Let's All Take a Deep Breath
Although there are fifteen state primaries to go, the air is thick with what feels a lot like an Obama victory. The string of consecutive contests he's won and the sometimes shocking margins (64-35% in Virginia? 68-31% in Washington??) by which he's defeated Hillary Clinton smell a lot like a tipping point. So it's worth stopping for a moment to consider what we're doing -- who we want our nominee to be, who we want our next president to be, and what we want him, or her, to accomplish.
In 2004, on the eve of an expected Howard Dean landslide, John Kerry started to make the "electability" argument, viz. that he could defeat President Bush and Dean could not. Dean was too confrontational, he said, too angry. Never mind that this was exactly the line the Republicans had been cynically proffering -- Dean's anger as disqualification to lead -- Kerry went on to victory on the heels of a charm offensive. He was a nice guy. He had great teeth. He had friends on both sides of the aisle. (He even asked his "friend" John McCain to be his running mate!) Democratic primary voters bought it, and nominated a smile in a Brooks Brothers suit to run against the Republican meat grinder. I won't bore you with the rest of the recap.
My question is obvious: Are we about to do the same thing again?
This is not a pro-Hillary column. I spent much of 2007 bemoaning the seeming inevitability of Hillary's nomination. It didn't have much to do with her politics, or with so-called "Clinton Fatigue" (I can think of a hell of a lot of things I'm more tired of than the Clintons...), but with my fear that a Clinton nomination would subject us to another year, perhaps more, of vicious, slanderous, sexist, foaming-at-the-mouth Republican smear campaigns; and also with a sneaking suspicion that many people would blame the victim (as many people have done in Bill's case) for the poisonous, vicious, filthy, rabid, etc., political atmosphere; and that the combination of attacks and blaming the victim and general reluctance to elect a woman president made it unlikely she could win.
In other words, my fear of Hillary was actually fear of the Republicans. The good liberal in me hoped for a more rational, less bloodthirsty political environment and hoped a less polarizing nominee might appease the party of Rove, O'Reilly, and Coulter. My attitude had everything to do with a Clinton campaign, and nothing to do with a Clinton presidency. And that, I fear, is the dynamic driving the surge which has brought Obama within a hair's breadth of the nomination.
Obama has branded himself as the candidate of Hope and Inspiration, the candidate who can bring people to the table -- whether Mitch McConnell or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and calmly work out compromises, the candidate who can usher in a New Age of Cooperation in American Politics. What a great story! What a thing to, um, hope for! It's no wonder he has captured voters' imaginations -- we are all, it's true, exhausted and dispirited. We are all tired of the streetfight, of getting kicked around and rolled over and generally screwed. And we're tired of losing. Many columnists have also adopted Obama's inspirational rhetoric. Robert Creamer's recent editorial serves as a good example: "Obama would be the best president to pass a progressive program of structural change... We won't pass this agenda if we rely on the insider game in Washington. Success will require a massive, ongoing mobilization of people across America. That will require inspiration." Terrific!
But here's my next question: Who do Obama, Creamer, et. al. think we're dealing with?
The Republican Party doesn't do compromise. They don't do friendly negotiations or charm offensives and they don't give a flying fuck about massive mobilizations of people across America. (Anyone remember the massive mobilizations against the Iraq invasion?) The Republican Party does winning. They do Swiftboating. They do recalls and threats and arm-twisting and rule changing and Nuclear Options. They aren't concerned with keeping their hands clean or making friends -- when they want something they get down in the dirt and break as many kneecaps as necessary to get it, and I am sick and tired of the Democrats being the party of "Let's All Just Get Along" that walks into a streetfight with an outstretched hand only to get kicked in the balls and spat on and lose.
It would take a dozen columns to review all the ways in which the Republicans have refused to compromise, or have reneged on compromises, in the last seven years. Remember the Gang of 14, which preserved the filibuster from the so-called Nuclear Option -- only to see Republicans threaten the Nuclear Option the instant Democrats objected to the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court? Remember the bipartisan torture ban -- which President Bush promptly annulled with a signing statement? Look no further than the current struggle over the Protect America Act -- the bill to modernize surveillance laws: The Democrats have essentially dropped all opposition to the Republicans' desire to make it easier to spy on Americans -- and yet Republicans refuse to pass the law, and President Bush has threatened to veto it, unless it also includes retroactive immunity for corporations that spied on their customers.
This has been the pattern with everything from No Child Left Behind, to the Medicare Drug plan, to the Patriot Act, to countless bills funding the war in Iraq: Democrats cave to 98% of Republican demands, only to be called traitors and obstructionists and cowards and to get beaten with pillowcases full of soap until they give the other 2%.
I don't see Hope getting in the way.
What I see is the need to return this country to the principles on which it was founded. I see a need to restore the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, which have been shredded by Bush and his Republican subordinates. I see a need to restore Habeas Corpus. I see a need for our country to stop torturing people, stop sending them to other countries to be tortured and killed, stop imprisoning them without charge, without counsel, without trial. I see a need to close down the obscenity that is Guantanamo. I see a need to finally do something about climate change. I see a need to address the drastic widening of wealth disparity in this country. I see a desperate need to reform the health insurance system, which is not only leaving 40 million people without health care but destroying American businesses.
Do you want these things, too? Well, I know for a fact that the Republicans don't agree with you on any of them. So who is it we're going to win over with the Power of Hope? When Senator Obama talks about compromise, what, exactly, does he mean? Are we willing to forget about, say, the 4th and 5th Amendments, if we can get some movement on the 1st and 8th? Are we willing to allow waterboarding on even-numbered days only? Won't we all feel better when there are only 20 million people in this preposterously wealthy country who can't afford to see a doctor?
The Republicans lost big in the 2006 elections -- and yet there are more soldiers in Iraq now than there were 18 months ago. How's that for compromise?
I'm not interested in a president who wants to sit down over coffee and talk compromise with people who are not going to compromise. I'm interested in someone who is going to fight like hell to move the country back in the right direction.
So let's all take a deep breath and think about what we're being offered by the candidates. Let's think about the political reality the next president will have to face, and what's coming from the Republicans once we have a nominee. As admirable and dignified as Barack Obama is, what we've seen so far when the going gets rough is thin-skinned whining: calling the Clintons racist (are you kidding?) because Hillary said LBJ was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act; crying foul when an aide referred to the drug use that Obama wrote about in his memoirs. Read Hendrik Hertzberg's piece in The New Yorker slamming Hillary for her "egregious... coldly premeditated" objection to Obama calling the Republicans the "party of ideas." Hertzberg, usually the smartest pundit in print, resorts to the equivalent of a sixth-grader's defense: That's not what he meant!
I've got news for you: If you think this is dirty, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
This kind of huffiness is just blood in the water for the Republicans, and "compromise" to them is a synonym for "sucker." The sooner we all get over the fantasy of the group hug, the sooner we can nominate someone who will step into the ring ready to fight the crucial battles that need to be fought. So let's stop and reconsider what we want out of the next four years: a friendlier atmosphere, or a better country. Because we're not going to get both.
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The main premise of the article is correct. It is about winning and only about winning this election. Whatever happens after that we can all argue until kingdom come. Who is going to do a better job as president has nothing to do with stopping the republicans win another presidency. Inspiration is one of those things that can spring up out of nowhere, but it is also something that can disappear just as fast. Congress has been ineffectual for a long time and the hope that somehow it will change with a overwhelming democratic majority (it will never happen anyway) is absurd. It wasn't the republicans who stop Bill from allowing gays to serve in the military freely, it was Sam Nunn and the other democrats. It wasn't the republicans who stopped Hillary's universal health care plan, it was the democratic controlled congress. It was the democrats who allowed Bill to be impeached. It was the democrats who threw Bill overboard (including Gore) and lost the election. She and Bill still stand with everyone hating them (most of all a lot of democrats) surviving another onslaught of democratic condemnation. Winning this election is not about how she was able to fight the republicans in congress, but how she and bill were able to beat the republicans time and time again. She stood by him (with his one big flaw) in 2000 and the democrats didn't and paid the price by losing. She understands the republicans better than Obama will ever be able to. Just look at the battle won. She is running for president and Newt is nowhere politically. To keep back the continuing republican revolution you need a fighter who is willing to get down and dirty in that fight.
Andrew, I find a little odd that you start by saying this isn't a pro-Hillary post, then go on to question Obama's capacity to move the country forward without ever doing the same to Hillary. No mention of the vote for War, no mention of the Iran vote, no mention of the biggest battle of her life, when she fought the Republicans with no compromise for health care and got us absolutely nothing. And where was this no-compromise policy when Bill Clinton was in the White House doing his best to move the Democratic Party to the center? If your post was not pro-Hillary, but rather a careful examination of who we'd like to move the progressive agenda forward as a president, you'd think it would have analyzed both sides.
But beyond that, I for one am getting sick and tired of this painting of the candidates as one-dimensional beings. Obama might talk about hope, but that's not all he's about. Branding himself as the candidate of hope does not mean hope is the only weapon in his arsenal any more than Hillary taking donations from the health care lobby makes her the candidate of the health care industry. Can we drop being so condescending to the electorate as to imagine we can't see the candidates but for one dimension and a set of cherry picked bullet points?
for shchartley -
Sorry you didn't get my weak joke about J Edwards hair! Since his great coiffure brought constant ridicule for him (that was the only thing the opposition could come up with) I figured he would have been better off bald.
The reason there was so much yelling and screaming during the Clinton years is that they were overall quite effective. Tobacco industry judgments, environment, Kyoto, no deficit, a surplus, a balanced budget with a Republican congress hell bent to destroy them, respect all over the world and the best economy for all that anyone can remember.
Demonizing the Clintons is intellectually disingenuous. No one will be able to pull anything over Clinton once she is in the Presidency with a democratic congress. The reason the Republicans want Obama is that he is undefined and they can beat him. If he wins, they know they can take advantage of a newbie.
Ninety percent of the country is generally centrist anyhow. Bringing together the extreme ten percent of the left and the right will not happen anytime soon. The extreme left and right are just too wed to their positions.
Yes! This is exactly what I have been saying. It's all well and good to be a "compromiser", but we are beyond the point of compromise. If we have any hope of saving our country, we must have a fighter who will tell the Republicans "no", and will not allow the Constitution to be used as toilet paper. Hillary is the strongest candidate to fight against the horrible abuses of the past two terms.
Hope would seem a tenuous weapon were it not for all the little checks that are backing the hope up.
One of Hillary's and the Republicans biggest problem is that they have finally found someone who can outraise them in campaign warchests, all on the basis of hope.
But it's Hillary who is the compromiser and eqivocator at every turn. She's so tough she votes for the bank-friendly bankruptcy bill, talks cave-in about abortion rights and votes for that nice little bill to cluster bomb children.
Obama's rhetoric is designed to lay a foundation for major reallignment. Wake up
Your arguement ignores the two elephants in the room - Bill Clinton and the media. These factors aside, I believe Hillary would make a better president. But you can't ignore the fact that we would face 4-8 years of Hillary bashing by the press and Bill sucking up all of the air. It's too bad but it's reality.
I understand the theory of fighting fire with fire, and understand that Republicans are pure hardball, and that hate is the most powerful unifying force going which explains the power of negative campaigning. But my friends, while it has taken for too long, the American elector has grown tried of the Republican Rambo style of power grabbing politics. From what I can tell Obama is not just” fair and balance” ha! ha! He has a knack for spinning bullies on their head and a smile that cuts their legs off. Just watch when he effortlessly shoves their poison right back down their throat. It is going to be fun to watch the Rove technique bound off him like spitballs off a battleship.
Isn't it a tragedy that the Democrats can only eat their own? Never a peep comes from their mouths about their political opponents, The Republcan Party.
Apparently they're too cheap and stupid to fund and staff their own side's influential think tanks, scattered around D.C., to provide confidence giving, shelter and employment for out of Govt. Dems as the Republicans have done. And it shows, the Democrats have absolutely no influence or presence within the beltway establishment, and no voice in national or world affairs.
The Democrats haven't evolved out of the 60's.
After Monicagate, the Democrats for the sake of the party should have fired the Clinton's ass's and gotten rid of McAuliffe too. And Gore would have been the Pres. and Bush wouldn't have been elected.
The party let the Clintons hang of with bloody nails to the White House instead of replacing 'them' with Al Gore, they only upped the Clinton's self-serving hype and conduct, and now, it's come home to bite them because the Dems. are so weak and ineffectual and have been beaten to such a pulp for the past ten years by years of hammering by .... Fox and yes, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy - it is a billion dollar industry now. It never could have existed if the Clintons had done the decent thing and resigned.
The tragedy for the Democrats is that they have never self-corrected after the Clintons.
But then, golly gee, Hillary couldn't have used the White House as her posh campaign headquarters, having an unprecedented number of state dinners in their last year and Bill wouldn't have been able to give unpardonable pardons, smarmy, to the bitter end.
And all this done while the DNC stood by, mute.
The Clintons are ONLY fanatically adored by their own little base of noisy supporters, no one else. When will the DNC get that fact in their ineffectual little heads?
Words are important! Obama is so weak, his followers have to carry him. He's their savior, so they don't mind.
Well - The Democratic Party can't afford "to carry" Obama. He can never beat McCain, not even as a democrat. We've got to drop him FAST!
Stand on your own feet Obama. Speak your own words.
"hope" and "dream" I hope and dream too. I hope that this is all a dream, a bad dream.
2008 will be 1972 all over again. McCain with Romney as his running mate will tell the American people that he will take care of the terrorists and Romney the economy. The Dems will spend the whole summer fighting, and come November the Republicans will win 40 states.
vsign
"Words are important!" Your over used quote.
Your posts do not help your argument.
I can just imagine your consternation should Edward's
endorse Senator Obama.
And when you accuse Obama for getting Imus fired,
you only prove your limited knowledge and creepy
bigotry.
Happy to know you are on the side of working Americans.
How has Clinton's NAFTA worked for you?
Do yourself a favor and read the many articles printed
about Senator Obama. Of particular interest are his
hour long conferences with newspaper Editorial Boards.
The hours are spent with questions from the staff.
The candidates do not know the questions in advance.
The candidates must answer to the best of their knowledge.
Well, Senator Obama has answered their questions
fully and has then won their endorsements.
If you read these articles, you will find out he agrees with you and your concerns, much more than Sen. Clinton.
As a former supporter of Hillary Clinton, I now support Senator Obama.
Hillary's desperation comes from her Iraq War Vote
and her refusal to admit it was wrong. She is the
one totally out of touch with the American people.
Her LAST CHANCE to correct herself was during the
last debate. She didn't.
She now knows by her falling numbers her campaign
is doomed.
Now I wish she would change her tactics so she could
become the country's First Woman Vice President.
She may not change and the DEM PARTY CAN
NO LONGER CARRY HER EGO!
The Democrats have been too willing to stick to rules of campaigning beheaviors that the Republicans don't. How long before Republicans and their friends in talk radio they control start up the slime machine against Sen. Clinton bringing back up all the junk they had against Bill Clinton. How long before they put out ads showing Democrats as 'surrender monkeys' as to Iraq. How long, especially if Sen. Obama is the likely canidate will they create a new generation version of the racist 'Willie Horton' ad.
Democrats and their supporters must put out ads that bash Republicans on their horrible decisons under GWB. Have an ad showing the caskets of soldiers killed and of crippled men and women soldiers in a stupid war in Iraq. Show a family getting their home forclosed. Show people who died, got sicker or got screwed becaues of our health care system. Tie all these facts to the Republicans, especially GWB and his designeated Republcan replacment, McCain. Whenever a anti-Democrat ad appears, counter it fast and hard with a reply ad and on the stump. Democrats must make sure they get their story out through the media their way, without filters. The Internet can be a critical way to do that.
No matter what, the Democrats must attack first and fast.
yes, the GOP will fight dirty . . . they will rig elections .. .they are the scum of the earth . . . we know how the chimp took florida .. his brother gave it to him and we all know about the role of the supreme court in thrusting the chimp on us . . . this time hopefully we know how to fight back harder . . . whether it is hillary or obama it is going to be nasty . . . they will fight harder than in 2000 and 2004 .. . so we have to be ready .. . what is clear from the primaries thus far is that we want change . . . not more of the status quo .. .we have to go with that and win . . . Obama for me!
Thank you, Mr. Altschul, for reminding us what the real world looks like. I have to hope and pray that Obama's message of hope and reconciliation is just a schtick to get the nomination - because if it's what he genuinely believes, we're doomed. The Republicans, as you make perfectly clear, have no earthly intention of working side by side with the Democrats to create a better America. They will only work side by side with the corporations to create a better business environment. Haven't the polls made it crystal clear that what the people think is entirely irrelevant to the Republican ideology? Polls=public opinion=dung heaps in the Republican scheme of things. Their gloves will come off the instant President Obama takes the oath of office - and will stay off for the next four years. Oh, and what's all this about Illinois politics being the ultimate training ground? Last I heard, the Illinois machine (i.e., the Chicago machine) was a Democratic machine, not a Republican machine. So any political street fighting Obama did wound have been against his own party. Oooh, I can just see the Republicans shaking in their shoes!
Excellent! And we're back in the REAL WORLD, if just for a moment!
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Posted February 18, 2008 | 09:59 AM (EST)