Bad politics sinking over Indiana and North Carolina… Hillary and the economists… May 7, 2008
Posted by WorldbyStorm in US Politics.trackback
Well, now this I didn’t expect. Obama having an easy victory in North Carolina (remember how the Clinton camp, and the polls were predicting otherwise?) and doing remarkably well in Indiana by pulling more or less even with Clinton although she snatched the prize at the last moment. As the Irish Times put it:
In North Carolina, Mr Obama beat Mrs Clinton by 14 percentage points, moving him closer to the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination at the party’s August convention. The result was a heavy blow to Mrs Clinton’s efforts to overtake her rival in either delegates or popular votes won during the state-by-state nominating contests that began in January.
Indiana, where she was supposedly meant to do better again, saw (as reported in the Guardian):
She won Indiana by a slim margin, 51% to 49%. But that was outweighed by his 56% to 42% landslide victory in North Carolina.
To give a meta view of what is ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in this context consider Slate’s yardsticks…
Clinton won Indiana but as she pointed out repeatedly to Petraeus, individual victories—even a surge of them in Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania—don’t change the whole story. The larger reality still holds. Barack Obama has the lead in elected delegates and the popular vote. Those leads increased Tuesday as he picked up five more delegates and roughly 200,000 more votes. For Clinton to move ahead in those numbers now, she must bring more states into the union.
Indeed. Since the latter event is somewhat unlikely it seems that Obama will be the standard bearer for the Democrats.
It’s strange though. As a spectator to these processes it’s difficult. Hillary Clinton has changed, and not for the better. I’ve defended her healthcare plan here as against that of Obama. I suspect her political inclinations were once, if not necessarily now, from the sort of progressive standpoint that many of us here would recognise, even identify with. And yet, this campaign has been a revelation. The way her accent has changed as she tours the US. The good ‘ol boy act. The sticking the boot in. To some degree it’s fair enough, this is a tough campaign, it was inevitably going to get tougher as it progressed. And yet, it’s also very much politics as usual, a zero sum game of winner take all, and in all that I just can’t help but feel that the goal has been lost sight of in the process.
The best so far?
Why what about this for shameless pandering… her latest thoughts (from the Huffington Post) about a holiday (for the Summer) from the gas tax. Now even if one supported such an idea, which one shouldn’t if one has any sense at all as regards trying to curb fuel consumption, what about this?
When asked this morning by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos if she could name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax holiday this summer, HRC said “I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”
What does that mean? Clinton is, as Jon Stewart noted on the Daily Show yesterday, one of the most highly educated and intelligent people to run for President of the United States, and yet she won’t ‘put her lot in with economists’.
It’s great, but it gets better…
She continued the line of attack, criticizing more generally “this mindset where elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.”
One has to love the entirely artificial introduction of ‘elite opinion’ (I mean, c’mon, former First Lady, husband now George Bush Snr’s bestest bestest friend - that’s not part of the elite?). But more pernicious is the idea that ‘disadvantaging’ the ‘majority’ of Americans is counterposed in this fashion. I can’t help but think that this is an echo of the Boris Johnson, shift to the right in the UK. Don’t, whatever you do, tell some hard truths to people about the way they live their lives. Don’t tell them that the future is uncertain and may well demand sacrifices, significant sacrifices, in order to safeguard the broad brushstrokes of their way of life. And here is the gap between reality and rhetoric in contemporary political debate, particularly in the US, but also here and in the UK, whereby the easy, obvious option is always taken rather than the more difficult alternative. Where it is somehow (and this is purely for political gain) ‘better’ to talk about ‘elites’ when suggesting pandering political ideas that are aired simply to solidify support. Where all the Churchillian rhetoric that is rolled out with tedious inevitability on the war on Terror, or whatever, is always used when and where it won’t impact on voting populations to any significant degree, for perish the thought that we might actually ask of people not what we can do for them, but what they can do for their own societies. The point about Churchill, for his faults, was that he actually had some grasp of the sacrifices that had to be made during a very specific historical period and was unafraid to articulate it. These people? Nah.
This pseudo class war rhetoric sits uneasily, doesn’t it? But note a further quote from the HF piece:
Clinton aide Howard Wolfson put it as clearly as the campaign has on a conference call just now. Obama, he said, is “somebody who just doesn’t seem to understand that middle-class families are hurting, working-class families are hurting, that they need relief. He would rather side with the oil companies over the interest of middle-class families.”
Now, I’m sorry, but this idea of the Clinton campaign as an advanced guard of a class alliance between hurting middle-classes and hurting working-classes is risible stuff, and the further modish dig at the ‘oil companies’ is simply nonsense. She says she will raise taxes on incomes over $250,000. Very good. But this a program of a serious redistribution does not make.
And here’s the thing. It’s not as if Obama is a flawless candidate. Quite the opposite. His program is anaemic and built on rhetoric, but that’s not what Clinton is going after. Instead she is pretending that there are easy answers, that tomorrow will necessarily be brighter than today. That’s not just pandering, that’s patronising. And it’s wrong.
Is this going any much further? All the way to the Convention? Perhaps, but the point was aired on the Slate Gabfest podcast at the weekend, that the real problem is that a Clinton imposition (now more unlikely, but still not impossible) over Obama will do greater damage to the support base(s) of the Democrats than the other way around.
Clinton doesn’t ‘put her lot in with economists’? I don’t believe her. I don’t believe she believes that for one moment. And I don’t think anyone else should either. Indiana and North Carolina certainly don’t appear to have.
On a side point, apparently, and again according to Slate, Catholics tend to view Obama with some suspicion due to the Wright issue. I find this puzzling, having not merely attended Catholic Church, but at one point for some years as a teenager sung in a folk group there. This despite a constant cognitive dissonance (or what we used to call ‘disagreement’) at the time as regards aspects of the RCC line on sexuality, social policy etc. Now granted, I had another string to my bow in the shape of the Church of Ireland, but the situation was hardly better there. Some of the views expressed were fairly scary, to put it mildly - not quite the reasonableness expected by the liberal imagination as regards the nice CofI. But my point is that in subsequent years - although no longer involved - I have been at christenings, weddings, funerals and such like, and sat again through sermons of varying worthiness, and in some cases none. I’ve never had, and never did have, the impulse to walk away, not least because however much I might disagree with the rhetoric in both churches I’ve rather liked the people who have produced it. They’ve been central to familial, domestic and other events and crises. This is how the world of actual relationships between people works, where even with those we have profound political and other differences there is still space to get along, even to have strong affection or look for solace. Their humanity at times of great upset was a genuine comfort even if I don’t and couldn’t share their beliefs on many matters. That this sort of engagement is somehow given as evidence of unworthiness on the part of Obama surely paints us all as hypocrites. And perhaps we are, but I think that’s just human as well…
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/318630
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/318585/a_change_is_gonna_come
See the above
I’ve tried and failed to put up some links to The Nation which has several articles well worth reading on this matter, as usual. It doesn’t seem to work so just google it yerselves!
I suspect that the Catholic suspicion maght be of the traditional anti-Catholic bias amongst some fundamentalist Protestants. The attitude that did for Al Smith and nearly did for Kennedy is not totally dead.
Bigotry is not a preserve of the 6 counties.The crude populism personified for me by Jeremy Clarkson is rife.
I think many are more concerned at the speed laws and the breathaliser than the state of the hospitals and the storm clouds affecting the economy.
In despir I suspect an anti congestion candidate would have split the Boris vote. Her there is no serious politicain will advocate a congestion charge in Dublin. We have to wait for car parks and buses etc. If thre was a charge the existing service would be so much more efficient.
We seem to just have competing populisms.
Sorry Ed, sorted now…
Very true Jim.
Obama now needs just about 40 more pledged delegates to have a majority of the voted delegates. This he’ll achieve on May 21 when Oregon and Kentucky vote. The movement of superdelegates to Obama at that point should accelerate.
But Obama will probably be clobbered in W. Virginia next week, and will also lose Kentucky, so Clinton has a few wins coming and so has an excuse to hang in. Where Clinton has done really well against Obama is in the mountainy, Appalachian regions, -heavily Scots-Irish.
As for the Catholics in Indiana here’s what Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics has to say:
“As you can see, Clinton did about as well in Indiana as she did in Pennsylvania and Ohio with white men, white Protestants, and seniors. However, beyond this, she suffered a decline among her best groups. Notice in particular her decline among white women, white Catholics, and union households. Basically, the core of her voting bloc was still with her, but Obama picked off a larger portion of it than he did in Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
And of course Obama carried South Bend, home of Notre Dame university.
Her gas tax ploy she picked up from McCain, but people were not fooled. And the economists were right on this one: with strong demand and tight supply lifting the tax would not necessarily lower price and the government would lose the revenue which goes to investment in infrastructure.
Obama had a very rough couple of months so his performance last night was all the more remarkable. He’s been tested and has come through. Good training for November. People are ready for something different. Whether that ’something different’ will tend to the right or the left depends on the intellectual influences on Obama over the coming months. A battle for the mind of Obama….
Great overview CL. It is interesting how his vote held up in Indiana. I think that was the killer for the Clinton campaign, at least last night. Easy to argue he’d get NC, much harder to argue that an almost photo-finish in Indiana indicated that he couldn’t cut it…
I can’t defend Clinton over the gas tax (and I think it was dumb politics, too), but Obama has done his share of pandering this primary season, and he rarely gets called on it.
**Indiana, where she was supposedly meant to do better again,”"
Clinton was expected to have a more solid win, true, but in polls conducted earlier, as late as March to my knowledge, Obama had a substantial lead over Clinton in Indiana, which is right next door to Illinois, which should have proved a powerful advantage for him (as it did in Iowa).
**Instead she is pretending that there are easy answers, that tomorrow will necessarily be brighter than today.**
Well, for most of the time Obama has been the one suggesting that kumbaya will bring parties previously at each other’s throats to the table, where under his benevolent gaze they will march together into a glorious new future. Clinton has had the less attractive job of saying this isn’t going to be that easy to do.
**The way her accent has changed as she tours the US.**
I’m sorry to have to bring this up, but Michelle Obama, a lawyer with an Ivy League education, has also been dropping her g’s like live grenades, depending on her audience, and seeking common ground with the simple folk on the basis of….paying off student loans. Her husband has been heard to speak with certain African American cadences and inflections that can by no stretch of the imagination come naturally to him. Do I think this is a big deal? No – except for the criticism that Clinton has had to take on this non-issue. Not to mention her voice, her laugh, her clothes, her hair, her figure…but let it pass. (I’m not crazy about either Clinton and I never have been. But some of the stuff getting pitched at them is just ridiculous.)
**Basically, the core of her voting bloc was still with her, but Obama picked off a larger portion of it than he did in Ohio and Pennsylvania.**
If Obama is the nominee, I hope this is a trend. But I recall hearing similar things from Obama supporters after Wisconsin and Virginia – that this was the turning point and Clinton’s supporters were gradually deserting her as they learned more about Obama. Didn’t happen.
**Easy to argue he’d get NC, much harder to argue that an almost photo-finish in Indiana indicated that he couldn’t cut it…**
I think NC hurt her more than Indiana. She was supposed to come closer than she did, and the popular vote margin essentially canceled out Pennsylvania. If she had cut his lead in NC significantly, the close result in Indiana would have mattered less.
The real point about Clinton is that she’s not running against Barack Obama: she’s running against George McGovern and Jesse Jackson. That’s what the Clintons do.
CL,
I’m not sure South Bend’s voting district includes Notre Dame. The University is actually outside the city limits. Also, South Bend has a pretty large black population. I would have expected Obama to win there
I think the point about Catholics is an odd one, to be honest. I can’t see how Catholics have responded any differently than Protestants with regards to the Wright issue. If anything, I would imagine Protestants would find the theology of Wright’s church more problematic than would Catholics. (Just as Catholics had less of an issue with Romney’s Mormonism than did Protestants.)
So why would “Catholics” react any differently than Protestants over this stuff? What he’s (is the Slate writer a he?) probably trying to say is that white, working and middle class folks in the northeast and mid Atlantic states are less aware of the sorts of things that are said in the black churches than are white Protestants from the midwest and south. I think there’s something to that.
I definitely think that middle class white people from the Atlantic seaboard states (including Pennsylvania) were a bit taken aback by the Wright revelations. We’ll have to wait and see if they hold it against Obama in November.
Oddly enough I think you’re right ejh, that they run against something that is not necessarily that which they think they’re running against. Perhaps that might be seen as a paranoid approach on their part.
Eagle, re the writer, Slate’s analysis of the polling data picked up much greater antagonism from Catholic blue collar working people than Protestant. And I think there is a lot in what you say about a cultural divide. Still, re your last point, that’s it exactly. What happens in November? Will he rise above all this? Or not.
Eagle:
It would be more accurate for me to say that Notre Dame university is adjacent to South Bend. But both South Bend and Notre Dame, and some other Catholic colleges, are in St.Joseph’s county. St.Josephs county is 80% white, predominantly Catholic, and Obama carried it.
Clinton’s strongest support is coming from the white, ‘Scots-Irish’ working class in the Appalachian areas
CL, would the Scots-Irish not be of various Protestant denominations?
Yes of course. But non-Anglican. Its just that the focus has been on Hillary’s ‘Catholic’ support. She does much better amongst the Protestant ‘Scots-Irish’.
Jay Cost has an interesting piece on Appalachia and Obama:
“it is wrong to assert that Obama cannot win the white working class. He did exactly that in Wisconsin. His problem has been the white working class in certain geographical reasons (sic)”
Obama’s weakest performances among whites have been in Appalachia, .. This is where Obama has had his greatest problems… This is why Clinton will not drop out next week, even if she loses Indiana. West Virginia comes the week after, and Kentucky the week after that. She’s bound to win both, and candidates do not drop out immediately prior to impending victories.
In all likelihood, weak general election performances in Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia will not cost Obama the presidency - though he would be the first Democrat ever to win the White House having lost all three. The trouble comes with southern Ohio and western Pennsylvania.”
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Obama. It would be a wise choice. Webb has written a book on the Scots-Irish, and he makes the case that the Scots-Irish have been central in the formation of American working class culure.
The Cost article link (scroll down to April 27 entry)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/
More by Cost on the Appalachian factor:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/05/not_quite_yet_1.html
Interesting about the distinctions between perceptions and reality of Clinton’s support base.
The Cost piece makes for a good read. Webb? Well, that might work.
JIm Webb as running mate? Well, that would be something. Wasn’t he part of the Reagan machine before becoming a Democrat?
Yep, Secretary of the Navy no less. He has written shit-loads on the Scotch-Irish.
http://webb.senate.gov/jim/
Yeah, Webb was Reagan’s secretary of the navy. He’s probably too headstrong and independent to be VP. Here’s what he wrote in Nov. 06,
“The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of “God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag” while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet.”
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246
more on Webb:
“Webb is a Naval Academy grad and Vietnam veteran (exactly matching McCain), and a former Secretary of the Navy bringing directly relevant executive experience. He won four military medals in Vietnam, and was wounded twice, a record that, along with awards from the American Legion and VFW, would repel attacks by SwiftBoaters. His term at the Pentagon came under Ronald Reagan, when Webb was a Republican, an advantage in Obama’s effort to achieve a new electoral coalition. With this military background, he reinforces the Democrats’ case against the Iraqi intervention, a position he has articulated from the beginning of the war and with particular force, including a direct confrontation with President Bush at a White House reception. As a novelist, non-fiction author and Emmy-winning television reporter, he also shows intellectual distinction.
Webb also would bring specific political advantages to the Democratic ticket. His rural roots, vigorous language and championing of working class values would compensate for Obama’s evident weaknesses among these voters. Webb provides a populist platform on corporate regulation, trade, taxation and health care that would further extend the party’s appeal to its lower-income base. Born in Missouri, educated in Nebraska, California and the Naval Academy in Maryland, he encapsulates a national electoral appeal. Finally, to the limited extent that state residence matters, he would help to switch Virginia into the Democratic column for the first election since 1964.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/obama_should_pick_webb_for_run.html
And yet, and yet, note the chorus for Hillary to become VP.
Wow, Webb would be fascinating as a choice.
HIllary would be a great VP choice,-for John McCain.
Gender and racial clashes continue…
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080519/betsyreed