

I really don't understand this idea that Obama has some sort of obligation to Hillary Clinton to help her pay her debt from the primary campaign. Attitudes like this are completely mystifying to me:

Some Clinton supporters are grousing that Mr. Obama has yet to make the symbolic gesture of writing a check for $2,300, the maximum allowable campaign donation, to help retire her debt of over $12 million.

Am I missing something here? Clinton went into debt because she made the calculated decision to borrow money to win the primary. Why should someone else pay it off, let alone the very rival she borrowed the money to defeat? Moreover: aren't the Clintons supposed to be worth far more than $12 million? When their tax returns were released a few months ago, it was revealed that they had earned no less than "$109 million in the the last eight years". So it seems to me that Clinton ought to be more than capable of paying off her debts by herself.

'Tis but a scratch

This is the best leveraging of a Monty Python bit to take down a politician I've seen yet.

Clinton campaign post-mortem

For those of you addicted, here's some pretty high-quality crack.

Thanks sis!

The rare apt WWII analogy

From the AP:

"They had an inevitability strategy, which was sort of a political Maginot line. It was illusionary. You just went around it, and, you know, Barack Obama did that."

-Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic chairman and Barack Obama supporter on Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy

Fighting to the end

Hillary Clinton supporter Ellen Malcolm wants her to fight it out to the end:

So here we are in the fourth quarter of the nominating process and the game is too close to call. Once again, the opponents and the media are calling for Hillary to quit. The first woman ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop competing, to curtsy and exit stage right.

I can sympathize with her anger over people calling for her candidate to quit. If nothing else, it can look like the woman is being condescendingly patted on the head and ushered out of the still-very-male-dominated process--and I don't think even the appearance of that is acceptable.

But let's put things into perspective a little bit. It is not as though Clinton was the scrappy underdog who, through grit and determination, miraculously rose in the ranks to become a real contender for the nomination. The opposite is true: she was the heavy favorite to win, the "inevitable" candidate, the establishment favorite. By all accounts, she probably wouldn't be about to lose today if she hadn't shot herself in the foot in several creative different ways. So I think the victimization narrative that Malcolm is trying gin up here doesn't harmonize well with the facts.

In the end, I have no problems with Clinton finishing out the primary cycle, especially if she and her supporters feel that it is the fitting way to conclude things. But it's just an empirical fact at this point that Clinton has no chance of winning the nomination, and Clinton needs to recognize this. If she doesn't--and continues the harsh negative attacks, or, heaven help us, drags out the fight all the way to convention time--then she really will do serious harm to the Democratic Party.

Ironically, in the final analysis it is Malcolm who seems to be underestimating Clinton's power--by pretending that she is so marginalized that she cannot tear apart the party.

Hillary Clinton's quest to piss off everybody

Her latest inflammatory comments:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Now, in a primary race against the first serious black nominee ever, that's a pretty dumb thing to say. I don't think there was intentional malice here--I don't think she was making some kind of political calculation to be racially divisive--but I do think that she has got it into her head that, somehow, in making this kind of observation she is simply being a political realist, and that the thought of her being racist in any way is so laughable that no one would ever think of calling it racially divisive. And so she goes ahead and says it.

But in doing so, she's pissing everybody off. For example, she's certainly got Bob Herbert's hackles in the 12 o'clock position:

He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!

The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.

...

But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.

The crazy thing about it is, I'm sure the Clintons are so steeped in their perception of themselves that they'll fail to see how opinions like Herbert's have a legitimate basis. They'll probably come to the conclusion that Obama supporters are playing the race card on them, accusing the Obama campaign of turning a non-racist comment into a semi-racist one.

And none of this does the Democratic Party any good whatsoever.

...letting it die

Looks like the Obama campaign is going to let the Hillary campaign run its course, as it should:

Its campaign quarry finally cornered, the Obama high command gave it space. The Illinois senator was on track to become the first black presidential nominee of a major party and aides produced a small trickle of superdelegate supporters. But there was nary a word about hastening Clinton's departure.

"I think that it would be inappropriate and awkward and wrong for any of us to tell Senator Clinton when it is time for the race to be over," said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, speaking on a campaign-sponsored conference call with reporters.

Of course, I don't want to jinx anything--but the whole tenor of the media has suddenly shifted. Clinton's stock is plummeting. Can it be that we're finally nearing the end?

Clinton campaign must die a natural death

I think it's clear at this point that the Clinton campaign is in its final throes. Assuming realistic outcomes for the remaining contests, she cannot win in pledged delegates, and she will undoubtedly lose the popular vote, as well. Her remaining trump card--reinstating Michigan and Florida--would require the determined support of the party elites, but her support with them is waning: every day she bleeds a few more superdelegates.

However, the smart thing for the Obama campaign to do would be to pretend that none of this is the case, and to stop harping on tactical arguments as to why Clinton should drop out of the campaign "for the good of the party". Leave that argument for the punditry to make; coming from the Obama camp, all it does is raise the hackles of Clinton's base of supporters and make them feel like their candidate is getting elbowed out of the process.

If there is the appearance that Clinton withdraws from the race entirely of her own volition, it will go a long way towards healing the rift that has cropped up in the Democratic Party over the course of the long primary season. I know that if the situation was reversed and Obama was facing bleak prospects for the nomination, I'd certainly be happier with Clinton and the Democrats if they allowed my candidate to withdraw from the race on his own terms.

And if it turns out that Clinton is just absolutely determined to drag things out until the convention, then, well--there wasn't anything anyone could do about it anyway.

"Race is over", NYT meta-declares

There is a NYT front page article that says that the punditry says that--with Obama and Clinton splitting North Carolina and Indiana yesterday--the race is over:

Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton’s continued viability as a presidential candidate.

The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: “We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it,” he said on MSNBC.

The comment was echoed on Drudge and soon repeated by many others.

Of course, the pundits will inevitably start talking about the NYT article...it's turtles all the way down, I'm telling ya.

Sixty minutes of Clinton

In case you're interested, here's an unvarnished hour of George Stephanapoulous questioning Hillary Clinton in a "town-hall" setting. She double-downs on the gas tax holiday nonsense, including the surprising statement that she "doesn't throw in her lot with economists". Huh?

Clinton the underdog

I know it's William Kristol, and so anything he has to say about Democratic politics probably shouldn't count, but this just seems so crazy to me:

The fact is Hillary Clinton has turned out to be an impressive candidate. She has consistently defeated Barack Obama when her back was to the wall — first in New Hampshire, then in several big primaries on Super Tuesday, on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, and then last week in Pennsylvania, where she was outspent by almost 3 to 1, yet won handily.

Whoa there. When this thing started, Hillary Clinton was the overwhelming favorite: she had name recognition, the vast Clinton Rolodex at her disposal, and she was perceived to be the "inevitable" nominee by the press and the party elite. Now she is the feisty, embattled underdog. That's quite a distance to fall--and hardly "impressive".

Responding to Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman has an op-ed today that makes a couple of points defending Hillary Clinton and a couple of points questioning Barack Obama. As a dutiful Obama supporter, I'll try to make arguments against some of his points.

Mr. Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan differences and unify the nation.

This is the common misunderstanding of Obama's rhetoric when content is confused with process. When Obama talks about "transcending" partisan differences, it does not mean that somehow everyone will hew to the same ideological line, or that ideological differences will go away. Rather, it means that the process of politics will be executed in good faith, and that the opposition will have its voice be heard and not be shut out of the process, encouraging pragmatic resolutions to the immense problems our nation faces: the Iraq War, the upcoming recession, health care affordability, rising energy prices, global warming, terrorism, etc. There is nothing "magical" about any of this, and there is no rule that says that only Obama is capable of achieving it. Clinton could have chosen this route of conciliary and empathetic politics, but instead has opted for 90s-style ultra-partisan warfare politics and its incessant "fighting" of the "Republican machine". This difference in political methodologies between the candidates is a substantive one. As Clinton herself demonstrated in the early 1990s with the 'Hillarycare' debacle, the wrong political strategy can doom even the most well-thought-out policy.

Once voters got to know him — and once he had eliminated Hillary Clinton’s initial financial and organizational advantage — he was supposed to sweep easily to the nomination, then march on to a huge victory in November.

If the implication is that this was the Obama campaign's prediction of how things would go, then it is wrong. In fact, the Obama campaign has for a long time been soberly predicting that Obama's margin of victory would not be large and that there would be absolutely nothing easy about toppling the Clinton machine. So there is more humility to the Obama campaign, I think, than Krugman lets on.

Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment — yet he still can’t seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class.

As a result, he keeps losing big states.

It has always been predicted that Obama would lose big states such as Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania (at around Super Tuesday, the Obama campaign itself predicted losses in these states by 4, 7, and 5 percent, respectively). This is part of the reason why Obama's campaign strategy has been to capitalize on lopsided margins in smaller states and/or caucus states where superior organization pays off.

And general election polls suggest that he might well lose to John McCain.

Tellingly, no citation. In the helpful metapoll over at RealClearPolitics, it shows that Obama is polling on average 1.5 points ahead of McCain, and Clinton is polling 0.6 ahead. In other words, even though the Democrats are currently campaigning against each other, they are both essentially in a dead heat with McCain (good news for Democrats). So I don't know where Krugman is getting his polling data from.

According to many Obama supporters, it’s all Hillary’s fault. If she hadn’t launched all those vile, negative attacks on their hero — if she had just gone away — his aura would be intact, and his mission of unifying America still on track.

But how negative has the Clinton campaign been, really? Yes, it ran an ad that included Osama bin Laden in a montage of crisis images that also included the Great Depression and Hurricane Katrina. To listen to some pundits, you’d think that ad was practically the same as the famous G.O.P. ad accusing Max Cleland of being weak on national security.

It wasn’t. The attacks from the Clinton campaign have been badminton compared with the hardball Republicans will play this fall. If the relatively mild rough and tumble of the Democratic fight has been enough to knock Mr. Obama off his pedestal, what hope did he ever have of staying on it through the general election?

I agree with Krugman that many Obama supporters overstate the damage done by Clinton's attacks, and tend to exaggerate the actual negativity of the ads themselves. At the same time, though, I don't think it makes sense to judge the negativity of Clinton's ads by using Republican attacks as a yardstick. Even if a Clinton attack is substantively less negative than a Republican one, the fact that it is uttered by a fellow Democrat can make it far more damaging. For example, the suggestion that Obama is less prepared to be President than John McCain is very damaging coming from the mouth of a leading Democrat, but is par for the course coming from a Republican.

Moreover, I think Krugman and Clinton supporters in general should be on guard against facile arguments of the type "what Clinton did was justified in the primary because Republicans will do the same thing in the general". To a certain extent it's fair--and in fact desired--for primary candidates to take off the gloves a little bit and go after each other's weak spots, especially the ones that will likely be exploited in the general election. Hillary's prevarications, Obama's preacher--bring it on. However, as I argue above, there are some attacks that cannot be made by Republicans, that can only inflict pain because they are uttered by Democrats. It doesn't make sense to say of these Democrat-on-Democrat attacks that they are some kind of precursor of what is to come in the general election, and therefore fair game.

[M]aybe his transformational campaign isn’t winning over working-class voters because transformation isn’t what they’re looking for.

From the beginning, I wondered what Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and declarations that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” (waiting for to do what, exactly?) would mean to families troubled by lagging wages, insecure jobs and fear of losing health coverage. The answer, from Ohio and Pennsylvania, seems pretty clear: not much. Mrs. Clinton has been able to stay in the race, against heavy odds, largely because her no-nonsense style, her obvious interest in the wonkish details of policy, resonate with many voters in a way that Mr. Obama’s eloquence does not.

I agree absolutely with Krugman: the majority of the sorts of "troubled" working-class families described above are going to favor Clinton's no-nonsense wonkish approach over Obama's admittedly airy-fairy rhetoric of "change" and "transcendence". No one's saying that Clinton doesn't have strengths--indeed, I think Obama has learned from Clinton that often times conveying wonkish competence and mastery of details can be more comforting than high-flying oratory. However, just because these voters prefer Clinton to Obama does not mean that they will prefer McCain to Obama. If these voters are really as policy and detail minded as Krugman suggests, then they will certainly choose any Democrat over any Republican in the general, come what may. The same is not necessarily true, however, for many Independents and new voters who do respond to Obama's soaring oratory--which is why I think Obama is better positioned than Clinton to win the general election in November.

Tellingly, the Obama campaign has put far more energy into attacking Mrs. Clinton’s health care proposals than it has into promoting the idea of universal coverage.

During the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary fight, the Obama campaign ran a TV ad repeating the dishonest charge that the Clinton plan would force people to buy health insurance they can’t afford. It was as negative as any ad that Mrs. Clinton has run — but perhaps more important, it was fear-mongering aimed at people who don’t think they need insurance, rather than reassurance for families who are trying to get coverage or are afraid of losing it.

To say that Obama "has put far more energy" into attacking Clinton than promoting universal coverage is, I think, an obvious exaggeration. But I do agree that the particular attack ad that Krugman refers to was an inexcusable misrepresentation of Clinton's health care proposals, and should never have been run.

The question Democrats, both inside and outside the Obama campaign, should be asking themselves is this: now that the magic has dissipated, what is the campaign about? More generally, what are the Democrats for in this election?

That should be an easy question to answer. Democrats can justly portray themselves as the party of economic security, the party that created Social Security and Medicare and defended those programs against Republican attacks — and the party that can bring assured health coverage to all Americans.

They can also portray themselves as the party of prosperity: the contrast between the Clinton economy and the Bush economy is the best free advertisement that Democrats have had since Herbert Hoover.

But the message that Democrats are ready to continue and build on a grand tradition doesn’t mesh well with claims to be bringing a “new politics” and rhetoric that places blame for our current state equally on both parties.

I think the Democratic candidate will be able to portray him or herself and the party in all the ways Krugman wants them to be portrayed, whether it's Obama or Clinton. What we're seeing here is the kind of myopia and cognitive dissonance that the long and bitter primary tends to cause amongst Democrats: we tend to lose sight of the fact that both candidates--though different in their political styles and what they emphasize--are overwhelmingly more the same than different, with almost no significant policy differences between them. Moreover, there is no tension between Obama's project of a "new politics" and the idea of building on "a grand tradition" of the Democratic Party, so long as we remember to distinguish between the content of policy proposals (which build on tradition) and the process of getting those policies passed into law (which requires "new politics").

So I think Krugman's criticisms of Obama are overblown. On the other hand, I'm also sympathetic to the article in general: with Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, and even David Brooks cheerleading for Obama week in and week out and bashing Clinton, a Clinton supporter like Krugman must feel obligated to balance out the scales a little bit on the NYT op-ed pages.

The same mistake again

I'm getting pretty tired of seeing this error in reasoning:

Obama's recent problems have caused some Democrats to worry about his chances of winning the general election. His performance in Ohio, they argue, where he won only a handful of counties and lost some by huge margins, will make his prospects there difficult, they say.

A candidate's performance in a primary does not imply anything about how that candidate will do in a general election. Just because Obama lost to Clinton amongst Ohio Democrats does not mean that Obama will lose to McCain amongst all Ohio registered voters. I wish the Washington Post and other media outlets would stop uncritically echoing this fallacious Clinton argument.

EDIT: The quote is actually taken from Dan Balz' campaign blog, and not from a regular Post article--so it seems in this instance that my issue is with one writer in particular, not the whole editorial board of the Washington Post.

A depressing view of a journalist's job

David Brooks had an uncharacteristically off-base comment about tonight's Democratic debate:

First, Democrats, and especially Obama supporters, are going to jump all over ABC for the choice of topics: too many gaffe questions, not enough policy questions.

I understand the complaints, but I thought the questions were excellent. The journalist’s job is to make politicians uncomfortable, to explore evasions, contradictions and vulnerabilities. Almost every question tonight did that. The candidates each looked foolish at times, but that’s their own fault.

Wrong, David. Though the journalist's job often entails making politicians uncomfortable in a variety of ways, this sort of gotcha-game is not the journalist's job per se.

It is not helpful to "expose" a "contradiction" of some candidate when there is nothing at stake besides making the candidate look momentarily foolish; there's got to be some substantive and pressing issue that the interrogation is leading up to, some civic payoff. Thus, grilling Hillary Clinton about her sniperfire remarks is fine but only if it's leading up to some hard questions about just what her claims of experience amount to; and hammering Obama on the Wright issue is appropriate so long as it serves as an entry point into what Obama's views of race are. But lingering for 45 minutes on this stuff with no substantive upshot is nothing more than the fetishization of insider campaign politics.

Izott better than PBS?!

An article by one Froma Harrop complains about Hillary-bashing in the press of late, including the coverage of the comment from Sen. Leahy that Clinton ought to quit for the good of the party. Here is the criticism:

The latest collapse started some days ago on what is normally a four-star destination for good journalism, PBS's "NewsHour." The news summary started off with this: "Clinton's fellow Democrat in the Senate, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, today urged her to leave the race for the good of the party."

The "fellow Democrat" also happened to be one of Barack Obama's most ardent supporters, but whoops, they forget to mention that. For days even mainstream media were portraying Leahy, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and other members of the Obama team as "elders" thinking only of the party.

I agree that, if true, that is some biased coverage of the Leahy comment. However, I can plead innocent to this crime. For I included this caveat in an earlier post about the comment:

It should be noted that Leahy is an Obama supporter, so it is not as if he has any kind of neutral-observer/elder-statesman gravitas here.

Dude! I'm like so even-handed.

Senator Leahy: "Hillary Clinton is naked!"

Finally a prominent Democrat goes ahead and says it:

Sen. Patrick Leahy has gone where no Democratic leader has dared go. It's time, the Vermont senator said, for Hillary Clinton to get out of the presidential race. "She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama," he told Vermont Public Radio.

It should be noted that Leahy is an Obama supporter, so it is not as if he has any kind of neutral-observer/elder-statesman gravitas here. But still, by publicly stating the obvious he could end up starting a chorus of Democrats urging Clinton to wrap it up.

If enough voices chime in, the question of whether Clinton should withdraw will start to dominate the news cycle--a development which may or may not be good for the party. On the one hand it might actually push Clinton into withdrawing, allowing the Democrats to consolidate behind Obama and finally begin campaigning for the general. On the other hand, it may further alienate Clinton's many, many supporters, who already feel like their candidate has been unfairly maligned by the media and many in the Democratic leadership (e.g. Nancy Pelosi).

Of course, the best option would be for Clinton to withdraw unprompted, her campaign dying a natural death--but it seems like if this was going to happen, it would have happened by now.

The babbling classes

The always thoughtful Stanley Fish directs a well-placed blow at the inanity of the politics of guilt by association:

This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.

Meanwhile, the things the candidates themselves are saying about really important matters – war, the economy, health care, the environment – are put on the back-burner until the side show is over, though the odds are that a new one will start up immediately.

"Not serious" is a phrase that has described politics pretty much since I became politically aware in the mid-1990s. I think the fact that Obama at least tries to maintain some level of intelligence and maturity in the discourse of his campaign is one of the reasons he appeals to me.

Primary brinksmanship

A Gallup poll result that has been gaining traction on the internets and in the media suggests there will be heavy Democratic defections in the general election to the McCain side. Specifically, it says that 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain over Obama in the general election, and that 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton.

My intuition is that, if accurate, these numbers will subside dramatically once the primary is over and the general election campaign starts in earnest. In the heat of the primary it can be very emotionally satisfying to say that if X wins, fuck it, I'm voting McCain. Moreover, it also makes sense from a purely tactical point of view: if you can convince other Democrats that you and lots of others will walk if your candidate isn't chosen, it may convince them to vote for your candidate in an attempt to keep you around. Telling a pollster that you favor McCain over your candidate's primary opponent is one way of pursuing this strategy.

So what's happening here, I think, is a mixture of saying the emotionally satisfying thing but also engaging in some political brinkmanship. But I doubt many people will follow through on their threats and actually pull the lever for McCain in November.

At the end of the day, no one wants to stay in Iraq.

The kitchen sink was shaped like a boomerang

After a week of Hillary Clinton on the offensive and Obama on the defensive with the Wright controversy going on, Clinton's positive rating is down from 45% to 38%, but Obama's has remained almost steady:


(Related article)

I think she just may be trying to dig herself out of a hole at this point. The negative campaigning and fratricidal hardball tactics can't be doing anything at this point but polarizing the hardcore Clinton and Obama supporters and alienating the rest of the Democrats, including the Democratic establishment. And yet still she continues on.

I suppose she has somehow justified it all to herself--probably something along the lines of, "Well it's no worse than what the Republicans are gonna do--if he can't handle this barrage, then he wouldn't have won in the general anyway." But when certain things come from a fellow Democrat, it stings more than it ever could coming from a Republican--for example, that McCain has the right experience to be commander-in-chief but Obama does not.

I wish I knew what was going on in that head of hers.

PS: Tim Russert looks like a turnip.

Clinton's Praetorian Guard moves in on Pelosi

According to Reuters, 20 prominent Hillary Clinton supporters have sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi politely strong-arming her into retracting her opinion on how superdelegates should vote:

The 20 prominent Clinton supporters told Pelosi she should "clarify" recent statements to make it clear superdelegates -- nearly 800 party insiders and elected officials who are free to back any candidate -- could support the candidate they think would be the best nominee.

Pelosi has not publicly endorsed either Clinton or Barack Obama in their hotly contested White House battle, but she recently said superdelegates should support whoever emerges from the nomination contests with the most pledged delegates -- which appears almost certain to be Obama.

"This is an untenable position that runs counter to the party's intent in establishing superdelegates in 1984," the letter from the wealthy Clinton backers said.

"Superdelegates, like all delegates, have an obligation to make an informed, individual decision about whom to support and who would be the party's strongest nominee," said the letter signed by some of Clinton's biggest fund raisers.

Like most other arguments coming from Clinton supporters these days, this one doesn't make much sense. Everybody concedes that the superdelegates can use whatever criteria they want in casting their vote at the convention. What Pelosi is suggesting is that--given that the superdelegates are free to choose any criteria they want--the criterion that ought to trump all others is whether the candidate won the most pledged delegates. I imagine that her reasoning behind this is that nominating a candidate that has less pledged delegates will be seen as illegitimate by Democratic voters, and that the candidate would therefore not be "the party's strongest nominee" in the general election.

The letter makes it sound like Pelosi is trying to change the rules, when really she is just offering advice to the superdelegates--advice that they can heed or reject without Pelosi having to "clarify" anything.