I’ve largely been ignoring this recent “the Clintons are intentionally race baiting!” eruption from liberal blogs for mostly one reason: The blogs hate Clinton.
This isn’t a result of the campaign, either. They’ve always hated the Clintons. Most of the liberal bloggers don’t see the 90s as the time of economic prosperity and peace, but as a time of democrats bending over and taking it in the ass by the GOP (I don’t agree with that by the way).
As a result, not only are callbacks to the 1990s unpersuasive to them as a reason to support Clinton, but it just convinces them further that Hillary would just do whatever the GOP wanted her to do like Bill supposedly did in the 90s.
There are many conspiracy theories thrown out there by conservatives about secret plans that the liberals have in mind – most of them deal with ending civilization by banning religion for making heterosexuality illegal or something like that.
However, many on the more liberal side’s true intentions are largely intentions that not many people are bringing up: the intentional purging from the democratic party anyone to the right of Russ Feingold and the attempt to finally get a “true” liberal in the White House. What better place to start by the most powerful members of the moderate wing of the party – the Clintons. The blogs hate Clinton. Their hatred for her probably is only surpassed by a few members of Bush’s administration (and of course Bush himself).
They didn’t really express this in the campaign, just in case she won, but the amount of vile material that was thrown her way before the campaign and the amount of it being thrown at her now that the probability of her winning the nomination is probably in the single digits now is a testament to this. Probably the only democrat who had more shit thrown at them than Clinton before 2006 was Lieberman, and of course he’s not a Democrat anymore, mostly to great celebration on the blogs. And don’t be a damn bit surprised if the blogs try to Lieberman Hillary in New York in 2010 either. The only reason they didn’t in 2006 was because she was obviously too popular. I’m sure they’re salivating at the chance to in 2010.
Not that all of this excuses some of the things Hillary’s campaign has said and done over the course of the campaign, but typically when one of Hillary’s people does something stupid, it’s all part of her evil campaign plan and shows once again how horrible the Clintons are. If one of Obama’s people does something stupid then, well, that stuff just happens during campaigns sometimes.
They’ve wanted Obama to win from the start, and while many blogs have never endorsed Obama and claim that they are remaining neutral, it’s pretty clear that most liberal blogs have made a concerted effort to downplay Obama’s problems and mistakes while amplifying Clinton’s.
I’ll just give a recent example: Clinton’s campaign that Obama hasn’t passed the “commander-in-chief” test. Now, I think this is a pretty silly exercise by Clinton’s people. However, how did Obama respond? Mostly by either saying “well, if I’m not, then you aren’t” and pointing out the contradiction of Clinton’s campaign making this claim yet at the same time promoting Obama as a possible VP candidate.
The one thing Obama never did – and really never has done that I’m aware of – is actually make the case that he IS ready to be commander-in-chief. While this exercise may seem less relevant against a primary candidate who has little executive and foreign policy experience herself, it will matter quite a bit in the general election against McCain.
What, exactly, makes Obama think he’s qualified (this same question applies to Clinton as well). I’ve never recalled Obama really say anything on the topic, beyond talking about Iraq, and I don’t really think, however right he might have been, that that’s a sufficient enough answer.
However, the fact that Obama has never really done this to my knowledge is never brought up by the blogs, but the fact that Clinton apparently hasn’t done this is brought up all the time (not that I mind that it is, but ask it to both candidates if you do). Of course, their reasoning behind this is the vote to authorize the war, as if that single vote alone is enough to label someone ready or not ready to be commander-in-chief.
It’s kind of a shame we aren’t having another debate (unless they decide to do one in Pennsylvania). I’d like a moderator to ask “when do you think someone has passed the commander-in-chief test, and why do you think you have passed it.”
Also, as much as they laugh at Clinton’s campaigns assertions of winning “states that matter,” the fact of the matter is that, if one were calculating who was winning the nomination based on electoral votes using the popular vote of a state, Clinton would actually by winning 219 to 202 (I am giving Texas to Clinton since she won the primary, which I regard as a better representation of the will of the people in Texas). That is a serious problem in regards to Obama’s potential electability I think.
Obama has won a total of 8 states with 10 or more EVs, and only 2 states with 15 or more – Georgia with 15 and Illinois with 21.
Clinton has won 8 states with 10 or more EVs, and 5 states with 15 or more – California, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Texas.
Really only Georgia and Texas could be considered safe GOP this cycle in that list. The only real swing state on that list is Ohio which, of course, Clinton won by a substantial margin.
And again, this is all NOT including Michigan or Florida.
And while people like to deride Clinton’s “insult 50 state” strategy, the fact is that every state Clinton has won Democrats will win or have a chance of winning, except probably Oklahoma and Texas.
Meanwhile, the bulk of Obama’s wins have come in states which democrats have essentially no shot of winning. Yes, he does at least get wins in some “lock” states such as Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Washington, Maine, DC, Maryland, Hawaii, and Vermont. Yes, he does get wins in some swing states such as Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin. However, he has a hell of a lot of wins in states which campaign money would be pretty much wasted in if we spent it there in the general: South Carolina, Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, Louisiana, Nebraska, Wyoming, Mississippi.
This is the core to Clinton’s argument: Obama is strongest in states which won’t help democrates a bit: states which democrats are virtually guaranteed to lose. That might help his popular vote margin over McCain, but it won’t help his Electoral Vote margin, which is, of course, what matters. Meanwhile, Clinton would argue, she has shown a better aptitude at locking down the states that Democrats should win and must win.
Of course, the blogs completely ignore all of this because it’s inconvenient. Not that Clinton’s blowing off states as “not mattering” really helps, but if one is making the argument that the grass is green, but in the process blows off all the other colors, that doesn’t change the fact that the grass is green.
The Wyoming and Mississippi elections are another example of pro-Obama bias. Obama netted maybe 4 total delegates from those two states. The blogs celebrated as these wins seemed to show that Clinton’s momentum had stalled. On the contrary, Obama should have pulled something around 10 delegates from these states. The fact that Clinton held Obama to a net of 4 delegates is a huge win for her, considering the margins Obama had been getting in the south and west. But you won’t hear this on the blogs.
Regardless of what the blogs say, Clinton can still climb back into the race. She absolutely positively must win Pennsylvania by a substantial margin – and that includes the delegate count this time as well – but if she does, Obama is going to have to watch out. He’ll still have the upper hand, but he can’t afford to have Clinton start rallying off wins in May and June like he was going in February or else this race is going to narrow quite a bit very quickly (to say nothing about not wanting to go into the general with stalled momentum if he did survive such a run).
Of course, you won’t hear this on the blogs. You’ll hear how Clinton is trying to campaign even though it is utterly impossible for her to win (unless, of course, she uses the evil, vile superdelegates, which are bane of all civilization, apparently) hoping that she can damage Obama to the point to where he wouldn’t be able to survive a general election campaign.
Of course, what seems to slip past most of the blogs is the idea that when you’re in an election, you typically try to win. Of course, Clinton campaigning to win is abhorrent while Obama campaigning to win is, you know, campaigning.
In any case, I think I’ve rambled enough on this topic.
