Okay, she probably didn’t mean it that way—at least not consciously—but it doesn’t matter. Hillary Clinton raised the specter of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination while answering a question about why she’s still in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. That’s a live wire you can’t touch and expect to survive. Especially when the man you are running against is challenging the unspoken fears of many of his supporters that the audacity of seeking to be the first African-American president could get him killed.
And it was a dumb argument in the first place. She was saying that people should not be in such a hurry to see her shut down her campaign when historically several campaigns have run into June including in 1968, when Kennedy was shot the night he won the California primary. Kennedy, however, did not even declare himself to be a candidate that year until mid-February. Traditionally California, the state with the most votes, has held its primary last, in June, and it was winner-take-all, unlike this year’s proportional allocation of delegates. So it made sense that in a close race the winner would not be decided until the cusp of summer.
In those same old days (before this election) the New York primary was in April; “Super Tuesday,” an ‘80s invention, was in March; New Hampshire was in February. This year everything on the calendar got pushed up. There were more primaries than ever and they were earlier than ever, starting in January, which is why this campaign has lasted longer than usual. It was a change clearly designed to benefit the candidate who arrived at the starting line with the greatest name recognition, the most money raised, the most experienced campaign organization. In December 2007 that person was Hillary Clinton, who said then that she fully expected the primary campaign to be over in February. Oops. In other words, her wait-a-minute plea isn’t so much to let the process play out (how much attention would she have paid then to her precious friends in West Virginia?) as it is to let her get back in front where she believes she belongs. Whatever it takes.
Many of her critics, while chastising her for her insensitive comments, are giving her the benefit of the doubt. She hasn’t earned it. Barack Obama was exceedingly gracious in his we-all-make-mistakes public response. Yet where was her compassion when he spoke “inartfully” about small-town folks “clinging to their guns and religion” in times of political stress? He was actually trying to cut them a break. Asked why certain groups weren’t supporting him, he wrapped prejudice in a soft blanket and described bitterness as a natural response to a loss of faith in the government. Clinton knew that. But instead of giving him the kind of pass he just gave her, she jumped all over the remark, branded Obama an “elitist” and went on to create a whole new campaign persona as a gun-totin’ fighter for the little feller.
That hasn’t worked out so well. So now she is forced to say out loud words that suggest she is hanging around in case one of her “hard-working white American” supporters decides to shoot the other guy. Hey, you never know.
This is beyond desperate. It is frightening and insulting and appalling. It shows that she has neither the common sense, the integrity nor the simple human decency to occupy the office she seeks. And it wasn’t even 3 a.m.
Delphine Davis
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Yes, Okay, It's Over--For Now
Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Way back in February, the math was clear: Hillary Clinton would have to win every remaining primary by at least 10 percentage points in order to catch Barack Obama in pledged delegates for the Democratic nomination. But then it was decided that she would have to win both Ohio and Texas to stay in the race. She won both but ended up splitting the delegates almost evenly in Texas, where there was also a caucus. That could have done it right there.
But then with six weeks of nothing else to talk about, it was decided that if Clinton could win Pennsylvania by 10 points, this thing might be considered almost a toss-up. She won by not-quite-ten-points, and the crowd went wild. She’s closing fast! He can’t put her away! He (Harvard Law) is an out-of-touch elitist, while she (Yale Law) is a regular ol’ gal—who can afford to loan her own campaign a few million bucks. (Apparently all her working-class fans weren’t carrying their weight.)
Oh, and he still had a lead of close to 150 pledged delegates, with more superdelegates sliding his way every day. But by cracky, what a barn-burner!
North Carolina and Indiana: Can he possibly stay afloat? Will Jeremiah Wright remind everybody that Obama is still black and therefore not supposed to be winning? Maybe, but he wins North Carolina anyway by a margin of about 15 per cent that is hailed as a “trouncing” of Clinton. (In fact it is close to his average margin of victory; he has won neighboring Virginia by 29 percentage points.) And Clinton almost loses Indiana in the middle of the night.
And just like that, she’s pronounced toast. Yet all that has happened is that each candidate has won the expected states, and the one in second place has never seriously cut into the front-runner’s delegate margin.
For a while commentators asked each other whether the superdelegates would overrule primary voters and pick Clinton because they bought her argument that she would be the better candidate. Just as quickly, those same commentators would answer “probably not.” Even more seriously, they asked whether Obama could win the general election without the “hard-working white Americans” clinging to Clinton. They did not ask, at least not as seriously, wheteher she could win without the everybody-else who seemed to keep voting for Obama.
As if on cue, all that has pretty much stopped. Maybe the Big Media thought it unseemly to call the fight too soon. Maybe they just got tired of concocting dramatic narratives to string it along. Maybe they feared that if the horse race were declared over they would have to talk about substantive policy. God forbid anyone look too closely at what “working class” voters really want besides a grinning, beer-swigging, pantsuited champion.
The “conversation” changes so quickly and easily—like so many plot twists in a Law & Order” marathon—that you wouldn’t think anything of significance is at stake. And that is the truly scary part. As this race winds down and the contestants begin to line up for the next heat, it is not preposterous to stop and ask ourselves: Are we making a decision that in the end will make any difference?
Delphine Davis
Way back in February, the math was clear: Hillary Clinton would have to win every remaining primary by at least 10 percentage points in order to catch Barack Obama in pledged delegates for the Democratic nomination. But then it was decided that she would have to win both Ohio and Texas to stay in the race. She won both but ended up splitting the delegates almost evenly in Texas, where there was also a caucus. That could have done it right there.
But then with six weeks of nothing else to talk about, it was decided that if Clinton could win Pennsylvania by 10 points, this thing might be considered almost a toss-up. She won by not-quite-ten-points, and the crowd went wild. She’s closing fast! He can’t put her away! He (Harvard Law) is an out-of-touch elitist, while she (Yale Law) is a regular ol’ gal—who can afford to loan her own campaign a few million bucks. (Apparently all her working-class fans weren’t carrying their weight.)
Oh, and he still had a lead of close to 150 pledged delegates, with more superdelegates sliding his way every day. But by cracky, what a barn-burner!
North Carolina and Indiana: Can he possibly stay afloat? Will Jeremiah Wright remind everybody that Obama is still black and therefore not supposed to be winning? Maybe, but he wins North Carolina anyway by a margin of about 15 per cent that is hailed as a “trouncing” of Clinton. (In fact it is close to his average margin of victory; he has won neighboring Virginia by 29 percentage points.) And Clinton almost loses Indiana in the middle of the night.
And just like that, she’s pronounced toast. Yet all that has happened is that each candidate has won the expected states, and the one in second place has never seriously cut into the front-runner’s delegate margin.
For a while commentators asked each other whether the superdelegates would overrule primary voters and pick Clinton because they bought her argument that she would be the better candidate. Just as quickly, those same commentators would answer “probably not.” Even more seriously, they asked whether Obama could win the general election without the “hard-working white Americans” clinging to Clinton. They did not ask, at least not as seriously, wheteher she could win without the everybody-else who seemed to keep voting for Obama.
As if on cue, all that has pretty much stopped. Maybe the Big Media thought it unseemly to call the fight too soon. Maybe they just got tired of concocting dramatic narratives to string it along. Maybe they feared that if the horse race were declared over they would have to talk about substantive policy. God forbid anyone look too closely at what “working class” voters really want besides a grinning, beer-swigging, pantsuited champion.
The “conversation” changes so quickly and easily—like so many plot twists in a Law & Order” marathon—that you wouldn’t think anything of significance is at stake. And that is the truly scary part. As this race winds down and the contestants begin to line up for the next heat, it is not preposterous to stop and ask ourselves: Are we making a decision that in the end will make any difference?
Delphine Davis
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)