Finally
Hillary Clinton Ends Her Historic Run
Clinton squandered the trust and friendship of the black
community.
Not finding an effective voice within our lexicon,
Clinton seemed ill at ease and off-center in African American
venues. Her Obama strategy became alarmingly Republican—scare
ads preying on the fear of what Clinton called “hard-working
Americans, hard-working white Americans,” while floating the
suggestion Obama would likely be assassinated. She may have
irreparably damaged her friendship with the black community.
I’ve
been holding this cover story
for more than a month. I was prepared to start calling Senator
Barack Obama “the candidate” right after the Indiana and South
Carolina primaries, but had to keep waiting because Senator
Hillary Rodham Clinton refused to drop out of the race. Even
after the delegate math went from unlikely to implausible to
impossible, Clinton kept running. Kept undermining Obama’s
eventual candidacy. Kept spending money and racking up debts she
will ultimately turn to Obama (and his donors) to retire. Kept
delaying the start of the general election campaign. Worst, she
continued to capitalize upon and therefore polarize the racial
divide here in this country, providing refuge for whites made
uncomfortable by Barack Obama’s surge toward the nomination.
Clinton frequently misspoke—attributing her indiscretions to
fatigue or the rush of the moment—poisoning the atmosphere with
hateful suggestions that she alone is the candidate of
“hard-working Americans… hard-working white Americans” whose
support the Illinois Senator would not have. As the race
continued on ad infinitum, Clinton’s campaign became
increasingly Republican in tone and aspect, with the New York
senator attempting to frighten voters first about Obama’s
alleged inexperience (he has more years in elected office than
she does) and then, capriciously, about the senator’s race.
Clinton squandered the trust and friendship of the black
community. Not finding an effective voice within our lexicon,
Clinton seemed ill at ease and off-center in African American
venues. Her husband’s puzzlingly condescending Jesse Jackson
comments, along with a great many other barbed and often
ridiculous statements, have severely damaged the black
community’s near-universal trust in him, revealing a dark and
unnervingly racist side to the Clintons’ legendary
tenaciousness.
ASSOCIATED PRESS [Yesterday,] the former
first lady, who as recently as Tuesday declared herself the
strongest candidate, spoke before a capacity crowd at Washington
D.C.'s ornate National Building Museum. She gave Obama an
unqualified endorsement and pivoted from her role as determined
foe to absolute ally. "The way to continue our fight now to
accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy,
our passion, our energy and do all we can to help elect Barack
Obama, the next president of the United States," she said.
"Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the
victory he has won and the extraordinary campaign he has won. I
endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of
you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have
for me," the New York senator said.
I have to assume the black community, prepared to launch Senator
Clinton into stratospheric numbers after former President
Clinton’s dynamic and eloquent eulogy for Coretta Scott King,
has to be saddened and puzzled by the former president’s
apparent feet of clay. As I suspected at the time, our
unflinching support for Hillary wasn’t really about her so much
as it was about Bill. We wanted Bill. But Hillary’s static,
brittle, awkward speech at the King funeral, her arrogance at
following rock star Bill, revealed a startling mix of arrogance
and naiveté. The smart thing for Hillary to have done would have
been to wave, smile, and sit down. Bill had, at the King
funeral, said it all. Had spoken so compellingly, so earnestly
about the future, that Hillary could wrap herself within that
mantle, emerging as a virtually unstoppable force. Instead, she
apparently insisted on taking the podium, which, I suspect, was
a turning point for her candidacy at least among African
Americans as that choice showed more arrogance than
intelligence. Nobody can follow Bill Clinton. He really is just
that good. Her insistence on speaking, therefore, cam across as
purely political at a time of deep public mourning over a
cherished loved one. It seemed coldly calculated, and Hillary’s
stiffness and lack of eloquence and passion gave many of us
pause. Whereas, to that moment, we’d been unquestioningly in
Hillary’s column, after the funeral, many of us began shopping
to see what else might be available.
Hillary Clinton stumbled badly at the Coretta Scott King
funeral. Her relationship with and strength among African
Americans never recovered. We discovered, in that moment, that
Hillary Was Not Bill, a fact she had successfully hidden until
then. And, she’s not. People should stop clamoring for Barack
Obama to name her as running mate. She’s not Bill Clinton. She
lacks his passion, his insight or his instincts. She is Hillary
Rodham Clinton. She has many virtues but, bottom line, if she
weren’t married to Bill, I doubt she’d even be on our radar. I
certainly doubt anybody would be pushing for her to become our
next vice president.
The only good news is, as harmful as Clinton’s campaign was,
Senator John McCain’s campaign appears to be much worse. From my
chair, McCain appears to have squandered this amazing
gift—months and months of squabbling among Democrats. A
honeymoon during which McCain could and should have positioned
himself as the only grown-up in the race. He could and should
have crafted an image of The New Republican Party, distancing
himself from a historically unpopular president and co-opting
Obama’s “Change” theme.
What most people—and certainly most every black person I’ve ever
met—fail to realize about John McCain is he is nothing at all
like George Bush. Their protests to the contrary, I believe the
two men dislike one another intensely. I believe, and have said,
that George Bush has made an absolute mess of this country and
of his own party. John McCain, a moderate claiming to be a
conservative, might change all of that. But first he’s got to
stop lying to us: he’s not a conservative, no matter what he
says. He’s a moderate. He has a Republican moderate’s record.
Running to his right in some hail Mary effort to hang onto a
Republican base that openly despises him is a mistake. Either
people won’t believe he’s a conservative (which most
conservatives do not) and is, therefore, a liar, or, worse,
independents, moderates and liberals will, in fact, take him at
his word and, believing him to be a conservative, will vote for
Barack Obama or Ralph Nader or stay home.
McCain’s inability to competently define himself has been a
startling and dramatic weakness of what, at this writing,
appears to be a sacrificial lamb nomination: the GOP getting
McCain out of the way in an election season they are likely to
lose. That McCain has been routinely pushed out of news cycles
by the Democratic mud wrestling underscores the weaknesses of
his faceless, generic campaign. I like John McCain very much. I
was prepared to vote for him in 2000 before the GOP wear machine
swiftboated him. I might even be a closet McCain supporter now
if he could just tell me who he is and what he’s about.
McCain’s inability to define himself has created an atmosphere
for the liberals to define him as Bush Term Three, which is
qualitatively disingenuous. John McCain is nothing, nothing at
all, like George Bush. His administration will bear no
resemblance whatsoever to George Bush’s. But his mute, arthritic
campaign as allowed that notion to be hung around his neck,
because the campaign has yet to make up its mind what it is and
who this guy is.
McCain’s best hope is a clear break from Bush’s policies and an
end to pandering to the right. Moving away from his base may
doom his campaign. But McCain has yet to adequately convince his
base that he’s a gun-toting conservative—mainly because he’s
not. He’s never really been. Oh, he’s way more conservative than
most any Democrat, but McCain’s strength—and the Democrats’
biggest problem in the fall—is people don’t hate him. Oh,
conservative Republicans hate him, but McCain is unique among
Republicans in that the traditional Democratic base—middle class
working whites—don’t really hate him. McCain has crossed party
lines to enact historic legislation. He is a genuine war hero
who spoke out against the Viet Nam war, who criticized the
administration’s handling of the Iraq war. He’s an experienced
leader who knows how to get things done on Capitol Hill, who is
ready to deal, ready to bring people together moreso than ready
to divide us in order to win at all costs. He’s smart, he’s
tough, he is eminently qualified. He is in no sense of the
concept George W. Bush.
And he’s losing the election because he can’t find a way to say
any of that without losing the fire-breathing right-wingers he
thinks he needs to win. He may be right, but, from my chair, a
dynamic McCain campaign, positioning himself as an experienced,
aisle-crossing moderate, would torpedo Obama in the fall. If
McCain could win without the conservatives, he really could
transform the way things are done in Washington. He really could
steal Obama’s “Change” theme, and his presidency could truly be
historic.
But, instead, he’s playing these meandering neither
fish-nor-fowl games, trying to hang on to the neocons, keeping
Bush in his orbit, while ineffectively positioning himself as a
“change” candidate. No effective ideas on the economy, and “100
years” in Iraq (a terrible McCain blunder). Of course, John
McCain doesn’t want us in Iraq for 100 years. Of course he wants
to fix the economy. But, thus far, his campaign has not
effectively communicated that. He has allowed others—liberals—to
define him.
Truth is, John McCain really *is* the candidate of change. He’s
just, thus far, running a lousy campaign. If he really wants the
White House, he needs to engage the American people where they
are at. America wants a change from George Bush. McCain has to
find a way to jettison the Bush baggage and appeal to moderates
and independents. I don’t see how he manages that without losing
the right. But the right wing has been in power for nearly a
decade now. The result is a wrecked economy and a nation at war.
McCain’s running away from them wouldn’t be the worst idea.
Trying to hang onto those people will, I promise you, cost him
the election.
I’d said in an earlier essay that Obama’s candidacy was a
gangsta move. Had Hillary Clinton not run, I doubt Obama would
have gotten as far. But the unprecedented rules of chivalrous
civility extended to Senator Clinton were extended in double
measure to Senator Obama as, in the early going, everybody
tip-toed around issues of gender and race. The uniqueness of the
first viable female presidential candidacy created the
opportunity for Obama, whose run I remain convinced was a warm
up for 2016 where he’d be a much more viable candidate. But the
Clinton candidacy’s presumptive arrogance presented an optimal
opportunity for another historic candidacy, Obama’s blackness
stealing the thunder from Clinton’s gender.
He ganked it. Obama simply ganked Clinton’s spotlight, swiping
the tiara right off her head as the New York senator seemed
poised for coronation, reclining on luxurious silk couches as
she announced her candidacy from her multi-million-dollar
upstate New York home. Fifteen months later, this same
fabulously rich woman managed the implausible: plastering the
well-off but hardly rich Obama as an “elitist.” The fact the
label stuck points out the many serious weaknesses of Obama’s
otherwise smart ground game: his slowness to respond to the
silly stuff. I can’t begin to suggest what the senator may have
been thinking, but it’s possible he tended to brush off such
absurdities and give the American people credit for seeing
through such transparently stupid and sophomoric attacks as the
“2 a.m. wake-up call” ad.
The main difference between Republicans and Democrats seems to
be Republicans intrinsically understand how stupid and
intellectually lazy most working-class white Americans are.
Black America and Young America (18-25) can never dependably be
counted on at the polls. Seniors and middle-class whites form
the bulk of the electorate, and most of them did not (and likely
will not) vote for Obama. Republican strategy has always been to
frighten those people—seniors and middle-class whites—confident
those groups are not likely to have sufficient intellectual
curiosity to actually research and confirm any of the silliness
in Republican TV spots.
Which may mean Obama is, indeed, an out-of-touch elitist, an
intellectual who tends to assume everybody is an intellectual or
is at least curious enough to not fall for the silly stuff.
Obama seems naïve in the sense of his trust in and hopefulness
about the American people. Republicans have always had a cynical
attitude toward the American people, content to frighten them
with bedtime stories and lecture them like children. They know
we’re stupid and that we’ll fall for it. Barack Obama refuses to
accept that reality, which makes him severely vulnerable to
swiftboating and the like.
While initially supportive of Obama’s run, which she saw as no
threat to her, Hillary Clinton’s campaign became increasingly
smarmy and manipulative. Toward the Indiana/South Carolina
primaries—arguably the turning point in her campaign—her Obama
strategy was alarmingly Republican—scare ads preying on the fear
of what Clinton called “hard-working Americans, hard-working
white Americans,” while floating the suggestion Obama would
likely be assassinated. She may have written John McCain’s fall
playbook, a strategy which will certainly question Obama’s
unimpressive Senate record and foreign policy inexperience.
Should Obama chose Hillary as a running mate—which would be a
popular thing among Democrats, bringing closure to an overlong
primary season, but a disastrous move in terms of the general
election—the McCain campaign will all but certainly run hours of
video of Hillary gaffes and her questioning Obama’s
qualifications for Commander In Chief.
Hillary’s campaign seemed focused on and succeeded in winning
states—big states like New York and California, Texas (which was
actually a draw, though Clinton continues to claim it as a win
for her, Obama got more delegates), Ohio, Florida. Obama’s
campaign was much smarter: Obama went after districts. He fought
door-to-door in an insurgent campaign focused not so much on
winning the state as winning the important, delegate-rich
districts. While Hillary won bigger states, Obama won so many
delegates from these Clinton wins that her delegate gains were
typically nominal.
Hillary’s big wins in West Virginia and Kentucky may have made
headlines, and her supporters may march into the convention
demanding a spot on the ticket for her because she trounced
Obama 2-to-1 among blue-collar whites, but those claims miss the
point Obama didn’t campaign very hard in either state. His
smarter campaign had done its work and, by the time of those
“huge wins” for Clinton—in states where Obama didn’t campaign
much—the math was already on Obama’s side. Spending money in
Kentucky and West Virginia was unwise. Clinton going into the
red, bleeding money into those states when the delegate math was
clearly against her was selfish. It was more about Clinton
saving face and building convention muscle at the expense of the
likely nominee than it was about serving the American people.
Unfortunately, the American people are demonstrably too lazy to
vet this stuff and realize they’re being played.
Senator Clinton is a sore loser. Like a child who changes the
rules of the game she is losing, Clinton has moved the goalposts
of what constitutes a “win” over and over as her political
fortunes dwindled. She stayed in to cause problems for Obama.
Staying in was the smart thing to do. It was a gamble to the
extent Hillary might be seen as a spoiler and a sore loser, but
staying in, forcing Obama to either spend money campaigning in
places he wasn’t likely to win or, as it turned out, to
virtually concede those states to Clinton so she could run
around saying, “Look, I won Kentucky! I am the candidate of
white people!” was certainly a smart thing to do. Dropping out
earlier would have likely diminished her clout. Staying in,
dubiously (and disingenuously) claiming to have won the popular
vote (by not counting states which ran caucuses and counting
Michigan where Obama was not on the ballot), puts her in Obama’s
way. Hillary is now a cloud hovering over an historic candidacy,
an implicit threat to sink Obama by playing on the disaffection
of half of Obama’s Democratic base.
Should Obama step in to retire Clinton’s campaign debt, a move
viewed as conciliatory by many pundits, he’d be rewarding her
self-serving behavior. Clinton ran up massive debt screwing
around in states that would ultimately make no real difference
in the primary other than to run up her numbers among
whites—polarizing the primary season with an undercurrent of
racism. She spent gobs of money, spending into the red, in
primaries long after the handwriting was on the wall about
Obama’s lead going into the convention. These were not
legitimate contests. These were Hillary Clinton hardball
politics: making things tougher for Obama, damaging him and
positioning herself for a prime seat at the table. Then
demanding Obama’s donors—many of them working-class whites and
blacks who can barely afford the fifty bucks they donated—to
actually pay for her foolishness. That’s the kind of arrogance
in play, here. It is why Clinton should certainly not even be
considered for a spot on the ticket. However, it is indeed
possible that Obama has grown wiser, perhaps sadly concluding
the American people are simply too lazy to figure this stuff
out, which is why the loud clamor for the so-called “Dream
Ticket” continues to echo across America, drowning out any
semblance of Clinton’s selfishness.
The Clinton Cloud over Barack Obama’s outstanding and historic
achievement should, in and of itself, disqualify her from
consideration as his running mate. I believe it has, I believe
Obama would frankly rather lose than select her by virtual
blackmail. And Senator Clinton should realize, if Obama loses,
that loss will be attributed to her, to her refusal to be a team
player and her ongoing selfish efforts to weaken him as a
candidate. I frankly do not see the party supporting an ’12 or
’16 Clinton run. In 2016, Barack Obama will be 54—still young
and a much stronger candidate than he is today. Hillary will be
68 and having to go the long way around bridges she’s burned
during this campaign. For Hillary, it’s pretty much over—which
is likely why she (and, likely, former President Clinton) felt
it was okay to go down dirty—hence the unforgiveable evoking of
Bobby Kennedy’s murder, Clinton floating herself as the
alternative in case of Obama’s assassination. The line, repeated
several times by Senator Clinton, revealed a dark core of
ruthlessness that, frankly, shocked me. I can’t *imagine* Obama
choosing her as running mate after that.
For Obama, it’s all win-win. An unlikely loss to McCain in the
fall will most certainly be attributed to Hillary’s foolishness,
while a run in ’12 or ’16 is not only likely but certain. Barack
Obama will be president of the United States. It really is only
a matter of when. He has no reason to take Hillary with a gun to
his head.
Christopher J. Priest
8 June 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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