I had an interesting discussion recently about the 2008 election. Reliable Democrats seem so certain that it's a lock that it doesn't matter who they nominate. Nomination thus becomes a form of self-expression; and the self they seemingly most want to express is "Screw you, Republican jerks". Since Hillary Clinton best fills that bill, then she should be the nominee. The belief that she, alone, can best put the screws to Republicans, and therefore she, alone, must be the nominee, seems surprisingly common.
Mayhap. After my expressive dissonance on vouchers, I can hardly claim that self-expression is an illegitimate function of political discourse.
However.
I am put in mind of an aphorism I inherited from wise ancestors: the wheel goes 'round and 'round, and sooner or later, the fly on top is going to be the fly on the bottom. In political cycles, these days, that wheel seems to be spinning with peculiar alacrity.
Are we really so sure that America, in a year, will hate Republicans quite as much as it does now? Might it not be that if Iraq settles down--as it seems to be doing, whatever the reason (and forcible ethnic sorting strikes me as the most likely one)--and the economy mysteriously fails to go into recession, that the Democrats might have a bit more of a struggle than they are currently anticipating? It seems to me much more likely than not that America will have either a recession, or a bloody ongoing battle in Iraq, or both. Nonetheless: always have Plan B, said another wise ancestor. What's Plan B, if the economy and Iraq are both all right in time for Clinton v. Giuliani 2008?
If it comes down to Clinton vs. Guiliani, it's really just a matter of which dictator we think looks better in a dress.
"...Since Hillary Clinton best fills that bill, then she should be the nominee. The belief that she, alone, can best put the screws to Republicans, and therefore she, alone, must be the nominee, seems surprisingly common."
I don't hear this at all.
While she is certainly the most hated by the Republicans, she is also the most like them. I think it is more a matter that you are listening to what Republicans say Democrats think, than what Democrats really think.
Although, I am thinking of the actual presidency, not the campaign. I would agree that Clinton would be the toughest campaigner.
Polls had Rudy ahead in Florida 49% to 45% and Rudy ahead 46 to 45 in Ohio
You definitely have a strong point there. The Democrats would be wise not to assume they have a guarantee of winning in 2008.
I'm not sure I agree that the primary basis for Hilary support among Democrats is that she'd be the candidate most likely to irritate the Republicans. It's got a lot to do with the fact that she appears to be the most competitively driven, the meanest, the most controlled, the one more likely than the rest to do whatever it takes to win power.
A lot of people have criticized the Democrats for a long time for electing insipid, "too nice" candidates who don't have the stomach for a rough-and-tumble dirty tricks election. Kerry was certainly in that mold, and so to a lesser degree was Gore. Hilary brings a freshly sharpened knife to the table. She certainly won't let herself be Swift-boated like Kerry did, refusing to vigorously engage the issue.
Her flaws, electorally, are precisely tied to that; the feeling that she's dishonest, unwilling to speak her mind, always looking to say whatever people want to hear without really committing to anything. She wants power too bad to stand on principle, and perhaps the widespread perception of that will be a problem.
However, I don't think either of the two other major Democrat candidates would be any better; Edwards is too strident, too leftist, easy target for Republicans, and I think personally not mean enough to fight it effectively. Obama is too green, a touch naive at times, a little too Pollyanna; also prone to saying stupid things that could be ripped apart.
However, if anything makes any of them much more likely to sit in the White House come January 2009, it's that none of the Republican candidates seem a good nominee. I can't really see any of them getting the kind of backing from the party faithful that Bush did; most of them require certain powerful groups within the party to hold their noses, and that's a problem. It's also hard to see many of them being that appealing to the voting public, frankly.
I grew up up in Arkansas, and I also have a taste in my mouth with respect to republicans. If I'm faced with a Hillary vs. Giuliani ticket, I'll probably choose a third party. Honestly, faced with a Hillary vs. Anyone ticket, I'll probably choose a third party. So by choosing Hillary the best that democrats can hope for in a voter such as myself is me _not_ voting republican. Now most folks didn't grow up in Arkansas, but there are a lot of people out there in the center (or just right of center) that feel the same way I do about Hillary.
This really is the election for the democrats to loose.
You definitely have a strong point there. The Democrats would be wise not to assume they have a guarantee of winning in 2008
This discussion would be so much more interesting if any Democrats actually thought this. But, of course, they don't. This sentiment is expressed exclusively in the negative by Republican and conservative elements. And why? Because they like the dramatic arc of the story it suggests: the hubristic Dems assume victory is assured, but are rebuffed by the wisdom of the American people, who demonstrate on election day that American conservatism is in fact still ascendent, still heading towards "the permanent Republican majority." No one I know seriously believes the election is in the bag. The notion that they do is a Republican fantasy, a way to hedge bets for 2008, to create a political narrative. It's a fable, a dodge.
MM,
with this: "Might it not be that if Iraq settles down--as it seems to be doing, whatever the reason (and forcible ethnic sorting strikes me as the most likely one)--and the economy mysteriously fails to go into recession, that the Democrats might have a bit more of a struggle than they are currently anticipating?"
Doesn't it get boring, thinking the same tired thoughts as nearly everyone else? thinking so little of the intellect of the American voter?
Do you really think that the vast majority of Americans would be copasetic with the 'war' in Iraq if only a few less young men and women were guaranteed death benefits instead of paychecks?
Or that either party can shirk this growing realization: "...to watch since it certainly appears that the US and Japan are more than willing to debauch their own currencies rather than to take the drastic steps needed to curtail the problems that resulted in their weakness in the first place. Make no mistake about it – all great powers have strong currencies and the slide in both the Yen and the US Dollar are symptomatic of the decline in their economic influence in the global scheme of things. As a US citizen, I deeply resent what the current monetary officials have done to the Dollar as we are talking about the future of my children and their grandchildren. These people are entrusted with the status of the Dollar and it is very obvious that they have squandered their stewardship for the sake of short term gain. “Avoid economic pain at all costs - damn the long term ramifications”, is their motto. To use an analogy – they have sold our birthright for a bowl of stew."
http://www.jsmineset.com/
Or this peach: "forcible ethnic sorting" being done in our name?
Past any of that, Are you here to tell us that there isn't an "Anti-War" GOP candidate, as well?
Hmmm... I know my group of mostly liberal East coast friends are by no means representative of Democractic party activists, but not a single one of them thinks the 2008 election is a lock. In fact, if anything, they're all waiting for something horrible to happen and to lose another election and to have the pompous and reckless Bush replaced by the dangerously pompous and rockless Rudy.
And regarding Iraq - the horrible truth of the matter is we have no way of knowing what will happen, or how it will influence the election. It appears increasingly likely Turkey will mount an invasion of the Kurdish areas. Who knows what the consequences of that action will be? Bush is crazy enough to launch a major attack on Iran. What happens then?
The point is that it is an incredibly unstable and dangerous issue for electoral politics. Will things going hot in Iran hurt the Republic party because it was their crazy ideology that got us into this mess in the first place? Or will they use the fear to play up machoism and win again? I would like to believe it would help the Democrats, but nothing that has happened over the last seven years tells me it won't play the other way.
Nomination thus becomes a form of self-expression; and the self they seemingly most want to express is "Screw you, Republican jerks". Since Hillary Clinton best fills that bill, then she should be the nominee.
You know, I'm not completely sure this works. Clinton is certainly roundly hated by a whole lot of Republicans -- much more than any other possible Democratic option. But (I think. All of the generalizations I'm heading into come from a NE urbanite, and one whose Republican friends are NE urbanites as well) the serious Clinton haters seem to be generally the ones with no shot of ever voting for a Democrat. Once you get into the kind of Republican who's really starting to think the war in Iraq was an awful idea, and wants to reject Bush and anything associated with his administration, but is still squeamish about Democrats generally (that is, the kind of guy who's a possible pickup for the Dems), they don't seem to have nearly as much of the visceral distaste for Clinton, and they actually like her a little better than the other Democratic options on substance, for all the reasons that the anti-war left doesn't.
I think you're misrepresenting what Dems think, Megan. Too many remember thinking that 2004 was a lock only to lose it.
What Dems have this year is a lot of confidence because of two factors: objectively, the landscape has never been better insofar as the Republicans are deeply unpopular, not just as compatriots of the Bush Administration, but in and of themselves; but more importantly, the Dems themselves have a selection of candidates that actually seem... good. You've got Hilary, the seasoned political infighter, with Bill on her side; and you've got Obama, a candidate that people actually like, who inspires people, and still seems a competent campaigner. The two front runners both seem like they'll actually win, not to the party elders who picked Kerry, but to the average Dem in the street.
There's an ongoing narrative in the Democratic party that if they were either as mean as Republicans or just obviously, obviously better, they'd get the victory they deserve. That's Hilary and Obama, respectively. Perhaps Kerry's loss in 2004 was valuable because it was an object lesson in overconfidence, a mistake Dems will be very careful about this time.
"if Iraq settles down--as it seems to be doing, whatever the reason (and forcible ethnic sorting strikes me as the most likely one).."
I think a big part of the change in Iraq is that Iraqis have gotten to know both Americans and Al Qaeda better. Saddam used to tell the Iraqis that Americans wanted to take their oil and their women. But gradually, more and more Iraqis have realized that we're there to help, and they've also gotten a clearer idea of the motives and intentions of Al Qaeda.
We should have changed our tactics sooner, and this all should have been handled better. But the trend towards more and more Iraqis returning to their former homes doesn't fit your explanation. We'll see if the trends (less violence, less ethnic conflict) continue.
I think we'll have to disagree on this, LizardBreath; I know a lot of swing voters who, like my mother, simply have a visceral hatred for the woman. And believe me, she couldn't wait to pull the lever for a Dem in 2006.
Eh, I could be overgeneralizing from a couple of examples.
Once you get into the kind of Republican who's really starting to think the war in Iraq was an awful idea, and wants to reject Bush and anything associated with his administration, but is still squeamish about Democrats generally
Why wouldn't a person like that just vote for, say, Rudy Giuliani? I certainly don't see a person who is "squeamish about Democrats generally" voting for Bill Clinton's *wife*!
I perfectly well may be overgeneralizing from a couple of examples. But the guys I'm thinking of are really unhappy about how the war in Iraq is going, and think in retrospect that it was probably an injudicious idea (from the polls, there have to be a fair number of Republican voters like that out there). And so they really don't want to vote for someone who's all "Rah, rah, go Iraq war! If I get the chance to do something like that, I promise to do it harder!!" (Oversimplifying here, just to get the descriptive point across.) And there's a fair chance that Giuliani is going to be running on the premise that the Iraq war was not a fuckup, making him unattractive to voters who, regardless of their general Republicanism, think it was. I've had a couple of guys in this category identify Clinton as the best option among the Democrats.
How the visceral Clinton-hate fits into this, I don't know. But if it's not too big a factor, I think she's got potential to pick up swing voters by being the most hawkish candidate who wants us out of Iraq.
(Just to be clear, I'm not crazy about her myself. I'll vote for whichever Democrat makes it through the primaries over any Republican currently on offer, but I'm not voting for her in the primaries. I'm just speculating on whether she's as off-putting to Republicans generally as the post assumes.)
I'm neither embracing Hillary or vilifying her, but she does indeed bring out the visceral reactions unlike any politician I've ever seen. Put me down in the column of Democrats who hope we won't nominate her -- she can mobilize the Republicans like no one else running. Often it's not explainable. My parents are blue-dog Democrats and when I asked my mother about voting for Hillary, she looked me in the eye and said "I just don't trust her, and I don't have to explain it."
I think Megan just captured that same feeling in her post. Underestimating the American voter? No, but it's very possible to overestimate the voter's forgiveness of her sense of coldness. Call it sexism, or whatever you want, but it just doesn't play well in middle America. The questioner at a McCain rally that used the b-word doesn't speak for me, but that person did give voice to many more people than we'd care to admit. We can wish it way, and the Democrats may do so at their peril.
"I think she's got potential to pick up swing voters by being the most hawkish candidate who wants us out of Iraq."
Don't people read?
Top Dems Don't Guarantee Full Iraq Pullout
Leading Candidates Refuse To Promise At Debate They Would Have All Troops Out Of Iraq By 2013
Comments 634 | Page 1 of 2
HANOVER, N.H., Sept. 26, 2007
(CBS/AP) The leading Democratic White House hopefuls conceded Wednesday night they cannot guarantee to pull all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of the next presidential term in 2013.
"I think it's hard to project four years from now," said Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois in the opening moments of a campaign debate in the nation's first primary state.
"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
"I cannot make that commitment," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Sensing an opening, Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson provided the assurances the others would not.
"I'll get the job done," said Dodd, while Richardson said he would make sure the troops were home by the end of his first year in office.
“Democratic primary voters may pause when they consider that none of the three top-tier candidates were willing to promise a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of their first term as president,” said CBSNews.com Senior Political Editor Vaughn Ververs.
"It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting," added Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
v.
"I think she's got potential to pick up swing voters by being the most hawkish candidate who wants us out of Iraq."
The problem with HRC is that she has no solutions to any of our problems excepting, of course, 'more of the same'. She's the best Neo-con the (D)'s have.
It's not so much that the Republicans hate her as the reasons they do, and why that appeals to our left. 'Religion is the opiate of the people,' Lenin famously said about the fake maternal object of G-d or the Church. Better somebody that could get the milk pumps to run on time at the modern Animal Farm the leftist believe. Somebody that is cold and mechanical and has the right policy because they have to be the ideal clockwork to run everything. We have the later experiments of Harlowe in the twentieth century regarding false mothers. Baby chimps were raised with cloth monkeys for mothers or wire 'mothers.' The wire left the chimps most damaged. For some deep, dark Freudian reason the leftists prefer the wire monkeys like Stalin. Hillary is the wire mother.
When it comes to retaining control of the House and Senate, the Democrats do look like a sure thing--TradeSports quotes odds of 4 to 1. But in the presidential race, at TradeSports (and the Iowa Electronic Market) the odds are only 6.3 to 3.7.
On the other hand, chances of a recession are better than 40%, and that doesn't bode well for the party occupying the White House.
A reader writes to Andrew Sullivan:
Referring to the whole 'tip episode' in Iowa..
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/11/the-clinton-por.html
The point is that the waitress and people like my mother (hardcore anti-HRC Democrat) apparently aren't represented in the MSM. Hillary's machine is making it appear as if she's running away with the nomination. We shall see.
I'd like to chime in with those who think you have the basis of Hillary's support backwards: I think most Democrats DON'T think the election is in the bag, and that's the main basis of Hillary's support. As for the Hillary hating, some of it comes from people who will never vote Democratic, and some of it comes from people who don't like what she "stands for" in some sense that has to do with the symbolism around class and generation rather than what she "stands for" in terms of issues. I suspect that some of the latter group will change their minds if she get nominated and is subjected to the intense day-to-day attention of the latter stages of the campaign. They'll see that she is actually a pretty hawkish, pro-business Democrat. This is an analysis from someone who won't vote for her in a primary (prefer Obama & Edwards) but would certainly do so over any Republican since James Connolly. (In my heart of hearts I am hoping that something of the Wellesley radical still lurks in Hillary.)
Daniel (above) is right. I'm starting with Hillary, but that's just personal preference--his analysis is entirely correct. As for Plan B (to answer Matt's question), it's the same as Plan A: point out that Giuliani is mentally unhealthy, a vile trafficker (economically and politically) in the grief of others, and contemptuous of our liberties.
Personally, I think the reason HRH Clinton draws so much ire is two-fold. First of all, it's possible people are finally getting the sense that political royalty isn't a good thing in the executive seat. Bush, Clinton...Bush again...Clinton again? And second, she reeks of Eau de Carly Fiorina. Same bombast and driving mentality, same inability to actually meld with any major element of the culture she would be presiding over.
"Screw you, Republican jerks"
Wow, that's a pretty threadbare strawman. Of the Hillary supporters I've talked to (a learning method I highly recommend), they mostly remember the previous Clinton administration fondly as a sane, moderate administration, and view Hillary Clinton as the most straightforward heir of that tradition. I don't particularly buy that, since it considerably undersells Bill's and oversells Hillary's political skills. The bottom line, though, is that among Hillary supporters, the Clinton Derangement Syndrome has been completely tuned out. And given the record of the CDSers, why shouldn't it be?
As for Plan B, let's face it: Losing is a perfectly acceptable Plan B. After all, if Hillary loses, Giuliani becomes president, and every one of Bush's stupid ideas gets doubled-down on. If there are still 50% of the voting public who think that will work, I look forward to their continued rude awakening.
This is a weird conclusion to draw when all the Republicans are eager to talk about how they can defeat Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, while Hillary's campaign is less "I can whup Giuliani" and more about meaningless platitudes about working together and solving problems without actually saying anything specific that could cost her votes.
Democrats aren't nostalgic about the Clinton vs. Republicans wars of personal destruction. People seem to support Hillary Clinton because they think she's too polished to screw up, because they're impressed by her, because they want to support a woman, or because they think the 90s were a good time aside from the Limbaugh/Gingrich wars, among other reasons.
It is correct that people think that the Democratic polling advantage makes it safer to nominate Hillary than it would have seemed in 2004, because people know she's disliked by a lot of voters who are in principle open to an Obama or an Edwards. But we've seen plenty of fresh new candidates get tarred by the campaign war machine anyway, so Hillary no longer looks uniquely bad.
Or was this post prompted by Obama's inability to break out with an explicitly bipartisan approach?
By the way, I apologize if I'm ascribing views to this post that were actually just the launching point for your other thought.
I think MM has it wrong, the Democrat party is embracing Hilary because they think she is the most electable. Electability is the biggest concerns of most Democrats after being out of power for eight years.
Ironically the thing that makes the Democrats think she is electable is what makes her unappealing to most swing voters.
Democrats think that the reason they lose presidential elections is that their nominees are too gentlemanly to respond to republican lies and attacks eg. Dukakis-willie Horton, Gore-inventing the internet, Kerry-Swift Boaters. Democrats see Hillary's iron will and toughness and think that they finally have someone who will stand up to the Republicans.
Fortunately, most swing voters are not looking for a soulless terminator for president and will spare the country from four years of Popeye legs.