Okay, I understand why somebody obscure who would otherwise never be invited on the programs would cross the WGA picket line to go on Colbert or the Daily Show. Not that I think it’s admirable, but I think it’s understandable. But Andrew Sullivan can get invited on to those shows during normal times; it’s not as if scabbing presents his only window of opportunity.
And can I just say how very, truly, deeply moved I am hearing the gospel of post-partisan politics preached by a man who once wrote:
The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.
I’d give him more credit for the personal evolution if I didn’t suspect that he’ll revert back to form the moment it becomes politically expedient to do so.
Hillary Clinton was fiery and funny and bore no resemblance to the candidate relentless attacked in the media as rigid, incompetent, Machiavellian and screechy. You can understand her obvious frustration with the ongoing lovefest for Obama: At one point she even compared his “likeability’ to that of George W. Bush. In real life, Obama has made the same sort of compromises she herself has made. As she pointed out, he said he’d vote against the Patriot Act, and then he voted for it. He casts himself as the candidate who’d repair our bellicose relations with the world, and then talks about bombing Pakistan. He talks about putting Republicans in his cabinet, as Bill Clinton did. His health-care plan, as Paul Krugman points out every day on the New York Times op-ed page, is weaker than Clinton’s or Edwards’. I’m sure Hillary Clinton must be wondering what the difference is between “triangulation” and Obama’s calls for unity.
Somehow Hillary Clinton is stuck as the candidate who simultaneously represents excessive compromise and excessive partisanship. For various reasons, John Edwards, who actually represents the most substantive hope for change, seems in some ways a throwback to the old-fashioned class-based politics of the 1930s. Poor Richardson, who actually has the most experience of any candidate in either party, can’t get any traction at all. Obama, the black candidate who never mentions his race, gets to smile his mile-wide smile and be a rock star. Somehow he has made himself a great big humongous hope object. People can project on him what they want him to be.
I’ll support a potted plant against whichever race-baiting science-denying warmonger the Republicans finally settle on, but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t prefer a candidate who actually stands for things I care about, like real health care reform and a speedy end to the Iraq debacle. Given that Kucinich is — sorry — unlikely to carry the day, that leaves me with Edwards. Who is also probably not going to make it to the finish line. And then, hurray!, the Democrats will once again be offering up a mushy centrist who speaks vaguely of hope and change, of bipartisanship and reconciliation. Why is it always the Democrats who have to reconcile, after these spasms of right wing extremism? Why is partisanship always such a one-way street?
I’m fascinated by the way the Clinton campaign is dealing with the challenge of changing their message in the four days between Iowa and New Hampshire. Hillary’s newest line seems to be that all three Democratic candidates are agents of “change” (anyone tired of hearing that word yet?), but that she’s the only one who can actually accomplish that change. It’s a twist on her “demand it, hope for it, work hard for it” line, but her rhetoric doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny.
For example, here’s a revealing line in her latest stump speech from Ezra Klein :
Clinton now has this line where she says (slight paraphrase, as I’m hand-transcribing), “Let’s be serious about change. Change isn’t voting for the PATRIOT Act then criticizing it. Change isn’t saying you won’t take lobbyist money then appointing a lobbyist as head of your New Hampshire campaign. Change isn’t bragging about passing the Patient’s Bill of Rights when it never passed. Change isn’t talking about your opposition to the Iraq War then voting for more funding.”
Those are attacks on, in order, Edwards, Obama, Edwards, and Obama. But what’s interesting about the charges is the direction in which they point. On each of the relevant issues there, Hillary is on the wrong side of her own rhetoric. She voted for the PATRIOT Act. She voted for the war. She takes lobbyist money and defends their contributions. And she voted for the PBR, and also couldn’t pass it. None are issues that give her any advantage.
An even more telling example of the pot calling the kettle black is this contradiction in Hillary’s depressing (as Obama put it) claim that Obama and Edwards offer “false hopes”.
I suppose that in pure campaigning terms, Kevin Drum’s right and Hillary Clinton’s complaints about Barack Obama and John Edwards raising “false hopes” was a gaffe. But I think it’s an interesting theme, and sort of wish she would explore it in a more rigorous and thorough way.
The trouble is that as is, she’s raising essentially the same hopes as her competitors — hopes of fundamental change in health care and energy policy…It’s true that high aspirations and inspiring rhetoric won’t produce fundamental policy shifts. It’s also true that getting really outraged won’t produce fundamental policy shifts. But neither will Clinton’s years of experience — you can see it in her own list of legislative accomplishments as Senator and First Lady, there’s just nothing in there of remotely the sort of scale that she’s now promising.
So if it’s true that Edwards and Obama are raising false hopes, then so is she.
While some may consider Hillary’s “false hopes” line a gaffe, the truly depressing thing seems to be that it’s a pretty accurate reflection of her feelings.
Hillary was asked about Obama’s rejoinder that there’s something vaguely un-American about dismissing hopes as false, and that it doesn’t jibe with the careers of figures like like John F. Kennedy and King.
“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” Clinton said. “It took a president to get it done.”
Ugghhh….this reminds me of the Mr. Show sketch in which they tried to solicit hate mail :
When David Cross said “Abraham Lincoln, a white man, set them free” it was satire, but that barely seems worse that Hillary’s denigration of the work of Martin Luther King Jr. by insisting “It took a president to get it done”. I don’t think this is some sign of latent racism on her part, but further proof that she’ll say just about anything to get elected. Is it any wonder why Hillary’s campaign is in a tailspin?
The Clinton implosion continues. In the past two days, Hillary Clinton has expressed angerandsadness. Granted, some of you might argue “Her supposed ‘anger’ during Saturday’s debate was completely exaggerated.” or “Hillary didn’t burst into tears the way the Republican leader in the Senate does every time someone mentions Iraq.”, but that’s all beside the point. I don’t know if we can afford to have a commander-in-chief that expresses emotion (in public!).
As an aside, if Hillary really wants to compete with Obama, she needs to stop acting so stiff and be a bit more “likeable“, but not in a way that exposes her to any criticism. At least, that’s what I gather from the punditocracy’s ‘”conventional wisdom” that insists that she open herself up to voters but treats her like a emotionally-fragile bitch when she acts like a normal human being.
