progressive involvement

Would President Hillary Clinton have done things differently?

A staunch Obama supporter talks about posting "Hillary 2012" on his Facebook page.  At salon.com, Jonathan Bernstein wonders if President Hillary would have been a stronger leader.  Froma Harrop is talking up a challenge to the President from Hillary or Ed Rendell or...anybody.

This kind of talk has been going on under the radar for a few months now, but, following the debt ceiling deal, it appears to have broken open in public.  The left is seriously disillusioned with President Obama.

As it happens, yes, I do think President Hillary would have done some things different--two things, in particular.  First, she would have focused on jobs first, then health care.  (President Obama pursued health care reform first because he promised Ted Kennedy he would.)

Politically, Hillary's approach probably would have worked better, if for no other reason than that her "street cred" with core Democratic constituencies such as labor and the working class would have been bolstered right in the beginning by her support for job-creating policies.    

Second, she would have fought harder.  That's not a slam on President Obama, by the way.  He correctly perceives that white America would recoil from an African-American man they perceive as angry or "riled up."  Therefore, he pursues compromise, bipartisanship, making deals, "changing the atmosphere," and all that.  He pretty much has to do it that way.

As the first woman president, Hillary's problem would have been the opposite.  She would have had to prove her toughness.  She would have gotten a political boost for standing her ground and fighting hard.  It would have been in her political interest to do so.  As it happens, she's quite good at this.

Plus, these Washington Republicans are not the southern Illinois politicians one would work with during the day and play poker with at night.  If you're not tough as nails, they'll eat your lunch.

So yes, I do think a President Hillary's approach would have been different, and likely more successful.  The political atmosphere, however, would be just as charged and just as noxious as it is now.  The emails you get from Uncle Edgar would be misogynist instead of racist, but loathsome all the same.

All that said, I find it somewhat difficult to share the liberals' pain.  It's their own fault they're disillusioned.  

They fell in love with Barack Obama.  People in love often imagine their beloved to have the most sterling character possible, so it followed that Barack Obama must needs incarnate the long-deferred liberal dream.  

"He's Bobby Kennedy," George Clooney famously said--(which was rather curious since most of Bobby's constituency supported Hillary).  He was anti-war, or so they supposed on the basis of one anti-war speech given by the state senator in 2004, in the most liberal district in Illinois, that was so little noted at the time that no Chicago newspaper mentioned it, and no observer present could remember it.  

Now, they're finding out that he's not the liberal heart-throb they thought he was and they feel like lovers spurned.  Yikes!  Hell hath no fury!

You should have known.  Where did you think those hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions were coming from?  20 year old college students?  You didn't notice the kind words for Ronald Reagan, or the reluctance to even say, "I'm a Democrat"?

But that was then, and this is now.  What next?  Liberals will have to manage their grief and support the President anyway on the grounds that, for all his faults, he's better than the opposition.  Most will, but many won't.  

They stayed home in '68 and we got Richard Nixon.  They stayed home in '80 and we got Ronald Reagan.  They flaked off to Nader in '00, and we got George W. Bush.  There's a pattern here, people.  Take note.

Image:  Hillary speaking in Hungary, State Department photo

 

Falling in and out of love

The liberals are in an uproar.  President Obama is not the liberal champion they thought he was.  He is not striding through the land like a political colossus, rallying the country to new heights of progressivism. 

This was never an accurate assessment of Barack Obama.  In 2008, his positions on health care and the social safety net were arguably more conservative than Hillary Clinton's, and his much-vaunted anti-war speech of 2004 was so little-noticed at the time that no Chicago newspaper even made mention of it.  (There's the value of a good publicist for you:  Never has a state senator gotten more political mileage out of a single inconsequential speech.)

When they fall in love, liberals are no different than anyone else.  You overlook the potentially maddening little things you would ordinarily note.  Or, if you do notice them, you attribute them to the delightful quirkiness of your partner's stellar character. 

It should have given liberals pause that their candidate was, in actuality, the "establishment candidate" in 2008.  His largest single source of support was the banking and investment community.  He had the support of the establishment media and establishment money--even establishment bloggers.  He had a 19-8 vote on the Democratic Party's Rules Committee--you don't get any more "establishment" than the Rules Committee.

When liberals fall in love, as they did in 2008, the Age of Aquarius seems right around the corner.  When it proves not to be, what feels like unrequited love can be a painful thing.  Liberals have been seething for awhile, but now the pot is boiling over.  The blogosphere is awash with talk of a primary challenge to President Obama in 2012.  Said Joan Walsh today:

Still, the rush to proclaim Obama the one, true progressive in 2008 was foolish, and I'd suggest that those who wound up disappointed in Obama think more about what they can learn from that race, rather than plotting to bring him down in 2012.

She's getting flamed in the comments, but progressives should take her question seriously.  What could they learn from this experience?  First, don't fall in love with the candidate.  Second, don't believe all of your own propaganda.  Third, pining for a messiah is not a particularly progressive position to begin with.

Outgoing New Mexico Governor, Bill Richardson, who stabbed Hillary in the back during the campaign in 2008, says he hasn't spoken with Bill Clinton who is still "a little sore"

Gets along great with Hillary though, he says.

More than one story to be told

Rebecca Traister of salon.com has a new book out on women of the 2008 election--specifically, Hillary, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin.  She was interviewed by salon about the book, Big Girls Don't Cry. 

The master narrative of the 2008 campaign has been that a young charismatic senator from Illinois--a man of destiny from the land of Lincoln--rode a wave of popular support, upset the establishment candidate of the party, and glided to victory.

That's one story, and there's some truth in it--it's just not the only story out there.  In 2008, I found myself saying (often) to my Obama-supporting friends, "For a mind-blowing change in perspective, you should look at this campaign from the Clinton point of view.  It would look completely different from the story your side promotes and which the media has bought."

Traister began to appreciate this after the Iowa caucuses, which Hillary lost.  "There was this pile-on," she says, and to me it was mind-bending."  She went on to note that it came mostly from the left because of Hillary's effrontery in being the "inevitable" candidate.  "Finally she had shown weakness, and they were just going nuts."

Eventually I became a lot more aware of the ways in which not only Hillary but also her supporters were being talked about. I became increasingly sensitive to the scorn directed at her, and it built and built as she continued to fight, and it drove me nuts. Because I thought her continuing to fight was awesome and hilarious.

I thought it was completely redefining how we view women and our expectations for them in public and political life. She would not comply. She would not give in. She would not do what the pundits wanted her to do, what her opponents wanted her to do, what reporters were insisting that she do, what everyone was telling her was the smart thing to do or, in one case, the classy thing to do. She just kept going.

The insistence that Hillary get out of the race was insulting.  Ted Kennedy was 1000 votes behind Jimmy Carter in 1980.  Did anyone tell him to get out of the race?  Or Jesse Jackson in 1984?  Or Jerry Brown in 1992?

Hillary said "the hell with them" and fought on, which was the point at which Hillary Clinton became a master politician.  She won nearly all the late primaries, some by whopping margins.  On the day she announced the end of her candidacy, she was held in higher esteem by the American public than ever before.

Now, as Secretary of State, her prestige has increased yet more.  Partly, it must be admitted, this is because, in accepting appointment as Secretary of State, the media narrative is that she has humbled herself and become a "team player."  Consequently, her press reports have been glowing for the past 18 months.

That, and, as Secretary of State, she is nearly always seen as defending the United States or promoting the interests of the United States.  These are going to be favorable images with the public.  Though she (very) occasionally remarks on a domestic issue, she is seen as largely above domestic politics, which is also favorable politically.

In April, 2008, Hillary's speechwriter, Lissa Muscatine, was in Denver for a "rally the troops" event for Hillary at which she noted that "the media narrative is starting to change," and indeed it was.  The story was changing from Obama's oratory and charisma to Hillary's grit and force.

There are many stories in the 2008 campaign, and only some of them have been told.  Traister's book appears to be a start on telling the rest of it.

Would President Hillary Clinton have done things differently?

This is not to say that a Hillary administration would have been any less the target of abuse than this one has been.  Whenever someone even faintly liberal is in Our Nation's Highest Office--any Democrat, in other words--some people come absolutely unglued. 

JFK was called a "traitor."  When Jimmy Carter was in, he was supposedly an agent of something called the Trilateral Commission.  Before Bill Clinton was even in office, George H.W. Bush was trying to sell the idea that Clinton was a Soviet sell-out.  After he was elected, Jerry Falwell was selling video tapes calling Clinton a murderer and a drug dealer. 

There's no reason to think it would have been any different with Hillary.  In fact, had Hillary been elected, whole new dimensions of misogyny would have burst across our alabaster skies.  They might have left her religion alone, but only because her Methodist bonafides are strong enough that nobody would have gotten anywhere by calling her a "Muslim."  Other than that, however, she would have had to face the same kind of hysteria as has the current president, or any Democrat since FDR.

How would Hillary have handled it?  She would not have bothered trying to be "post-partisan."  She would not have bothered even to feint in that direction.  Having dealt, first hand, with the surreal and irrational during eight years of the Clinton administration, she would not have been naive.  As I like to say, if Hillary invited the opposition leaders to the White House and served milk and cookies, those opposition leaders would have brought taste testers. 

She would have known that the only way to govern under the circumstances would have been to engage and defeat the opposition.  You can't placate them because they never placate.  You can only wage political war and try to win.  This is the tack she would have taken, not only because it's the only approach that would work, but, more importantly, because it would have been in her political interest to do so. 

Being a woman, she would have faced continual pressure to prove her "toughness."  Ergo, it would have been in her political interest to take a stand and fight.  Knowing that it was pointless to engage the opposition in debate, she would have had to rally the Democrats to win.  Win or lose, this would have enhanced her political position.  (When she was fighting back hard in the later months of the campaign in 2008, her public position and polls got stronger.)   

Pres. Obama is more removed from combat, and more controlled in reaction, because he perceives that approach to be in his political interest, and he's probably right.  Before he started his campaign, he assessed, quite correctly, that white Americans would not vote for a black man who sounded confrontational or shrill--not Jesse Jackson, in other words.  As a result, he bends over backwards to meet opponents half-way--or, as has often proved to be the case, three-quarters of the way.

What has he gotten in return?  Nada.  The opposition has made it an article of faith that cooperation with the president, in any way, will not be taken kindly.  In fact, even to hold office while he does, even if in opposition, is apparently enough to sink one's chances in opposition party primaries. 

Yet, in for a penny, in for a pound.  Having crafted a particular cool and detached persona, Pres. Obama pretty much has to stick with it, even though, for all his bipartisan efforts, his opponents still call him every name in the book.  It's in his political interest, he believes, to take it.  It would have been in Hillary's interest to fight back. 

"You mean, aside from Hillary?"

Response of General David Petraeus when asked by reporter Joe Klein which candidate in 2008 had the best understanding of the military and military issues. 

Michelle Goldberg discovers Hillary Clinton isn't so bad

One year ago today, Hillary Clinton ended her presidential campaign, much to the relief of millions of ardent Barack Obama supporters like me. Throughout the primaries, I had been irritated and then outraged by those who argued feminism obliged women to back her. The possibility that our first female president would be a former first lady promising to continue her husband’s legacy struck me as profoundly dispiriting. During the campaign, her hardball tactics horrified me. So when she made her rousing and gracious speech in the National Building Museum, conceding defeat but celebrating "18 million cracks" in "that highest, hardest glass ceiling," I was too furious to really hear her.

So begins Michelle Goldberg's latest article for the Daily Beast.  She goes on to sing Hillary's praises for putting the interests of women and girls at the forefront of our nation's foreign policy agenda.

I'm still trying to digest that first paragraph, however.  In the first place, it is not at all clear to me that the raison d'etre for Hillary's candidacy was to "continue her husband's legacy."  Even if that were the case, however, what would be wrong with modelling an administration after the most successful one since FDR?

Second, what "hardball tactics"?  We heard this constantly from the lower-level minions of the Obama campaign, and from some higher-level minions too, along with their Amen Corner in the blogosphere--"The Clintons will do anything to win," they said.  If that were really the case, why didn't she win?

It would be interesting to roll the clock back a year, and have Ms. Goldberg on the inside of the Clinton campaign.  She would find that the race looked totally different from that perspective as opposed to the one that was spun out in the media. 

In fact, it is a tribute to the political skill of the Obama campaign that their preferred "media narrative" is that one that the media did, in fact, adopt, particularly in the early months of the campaign. 

Recalling the "campaign of the century" a year later: Pennsylvania

Part of the propaganda of the campaign, oft-repeated in the blogosphere, was that Sen. Obama offered the possibility of "transformational"--as opposed to mere "transactional"--leadership.  A transactional leader works within the system, while a transformational leader changes the system.  A transactional leader is "business as usual," while a transformational leader overwhelms "business as usual" with the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

My own view is that all leadership positions in a democracy are "transactional."  These leaders are elected through the processes of the system and they're there to make the system work.  FDR and Reagan, contra Sen. Obama, were not transformational leaders.  They didn't change the system at all.  What they did was make the system more responsive to certain constituencies--people affected by the depression in the case of FDR, and white people who felt they were over-taxed in the case of Reagan.  That is not transformational.  It is simply democracy doing what democracy does.

Recalling the "campaign of the century": March interlude

Noah Millman offers an excellent summary of the race at this point in an article titled "Moral Claims:  Clinton vs. Obama.  I refer you to his excellent article where he makes the best case for each candidate at this point in the race, using their own voices to make their case.  Opening exchange, and it gets better from there:

Clinton: I've won all the big states except Illinois, my opponent's home state. I've also won most of the delegates in states that were seriously contested. Obama played a clever game, but I'm clearly the nominee with the greater support.

Obama: That's ridiculous. If you don't fight in Virginia, that doesn't mean Virginia doesn't count. And you did fight in Wisconsin - and lost. I was down 20% in Texas before we started campaigning there, and closed that gap to 4%. You've had every advantage in this race and haven't put it away. Bottom line: if I'm leading in pledged delegates going into the convention, the super-delegates should put me over the top. 

Locally, the Arapahoe County Convention was held the Saturday after Ohio and Texas.  This is a large, mostly suburban, county.  In the twelve years I've lived here, Arapahoe County has gone from red to blue.  Arapahoe County was "ground zero" for the Democratic Party's efforts in the west.

Precinct caucuses on February 5 had elected the delegates to the county convention.  There were about 1800 delegates and 1800 alternates--65% Obama and 35% Clinton.  If you didn't know it, you wouldn't have been able to tell that Clinton was at a 2-1 disadvantage.  Judging by the hats, shirts, and buttons people wore, it seemed more like 50-50. 

The Clinton people were there earlier, had the place well-decorated inside and out, worked the line outside, staffed a table for information, and, just generally, made a big splash.  When the Obama people began chanting "O-bam-a," the Hillary people more than answered with "Hill-a-ry."  The wins in Texas and Ohio had breathed some new life into the Clinton campaign.

These folks, yet again, were a good mirror of Hillary's national demographic.  In our House district caucus, which involved about 70 people, about two-thirds were women, of all ages.  Hispanics were well-represented, as were working people, union people, teachers, and the elderly--young people too;  Obama was not the only one with youth support.

The "campaign of the century" a year later: Ohio and Texas

The campaign turned nasty in February and got worse in March.  Others have chronicled the many examples of blatant misogyny in the media, but it wasn't just the media.  The comments section of major blogs dripped with animus toward the Clintons.  As I have said many times, never, in all my association with the Clinton campaign, did I ever hear a racial remark made about Sen. Obama, yet there was not a day in March, 2008, when I didn't see Hillary Clinton referred to in the basest terms.  (Many progressives who think their consciousness has been raised are mistaken.)

By the end of February, after a string of 11 straight caucus victories, Sen. Obama had opened up a small lead in delegates, which prompted some in the Obama camp to conclude that Hillary couldn't possibly win and, therefore, should drop out of the race.  This was a difficult proposition to sell because of the closeness of the race, the distance yet to go, and the closeness of the over-all vote.  Besides, did anyone tell Ted Kennedy to get out in 1980 when he was over 1000 delegates behind?  Did anyone tell Jesse Jackson to get out in 1984 or 1988 even though his cause was hopeless?  The answer to both questions is "no."  I remember those campaigns and such an idea was not even considered by partisans on either side.  Why Hillary?

Hillary continued to maintain a small lead in super-delegates.  The whole concept of "super-delegates" emerged after the McGovern-Fraser reforms of 1972.   Four years earlier, in 1968, the Democratic Party had blown itself up in a dispute between the established powerbrokers and the anti-war left.  The "McGovern Rules" were mostly about taking power away from "the establishment."  In the future, nominees would be chosen in local caucuses and state primaries.