Clinton Should Back Off
February 20th, 2008 by gordo
If Clinton can’t win without backroom deals and baseless attacks, then she should just stick a fork in her campaign and go home
As Clinton’s campaign continues to flounder (Obama leads 58-41 in Wisconsin), the campaign has increasingly turned to negative campaigning and lobbying delegates, including those already pledged to Obama (Clinton denies this).
It’s easy to see why Clinton is turning to attacks and negative ads. Voters generally don’t change their allegiance during the last couple of weeks of a campaign, except in response to attacks. But it’s only an effective strategy if you can identify something in your opponent’s character or record that you can credibly attack, and Clinton’s attacks have all been shown to be either false or frivolous.
First, she attacked Obama for voting “present” on several abortion measures in the Illinois state legislature. But it turns out that he was following a strategy devised by Planned Parenthood of Illinois. Then she trashed Obama for failing in his high-profile effort to regulate the nuclear power industry. Can you say, “Hillarycare ‘94″? Now she’s accused him of plagiarism, only to find that the man he ‘plagiarized’, Governor Deval of Massachusetts, is someone who has collaborated with Obama on crafting a resonant message. More embarrassingly, Clinton has been caught borrowing several lines from none other than Barack Obama.
I don’t have a problem with questioning Obama’s record or his proposals. I don’t even have a problem with Clinton criticizing Obama’s credentials, even though his are, in my opinion, more impressive than Clinton’s. But Clinton is using sort of attacks that I call “spaghetti marinara.” You throw them against the wall, knowing that nothing of substance will stick, and just hope that you can create a temporary stain, something that will last, if you’re lucky, until just after the next primary. Ultimately, such charges will hurt not just Obama, but the enthusiastic army of supporters that he brings with him to the campaign. If Clinton should win by using such tactics, many of those supporters will probably become discouraged, hurting not just Clinton’s chances in November, but the chances of many Democratic congressional hopefuls as well.
But as harmful as her attacks on Obama could turn out to be, that sin pales in comparison to Clinton’s lobbying of the convention delegates. In effect, she’s asking superdelegates to defy the rank-and-file of the Democratic party and choose the second-place candidate. And if it’s true that she’s secretly lobbying Obama delegates (that charge is sourced to a senior Clinton staffer), then she’s doing the one thing that could cost the Democrats the presidency in 2008.
Imagine this: having lost all but one or two of the late primaries, Clinton limps into the convention a hundred or more delegates behind. But she gets more superdelegates and a few of Obama’s pledged delegates, and the party reverses itself and allows delegates from Michigan and Florida to vote. End result: a narrow win for Clinton. If that were to happen, the Democrats would lose most of their new support among black voters and younger voters. They would see all of their efforts undone by party insiders, and a whole generation of talented activists and organizers would become disillusioned with electoral politics. The Democrats’ Holy Grail — a large turnout among blacks and young voters — would once again vanish, and with it the Democrats’ hopes of gaining a large congressional majority.
As I said, legitimate attacks on legitimate issues are completely defensible. And I certainly don’t think that any candidate should drop out of a race this close, if they’re prepared to win or lose on the basis of the will of people rather than the will of the party insiders. But if Senator Clinton doesn’t think that she can win without frivolous attacks and backroom deals, then she should do the country a favor and withdraw.
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Chis Cillizza has much more, including a list of all 796 superdelegates.
(cross posted at appletree)
February 20th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Obama has one avenue to defuse this. That is to reassure aging feminists of both sexes who have seen their former dream of an equal rights amendment die only to be reborn in the form of an impressive woman candidate for the Presidency. That means a combination of addressing feminist issues in his campaign and probably like you have mentioned before a woman for a running mate, one who will address feminist issues in the campaign and has some assurance of related responsibilities in a new administration.
“A woman for President in my lifetime” is the emotional underpinnings of the Clinton candidacy and its is strongest in those who were around when the amendment failed. A dream reborn is very hard to lose a second time around.
February 20th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
For the CNN analysis of committed superdelegates:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/19/dem.delegates/index.html
I notice Barbara Boxer in California isn’t listed as pledged to anyone.
She would make a very good running mate for Obama. She is also extremely popular in California where she keeps increasing her margins, having won her last election in a virtual cakewalk.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
dutch–
I think Boxer would work, but I think Obama would do better with a person who’s less confrontational and divisive, like Christine Gregoire or Kathleen Sebelius. And frankly, I’m not very enthused at the idea of Boxer being president some day. There’s a lot of women I’d choose first.
Also, if Obama takes Boxer and wins, then Schwarzenegger gets to appoint her successor.
February 20th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Also, thanks for the link to the superdelegates. You can see how close the candidates are politically by looking at the way they’ve both been able to attract both liberals and centrists.
And I noticed that Sebelius, Gregoire, and Janet Napalitano have all committed to Obama. Maybe they were all thinking along the same lines as me.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Does it really matter which communist you run against the Republican socialist? Now really, does it matter?
February 20th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
How crazy do you have to be to think that John McCain is a socialist?
Back in the 1990s, McCain pushed to have PBS de-funded because they ran a documentary on Nobel laureate Rigoberto Menchu, because McCain believed that the documentary promoted socialism.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Hank, Hank,
Take it from the far left that no elected American official in Washington is a communist, not Obama, not Clinton, not Boxer, not Sebelius, Gregoire, or Napalitano, either. At the most none of them is more than just a little left of pure centrist. And if McCain is left of you then you are a real fringe nut.
For that matter you wouldn’t know a socialist if a Nazi bit you on the ass. They were “socialists”, too, for all the weight that meaningless tag carries.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Man, where do all the whack-jobs like Hank come from? You think he’s at least aware that the Earth revolves around the sun?
February 21st, 2008 at 8:12 pm
I don’t know if Mr Obama will win the Democratic nomination, but Hillary Clinton has already lost the presidency. Black voters have seized upon the Obama candidacy, pushing one of their own forward, and instilling new pride in that community. If Mrs Clinton comes from behind — and especially if she does so via the back room — black voters will be hugely disappointed, and black turnout will probably be significantly depressed. And Democrats cannot win without the black vote.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Dana,
It isn’t just black Americans. Be careful about black turnout. In this primary season there are a lot of new voters casting votes in the primaries. Those are the most likely to stay home if Obama loses to Clinton, but there is not likely to be as much crossover to vote Republican among that black Americans in that group as among Obama’s white supporters.
He seems to have caught the fancy of Americans of all races and for a variety of reasons. Wisconsin puts an exclamation point behind that. Obama was strong in all parts of that state. In those few places he didn’t win outright, he was extremely competitive anyway. He carried the white vote in most demographics. He has a very strong appeal to moderate Republicans and independents, too, to the extent that there is an outside chance that he will pull enough away from McCain in the open primaries of Texas and Ohio to keep Huckabee in the race a lot longer than McCain would like.
That draw doesn’t bode well for McCain in the general election, either, since he needs all the independents he can attract to come close to having a chance. Blacks or no blacks, without the support of independents McCain is beaten. The general public interest is in the Democratic nomination contest with a very strong likelihood that many crossovers for Obama in the primaries will stay crossed over if he gets the nomination. The independents are already showing their preference. If Obama is the Democratic nominee most of them will have already decided to stick with him for November.
A little less than 50% of the Democratic superdelegates are staying on the sidelines. That group is watching the process very carefully. There has never in my memory been such a lopsided participation in the primaries in favor of the Democrats in state after state. I think it would take a pretty dumb politician to queer that potential with a back room deal that stands a good chance of alienating so many of them. I would not be surprised if those who remain uncommitted are in contact with each other, either. So a few who do commit may be taken as speaking for all of them. Of course, Obama still has to manage the caucus states. The raw numbers are in there, but the final delegate outcome has not yet been decided.
I would like to see when those superdelegates who are committed made their pledges. I would pretty much bet that most of Clinton’s came early on when she looked inevitable, and that there have been very few, if any, new ones recently. The ones that are left are looking for the most likely winner in November. If Obama continues to roll, I don’t see any way that he doesn’t get most of them. What are Clinton’s backers going to do? Vote Republican after they have savaged her so mercilessly for so many years? Not any where as many if Obama takes the nomination as those of his, especially among whites, who will if it is given to her. Alienation among Obama’s supporters may depress the black turnout, but it will have significant numbers of his white supporters voting against Clinton.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:56 am
Dana–
I have to agree with dutch. Obama has brought a lot of new voters into the campaign, but Clinton can win if they stay home. In other words, she probably wouldn’t have the benefit of getting a record turnout among young people and blacks, but she wouldn’t need a record turnout. All she’d need to get past the Stray Cock Express would be an ordinary turnout. She’s always run well among African-Americans, and she’ll stomp McCain when it comes to young people, women, Asians, Hispanics… pretty much everyone except angry old white men.
Obama or no Obama, McCain can’t win. This just wasn’t the right year to co-opt all of Bush’s policies and talking points. Last I checked, Idiot Boy was polling at 19%.
That said, if Hillary has to resort to the kind of chicanery I describe here — and she would have to do that — then she will alienate enough independent voters who were rooting for Obama to make this a close election. She’ll still win, but in the process she’ll make it tougher for the Democrats to extend their lead in congress.
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:50 am
Gordo wrote:
Uhhh, I wouldn’t be too sure about that if I were you.
In most years, the party nominees ran for their bases in the primaries, and then had to move to the center for the general election campaign, to try to pick up the independents. This year, John McCain ran from his independent base, where he was always strong. Republicans have no place else to go, so they’ll vote for Mr McCain.
To win the election, the Democratic nominee has to win at least one of the big states, or some of the smaller states, that George Bush won in 2004. Most of those states will not be competitive for either a black or female nominee. That means, in effect, Ohio or Florida: the Democratic nominee has to carry one of them to win.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Sorry Dana that independent base is voting in the Democratic primaries and going to Democratic caucuses across the country, including Bush’s red states. McClain is turning out to be enough of a playboy to put Bill Clinton to shame with enough skeletons connecting him to lobbyists that he is endangering the most dependable source of Republican votes, the religious fundamentalists, and his independent reputation at the same time.
I doubt that McCain can count on the independents this time around. He may not be able to count on the fundies turning out this year, and a lot of extreme conservatives don’t like him either.
It looks to me like his traditional support is as undependable as anybody else’s.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Dana–
I have to agree with Dutch when he says that Obama is going to get more independent support than McCain. And it’s simply not true that McCain has campaigned as either a centrist or as an independent.
On issue after issue, McCain abandoned the positions that marked him as a maverick. He embraced religious extremists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. He has embraced the tax cuts that brought a return to deficit spending, and he voted against a ban on the use of torture. Hilariously, he’s even said that he would not vote for his own immigration bill.
If he runs against Obama, he’s not going to win Ohio, Florida, or any other swing state. He’s going to get eaten alive.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
[…] Hillary Clinton is also getting a lot of advice. Gordo advises that “Clinton should back off” and Jonathon Alter at Newsweek wants her to “get out now“. The Zaftig Redhead wrote Clinton an open letter and posted it at TPM saying “Cease campaign operations — NOW. Call a press conference. Preferably before the Ohio and Texas contests.” […]