The Clinton campaign deserves an award for focusing media attention on the issue that Barack Obama cannot win the Presidency in a race against John McCain. Strangely, the media has done little to investigate the other possibility, but there is as serious a question about whether Hillary Clinton can win the White House as there is about Barack Obama.
Clinton has been so successful in sowing those doubts, that people are saying Obama cannot win the Presidency unless she is on the ticket. Some are calling it the “Dream Ticket” and Hillary Clinton is leaving little doubt that she harbors that dream. But a “dream ticket” would be a nightmare for the Democratic Party for the same reason a Clinton nomination would have been a nightmare.
The Black Vote
Start with African Americans. No Democrat in this century has won the White House without substantial support from African American voters. The Democrats cannot win without a large African American turnout, as both Al Gore and John Kerry proved. Both Clintons have so alienated black voters that had Hillary Clinton won the nomination she could not have hoped to match even Gore and Kerry’s percentages.
But now there is the issue of Clinton as VP. For many Obama voters, particularly people of color, the notion of placing Clinton on the ticket is deeply offensive. There is a feeling that it would reward Clinton for bad behavior. Rep. Lacy Clay (Mo.), a pro-Obama Democrat, told The Hill after the West Virginia primary:
I’m not sure the Obama supporters will fall in line and support her. It’s evident that she and her husband started down this racial path shortly after the South Carolina primary and they continue to hearken back to racial divides in this country.
The Angry Black Woman blogged:
Personally I’d prefer he choose someone that isn’t so likely to try to undermine him at every turn.
The Chaos Theory
There has been much attention focused on Clinton’s recent string of victories, but little attention paid to the whys of them. When you look at the data you see a rather disturbing pattern: Clinton has been piling up big margins because of votes from McCain supporters. An astounding 32% of those voting in the DEMOCRATIC Kentucky primary said they would vote for John McCain in November. Then there were the 19% of Indiana Primary voters who said they would vote for McCain.
The exit polls were not asking this question earlier in the campaign so we do not have data for these earlier primaries. This was before Rush Limbaugh began his much-hyped Operation Chaos, an attempt to get Republicans to deny Barack Obama the nomination and boost the then-sagging campaign of Hillary Clinton. Here is what Limbaugh said:
And I would also say that McCain would have never have done this and Republican National Committee, Republican Party would have never done this, which is why we did it. We needed Obama bloodied up politically. We knew that Hillary would do it.
“We knew Hillary would do it.” That phrase says a great deal about why Hillary Clinton cannot be allowed on the ticket. She willingly accepted the support of someone most Democrats view with nothing but contempt. What Limbaugh meant by that phrase is clear: he knew Clinton would accept his support. The Republican crossovers certainly won her delegates. How many it is hard to say, but don’t be surprised if in Denver a few delegates holding Clinton signs don’t have Limbaugh t-shirts under whatever else they might be wearing.
Here Comes Karl Rove
The Republicans have waited for at least a decade to run against Hillary Clinton. During that time they have amassed a considerable dossier of potential attack issues to package. Barack Obama, to his credit, did not touch on any of these issues during his campaign, but you can bet that the GOP will trot out all the old charges.
Former Clinton advisor Dick Morris brought some of this up in a column arguing against the choice of Hillary as VP:
If Obama put Hillary on the ticket, it would re-raise all of the questions about Bill’s income sources, what he did for Dubai, what he did for Frank Guistra — the Canadian mining executive who gave millions to the Clinton library and whom Bill introduced to the president of Kazakhstan — and whether he will make public his library donors. Who needs those issues, especially when Obama is trying to wage an anti-Washington-influence-peddling campaign?
The right wing web sites are more than happy to supply some of the dirt on Hillary Clinton. I am not saying some of this is true, but it will be trotted out if Clinton is the VP candidate. Here is one web site’s list of Clinton’s “greatest hits” which it is very easy to imagi8ne as a campaign commercial:
FIRST FIRST LADY to come under criminal investigation.
FIRST FIRST LADY to almost be indicted according to one of the special prosecutors.
NUMBER of Hillary Clinton fundraisers convicted of, or pleading no contest to, crime: 5.
NUMBER OF TIMES that Hillary Clinton, providing testimony to Congress, said that she didn’t remember, didn’t know, or something similar: 250.
NUMBER OF CLOSE BUSINESS partners of Hillary Clinton who ended up in prison: 3.
Clinton has all but bragged that she has bested these charges before, which is true in her Senate race in New York, but because neither Obama nor the press raised them during the Democratic primaries, they are largely untested nationally. One thing you can bet your mortgage on is that the GOP has probably tested a few ads like the above with focus groups.
The Flip-Flopper
Once the Republicans succeeded in painting John Kerry as a “flip-flopper” his campaign went down hill. The reason was simple–the charge stuck. Now we have another potential flip-flopper in Hillary Clinton, whose flip and flops make Kerry’s seem minor. There is, of course, the big one: Iraq. Many Democrats hope to make the Iraq War a major campaign issue come September. But it will be difficult to do so if the Party’s Presidential candidate voted for the war.
If you just enter “Hillary Clinton flip-flopper” in a search engine it will turn up a surprising number of entries. For example, there is Hillary the flip-flopper on immigration. Faux News actually did a “focus group” test of the flip-flopper tactic (BTW, this is why having a partisan news network is so dangerous–they can run “test” campaigns for that party).
Last August they ran a story, “Hillary flip-flops on use of nuclear weapons in war on terror.” This was capped by Republican Kate Obenshain who said:
American voters just don’t think that Hillary Clinton actually believes what she says.
They revived the same tactic during the Philadelphia debate with a soundbite that also is probably in the GOP attack ad vaults:
Dodd then quickly interrupted Clinton before she could finish, seizing on the apparent discrepancy. Moderator Tim Russert then tried to elicit an answer on whether she supported the plan or not, but she avoided offering specific support for the plan.
Then Edwards and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, both attorneys like Clinton, took turns dicing her statement.
“Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago,” Edwards said.
“I was confused on Senator Clinton’s answer. I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it,” Obama said.
Faux gleefully quoted then-candidate Rudy Giulinani:
Hillary Clinton was for it, she was against it, and she wasn’t sure if she was for it or against it, in the space of one answer. She is known for taking one position with one audience and another position with another audience. … What they didn’t know is she can actually take two different positions in front of the same audience.
Faux has made it pretty clear that if Clinton is on the ticket, they will try to hang the Flip-flopper tag on her just as they hung it on John Kerry.
The BSer
If Hillary Clinton is the VP nominee you can bet you will be seeing a lot of an ads built around her infamous remark about being under fire in Bosnia. The GOP attack dogs will also point to her exaggeration of her “experience” in the White House, which has already landed her in hot water.
Clinton’s tendency to exaggerate her own importance and role will drag up several Hillary versions of Al Gore’s infamous–and misquoted–”I invented the Internet” quote. Far from being Clinton’s strength, the experience card will prove to be her undoing. Just to provide a preview, in ten seconds can you name a significant Clinton Congressional accomplishment? Is there some bill, some cause that you can associate with her?
This leads to the next Clinton problem.
The Clinton Years
For some reason Hillary Clinton has chosen to paint her husband’s administration as some golden age. It wasn’t. The Democrats hope to make as big an issue out of the sub-prime mortgage crisis as they do out of Iraq, but again it will be difficult to do so if their candidate is the wife of the President whose repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act helped to fuel the current crisis.
A second big issue Democrats would love to press is the lack of action of health care reform by the Republicans. But if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Presidential nominee, a mention of the word “health care” will give rise to the mess she made of the last attempt to revamp health care during her husband’s administration.
The Bottom Line
The Democrats hope to win on a combination of the economy and Iraq. By September, it will be clear the surge has not changed a great deal in that country. What is more, it is clear that trying to fight two wars is not working as Afghanistan is beginning to deteriorate. The Democrats need only trot out Ronald Reagan’s old phrase, “Are Iraq and Afghanistan better now than they were a year ago?” But how can the Party run on Iraq and Afghanistan if Hillary Clinton is the VP candidate?
As for the economy, her husband’s repeal of Glass-Steagall will make it difficult for the Democrats to run on economic issues, especially the mortgage crisis.
Finally, of course, is the biggest issue of all: Washington. Barack Obama’s huge success has come because voters believe he offers something different than politics as usual. He made a huge gamble by not getting down in the gutter with the Clinton’s, but it showed more than anything that here was a candidate who did not intend to practice politics as usual. Were Obama to put Hillary Clinton on the ticket, it would deflate that balloon instantly.
For progressives Obama’s campaign has seemed like a breath of fresh air after two decades of the New Democrats and Democratic Leadership Council’s “me too” Republicanism. Many progressives, including me, hope that an Obama win will signify the waning of the DLC and the creation of a new Democratic Party based the idea that government exists to keep the playing field level. That cannot happen with Hillary Clinton on the ticket.
In addition, by caving in to pressure from the Clinton’s Obama will look like less than a leader. This, of course, brings up the elephant in the room–Bill Clinton. No matter how many protests to the contrary are made it will be difficult for Obama to not be looking behind his back with each move he makes. Think Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
In short, then, having Hillary Clinton on the ticket will not only hurt Barack Obama’s chances it will hurt the Democratic Party. The time has come to say goodbye to the Clintons and the DLC and move on.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
