It's Better to Lose an Election than the Party

In the 20th century world of machine politics, political machines survived on the principle that "it's better to lose an election than to lose the party". The Clintons and Terry McAuliffe lost the National Democratic Party to Howard Dean & Co. after John Kerry lost to George Bush in 2004. Now it appears that Hillary has lost the nomination and if Obama is the candidate who loses to McCain it is likely that she and Bill will inherit the party once again. An Obama defeat by a Republican who bears the burden of George Bush's eight years, will forfeit any claim he may have to lead the Democratic Party. For him 2008 is the all or nothing year.

I know readers will think, and I don't know any nice way of putting it, that it might be in Hillary's interests not to do too much for the Obama campaign. Many of her voters are just as loyal to her as Obama's are to him, and if even 10% of them should decide to vote the other way, Mr. Obama is probably a loser. At this moment Obama may need Ms. Clinton more than she needs him, and it's probably time for Obama fans to forget the past and forgive Ms. Clinton, for what they perceive to be, her sins.

I saw little of that in the comments on "ABC -- Anybody But Clinton" piece posted here yesterday. I saw none of it over the weekend, when Obama's people demanded and received by a narrow vote four delegates in Michigan that they did not deserve, and certainly did not need. That kind of petty humiliation did nothing to restore party unity, and permitted Harold Ickes Jr. to get in some pretty rough licks at the Deaniacs who now run the party.

The time for that stuff is over and I'd advise the Obama team to take a hard look at what I will now call the ABOs -- Anybody But Obamas. Obama lost South Dakota, his sponsor Tom Daschle's home state, by ten points last night to Hillary Clinton, by that time a dead candidate. If even the politically dead can beat Obama, he's got a lot of work to do, and I'm not sure at this point if I'd advise Hillary Clinton to do any heavy lifting for him. It's a rough world out there and Barack is going to need all the help he can get. Because for Hillary's best political interests, it may be better to lose the election and regain the party.

Related:
Read more from Huffington Post bloggers on Barack Obama clinching the Democratic nomination for president

Comments

[seejake]

OBAMA LANDSLIDE! It's coming!

[LorinM]

I'm not sure I follow the logic of your argument, that if 10% of Clinton supporters switch sides then Obama is cooked. Since both Obama and Clinton outdrew McCain in the primaries (even when they were competitive) this can't possibly be true. Take the Feb 5th primaries... both candidates beat McCain in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. McCain beat the loser in zero states. McCain beat both in Arizona and New Mexico.

If Obama gets 90% of the Clinton voters we'll see the biggest landslide since Reagan-Mondale.

It also assumes no Republicans will defect from McCain. And from what we've been seeing over the last few days, it seems McCain can't even hold elected Republicans in line with him. How many of Huckabee's people are going to be convinced to vote McCain?

You also cite the fact that Clinton won SD as a dead candidate. Well, tell that to anyone except the Clinton folks, who kept thinking she was anything but up until Charlie Rangel had to tell her so. It's also dubious logic in that Obama could back into the nomination, win or lose. Why expend valuable time and resources fighting a battle that's already won. Seems a bit vainglorious.

[Poboy]

Projection:

The Clintons will NEVER have anything to do with the Democratic Party, influence wise, not if Black people have anything to do with it. I know and love my peeps. Hillary may not be able to hold on to her Senate Seat.

Black politicians and others who supported Hillary's racist campaign without condemning it had better watch out.

[Cugel]

If the Clintons try and seize control of the Democratic party after this election it will mean all out civil war. No way will the rest of us sit quietly and let them do that.

They will have to go back to their old lobbyist donor base. Everyone who's been mobilized by Obama will be against them.

If Hillary sulks and her supporters stay home, let alone voting McCain, she will be about as popular in the party as Nader. I will NEVER support a Billary takeover of the party.

I've had it with the DLC. Once you get a divorce, you never go back. And we're not going back either.

[twgbonehead]

If Obama loses the election, Hillary will become popular enough to consider running as Nader's VP in 2012. Well, she could at least hope to make the "short list".

Hillary might consider what 4 years of a McCain presidency, for which she would be widely blamed, would do for her career.

Hillary might consider the damage she has done to the DNC in her fight with it, and question whether there will be anything left worth re-inheriting if they do get it back.

This year is Obama's all-or-nothing year? I think this week was Hillary's all-or-nothing week, and you'd better believe the week ends this Saturday.

[dasimms]

This post makes me realize how prevalent delusions of grandeur are. Hilliary fought hard and lost. She would have the respect of everyone if she had been fair and honest in her fight.
This post seems to ignore the fact that people in the Nation are suffering because of the war and this economy.
Even if you are not very politically astute, you will try to determine the best chance and hope for an improved life. Hilliary does not offer improvement and neither does McCain.
Hilliary might be of some help to Obama, but I really don't think much. She has been exposed for the self-serving experienced politician she is. Obama should denouce and reject her. But he is of higher moral character than I am.

[rgersmrk]

Mr. Schonfeld, what makes you think the Clinton's will take the DNC over if (and that is a big if) Obama loses? Right now, the Clinton's are as much of a problem for the DNC as they are helpful. If Hillary doesn't do everything in her power to get Obama elected she will be a pariah in the DNC with the stakes of this election. Your short sided thinking is why the DNC has lost the last 2 elections. It's a new game with a really weak Republican party.

[neesy08]

Obama does not need HRC to defeat McCain. It is the Prez, not eh VP that carries the preidency. Obama is not that weak. If he cannot defeat McCain on his own he might as well just get out of the race. Tge GOP are toast this year. Bill frist is worried about Obama. A white man worried about a black man. When was the last time you heard that. Obama is a major threat to the GOP and they all know it. Obama will be just fine. he defeated the Clinton machine, and he will defeat McCain, who still doesn't have the backing of most conservatives.

[sparkandy]

We need to get the Republicans out of Washington, and most people, even a lot of Republicans know it. Obama may not be the one to do it, however. His supporters rightfully see him as the way out of a horrible mess, but if they're only talking to each other, they're not aware of what other people are thinking. You know, Clinton die hards, Republicans, Independents and people who just vote because they're supposed to, but don't like either candidate.... The Democrats never worry about their candidate. That's why they won the last two elections against Bush. Oh, wait.....

[BadCompany]

The Dims lost for multiple reasons like:

Trying to appeal to Republicans.
Media collusion with BushCo (NYT).
Homophobia.
The electoral college.
Boring, wooden, out-of-touch candidates.
GOP scare tactics.

Obama has been appealing to non-voters.
There's a lot of them.
It's what the Dims should have been doing for years.

[tototo]

The Clintons, ie the Democratic Leadership Council's "third way New Democrats," are going to have to do a lot of work if they want to wrest back control of the party. Because the DLC supported the authorization to use military force in Iraq, and cheerleaded Bush's "stay the course" policy's for years.

It's not so much that the Dean faction has wrested power from the Clinton faction as that the Clinton faction has lost touch with the electorate and fallen behind the times.

All these hypotheses -- just like Hillary's "electability" argument -- are nothing more than that: hypotheses. But who could have hypothesized over 35 million voters turning out for the primaries this year?

There is no statistical model or historical precedent that can tell us how this thing will go in November. None. And there's certainly none that could tell us what the fallout of an Obama win -- or loss for that matter -- would be. 2012 is a lifetime away. Remember how quickly "everything changed" in a brief hour on the morning of September 11, 2001.

[Doofus]

'There is no statistical model or historical precedent that can tell us how this thing will go in November.'

But it's obvious (?) that polls will tell us more about how the
electorate feels about the situation then isolated comments
by individuals here on HuffPost or wherever. The comments
by those who insist that they won't vote for this one or that one,
especially since they're as likely to be political sabotage as not,
don't tell us much at all about who huge numbers of voters will
choose in Novmber. But polls may do so.

[Liam617]

I echo the sentiment that the Clintons seem to have lost touch with the public or, at least, have not learned how to adapt their slash and burn political style to the world of YouTube and 24/7 political blogging.

There was a time when Bill could say one thing in Ohio and a contradictory statement in California and you might hear a rumor to that effect but today every lie is caught on video and put online for all to see. So many of their tactics seemed hopelessly ham-fisted and 90's in style.

[standard]

That's one view of the universe. Here's another.

"Many of her voters are just as loyal to her as Obama's are to him, and if even 10% of them should decide to vote the other way, Mr. Obama is probably a loser."

That's just a wishful fantasy. Many--maybe most--of her supporters like her because she's been the Party's most visible woman, recently. When Obama places several women on his cabinet, and if he selects another woman as his running mate, her political stock gets diluted.

Power is a relationship, not a commodity. She doesn't control those who voted for her. With Obama now leader of the Party, his relationship to them has changed--as has hers. Voters who, faced with the choice, would have voted for Obama over McCain, will. Obama can win without the rest, given all the new voters he's attracted.

"[I]t's probably time for Obama fans to forget the past and forgive Ms. Clinton, for what they perceive to be, her sins."

We're not "fans". We're voters.

It's not "the past". It's this year.

Sen. Clinton's sins aren't a matter of perception, they're a matter of public record.

They--and her losing campaign strategy--are why a freshman Senator beat her. The last people on earth from whom Sen. Obama needs to be taking advice are the Clintons' apologists and advisors.

[DietrichMoody]

Wow. To call Hillary Clinton a politically dead candidate is pretty clueless, considering she still hasn't given up her candidacy, she still touts her alleged 18 million voters, she still says she can win, and the fact that, unlike Romney, and Huckabee, Hillary, chose to fight to the end, eventhough by April, she knew she had no mathematical way of winning but failed to concede and allowed voters to think she had a shot. No sir, politically dead candidates were Romney, Ron Paul and Hukabee, yet these candidates received millions of votes, even when McCain was the presumptive nominee. If Romney and Huckabee were still in the race, I guarantee that they would have each won a few states right up until the end and humiliated McCain.

Sir, the General Election is not the Democratic Primary or a closed Democratic Primary election. South Dakota was a closed Primary and Montana was open to Republicans, Independents and Democrats. What a great lock the Clintons have in closed primaries, don't they.


Obama will have to fight for Romney, Huckabee and Ron Paul votes. Not to mention the tens of millions of Independent voters and other non Democrats or Democrats who did not vote in the Primary. And he's going to have to fight Reagan Era people like you too.

[CaptainObvious]

By the way - not sure if you got the memo, but it's the 21st century now. Happened about 7 years ago.

[CaptainObvious]

"Hillary's best political interests"? Here I was thinking I lived in a democracy... Those darnded liberal schoolteachers told me I was supposed to cast my vote in my own political interests, and those of my country.

Maybe Hillary *should* form a new party - you could link up with the neo-cons to form the Totalitarian party.

[tedbear]

Hillary Clinton has already done so much damage to Obama, damage McCain has already started picking up and using, that she should be run out of the party immediately.

If Obama doesn't win the general election, it will be on Hillary Clinton's shoulders, so she had better paint that smile on and get out there for the home team. The home team, Hillary, is the Obama team.

When Hillary could see she couldn't win, she should have been a man about it and quit then. The superdelegates should have made her quit, because they knew she was lessening Obama's chances, they knew she was trying to destroy him, and that the Republicans would use every single negative thing she piled on him. As we speak, McCain has an ad out showing Hillary praising McCain. If she would have gotten out when she knew she couldn't win, which was months ago, she would have helped the party. Now, who knows if she can help. I hope so, because Obama deserves it and she owes the voters. She needs to try to make up for all the damage she has done.

[Thorn]

Good. Hold that thought.

[ckdogs]

The Clintons will never return to major power. They have embarrassed themselves in this campaign - both of them. Obama will beat McCain because he's right on the issues - no more, no less. If he should lose the election, other powers will fill the vacuum - not the Clintons. Their scorched earth primary, and her disingenuous speech last night, have been their coup de grace.
(And we didn't even get to the part where Bill's business dealings and personal life were "oppo-ed" by the Republicans.)