Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Getting Out on Their Own Terms: And Hopefully With Some China Intact

By

But, there is no doubt that they have done a good deal of china-breaking recently.  Hillary’s recent comments about how hard working white folks were increasingly supporting her represented a big piece of china.  She seems to have finally found a consistent voice in this campaign – speaking out for the “silent majority” – and stoking racial and class divisions that have long bedevilled our country as her last desperate hope that the trendlines in this campaign can be overturned.  

And many here defended her comments as just a statement of demographic fact.  Since when was making an overt racial appeal not considered a negative development among Democrats?  Not for a long time I’m sure.  It is really amazing to see the Clintons of all people, making the case for themselves based on race when they have been a positive force for racial justice for years.  Its something I’d like to think most of us would consider self-defeating given the Democratic Party’s diversity and am surprised that so many here tolerated it just out of loyalty to the Clintons – not to mention what comments like that may do to our chances in the fall.  

The classist and anti-elitist dimension to her recent campaign also reek.  The gas tax holiday played to both of those cards and you had to love the spectacle of Hillary the solution-maker, who lacked even one economic backer, proclaiming that opposition to her pander was just elitist opinion.  

What was most striking about the gas tax proposal was how once again Hillary made a major tactical blunder at a crucial instance of the campaign.  For just when Mr. Obama was stewing in Rev. Wright’s latest opprobrium, Hillary did something to give him his sea legs back.  The petro-holiday allowed him to strike a principled note against Washington gimmicks and pols and get back on message.  For her part, having found her base vote in rural hamlets, the proposal played to her choir when she should have been trying to expand her support and break into his coalition.  And while she may have sort of held her base (even though Obama won 40% of the white vote in Indiana versus 30% in Ohio), she again proved unable to shake any of Obama’s support free.  

And yet this bull goes on.  Her expected massive victories in West Virginia and Kentucky will likely be downplayed by the media, but represent more broken china on the floor.  To what end, not even the bull seems to know that.  Self-reflection is not in the bull’s repertoire.  If it was, maybe this bull would understand that she got beat because she could not complete the circle.  So what does that mean?

It means that of the three candidates left, only one provides voters with both a critique of how things are and a vision for how things could be.  That candidate is not the bull.  Instead, Hillary offers an increasingly scathing critique of the current but no positive vision for the future. She says we must change but does not give us anything to look forward to.  McCain, offers solely a flag-ladden defense of the status quo and of America as it is – for him, we don’t really need to change, just to do what we are doing a bit better.  Obama, even if often vague, has been the only candidate to complete the circle – offering both a withering critique of where we are, together with a hopeful vision that things can get better and how.  That is why I think he will be the next president.  

But, it would be alot easier for him if some of that china weren’t going to need so much glue.

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. First my comment: The china is becoming the Clinton’s legacy.
    _______________________________________________________________________________

    <

    p>Ben Smith takes a run at what has happened:
    The candidates and the calendar

    Here’s a budding storyline you shouldn’t buy: Hillary could have won this race, if only she’d cracked the code earlier on how to stop Obama. It’s an appealing notion, but one that ignores the force that’s driven her transformation: The calendar.

    Charles Krauthammer put this fallacy well in his last column, suggesting Clinton “figured out the seam in Obama’s defense” only “late in the fourth quarter.”

    Clinton finally understood the way to run against Obama: back to the center — not ideologically but culturally, not on policy but on attitude. She changed none of her positions on Iraq or Iran or health care or taxes. Instead, she transformed herself into working-class Sally-get-her-gun, off duck hunting with dad.

    To understand why this is false, just look at the timing. Clinton’s transformation into the tribune of the working class whites really came in the run-up to the March 5 votes in Texas and Ohio. It intensified as she campaigned through Pennsylvania. It was perfected in Indiana.

    That’s because those are the states in which working class whites hold the key to victory, which really isn’t broadly true in Democratic primary politics at large, where African-Americans, younger, and more highly-educated voters are a potent coalition.
    -snip

    Clinton couldn’t have run as this candidate at the beginning of the cycle. John Edwards occupied that space, with biographical authenticity, through January. February was a month dominated by coastal elites — New York City, Boston, Los Angeles — and African-Americans. Clinton could plausibly have done even worse if she’d run around talking about abandoning Nafta and protecting gun rights.

    Then, in March, Clinton’s transformation was driven by the calendar. (Just as Obama’s redevotion to clean coal has been. This is normal politics.) The final quarter of the delegates are to be won in states where working-class white voters provided the key to victory. And Obama has always won enough of those — from Iowa to Indiana — to put together a very slightly bigger coalition than Clinton, a coalition which hasn’t changed much, despite both candidates’ best efforts.
    -snip

    • Clinton finally found a few States where she could play a winning hand and she went absolutely nuts with it.  It did enough to keep her in the field but never allowed her to turn the tide and in fact, when she went overboard with the gas tax pander, actually likely weakened her own position slightly.  

      <

      p>What she never could do was breakdown any of Obama’s support base – never really came close in a State he was favored in once the demographics had started to freeze up.  Instead she just accepted the demographic die as cast – as usual she accepted the ugly world as it is – and tried to gin up fears and doubts – to stay alive.  I know a lot of folks will argue it was media bias, or rules that worked against her – and there is some truth in that.  But the Clinton camp made glaring errors from the autumn onwards and lost what had been a very winnable election for them.

      <

      p>Thanks for putting that up.

      <

      p>

Archives