I’ve been trying to figure out if some of Senator Clinton’s most vocal supporters – including her own husband – are clueless, morons, or are subvert Hillary’s campaign.
Now, I don’t really believe the last one, but I can’t think of many reasons for the behavior of some of her supporter’s behavior and comments except for the other two reasons.
First, you have Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign co-chair Billy Shaheen saying that Obama would be difficult to elect because of his admitted previous drug use. He ended up having to resign because, frankly, most people who are ever going to vote for a democrat in the general election probably don’t give a flying flip over drug use someone might have engaged in 20 years ago.
You then have former Senator Bob Kerrey coming out and saying that Obama attended a secular madrasa in Indonesia. Now, to Kerrey’s credit, he is probably technically correct in the sense that a madrasa is the Arabic word for “school,” whether secular or religious.
The problem Kerrey has is two fold, though. First, the language most Indonesians speak is Indonesian (amazingly enough), not Arabic, so to call it a madrasa within Indonesia would imply that it was within the Islamic cultural community, thus almost certainly making it a religious school. Second, Obama has already been subjected to attacks that he attended a radical Islamic madrasa in Indonesia, and so people already have in their heads Obama + madrasa = bad.
I think this was more of an issue of Kerrey being uninformed than anything else, but it was still moronic, and doesn’t help him, or the candidate he supports, with those who are tired old, long debunked stories being dredged up again.
Next you have former President Clinton sticking his foot in his mouth for a 2nd time in a relatively short time by saying that Hillary planned to send him and former President George H. W. Bush on basically a “hey! we’re not really so bad now” tour. (the first time was his statement that he was against the war from the start. While Hillary may have the public statements to be able to claim that, Bill Clinton appeared not to).
I would have to think that this was still in the idea or planning stage since Senator Clinton herself didn’t mention it, and clearly former President Bush wasn’t on board yet. Either Bill Clinton thought it was close enough to a done deal that he thought he would let it out to make Hillary sound somewhat conciliatory, or, again, he was acting either unwisely or without full knowledge of what he was saying.
Even if all of these things are unauthorized from the Clinton campaign, and I seem to doubt that Clinton herself authorized any of this (though lower, more-disgruntled with the way things are going members of the campaign may be involved), it still doesn’t show well on the campaign.
Part of the problem is that a cross-section of Hillary’s campaign is much like a cross-section of the democratic party in general, with both liberals, moderates, and conservative democrats. This may sound like a pretty decent plan as you’re basically welcoming everyone in the party.
The problem is that when things started going to hell, the inherent mistrust between the liberals and the moderates and conservatives came out in full force. You can see this mistrust everywhere, really. You saw in the 2004 primary battle between Dean and everyone else. You see it in the everyone-but-Clinton movement this year. You see it on blogs, and now you’re seeing it within the Clinton campaign itself.
The reason for much of this mistrust is that the Democratic party is, at it’s core, a coalition party between people who have similar sympathies, but pretty different ideas of how intense and quickly new policies should be put in place, and how it is politically best to implement those policies (among other things, I’m sure).
This extends itself to liberals believing that moderates will sell out on principles, since moderates are often willing to “go half way” in compromising while liberals are far less likely to be open to compromising.
Meanwhile, moderates mistrust liberals because they fear that if the party drifts to the left, they’ll bleed more support from the middle than they’re gain from the left, and they don’t trust that liberals are going to keep voting for democrats, even if they do appease them.
And now portions of the Clinton campaign has become somewhat of a proxy war between these two groups, with the most conservative aspects of the democratic coalition breaking off first and assailing the liberal part of the party.
Clinton can’t like all of this because she was already facing a threat that some of the more liberal members of the party may sit home if they lose the “anyone but Clinton” campaign in the primary, and a lot of this party infighting that’s popping up form her supporters can’t do anything than increase the likelihood of something like that happening.
Clinton can still win the nomination, given her still-strong lead in national polls, but one merely has to look back at 2004 to see how Iowa can change the race.
Newsweek did a poll about 10 days before the Iowa caucuses in 2004 which showed Dean leading with 24%, and Clark and Kerry basically tied for 2nd, and 14% saying they didn’t know nationally, and Edwards at 3%.
After Kerry won, Edwards finished 2nd, and Dean finished 3rd, Kerry jumped from 11% support to 30% support nationally, Edwards jumped from 3% to 13%, while Dean dropped from 24% to 12%. After winning New Hampshire, Kerry again jumped up to 45%, and the rest is history.
While Clinton’s 40%+ national ratings clearly are much better, and thus give her a bit more room than Deans’ 24% in 2004, the trend is going down, which has to be a worrysome sign for her. All this infighting can’t be helping either.
