Clinton, Obama, and the Endless Race

Yesterday, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton contested the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, the first election in six weeks, and it appears that Obama lost by just under ten points. I’ve been following this election with great interest since last summer. In January, I volunteered for the Obama campaign in Newmarket, New Hampshire. It was an experience I will never forget, and it was an honor and a privilege to be a part of a presidential election in that regard.

Although many democrats hoped for a conclusive result to the Clinton-Obama duel, last night’s results were perfectly inconclusive. The Pennsylvania victory demonstrates only two things: 1) that Clinton and Obama play to particular demographics, which results in one or the other having natural advantages in certain states; and 2) if a candidate keeps throwing dirt at another candidate, some of it will stick. Nonetheless, barring a colossal meltdown of the Obama campaign, it will be virtually impossible for Hillary Clinton to clinch the nomination. She is far enough behind in the delegate total that she would have to win the remaining contests by prohibitive margins. Her campaign is also broke and in debt.

Clinton won clearly in Pennsylvania, but her victory can be spun to favor Clinton or Obama. What is clear is that her Pennsylvania victory was not a clear denunciation of Barack Obama, despite a very rough few weeks for him. To the degree that the election shows a hardening of the coalitions that are already in place in both candidates’ camps, Pennsylvania changes nothing. And for that reason, Obama cannot yet declare victory and Hillary Clinton cannot find a reason to leave the campaign, although a case can be made that she should do so for the good of the Democratic Party.


Photo credit: Reuters

As the race stands, she can expect to do reasonably well in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico but not in North Carolina, South Dakota, or Oregon. Indiana and Montana will probably be competitive, and I have no idea how Guam will vote. I just feel sorry that this increasingly sad and desperate circus will soon land on her sandy shores.

It’s hard to stay objective when you have a horse in the race, but I am one of the Obama voters that has serious misgivings about voting for Hillary Clinton in the general election if she becomes the nominee. Ever since the race heated up in Iowa, her campaign has been ham-handed, patronizing, and shrill. Bill Clinton has demonstrated an arrogance and intemperance that makes him seem absurd. Hillary uttered a bald-faced lie about her experience in Bosnia. That’s enough for me to oppose a candidate in a primary, but there are two issues that may prevent me from supporting her if she’s the Democratic nominee.

The Clinton campaign has cynically exploited latent racial phobias in some Americans. Bill Clinton’s comments in South Carolina and Geraldine Ferraro’s comments before the Ohio primary were shameful examples of how this campaign has occasionally, and subtly, blown a dog-whistle to call attention to the fact that at least a portion of the electorate might be uncomfortable with a young black man as their president. I think this is a deliberate strategy to cleave away the so-called Reagan Democrats. For a democrat to exploit peoples' racial fears in a modern campaign is appalling.

The second issue is the Clinton campaign’s use of fear as a motivator to get people to vote. In Ohio and Texas, she ran the now-famous “3 a.m.” advertisement, in which she challenged Obama’s readiness and ability to respond to a national emergency in the wee hours of the morning. Worse still, she used images of Osama bin Laden and Hurricane Katrina in an attack ad against Obama in Pennsylvania. Certainly the experience argument is a valid question in a presidential primary, but to use images that cut deep into our national psyche to raise the question is inappropriate, especially after the GOP used similar tactics against democrats in the last decade.


Photo credit: AFP/Getty

Hillary Clinton is an immensely qualified and capable individual. You can only ride your spouse’s coat-tails for so long, even if he was the President of the United States. If she were incapable of holding her own, she would have been shown up by now. But I find the Clintons to be arrogant, cynical, and prone to pettiness. They are the products of a particular political environment that I find highly toxic. The highly negative tactics of Lee Atwater, George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, gave way to the “permanent campaign” of the Clinton years, where statecraft took a back seat to self preservation, triangulation, and poll testing; which in turn gave way to the machinations of Karl Rove. As a result, campaigns are won and lost by scapegoating, finger-pointing, and wedge issues such as gay marriage. By turns, the last three presidents and their lackeys have done considerable violence to our public discourse. I see nothing in Hillary Clinton that suggests she won’t follow the very same course –for that reason, I fear a Hillary Clinton presidency.

I came to support Barack Obama because he offers a unique perspective and vision to presidential politics and governance. Beyond his high-minded rhetoric, his pedigree, his life story, and his experience as a community organizer presents some interesting possibilities for a nation that has been beset by the cronyism, secrecy, power-mongering, and staggering incompetence of the current administration. I’m under no illusion that an Obama presidency will be sublime and transcendent; the man has considerable weaknesses that have become evident in the past months. Nonetheless, Barack Obama can be an intensely powerful symbol that can have a salutary effect on civic life at home and America’s reputation abroad. He deserves credit for inspiring millions of people in a period of time in our Republic where apathy and cynicism have settled into our public discourse. And for that he deserves a chance.