She Fights for Her Corner
Only the important bits, please(from NYT fashion section, 3/1/08)
She drives me crazy
Like no one else
She drives me crazy
And I cant help myself
--She Drives Me Crazy, Fine Young Cannibals
Thank you, oh Lord,
for not having made me a woman
--Orthodox Jewish morning prayer
"Mr. Editor, I fight for my corner.
Mr. Editor, I leave when the pub closes."
suggesting he "retire gracefully"
______________
There were a few sayings dear to my mother which eluded me. One of them was, "She can't win for losing." How does this make sense? Today I found out.
A dear, yet deeply conservative, friend -- a devotee of Drudge and Hannity -- told me the latest dish from his sources on Hillary:
[a] She wants Obama to win, so that people will see what a horrid president he will be, and they will then be ready for her come four years from now. Alternately of course, [b] she wants Obama to win the nomination so that McCain can beat him. He smiled, as he had two plausible reasons for Hillary's continued presence.
None of this recognizes the fact that she might be running in order to actually win the nomination. No -- she is a spoiler and a harpy, and has been since the outset. When she wins, as she did by 40% of the vote in West Virginia, she loses, as the press gives her short shrift. And besides, the West Virginians are rednecks. No one wants to consort with them; best they stay in the mines and haul coal for the rest of us.
This is really ruining the coronation. Please just go before you win anything else and steal more votes away from our presumptive candidate. The papers have been writing her obits for months, and their tone is alternately angry, wheedling and disinterested. The chutzpah is enormous: "Hillary is irrelevant; let's just begin our discussion of Obama vs. McCain." For candidates separated by a couple of percentage points in the popular vote, 100+ electoral votes -- this is democracy?
It reminds me of an 85-year chemistry professor at FSU recalling her days as an undergraduate, remembering when a professor chided her in front of the class: "Why are you taking up a seat that a man might have?" The WaPo ran an essay today, "Misongyny I Won't Miss" explaining how it goes down 65 years later.
The press had ordained the winner back when Obama was emerging as the golden boy among people who knew what to order (not "coffee") in a Starbucks ("Look, our barristas are white.") Hillary is for Dunkin' Donuts people. She is dowdy and frumpy and passe. It is not for the likes of her people have transitioned from Walmart to Target.
Poor Hill. She can't win for losing.
A dear, yet deeply conservative, friend -- a devotee of Drudge and Hannity -- told me the latest dish from his sources on Hillary:
[a] She wants Obama to win, so that people will see what a horrid president he will be, and they will then be ready for her come four years from now. Alternately of course, [b] she wants Obama to win the nomination so that McCain can beat him. He smiled, as he had two plausible reasons for Hillary's continued presence.
None of this recognizes the fact that she might be running in order to actually win the nomination. No -- she is a spoiler and a harpy, and has been since the outset. When she wins, as she did by 40% of the vote in West Virginia, she loses, as the press gives her short shrift. And besides, the West Virginians are rednecks. No one wants to consort with them; best they stay in the mines and haul coal for the rest of us.
This is really ruining the coronation. Please just go before you win anything else and steal more votes away from our presumptive candidate. The papers have been writing her obits for months, and their tone is alternately angry, wheedling and disinterested. The chutzpah is enormous: "Hillary is irrelevant; let's just begin our discussion of Obama vs. McCain." For candidates separated by a couple of percentage points in the popular vote, 100+ electoral votes -- this is democracy?
It reminds me of an 85-year chemistry professor at FSU recalling her days as an undergraduate, remembering when a professor chided her in front of the class: "Why are you taking up a seat that a man might have?" The WaPo ran an essay today, "Misongyny I Won't Miss" explaining how it goes down 65 years later.
The press had ordained the winner back when Obama was emerging as the golden boy among people who knew what to order (not "coffee") in a Starbucks ("Look, our barristas are white.") Hillary is for Dunkin' Donuts people. She is dowdy and frumpy and passe. It is not for the likes of her people have transitioned from Walmart to Target.
Poor Hill. She can't win for losing.
Labels: hillary clinton vs. obama, press bias
posted by Lisa at 10:27 PM
13 Comments:
No, she can't win because she doesn't have the votes. The only plausible scenarios that have her winning now involve the assassination of Obama, or Obama being found in bed with an underage dead girl or live boy and being forced to withdraw. This is math, where 2+2 is always 4, never 3, never 5, and Hillary can't make 2+2=5 no matter how much she wishes. Might as well wish that the laws of physics be overturned. Darn gravity, it caused that bowling ball to fall on my foot, ouch!
I'm still trying to figure out why Hillary is still in the race, given that there's only Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico left and Hillary even if she wins a landslide victory like West Virginia in every one of those states is likely to pick up at most 100 more delegates than Obama in those races. The problem is that she's 173 delegates behind Obama in the elected delegates count. x+100 != x+173. That's just math. Sorry!
- Badtux the Math Penguin
[a] She wants Obama to win, so that people will see what a horrid president he will be, and they will then be ready for her come four years from now. Alternately of course, [b] she wants Obama to win the nomination so that McCain can beat him.
The sad thing is that the Obamabots use the same two rationales as your conservative friend.
Even the math penguin says above that: I'm still trying to figure out why Hillary is still in the race, .
Duhhhh!!! - Because Dean and the other wingnuts in the DNC spread the primaries out from January thru June.
Secondly they only allowed a few states to go early - why should Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico not get to show their preference for November?
And third, If Obama is ahead in the math as claimed, it is because of the undemocratic caucuses that many states are stuck with where working people and senior citizens do not get a voice.
We need to take back the nomination process by:
[1] Letting voters in all states and territories vote within a reasonable time frame so that there are no more nominating farces in our future.
[2] Replace undemocratic caucuses with real elections where a small radical minority cannot force their will on the electorate.
[3] Stop the use of extreme and drastic punishments like denying voters their choice because their state assemblies did not agree with the DNC primary schedule (a la Florida and Michigan).
If Obama manages not to get caught in bed with BadTux's dead girl or live boy, and if he denies the people of Florida and Michigan a voice in the primary we will probably be stuck with him as the nominee. I will grudgingly vote for him in November. But guys like John Dean can kiss my Democratic @ss. And that goes double for Axelrod and Obama's other enforcers and trigger men. If he puts these true believers in his administration then we as a country are in for a repeat of the mess created by Bush's sycophants.
mike
Uhm, the rules were known from day one, and Hillary is on record from November of last year saying that disenfranchising the voters in Florida and Michigan if they refused to move their primaries to the correct day (Super Tuesday) was the proper thing to do. So she's flip-flopped since then. *BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER*. If the Florida results were to stand, Clinton would receive a net delegate gain of 38 pledged delegates. If the Michigan results were to stand and the “uncommitted” delegates awarded to Obama, Clinton would receive a net delegate gain of 18 pledged delegates. That's 56 delegates total. But she needs 173 delegates, and can at most pick up 100 delegates in the races remaining. The math simply doesn't lie.
In any event, the rules are the rules, and the rules have been known for the past three years -- they are the exact same rules that were set up in 1994 at the Democratic National Convention where Hillary Rodham Clinton was one of the drafters of the rules. So now she doesn't like the rules that she participated in drafting because, well, they don't favor her. Well gosh darn it, we'll just have to change the rules JUST FOR HER after the elections have already been run, even though they're her rules, that she drafted and agreed to, and thought was a darn good idea for three years!
If Hillary wants to run by Republican rules, she can just become a Republican. These are the Democratic rules, that she agreed with as long as she thought they were in her favor. If she didn't realize the implications of these rules when she voted for them... (shrug). Sounds a lot like her vote for the Iraq war, doesn't it? "I didn't realize the implications!". Real Presidential, eh? In the meantime, Obama read the rules, realized the implications, and ran a smart race while Hillary was running a race that would have won her the nomination if she was running under Republican rules -- but (duh) she forgot to run in the Republican race so she could run by Republican rules!
So it goes. It's a shame, she has good policy stuff on her platform and Obama's health care policy is shamefully weak, but it's the race she chose to run -- a Republican race -- and she's lost. The DNC is NOT going to change the rules that Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed to just because Hillary and her supporters whine and stamp their feet, there are no "do-over's" in politics, when you lose, you lose. Hillary has lost. That's it. Game over. Time to quit being a sore loser and move to the next stage, which is getting the Democratic nominee (who is Barack Obama, the math don't lie) elected as President of the United States.
- Badtux the Math Penguin
Mike,
I'm with you on all of your points.
My disappointment is with the undemocratic nature of the primary process. Of course the electorate is mightily swayed by the bilge the press produces, and the press coronated Obama early on. They just stay home if they think their vote will not count.
Caucuses are undemocratic, allowing only a physically healthy, radical minority to participate.
What was the insanity with MI and FL? If those voters are included, Hillary is ahead in the popular vote. She has won nearly every major contest.
As Obama was winning relatively minor contests, the press was playing him up as an unstoppable juggernaut, whereas in previous contests the minor states were pretty much ignored. When Hillary won CA despite Oprah's and the Kennedy's imprimatur, I don't recall any such glowing testimonials for her.
I'm opposed to the ridiculous bifurcation of the coverage on the two candidates based on constructed iconography, rather than actual issues.
I give Obama's team credit: they have tapped into the solipsistic national yearning for self-actualization, to be had by riding on candidate Obama's tails. The team borrowed many great lessons from his church, and the world of black self-help gurus at large.
"It'll be a new day for you." You will be your better self; the slate will be wiped clean. It is the irresistible message of expiation.
It is JFK's '61 electoral address: "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans..." Except, it's not gonna be new and clean, if even if a man of purity were to take over the office.
Reality: The best that can be hoped for is to staunch the bleeding, and attempt to roll back 7 awful years. What is needed is a reasonable pure politician who can deftly work both sides of the fence and give deference to the Constitution.
I believe we have had enough of the unitary Executive, even if he were J.C. himself.
Well, Badtux has done the homework. Math is math. Hillary is done. And as a person who really, really wants to see the modern Republican Party reduced to ashes, I wish she'd bow to the inevitable and reorient her formidable talents in a unified quest to ensure we do not see a McCain presidency. But she won't. It's my sense the Clintons live in a fantasy land where they are predestined to do great things, with the presidency for HRC somehow a divine right.
The sense of entitlement demonstrated by the Clintons irks me no end. I'll freely admit that even though I voted for Bill, I don't like the Clintons. I also remember that little Lewinsky caper, not because I care about sex on the side, but because that was what elected George Bush. But it's HRC running. Well, yeah, but you know what? I don't like her record. I remember the lost opportunity for national health care. And I also remember the vote for Iraq and the bellicose stance towards Iran. HRC has been an enabler of the worst president in our history, and that's why I don't like her. Not because she's a woman or even a Clinton. Because she's a hack.
And no, I don't like Obama either, but I wound up kind of supporting him, just because he is an unknown quantity. The unfortunate reality is that all of that experience that both HRC and McCain tout as being their strong suit is specifically what turns me off about them. And it looks as if millions of others feel the same. A track record can be either good or bad. I don't like the track records.
OTOH, I am sympathetic to Mike and Lisa. Yes, it is a crappy system being used by the Democrats to find a candidate. But you know what, all of the moaning and groaning about how "unfair" it is to HRC won't do a thing to address the real problem. Which is, of course, the very existence of these two abominable political parties. George Washington and other founders warned us of the dangers of parties. We didn't listen and now we see the results: three flawed individuals going after the big prize. Wasn't supposed to be that way.
Hillary doesn't have a single legitimate complaint about how she's been treated by her party. She's made out like a bandit through her Democratic affiliation and it's a little late in the game for her to cry foul. Ask yourself why she's a senator. Ask yourself why the national and New York Democratic parties gave her a free ride to the Senate. Because she's such a statesman? No. Because she's a Clinton, a fact that gave the Dems another seat and more power. The same cynical party head counting worked for another presidential relative more than 40 years ago, in the very same state.
Get rid of the parties. They are a cancer on the body politic.
Lisa, your numbers are out of date. They're pre-North Carolina numbers. After North Caroline, if you allocate the "uncommitted" votes in Michigan to Obama (which is proper, because if any of those voters had intended to vote for HRC they would have done so since she was the only candidate on the ballot), Obama wins the popular vote even *WITH* Florida and Michigan.
In short, before North Carolina and Indiana, there was a remote chance that HRC could win if she could get the Florida and Michigan delegations seated or convince enough superdelegates with her popular vote argument. Afterwards... none. HRC will likely win Kentucky in a blowout, but anything west of the Mississippi will at best be a draw for her -- and she needs blowouts there to overtake Obama in both popular votes and delegate counts EVEN IF WE COUNT FLORIDA AND MICHIGAN. Short of Obama being caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, it simply isn't happening. 2+2=4, no matter how much you wish it was 5, or 6.
As for Publius's speculation on why HRC lost, it is... speculation. I'll add my own speculation. HRC lost the activist vote, the college educated vote, and the young people vote with her vote for the war on Iraq. They instead turned to the only major candidate who did not vote for the war on Iraq. That is why HRC lost that vote, and why Edwards never gained any traction -- to quote the Rude Pundit, "it's the war, stupid!" Granted, we have no way of knowing what Obama would have done if he were in the Senate at the time. But he did at least have the foresight of saying he was against "dumb wars" and saying that Iraq was a dumb war -- before it started.
I personally don't have any delusions about Obama being magic, but he has done a good job of staying on-message and running a smart campaign that competed in all 50 states, not just the big states that HRC focused on. HRC's campaign, on the other hand, was never able to create a consistent message for her candidate after her original "I'm the one with experience!" message tested poorly with a general public tired of the same old politics. A poor choice of campaign staff compounded the problem. They apparently forgot to read the rulebook that HRC herself helped write, and devised a Big State strategy that would have worked if she were a Republican running in the Republican primaries but which ignored the realities of the new rules which made the 50 state strategy the winning strategy.
So she's lost, unless she can convince superdelegates to overturn both the popular vote and the elected delegate count. And her latest message, which appears aimed at superdelegates and says "vote for me, because a nigger can't get elected!" is simply offensive. It might work in KKK bastions such as West Virginia, but the reality is that the sort of voters it would work for would likely vote for McCain in the fall in the first place, given that McCain is even whiter than Clinton and is male besides, just like their Grand Wizard. And it doesn't seem to be swaying the superdelegates either, who are increasingly breaking towards Obama as it becomes clear that Obama has won both the popular vote and the elected delegate vote even *if* Michigan and Florida are counted.
So even though Obama wasn't my first choice, second choice, OR third choice for the Democratic candidate for President (hints: Kucinich, Edwards, HRC), he is who we have, and the job now is to get him elected. Unless you truly do want the country to have four more years of neo-con rule under McCain. Four more years! Four more wars! Yay!
- Badtux the Math Penguin
Publius,
You make a cogent argument. Believe you me, I'm not fired up about any of these three. I agree with you about the absurdity and malignancy of the party system.
It is merely as Mike says, the unfairness of the caucus system, and the endless nattering, bobbling heads ferociously declaiming for their candidate which I protest. Shameless pandering, with nary a thought to real problems and real solutions.
It is the disingenuousness of all the candidates against the blindness and naivete of the electorate which galls.
HRC ran a poor campaign. Obama's team tapped into the tenor of the times and the impulse to wishful thinking in America. The easy, not painful, solution. Obama delivers that palliative. That in itself disgusts me, but my disappointment is as much with my fellows as with the candidate that slops out the pablum.
Rules??? What about votes in November from Floridians and Michiganders???
Apparently, BadTux and many other Obama supporters care more about rules than they care about winning the White House in November. Obama's slander-squads care more about beating down HRC and trashing her than they care about winning the hearts and minds of the American voters during the general election. The primary dates in those states were set up by Republican chicanery. So for that reason Obama wants to deny good Dems in those states a voice??? So much for the "great unifier" bs he tried to pawn off on us.
Publius - like George Washington before him - is right on in his closing statement about political parties being cancerous. And he and badtux may be right about the math. But that does not matter to the tens of millions of Clinton supporters who feel they were robbed by the radicals in the caucus states and want to see her take it all the way to the convention floor. Alienating them is not a wise move.
Uhm, Mike, learn to read. I just pointed out that even *IF* you seat all the delegates from Michigan and Florida, HILLARY STILL LOSES BOTH THE POPULAR VOTE AND THE ELECTED DELEGATE COUNT. There just is mathematically no way to make an HRC nomination happen even if you do count Michigan and Florida.
It sounds like you like Republican rules, which don't do the proportional delegate allocation of Democratic rules and are thus undemocratic since they allow the person with the most popular votes to lose the nomination. But the rules we have are the rules HRC made and agreed to run under. Now she doesn't like her rules and wants a do-over. Well boo hoo.
As for calling me an "Obama supporter", Obama was not my first, second, or third choice. But he is going to be the Democratic nominee in November. That's reality, and all the stamping and whining in the world isn't going to make it somehow become un-real. It's time for some folks to get back to reality, which is that WE CANNOT SURVIVE A REPUBLICAN WIN IN NOVEMBER, and do what it takes to make sure the Democratic nominee -- Barack Obama -- wins in November.
- Badtux the Numbers Penguin
Badtux has made some really good points here, but I want to correct one thing. I wasn't speculating in a general sense about why HRC lost; I was specifically noting why she didn't get MY vote.
And to follow up on Badtux's broaching of the race issue, I've resided in South Carolina for the past two years—having moved from the liberal SF Bay Area—and I was very disappointed in Bill Clinton's performance here. You bet he brought up race, and not in a way that put him or his wife in a good light. I, and other South Carolina Democrats were left to wonder who the Clintons really are. The family that produced the "first black president," or the family that's looked kind of like classic race baiters. It's no mystery to me why black voters have overwhelmingly rejected HRC. Whether she is a prototypical rich white or the redneck she's tried to portray in the "shot and beer" episodes, I've not seen anything that would prompt minorities to vote for her.
As I say, I think it's time to say goodbye to the Clintons, if for no other reason than it's too much work trying to sort through their psychological baggage trying to discover who they really are. HRC comes across to me as being just like George Bush, the "compassionate conservative," the chameleon figure who lied his way to the presidency and then continued lying—along with subverting the Constitution—throughout his entire term. I don't trust HRC.
Mike, ISTM that in your zeal for HRC and your frustration with her loss, you're losing sight of the most important point I've tried to make. Sure, the caucuses are undemocratic. Sure, it's terrible that FL and MI delegates don't get seated. But those are the rules that HRC and Obama agreed to play by. Obama has benefitted from them this time around, but HRC has benefitted from them mightily in the past. Her complaints now fall on my deaf ears. As I noted, she wouldn't be where she is now without the past connivance of the Democratic Party, so this seems to be kind of a case of what goes around comes around.
And speaking of this whole party thing, why were the state parties in FL and MI such dumb-shits? They were warned, but they went right ahead with their early primaries because they were part of this whole "We're Number One" crap prevalent in this country. Rather than rewarding them (and HRC) for their stupidity, I'd like to see a move aimed at recapturing the public funds spent on those worthless primaries. Why should taxpayers be stuck with the costs of such exercises in stupidity?
Live by the party, die by the party.
Publius, regarding Michigan you are correct. But in Florida, the Florida Democratic Party wanted to comply with the rules. The Republican legislature and Republican governor overruled them, setting the date for the Democratic primary to be a known against-the-rules date and laughing at the Democrats when they complained about it. And to top it off, they passed a law saying that if Democratic nominees did not place their name on the ballot for the primary, they would not be eligible to have their name on the ballot in November. That is why every major candidate's name was on the primary ballot in Florida, unlike in Michigan.
So Florida Democrats have a case that because it was not their fault that the primary got held at that early date, they should not be punished for it and thus their delegates should be seated. Michigan... uhm, no. There it wasn't Republican malevolence that led to the fiasco, it was a Democratic legislature and Democratic governor who did it.
But in any event, it doesn't matter in the end. Seat the delegates, count the popular vote, and the outcome is the same. Obama still comes out ahead on both popular vote and delegates, although only by a few dozen delegates and a few hundred thousand in the popular vote. Short of assassination or being found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, the goal now has to be to make him President Obama, no matter how ingenous you believe his policy proclamations to be. We simply cannot survive eight more years of Republican rule.
-Badtux the Practical Penguin
BadTux: “Uhm, Mike, learn to read.”
What a great method you have to win people over to your side, BadTux. Good job!!!! Guys like you will probably help to get McCain elected.
Your point about not surviving a Republican win in November is true. That is the reason why I sadly regret that Obama has been blessed by the media and is on the way to be the nominee. I do not think he has the chops to win in November, but God bless him if he does. As I said upthread, I will vote for the Democratic nominee in November. But I fear that he will lose anyway to the GOP muck machine.
I just hope that Obama’s slime squads can counterpunch the swiftboaters as effectively as they suckerpunched HRC. She was not my first choice either. When my guy dropped out, I figured I would give my wife’s candidate a vote. I did not become an enthusiastic supporter of hers until our state caucuses when the Obama supporters started repeating Limbaugh, Hannity, and O’Reilly slanders on her. When the Obama boys re-invented the cock and bull story about her having Vince Foster murdered it got several HRC ladies bawling like babies. At that point I figured out that if he had supporters like that then he was bad for the country.
In any case, no matter who wins, my point is that the Democratic Party if it wants to survive needs to reform the nominating process. The current way it is done is undemocratic and is worse than what we had under Tammany Hall. It reeks. My suggestions (again) are:
1] Banish primary caucuses especially those where only a microscopic percentage of registered Dems get to vote.
2] Compress the primary season so that 6 to 12 states at the end of the process in May and June don’t end up having what you and the Obama guys say are meaningless primaries.
3] Stop picking favorite states to lead off the race and punishing voters in states who also wanted to be heard early. Why should Iowa, NH, SC and NV pick a frontrunner?
BTW – You are wrong about Michigan and you should do a little more research. They may have had Dems in the statehouse, but they were still snookered on that one. We Dems are not the smartest guys in the room when it comes to political double dealing. The Michigan GOP is still laughing about it.
Publius: Regarding what you call my zeal for HRC, see above. Call it zeal against BHO, or more correctly zeal against his rabid-dog supporters. He may in fact make a good president if he can stand the heat in October. But if he does, he needs to build a coalition cabinet and get rid of the CCW wingnuts on his campaign. Jim Webb for Secretary of Defense; and get some of Bill Clinton’s former cabinet officers especially treasury, health & human services, and FEMA; and Clinton (Bill not Hillary) would make a damn fine Secretary of State.
Mike,
Your ideas on the necessity of a coalition cabinet are correct, and we have long thought Bill would make a great Secretary of State.
Thanks for your thoughtful contributions re. primary reform.
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