A lot of the big bloggers and pundits have fallen over themselves to quote Friday’s Politico article that claims Clinton has only a 10% chance of winning.
You know, the same Politico that’s always wrong about everything?
The one that’s oh-so-tight with Matt Drudge?
The one that Glenn Greenwald called “a gossip rag masquerading as a news organization”?
Yep. That one.
If the corporate media can’t take Clinton down with “Stained Blue Dress Day,” they’ll paint her as a sure loser, so they can convince people in Pennsylvania and the other remaining states that a vote for her is wasted.
But see, I don’t think it’s going to work that way. I’ve been watching politics up close a lot longer than most bloggers (about 20 years longer), and as I’ve noted before, the game is played on several different levels.
He’s a tad rude, but commenter JT at Ezra Klein’s is right on the basics:
Let me do some math for all the Obama idiots. If you ain’t got 2025, you are tied with everyone else who ain’t got it. You either are the nominee or you are not. Obama fits into the second category. This bullshit about the pledge delegate lead don’t mean crap. This ridiculous bullshit about the super delegates having to vote for anyone is a plot by Obama to steal the nomination. If he continues it, then the polls that say 1 in 4 Hillary supporters will vote for McCain in the fall will only get worse. Obama will not extort the nomination out of this party and the more he tries the tougher it will be for him to close. The race is not over till someone has 2025, and if you don’t get it, any complaining that you were robbed is an illegitimate power grab. If you can’t get the voters to give you this nomination with all that money, that lead, and all those endorsements, then don’t expect the super delegates to do it for you.
There’s this from Mark Halperin in today’s TIME piece where he “me-too’s” the Politico:
The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day.
Gee, imagine that. I mean, he even admits the corporate media’s in the tank for Obama! What, you think all of a sudden they’re trustworthy because they happen to like YOUR candidate?
He also says this, which happens to be the sad truth:
She [Clinton] can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience.
No, she can’t. Because after all, if we say it out loud that lots of Americans still won’t ever, ever, ever vote for a black man, we are racist enablers who have killed the beautiful Unity Unicorn! (Just as surely as the people who give the weather reports have actually manifested the tornadoes.)
(And by the way, isn’t it funny that the people who won’t vote for Obama because he’s black are rightfully called “racists” but the ones who won’t vote for Clinton because she’s a woman are called… what, discerning? Thoughtful? Just sayin’.)
Now, I know there are lots of “thoughtful” Americans who will never, ever vote for a woman, especially if that woman is Hillary Clinton - but the Hillary-haters probably aren’t voting for any Democrat. And despite that admittedly strong bias, her head-to-head numbers against McCain are still looking good and trending upward, at least for now.
If there’s one thing politicians know how to do, it’s count votes. (These old ward leaders can predict an outcome within 20 votes.) And you can be damned sure that all those superdelegates are taking a very close look at numbers like Obama numbers like this and this. (There’s this Gallup poll showing him up again, but since Gallup’s always an outlier poll, they’ll have to see it confirmed elsewhere, over time.)
It’s a volatile situation. If that downward trend continues, or only levels out before the convention, and Hillary still looks stronger against McCain, the super delegates will do exactly what they’re supposed to do: They’ll back whichever candidate they believe can win in November. There will be wheeling and dealing, and it won’t be pretty, but they’re not going to pick someone who looks shaky for the general election.
John Dickerson in yesterday’s Slate:
And yet Clinton must not be dead, because the Obama campaign is fighting like hell to bury her. This week it unleashed the harshest string of attacks yet aimed at Clinton’s character, a risky move since Obama keeps reasserting how high-minded he wants his campaign to be. On a conference call with reporters Friday, top Obama aides said Clinton had a “history of deceiving voters” and laid out multiple claims suggesting she was untrustworthy and has sought to deceive the country.
Why take this risk? The answer is that Obama aides are not as certain superdelegates will come their way as some columnists are. And so they are trying to neutralize Clinton’s best weapon against Obama, which is that he cannot win the general election. Attacking her character and truthfulness (with the aid of photos) both undermines her claims against Obama and raises doubts about her own ability to beat John McCain. “It will be next to impossible to win a general election if half of the electorate does not think you’re trustworthy,” Obama manager David Plouffe says, lest anyone miss the point his campaign is making.
The Democratic race is like a CD stuck on a scratch, just waiting for the superdelegates to give it a kick and put it back on track. Bill Richardson took his shot. Now Obama has to hope that the other superdelegates hear the music and join in.
Hmm. So apparently it’s not quite as over as the rest of the corporate media would like you to think.
It’s almost funny that so many of my readers have convinced themselves I want Clinton at any cost, when I don’t give a shit who the nominee is. Why should I? They’re both in hock to the special interests and my guy’s out of the race.
Yes, I have strongly reacted to the attacks on Clinton - because I fucking hate bullies, of any persuasion. And fair is fair - there can’t be one set of rules for Clinton, and another for Obama. Sorry, boys.
The misogyny-fueled attacks on her have successfully made this pretty good - not great, but good enough Democrat a pariah in progressive circles. And the Obama camp did such a great job in smearing the Clintons as racist. (The Clintons, of all people. Probably the only administration in my lifetime where the N word wasn’t used in the Oval Office. Bill Clinton used to be the first black president, and now this coordinated attack has made him into a racist clown. Way to treat fellow Democrats!)
And don’t even start with the crap about her war vote. If that’s all it is, how come the blogosphere wasn’t viciously attacking Chris Dodd?
But as I said, I’m not emotionally invested in Clinton the way so many people are in Obama. It’s a matter or utility to me. I want to beat John McCain like a rented mule, and if enough voters say they won’t vote for Obama, we have to go with Clinton - or, if things are really bad, some compromise candidate.
See, I don’t believe in the Unity Unicorn.
There, I’ve said it. I’ve been watching this game too long to believe in post-racial voting. Hell, I’ve even seen elections that turned on whether the candidate’s name sounded Irish (or Italian) enough. I’d be happy if we managed to elect a black Democratic president - I just don’t believe it will happen just yet, and I don’t think Obama’s speech somehow magically changed that.
If he proves me wrong, and he’s the one kicking McCain’s ass in the poll numbers this summer, great. Because this election isn’t really about my personal validation, your feelings, racial healing, gender reparations, a first for the history books or any other kind of transcendent experience. It’s not about what you think of the refs, or whether it all fits your idea of “fair.”
And it’s sure as hell not about the Unity Unicorn.
It’s about wresting the country back from the control of the bastards who have been raping it and bleeding it dry for so many years. Try to remember that.
