UPDATED EARLY FEB 16
A failure to recognize the importance of being out-organized in Iowa as well as the significance of an early caucus state 3d place began to cast doubt on Sen. Clinton’s stance as “inevitable”. While she was being the frontrunner, Sen. Obama was able to present himself to voters in his own way — as a reform minded, “clean and articulate” (Sen. Biden regrets … ), non-race-baiting stemwinding speaker. Later, she’d try to portray him as a sleazy southside Chicago ward heeler, but by then it was too late.
Her “electability” argument failed on Super Tuesday. She was no more electable than Obama and they fought to a tie.
“Ready on Day One” seems shakey in light of campaign staff turmoil — is this how she reacts to crisis? Cold dismissal and just ignore her losses? Doesn’t take personal responsibility, does she?
Now she’s got Latino “firewalls” and “wait until March.”
I wish she’d at least make it a noble end. I wish she would just say flat out that the White House needs a woman and a woman’s point of view. She calls herself transformative, why doesn’t she try BEING transformative and just get down and dirty and talk about gender? She’s a codependent mommy with a 10 point plan to fix everything. I’d frame every damn issue in terms of “the children” whether it was the mothers of wounded veterans or the debt we’ve piled up on our grandchildren or the costs of raising children and emergency room horror stories and on and on and on. It’s the vision thing, as we used to tell Bush I. I’d completely change the story from this insider campaign demographic superdelegates crap and I do it dramatically. I’d go to Walter Reed Hospital or some such in every state and visit wounded soldiers’ parents. I’d be in day care centers and nursing homes and not factories. I’d be saying every day that I could bring something to the White House no other candidate can bring — a mother’s heart, the heart that’s been broken by so many slights from men who underestimated her willingness to work hard and succeed in a man’s world. Perhaps I’d be just ever so slightly more subtle, you understand, but I swear to God that if I were her, I go down fighting in the ring and not in the back rooms of a convention hall. I’d defy them to deny me and destroy the hopes of every adolescent girl in the country, in the face of their shattered mothers’ wrath. If I’m Mark Penn, I tell momma to get mad and line everybody out and use the slogan: “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, and mommas all over this country ain’t happy.”
She can’t do that.
Sorry.
POST SCRIPT: I FOUND THIS QUOTE FROM THE GRUBBY LITTLE DICK MORRIS AFTER I WROTE THE ABOVE ABOUT HILLARY. DO YOU THINK HE READS MY STUFF? JUST SAYIN’.
She could have waged a grassroots, small-donor, Internet campaign of change based on being the first woman running for president with a serious chance of victory. The charisma could have been hers, the excitement hers and the novelty hers. But by embracing experience and pretending to be safe and tested, she deadened the excitement her candidacy could have generated.
HERE’S THE LINK. I CAN’T BELIEVE I THINK LIKE THAT WORM. OH, WELL. TURNS OUT HE WROTE HIS SHIT ON FEB 13, TOO.
I’m looking for a game-changer, someone willing to dare to be great. Maybe Obama will fail. But, I believe he will fail greatly and well. I won’t be ashamed if I lose because I think he — and we — did our best and didn’t go down without a fight. From day one, he “re-brands” America in a way that destroys a lot of prejudices we’ve well earned in the past few years. It’s a transformative start. I’m a lawyer and I hate what’s happened to our Constitution, our laws, our courts, the Department of Justice, my profession. He’s a constitutional law professor. He knows this Bush stuff is screwed up and I believe he will quickly move to change all that. He knows this war is whack but he’s not stupid about getting out (“We need to do a better job of planning to get out than we did planning to get in.”).
The Republican Party, I think one way or another are replaying the film of the helicopters lifting off the Embassy in Saigon. It paralyzes them in Baghdad. Trillions in debt, a recession, a war that can’t be won or lost. And, McCain managed to twist himself into knots over the looney far right social agenda.
Obama will win Wisconsin by about 5% and do better in Hawaii. Hillary will win both Ohio and Texas, but not get enough delegates to make up all the slack. Obama will win — barely — in Pennsylvania and big in North Carolina and it will be over.
Obama’s message will be policy oriented and include swipes at McCain about equally as Hillary over the next three weeks. By Pennsylvania and North Carolina, he will begin painting a picture of McCain as “the past” and attack his former “maverick” credentials by portraying them as mere flip flops — he was against the tax cuts before he was for the tax cuts. The campaign will become a reality show narrative but he will be the nominee at the convention as superdelegates break to him in the background. That’s only to keep our interest, though, because I think much of the latter part of the campaign the fix will be in and the stuff in the papers will be a kabuki show.
So, why do they keep playing the game now that I’ve called it? Go figure.
blogblah
I just gotta say down here in Texas people keep talking about how much Texans hate Hillary. 99% of people I’ve talked to who are dems prefer Obama. But then again this is Austin. This isn’t the rest of redneckville, TX which is racist (though also sexist–but then again are those the people who will be voting Democrat at all?). There’s also a large Hispanic population, and apparently there’s some kind of animosity between blacks and hispanics? I don’t know. I’m just sayin, it might be an interesting case in ole TX.
The Viennese Squeeze sez:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fpccga/
Did you read Obama’s speech on foreign policy? I nearly vomited. No CHANGE at all. Same nauseating old shit. More military (which at least means more health care for people who otherwise can’t afford it, that’s the American way of getting it to the poor). America is already using as much money on military as the next 20 countries of the world together. “We have to remain the no 1 in the world” blablabla. “We have nuclear weapons and all kinds of nasty stuff but others shouldn’t have them”. “The world can’t do anything without America” (it’s EU troops that are going to Darfur now BTW).
Didn’t see anything about only deploying troops abroad if America is actually attacked. Nope, that’s it for me. As long as these imperial inclinations and the megalomania are still around, there won’t be any CHANGE.It doesn’t really matter who wins, the difference in foreign policy between all candidates is hardly discernable. Same old crap.
Your ideas about how Hillary should have gone about it are excellent BTW. Indeed!. That would have been a good strategy. It never pays for a woman to try to sound and behave like a man anyway. An original never looks and acts as strained and over-the-top as does the eager copy which for that reason never comes across as authentic. And voters funnily enough do have an antenna for authenticity.
Brigitte
Hillary with heart and playing the mommy card is brilliant, only one problem. Seems to me that this would be an appalling, weak way of presenting herself, in her eyes. She wants to act tough with that plastered fake smile. God knows, she’s not about baking cookies. Besides, we would all see right through her especially if she seemed even remotely touchy-feely. (Then again, maybe she should cry more.)
I have friends who love, love, love Hillary. However, it’s almost a sympathy thing, as if they’ll feel sorry for her if she loses. And then there’s near hatred for Obama. The attitude is: look at this little black child cutting in line in front of this nice lady.
I don’t understand voting out of sympathy. Pick an issue at least.
Thanks for less math. I’m going to hit that beer now.
Obama’s foreign policy team is led by Ziggy B and is, in my view Eurocentric and very conservative. The best look at his foreign policy is in Foreign Affairs, where you can read a more coherent and scholarly viewpoint penned by two others on his foreign policy team.
B may wish to vomit because she sees no change. I understand, but I also understand the political downside of a radical change in foreign policy too soon in the election season. People are already unsettled by his message of change (for good or ill), and he can’t get too radical.
I still insist the very fact of his name and face is a transformative “re-branding” of America across the globe. I believe he understands that the eventual resolutions of America’s biggest felt problems at this time begin in Gaza and the West Bank and not Baghdad.
I believe he will also force his foreign policy team to place more emphasis on Africa than in the past.
That said, his foreign policy will not be the radical change many in Europe might wish, including our Austrian friend. I believe something else he commits to do will have a long-term effect on foreign policy that has not been discussed much. Obama has indicated that he believes the set piece military that relies on masses of soldiers and armor required for state to meet state in battle is sooo 20th Century and that he wants to redirect the miltary towards smaller teams and asymmetrical foes. I’m not so sure that the withdrawal of brigades from Iraq might not be accompanied or followed by withdrawals of American military presence in Korea and Europe and elsewhere. I think we’re in for a sorta kinda isolationist time when America, hamstrung in Mesopotamia, wants to take a “hands off” approach to many problems in so far as being bellicose with the miltary.
I think Obama is the most likely to get jiggy with Kyoto, but I can taste some protectionist flavors in the small pie of information we have about trade policy.
By November, B, and this is important to remember about the American electorate, about 40% of American voters will only know one single thing about foreign policy: “surge or surrender?”. Another 45% will only know: “A war that never should have been authorized, never should have been fought.” Right now, they don’t even know that much. So, some of this discussion might be called … uhm … esoteric.
blogblah