How to Take the Fight Back to Hillary

Over the next few weeks, the Obama campaign must reframe this campaign, before it settles into the story that Clinton's team is telling (she's tough, he's not; she's lunchpail, he's college-campus granola; he's talk, she's work). The campaign needs a new way to talk about the fundamental difference between these two candidates.

There is such a story, that the Obama camp can tell from now on, which has the merit of being neither same-old nor the kind of sudden departure that looks like desperation. It also has the merit of being true.

It's this: Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the elites. She's the candidate of people with money, privilege and connections who say, in essence, Let Me Handle This. You don't have the time or the energy or the expertise to fight your own fight. I will do it for you, because I know best. When that phone rings at 3 A.M., I'll answer it. You go back to sleep. Clinton's is the progressive politics of the last century: I Will Fight for You. Because, God knows, you can't do it yourselves.

Many Americans (especially younger Americans) instinctively dislike this kind of condescension. Dislike being excluded from the work of solving the problem; dislike the experts who tell us what to do; and dislike the phoniness of privileged people who declare themselves oppressed. When Clinton talks in carefully composed sentences about the tribulations of regular Americans, you sense that for her the story is just material for the campaign, a lawyer's anecdote. Her story is, these poor little shlubs need me.

If you really want me to do better, give me the tools to do it myself. Conservatives have picked up on that kind of feeling and used it skillfully against Al Gore and John Kerry, but there is nothing inherently right-wing about a message that says "I trust the American people.''

The Obama campaign can make the case that Hillary is all about keeping power and privilege for herself and people like her. It is embedded in every aspect of the campaign, from organization to policy positions. On health care, Clinton wants a mandate (we can't trust those young people who think they don't need insurance). In fundraising, much of Clinton's money comes from the wealthy rather than small donations. In other words, her financial support comes from people like her -- wealthy people who sit on corporate boards, run into each other at Davos, go on junkets together. Obama's campaign, as it likes to proclaim, is owned by large numbers of ordinary people, each making small contributions.

The hesitation so many people feel about a dynastic sequence of Bush and Clinton presidencies folds into this story. So does the widespread unease about both Clintons' manner -- that sense they give of saying one thing in public and doing another in private.

This is the most important sense in which Hillary would be more of the same -- a president who would resemble George W. Bush in her reliance on a closed circle of people like herself to decide our fate.

Consider: Obama and John McCain have had testy exchanges. Hillary and McCain have knocked back shots together while on Congressional trips. They're at ease with each other because they live in the same world: the world of the connected and the privileged, who are comfortable deciding what the rest of us should do. (Remember, when Chelsea Clinton was deployed this year, she went to Hawaii with a microphone, not to Baghdad with a gun.)

This, the Obama campaign should proclaim, is the real meaning of "Yes, We Can.'' We can make our own decisions, thank you, and answer the crisis phone ourselves. And the real problem with Hillary is a trust issue. Not that we can't trust her, but that she's part of a class of people who don't trust us.

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Comments

[Moose49]

Great idea. I hope Axelrod and the Obama brain trust are thinking along similar lines.

I liked how Obama wrapped Hillary and her best buddy McCain in the same cloth in his speech Tuesday night. More of that would be good.

And here's something else for consideration.

Top Ten Things Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush have in common:

1) Same sense of entitlement to office (one by birthright, one by marriage-right, for lack of a better term).

2) Same willingness to go in the gutter and do whatever it takes to slime their opponents.

3) Same willingness to game the system or try to change the rules in the middle of the contest when they don't work to your advantage (see Bush in Florida, Hillary's complaints about caucuses and the Michigan/Florida situation).

4) Hiring sleazebags as their chief strategists (Rove, Penn) and tolerating incompetents in their midst (Michael Brown, Penn).

5) Both incompetent strategists and managers who are so arrogant, they fail to plan ahead (Bush in Iraq after the fall of Saddam, Hillary after Super Tuesday).

6) Associating with slimey characters (Jack Abramoff et al with Bush, Norman Hsu, Webb Hubbell et al with Hillary).

7) Supporting the war in Iraq and a belligerent posture toward Iran.

8) Weird family dynamics in which the nation pays a price for them working out their personal issues and demons (Bush trying to get back at Poppy for failing to show him love, Hillary trying to get back at Bill for failing to show her love).

9) Both obsessed with secrecy (Bush on everything, Hillary on White House records and tax returns).

10) Both refuse to ever admit a mistake (Bush on everything, Hillary on Iraq war vote).

[ndolomar]

couldn't have written it better myself. thank you for pointing this out. he is a candidate -- and would be a president -- beholden to the american people, not its corporations. that's such a refreshing idea, i think i'm going to poke my eyes out with gumdrops at the thought.

[SamThornton]

The Ohio election may represent more than just the success of negative campaigning. The CBC in Canada is reporting that the infamous NAFTA memo that claimed Sen. Obama's NAFTA stance was just a campaign ploy, was a fraud concocted by Conservative Party officials in Canada. So far, it's not clear whether evidence exists that the fraud was created in cooperation with Clinton campaign officials. If it was, it may constitute a violation of US criminal laws by the Clinton campaign.

Latest from the CBC is that Canadian officials outside the Conservative Party are calling for a full investigation by the RCMP, the Canadian equivalent or our FBI. http://www.cbc.ca/cp/national/080305/n030555A.html

[mmerose]

Absolutely right. The Clinton message "I can" is inherently exclusive, disempowering, and elitist.

The essential Obama message, "Yes we can," is part of "changing the mindset that got us into Iraq," and into a set of insults to our Constitution that have gone right along with it.

In addition, Mrs. Clinton's "tough" self-chara­cterizatio­n rings right in harmony with George Bush's staying the course. Don't admit you're wrong, act like unwanted information doesn't exist, keep the unwashed masses as uninformed as possible, lie in a pinch, keep America in readiness to bomb somebody.

The cynicism of lying to the citizens of Ohio about her NAFTA connection also has its roots in elitism.
It is a well-documented part of the aristocratic mindset that lying to peons doesn't count, they are not worthy of the obligation of honesty, and may be lied to in general because the life of those above them is none of their business, and the excuse that you are lying to them for their own good covers the rest.

[Fez]

Obama's challenge now is to not only defend himself from Clinton's attacks but to mount some attacks of his own and expose Clinton for the elite hack she is. I watched the last two presidential elections with utter disgust as neither Gore nor Kerrey stood up and defended himself against lies, slander, and calumny. As the saying goes, "Never take a knife to a gunfight." Gore and Kerrey took handkerchiefs embroidered with their initials to that gunfight and got their clocks cleaned. Neither election should have been close enough for Bush to steal, but because Gore and Kerrey were so intent on "rising above it all" they allowed their good names and good works to be denigrated by sewer rats like Karl Rove. So Obama's dilemma is this: how do I attack and defend without becoming a nasty bitch like Clinton? How about going right after Clinton's last attack ad with one like this: "When that phone rings at 3 AM, you want someone to answer who has the judgement to make the RIGHT decision RIGHT NOW, not someone who has to convene a gaggle of consultants to triangulate. You want someone who is RIGHT from Day One, not someone who is frequently wrong and is too stubborn to acknowledge it." Obama may not have the stomach for making such attacks and defending himself, but if he doesn't, he will end up as roadkill. It is unfortunate that our politics have become so toxic that a successful poitician in the US has the morals of an axe murderer. But that is the current reality. Let's see some of that South Side of Chicago grit that Obama talks about. Clinton just called yo mama a ho... watcha gonna do, Barack?

[pbarba1969]

Amen. The fact is who are the rich elite voting for? Senator Barack Obama . The blue collar working class are voting along with Hillary. I think the reason she won in Ohio is simple. She picked up a lot of the voters who would have voted for John Edwards...

[Countess]

This is one of the saddest jokes in this campaign the idea that she is for workers families. Like so much of her image this is so hollow but we must give her credit as being perhaps the slimiest politician in either party. She is working hard to convince us all how disgusting politics can be.

[PinkoAttic]

Well said.

But it won't be enough. Idealism should always be tempered by pragmatism. He cannot defeat her by remaining " the nice guy " with respect to campaign tactics. We all know what position nice guys finish in.

1) Demand that she release her tax returns;
2) Demand that she release information with respect to what she actually DID in the White House;
3) Expose her campaign contributors & pork barrel history in the senate;
4) and lastly (in the same vein as your argument), paint her as John McCain's good buddy who would maintain the status quo the same way he will as president, in the event Hillary wins the nomination.

GET TOUGH, AND SHOW SOME METTLE, BEFORE THEY FIND A WAY TO STEAL THIS THING.

[TerenceHartnett]

True, take JFK and RFK for example.

JFK said he was "an idealist without illusions."

And RFK, perhaps the defining idealist in the democratic party, was an extraordinarily practical politician, even ruthless when it came to defending his brother against attacks similar to what we have seen from Clinton against Obama.

But don't underestimate the Obama team.

[PinkoAttic]

I sure hope you're right. They've done a terrific job up to now but true winners know how and when to change gears as circumstances require.

[wldnswmmr]

I think you're right, sir, and it relates to the reason Hillary is sitting on her current tax return. I suspect she's waiting till she sees if she gets the nomination because revealing just how much moolah she and Bill pull down (if they filed a joint return for 2007; I suspect not, as part of the disguise) runs counter to her populist pitch to the party of the people, the Democrats. She is an elitist, a Martha's Vineyard habituee, a Renaissance Weekender, a connected crypto-Republican (returning to her native condition, as head of the Young Republicans at Wellesley). To his credit, Bill Clinton took on elites that he described as believing they had "a congenital right to rule." He then became a member of their influential club, and Hillary has absolutely nothing in common with these beleaguered laid off factory workers in Ohio with no health insurance she sheds her crocodile tears for. That should be a focus of Obama's counter-attack. He really did do community organization; she's a phony populist, a corporate lawyer who's trying to ride her husband's coat tails into the Oval Office.

[bauersox]

Hillary Clinton grew up in a middle-class home, worked hard and has been successful. Why do you hold that against her? Are you some kind of Bolshevik?

That approach won't work for Obama. Unlike Hillary, both *his* parents were college graduates with advanced degrees. And his granny who raised him was a bank VP. Plus, while Hillary was a student at the local suburban public high school, Obama attended the spiffiest, most post and elite private prep school in Hawaii (Punahou, in case you care to Google it). He lives in a mansion valued at nearly $2 million. His wife -- who also attended Ivy League schools -- pulls down a salary in the mid six figures.

Lots of luck turning Obama into a "man of the people."

[bauersox]

"Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the elites. She's the candidate of people with money, privilege and connections who say, in essence, Let Me Handle This."

Really? Until now, the Obama people have been lecturing us that they are the elites; you know, the people with higher educational achievements; the ones who make more money.

And we've been hearing that the Hillary supporters are working class, under-educated etc. Obama has been playing this great big class card all along. Labeling Obama as part of some kind of elite doesn't seem to have worked for him. Why do you think it will work against Hillary?

Did something change last night where Hillary supporters suddenly got rich and were offered big important jobs?

[mmerose]

No, it's the Clinton campaign that has been labeling Obama as elite.

Obama went to work with the working class, etc, while Clinton nepotized in a corporate law firm as her husband climbed the political ladder.

But if it makes you mad and jealous that Obama also excelled academically, I guess its easy for you to figure, America doesn't deserve excellence.

America both deserves and needs the excellence of Barack Obama.