The past 24 hours of televised bloviation, offered without embarrassment by the same people who were spectacularly wrong about New Hampshire, brought to mind the words of Leonard Cohen :
"There is a war between the young and old,
a war between the men and the women.
There is a war between those who say there is a war
and those who say there isn't."
Underneath the radar, identity conflicts have been driving this election. The most obvious case in point from Tuesday's vote is women, as all the pundits finally figured out after the fact. Press attacks on Hillary's show of emotion and their gloating over her poor showing in Iowa triggered a surround-the-wagons reaction, even among women who don't support her politics. John Edwards' harsh reaction to her show of vulnerability lost him female support and amplified the same 'us against them' emotion.
The Clinton campaign has accidentally triggered some identity-based responses of its own. Their cynical campaign posture against idealistic Democrats created a backlash among the party base - and me, too. I'm pretty darned pragmatic in my own life (25 years in the corporate world, consultant to the Bush I State Department, etc.). But I value idealism, think of myself as idealistic, and consider it the best civic virtue. So when Hillary's campaign aides started slamming people because they hope for a better world, I hit back (and got into a little brawl with a Clinton insider. That's another Clintonista mistake: Communicating that they care more about the Clintons and each other than they do about the rest of the country. Here's an early case in point.)
Call it Rorschach politics, and it's driving the Democratic primaries. Politicians' statements look and feel different to different people, depending on their own biography and personality. And voters project qualities onto candidates that sometimes tell us more about them than they do about the candidate. You've seen it: Hillary's either a calculating and self-entitled insider, or she's a woman encircled and beleaguered by hostile men. Obama's either facile and inexperienced or he's fresh, eloquent, and hopeful. Edwards is either a fearless fighter for change or a harsh rhetorician. And on and on, until the debate stage begins to look more like a hall of mirrors.
The Clinton campaign finally got it. Women weren't going to buy her as a heartless, unfeeling simulacrum of a 'tough guy.' (Neither were men.) Voters want to like her. So they finally let her open up - or it just happened - and she hit a nerve. But their strategy for attacking Obama keeps setting off other identity land mines. When they say he's inexperienced, younger voters hear them saying the young have nothing to offer. When they attack his eloquent words, the rest of us hear them advocating cynicism and corruption. If they don't wise up on that score, they're going to keep shooting themselves in the foot.
And I can't help it. After these results came in I started thinking I was pretty god-damned smart. Or, to paraphrase Wile E. Coyote: "RJ Eskow: Super. Genius." Maybe I wasn't that brilliant, but I now have a better track record than either Hillary's campaign advisors or the media pundits. I gave Hillary's campaign some suggestions a month ago: Drop the anti-idealism line, make Bill her 'Idealism Ambassador,' adopt global warming and electoral reform as campaign issues, defend Social Security, tell more jokes, emphasize the bench strength of her team, and share her personal dreams and aspirations with voters.
Not that they listen to guys like me, but they did do a few of those things: She told a couple light jokes, dropped anti-idealism and starting talking about 'change,' and in that now-famous emotional moment she shared her aspirations and motivations. That's only three of eight suggestions, and it saved her in New Hampshire. (RJ ... Eskow: Super ... genius ...)
Don't get on my case, people. I'm just kidding. Sorta. But while we're on the topic, I wrote on Monday that the press was doing Obama no favors by anointing him the candidate-in-waiting, that the race was far from over. And that they'd turn on Barack down eventually. ("The media giveth, and the media taketh away.")
That may not be brilliance, but it's more than the punditocracy was saying. Still, I had a moment of weakness. I had written this sentence: "If Hillary wins tomorrow, which she still could, or runs a decent second ..." Then I thought to myself 'Wait a minute: There isn't a single pundit or pollster who says she can win. You may think she can, but if you write that you'll look like an idiot." So I changed it to "If she runs a decent second ..."
In other words, I deferred to the same mean-spirited and wrongheaded group of people that spent all day Wednesday tracing the tracks of Hillary's tears. "She pretended to cry," said Bill Kristol in a typical comment, "the women felt sorry for her, and she won." Typical nasty, superficial punditry. It looked real to me, butif it was an act - then, man, she's really good, and the Kristols of this world should be praising her skill.
And to think I listened to these guys. I'll never make that mistake again.