I have several friends who, like me, support Senator Barack Obama. Please understand that I use the word "support" in the broadest sense. To my way of thinking, support can mean a lot of things, and many people in politics assume it to mean financial support. In this particular instance I mean it to mean that I have voted for Senator Obama in the Florida primary, and in that way I have supported him. Should he win the nomination, I'll likely write him a modest check.
Those friends -- and me too, a little bit -- have been in something of a funk over the election lately. Perhaps we can chalk that up to knowing all along how Pennsylvania would likely turn out. But I have friends who support Senator Clinton, too, and there's something going on there as well, only it's not a general malaise. It's more like an anger. A bitter, furious anger.
It's an anger I recognize because I've felt it myself. It's the anger I felt at Richard Mellon Scaife and Rush Limbaugh and Ken Starr and the rest of the tawdry, worthless vast right wing consipiracists who mercilessly unloaded with both barrels on the Clintons pretty much because they felt like it. And to advance their weirdo agenda. And line their slimy pockets. It's a righteous anger we all felt in the 1990s, a white-hot anger, an anger born out of our own personal anguish, personal suffering, and a solemn resolve not to take it any more. We learned to express all of this from Hillary Clinton.
On the Obama side, I have heard from more than one friend that Obama has now been "brought down into the muck," or something like that. He's being made to play on the same level as Clinton. Watching the faces of these many Obama supporters is like watching your first girlfriend's face when you broke up with her, when she realized you're not the one, you're not so special after all. You're just like everybody else. There is a collective downward cast of the head and eyes of these once energetic Obama supporters -- can't you just feel it? -- and they are realizing that he is, almost against all odds, against everything they'd hoped for and dreamed about, against every convention they had carefully constructed for themselves and that Obama most of all had constructed for them, just another politician.
But I'd say something to my friends on both sides: let's cool out. That Barack Obama is the likely nominee is more than a mathematical fact -- it's reality. Just because he ran a nearly flawless campaign from the outset doesn't make him a sexist. Just because I support him doesn't make me a sexist. Something of a traitor to my former employer, maybe, but that's for me to work out.
I'd urge my friends in the Clinton camp to hold their fire. This isn't advice given lightly, and I know it's hard to hear from an Obama voter. But I'd still give every last word of it. I've heard women who support Hillary Clinton say, with nearly unbridled passion, with unshackled conviction that they have been waiting for this very moment in history, that their own mothers dreamed of this moment, that their own grandmothers dreamed of this shining moment in American history. And they will not give it up. They will fight until the last dog dies. To quote Hillary Clinton, actually.
I've heard Clinton supporters say that a black man can't be elected president. And I've heard Obama supporters cry racism, cry it as quickly and urgently as the Clinton supporters cry sexism. I just don't think either is the case.
In the end, political campaigns are actually simple things, or they should be. Two or more candidates present their ideas and you choose the one who most represents your own ideas. Isn't that easy?
You might be tempted to say that campaign consultants make them difficult, or the process makes campaigns difficult, or the money makes them difficult. I don't think any of that is really true. The people who make campaigns complex are the voters. Because in the end it's more than just our ideas for good government -- our lifelong hopes and dreams for the future, our unique vision for a better America all get caught up in these campaigns. And before you know it, it's personal.
I would love nothing more than to give some sage advice, here, offer something to each worthy campaign. But I don't know it. People who support Hillary Clinton see the glory of their generation in her, they see the best of themselves overcoming the worst of the other side, they see redemption for a previous Clinton presidency tarnished by impeachment. People who support Barack Obama see a glorious end to our tragic national storyline of racial suffering and racial shame. They see a young man who can lead us beyond the now-stale fights of the Baby Boom generation. They see political transcendence.
All of these things are good. And all of them are terrible.
So what will happen? I don't know, I really don't.
But for fun, I'll offer you this guess.
In addition to getting caught up in campaigns emotionally, Americans have relatively short attention spans. If we get to June and this thing finally runs out of gas and Hillary Clinton departs in a relatively humane manner, then I think that it’s possible we all move on and get wildly excited about the general election and relegate all of this to the Weird History Bin. Even if she takes it to the Convention in August, as I’ve predicted to some, and loses there, we will move beyond the long, hot summer out of Denver and activate in a way we need to into fall. That’s if Obama comes out on top, which again I have to say seems like the strongest likelihood to me at this point in time.
As for Obama in the general election, there’s no contesting the notion that he’s been damaged. Given that, and the damage that the Clintons have done to their own brand, we’re a party that’s somewhat smarting right now. But the truth is, we’ve got a bit of political capital to spend, to quote a president. Remember some of the bedrock rules of campaigns, one of them being turnout. Obama is still energizing huge crowds and turnout throughout the primary has been at record levels, and even with his negatives going up (as they do in campaigns) the current administration has the highest negatives, well, ever. And given McCain’s close tether to the Bush Administration, that is good and probably great news for progressives and Democrats and people that hate this damn war everywhere.
If Clinton comes out on top – and I’m not discounting this possibility in the slightest, because it would be foolish to underestimate her – then it’s a whole different game. I think that if Clinton is the nominee, no matter how that comes about, African Americans primarily, followed by new younger voters secondarily, will be wildly disenfranchised, wholesale. It would be ugly. Clinton at the top of the ticket has almost no choice but to pick Obama for her running mate, but I’ll be bold and say that if she is the eventual nominee, she won’t do that, or at least he won’t accept it.
In other words, he comes to the general election damaged and limping a bit – she comes in mortally wounded and staggering. I think McCain would clean her clock in the general. It’d be a Reagan-style blowout. New voters? African Americans? Sitting at home. Almost worse, it’d be a nightmare for Democrats down ticket across the country. Imagine a scene of Democratic carnage. Mayoral races, gubernatorial races, state house and senate races, Congressional elections, blown for Democrats. It gives you shivers if you dwell on it for too long.
One of the things Clinton must have if she is to take the nomination is Super delegates from Obama. Meaning, not just every one of the undecideds, but Supers who currently support Obama are going to have to change their mind. I think that’s an awfully tall order, and I don’t see it, and in my thinking that’s the biggest hurdle she has that she just can’t overcome. I furthermore don’t believe that the current undecided Supers are going to swing her way. In fact, I think the narrative over the next couple of weeks and days is that it’s time to stop the bloodbath, Hillary is behind in fundraising, votes and support, Obama is ahead, let’s (the Supers) move to Obama and call it a day.
But back to the point. The other thing she is counting on is a Florida and Michigan coup. Not going to happen. Seems the most likely outcome there is that we count Florida by half. This ultimately does nothing for her. Finally, another unlikely thing she needs to have happen is that she needs blowouts in every remaining contest until the Convention, and that’s not going to happen, either.
In the end, if I were advising either campaign, I'd suggest a brief respite for both candidates. A couple of days off, catch your breath, relax. Then I'd get back on the wagon, tour Indiana and North Carolina, and spend every waking moment deconstructing John McCain. It's time to start that campaign. Because here's the big message: the people who are tired and sad and in a funk over this part of the campaign haven't seen a damn thing yet.
cross posted at The Spencerian.