Naive, Thy Name Is Hilary

Blogging today (6/4/08) on The Huffington Post, Hillary Clinton supporter/pundit Hilary Rosen takes issue with with the tone and sentiments of the candidate's speech last (Tuesday) night:

So, I am also so very disappointed at how she has handled this last week. I know she is exhausted and she had pledged to finish the primaries and let every state vote before any final action. But by the time she got on that podium last night, she knew it was over and that she had lost. I am sure I was not alone in privately urging the campaign over the last two weeks to use the moment to take her due, pass the torch and cement her grace. She had an opportunity to soar and unite. She had a chance to surprise her party and the nation after the day-long denials about expecting any concession and send Obama off on the campaign trail of the general election with the best possible platform. I wrote before how she had a chance for her "Al Gore moment." And if she had done so, the whole country ALL would be talking today about how great she is and give her her due.

We all should applaud Rosen's concluding declaration "I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat." As a Democrat, voter, and American, she is dead right.

But what kind of political strategist would she be? An "Al Gore moment." Yes, Gore gave a great speech when he conceded the presidency to George W. Bush, who had almost won the election. He remarked that evening, including self-deprecating irony:

I personally will be at his disposal, and I call on all Americans--I particularly urge all who stood with us--to unite behind our next president. This is America. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done....Now the political struggle is over and we turn again to the unending struggle for the common good of all Americans and for those multitudes around the world who look to us for leadership in the cause of freedom.

In the words of our great hymn, "America, America": "Let us crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea."

And now, my friends, in a phrase I once addressed to others, it's time for me to go.

All of America saluted Gore's comments, and respect and admiration for the Vice-President accordingly shot up. Six months later? Attitudes and opinions, postive and negative, about Mr. Gore returned to pre-election levels. And of course, 7-8 years later, the view of the Democrats' 2000 presidential nominee hinges mostly on partisanship and one's perception of Gore's environmental activism. And The Speech? Virtually irrelevant in calculating Gore's political prospects or his impact (past and present) on environmental and climatic policy.

So, if Hillary Clinton did not go out- or stay in- graciously last night, fret not. Her speech served mainly to preserve her options, which no doubt she will discuss with the presumptive nominee of the party.

Vice-Presidential Consideration

In an article on salon.com on 6/6/08, Walter Shapiro argues that Barack Obama is unlikely to select as his running mate any of the usual suspects. Shapiro notes that the practice of the nominee choosing the V.P.-designate began only in 1960 and frequently has produced "a national embarassment- or worse." Think Agnew, Eagleton (a little unfair- but it was an embarrassment), Ferraro, Quayle, Lieberman, Cheney.

By contrast, through 1956 the convention iself selected the head guy's running mate. And in 1960, that process led to a fight among four giants: John F. Kennedy, Estes Kefauver, Al Gore Sr., and Hubert H. Humphrey.

Think about that a moment. We all remember John Kennedy. Then there was Albert Arnold Gore, whose son became Vice-President before being elected President in 2000, of whom it was said "never ran a negative campaign." The Tennessee senator who helped create the Interstate Highway System, was dedicated to fighting poverty, opposed the Vietnam War, and was one of only three southern Senators who refused to sign the segregationist Southern Manifesto. He supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 after he had opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964- but later wrote in his memoirs of his regret over his position.

The other two senators opposing the Southern Manifesto? Lyndon B. Johnson and Estes Kefauver. That was Estes Kefauver, a supporter of antitrust activity and opponent of "the concentration of U.S. economic and political power under the control of a wealthy, exclusive elite." He served as chairman of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses), whose televised hearings in 1950-1951 threw light on the danger of organized crime before American society, a la The Sopranos, began to glorify La Cosa Nostra.

And then there was Minnesota Senator, and Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, who tirelesly fought for justice for the less fortunate in American society. At the Democratic Presidential Convention on July 14, 1948, Humphrey helped spark the walkout of Strom Thurmon's Dixicrats with a speech in which he declared

To those who say -- My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say -- To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

Years later, we have a presumptive nominee whose slogan is "we are the ones we've been waiting for" and little experience by which to judge him; and a vanquished candidate, the spouse of a former president, who during the campaign compared her opponent unfavorably to the presumptive Republican nominee. The decline in the caliber of the national candidates of our party is disturbing. And stunning.

Obama And Race

The May 28, 2008 edition of The New Republic carries an article by television writer Cinque Henderson, who describes himself as "par to an internet group of black people who yammer on about politics." He makes an eloquent case as to why he (alone among his "yammering" colleagues) is highly skeptical of Barack Obama and is an HRC supporter. Here is one of Henderson's insights:

Why do black people love Obama? In large part, it's because of the dark-skinned woman on his arm. Black people (especially black women) are nuts for Michelle. Had Barack married a white woman, his candidacy would've never gotten off the ground with black people. And would whites really be so into him if he hadn't had a white mother? Based on U.S. political history, you would have to conclude: not a chance. My suspicion is that people are ultimately comfortable with Obama because a member of his family looks like them--and, if you think about it, that's not terribly transcendent.

Although Henderson's point is that Obama's circumstances suggest "his so-called racial transcendence... is mostly hokum," the writer inadvertently exposes one of the most controversial questions of the campaign- whether a black "can be elected" president of the U.S.A.

We'll never know, of course, because Obama is, in fact, biracial. And early in his campaign, his appeal to white people owed in part to the hope that he could "transcend" race, though that dream has been largely extinguished with the escapades of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Much of Obama's support in the white community resulted from the perception that the Illinois senator, born in Hawaii, fairly light-skinned, and dressed oh, so professionally, was not the typical black male; that he had largely escaped the African-American experience and was free of the grievances whites perceive blacks as holding.

Whether being black has helped, or harmed, the candidate is unknowable. But it is barely arguable that without his particular ethnic heritage, Barack Obama would not now be on the verge of securing the Democratic nomination for President.

Her Only Chance

And this is the only way to the nomination for Hillary Clinton. Scandal, either by way of Trinity United Church of Christ (which, Obama announced on 6/1/08, he now has left)- or not.

When we last heard of Jeremiah Wright, following Senator Obama's denunciation of the minister's remarks made at the National Press Club, the punditocracy, not averse to picturing Obama as the victim, argued that Wright was out to harm the Illinois senator's candidacy. The Wright uproar thus far has come in two parts: following release of his two incendiary sermons and upon his appearance at the National Press Club. Support for the leading Democratic candidate, given his unique ability to appeal to our need as Americans for change, declined in the wake of the first event insufficiently to threaten seriously his candidacy. Following the second event, support declined further. I was never convinced that Wright was committed to harming Obama (as against merely wanting to further his own interests) but, if most of the media and other analysts were right, the former pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ is coming back. Maybe soon, maybe between the convention and the election, but sometime before November. And the third event likely would be fatal to Obama's chances.

There is another possibility, however remote, of a scandal related to Mr. Obama's famous church. Larry Johnson, the former CIA agent and Clinton partisan with a website whose vituperative postings make for entertaining, if less than edifying, reading, claims the existence of what he characteristically refers to as a "whitey" tape. This alleged tape pictures Michelle Obama making incendiary, race-based comments while on a panel with Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan at Trinity United Church of Christ. I suspect the tape either a)has been doctored by Roger Stone or some other slimey Repub operative; b)is not as explosive as claimed by Johnson; c)will not seem the light of day; or d)will for some other reason not prove very significant. If, however, it is as Johnson is arguing, and hoping, it is, Barack Obama will not become the 44th president of the United States of America. We need to hope that such an event never occurred- or that if it did,any tape depicting it is released soon, giving Hillary Clinton a serious chance to be nominated. If such a tape is released after the nomination is formally granted Barack Obama, it would be devastating- not only to us as Democrats and progressives, but especially to America.

No Way By The Numbers

The analyses of the past two days explaining how the math is impossible for Hillary Clinton and nearly assures an Obama nomination is accurate, and completely misleading. The Illinois senator is now only 40+ delegates away from gaining a majority of delegates and, hence, the nomination.

But it has been that way for weeks. If not, surely Senator Clinton's recent lopsided victories in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico (as expected, Obama won Oregon easily) would have posed a serious obstacle to Obama's jog across the finish line.

The numbers haven't been there for awhile for Mrs. Clinton. That was again made obvious when, as MSNBC noted this morning, two more superdelegates have declared for Mr. Obama. Here are the circumstances in which Obama has picked up superdelegates the past few months: 1) when he has a good day on a primary/caucus date; and 2) when he has a bad day on a primary/caucus date.

Counter-intuitive? Yes. Illogical? No. Obviously, when a candidate does well in a primary, he's going to pick up support. And this candidate, understandably, picks up support when he does poorly. When Hillary Clinton smashes Barack Obama in a primary, superdelegates notice. And shudder. Numbers rise nationally for the individual once the candidate of the Democratic party establishment and now a detested outsider, while electoral college math suggests that Barack Obama may snatch defeat from the jaws of Democratic victory in November. Stop her now- or else at the convention decide between a)potentially the first black president of the United States (whose nomination and election they will have shared in) and b)an individual they truly don't like, whose ascension to the presidency would, they fear, leave most of the Democratic establishment outside while ushering inside the Clinton establishment.

So there is only one way to the nomination for Hillary Clinton, and it's not pretty.

Michigan Exists!

On Meet The Press for Sunday, May 1, 2008, Tim Russert asked Harold Ickes, Senior Advisor to the Clinton campaign, about the campaign's claim that "seventeen million Americans have voted for Hillary Clinton, more than for any primary candidate in history." This exchange ensued:

MR. ICKES: Well, we're going by the AP projections, and we're counting both Michigan and Florida. And, and in our...

MR. RUSSERT: You're counting Michigan when...

MR. ICKES: Yes, we're counting Michigan.

MR. RUSSERT: ...Senator Obama's name wasn't on the ballot?

MR. ICKES: We're counting Michigan. He voluntarily took his name off the ballot, Tim. There was no party rule, no exhortation from the Democratic National Committee. He, he--it was a voluntary, strategic choice that he made. He could have kept it on there.

MR. RUSSERT: But Senator Clinton said it didn't count for anything...

MR. ICKES: Well...

MR. RUSSERT: ...but now it counts for everything.

Tim is very skeptical of the idea of counting the results of Michigan's primary in calculating the total popular votes nationwide of the two candidates.

That was a legitimate, and perhaps sound, position as of May 30, the day before the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee met in a Washington hotel and decided that the delegates and superdelegates from both Florida and Michigan would be seated, with each individual granted a half-vote. Of Florida, Clinton was granted 105 (52.5) and Obama 67 (33.5) delegates. Of Michigan, based on exit poll and other data (which favored Obama), Clinton was granted 69 (34.5) and Obama 59 (29.5) delegates. Delegates won by Clinton in the two primaries were allocated to her while Obama was allocated delegates won in the Florida primary and in Michigan, the vast majority of the "uncommitted" delegates. The two primaries were held, the party has decided that the delegations will be seated and delegates will vote. And now....

The Michigan primary never happened?

Sorry, folks, but the Michigan primary occurred. The party now has acknowledged that it did and has acted accordingly. Hillary Clinton won those popular votes in Michigan. Barack Obama and John Edwards, in part to curry favor with Iowa voters, took their names off the ballot. And the ploy worked. Not only did Obama win the Iowa caucus (admittedly primarily for other reasons) but HRC came in behind Edwards. It was effective strategy in the critical first-in-the-country vote, with the only downside that Obama has no popular votes (but a lot of delegates in a state he probably wouldn't have won, anyway) to count toward his national total. All in all, a good tradeoff.

Concession From Ickes

The bluff and bluster- or self-confidence- of Harold Ickes, Senior Advisor to the Clinton campaign, was on display on the May 1, 2008 edition of NBC's Meet The Press. When asked by host Tim Russert "Should Barack Obama offer Hillary Clinton the vice presidency to unite the party?" Ickes replied "We don't think that that's going to be necessary. Mrs. Clinton will get the nomination."

Moments later, this exchange took place:

MR. RUSSERT: When, when will this be over?

MR. ICKES: MR. RUSSERT: Could that happen Wednesday?

MR. ICKES: It could. Anything could happen.

And what will happen this week was noted, fairly casually, by Russert's next guest, former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle, now a national co-chairman of the Obama campaign. Russert asked of the Illinois senator "assuming he gets half of the delegates of Montana, South Dakota, Puerto Rico, with proportional allocation, he would need about 20 superdelegates. You've been leading the fight to secure the superdelegates. Will you have those 20 in hand by Wednesday morning?"

And Daschle responded

Well, Tim, we're not making any predictions with regard to schedule, but I think we're going to have a nominee before the end of this week. I don't think there's any question. A large number of superdelegates were holding back, waiting until the last vote was counted, and then they're going to step forward. I've had many, many conversations. I, I, I, I am quite confident that you're going to see a--an overwhelming number of superdelegates declare this week.

After Russert followed up, Daschle assured him "well, they're going to declare, and we assume that, that the vast majority of them will be for Barack Obama."

No one seriously questions Daschle's analysis. Meanwhile, a major spokesman for the Clinton campaign concedes "it'll be over when one candidate secures the number for the nomination." He seems to be conceding the nomination to Barack Obama which, as I will argue in a later post, is premature, despite Daschle's impeccable math.