Hillary’s seen it all
I don’t think anyone should vote in the primary election on the basis of “electability.” Frankly I don’t think anyone knows. Vote for Clinton or Obama because you like their positions or their politics or their policies, but not because you think one of them is better suited to win in November.
That said, I want to address the Hillary electability argument because it irks me. It goes like this: Obama is untested against the right-wing noise machine, but Clinton’s been facing the Republicans down for sixteen years, so she knows how to handle herself. Obama, who is like unto a babe in the woods, will be immediately devoured by the right-wing nutjobs.
Writing in TPMCafé Michael Bérubé says:
But this argument always overlooked the fact that the right-wing noise machine has, in fact, scored a few very palpable hits. Thanks to all that machinery and all that noise over the course of two decades, millions of people now seem to believe that Hillary Clinton will nationalize American industry, institute Wicca as the official state religion, and castrate all firstborn males (Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson get especially squicky about this last bit). [...]
[...] No doubt the right-wing noise machine will do all it can to drive up Obama’s negatives, and as we’ve learned, their barrel has no bottom. But if that’s the argument, then we’re not being asked to choose between a battle-tested veteran and a naive greenhorn; we’re being asked to choose between a candidate who has been badly damaged by psychotic wingnuts and a candidate who might yet be. [ A Clinton Attack Plan? ]
This particular Clinton argument is really about her capability to craft a response against the right-wing media empire and it has nothing to do with her policies or how she might govern or what she’s capable of as President. Vote for Hillary because she can cross the finish line! She’s great at messaging! And this is what she pays her consultants for:
“It is time to get real — to get real about how we actually win this election, and get real about the challenges facing America,” the senator from New York told a cheering crowd at Hunter College in Manhattan. [ As Crucial Tests Loom, Clinton Hits Harder ]
Even if you actually believe that Obama’s supporters are deluded and living in a fantasy-land, there has to be a more persuasive means of making the argument than hectoring the other side for being irresponsible. Maybe it’s designed to harden her support so she doesn’t lose more people, but it’s also hardening the opposition against her. And while I’d vote for her in the general, there are a lot of things she’s said and positions she’s taken that I can’t find a way to defend.
Since we’re speaking of being responsible, however, let us consider her campaign: We’ve seen ten straight losses, serious procedural embarrassments in Texas and Pennsylvania, seven million dollars in debt and well over $100 million spent to win only nine states, a playbook bought at bargain price from the Giuliani camp, and incompetents kept on Clinton’s payroll long after they’d done serious damage. After all of that, it’s hard to take her hard-nosed highly-experienced ready-on-day-one reputation seriously.
A campaign message highlighting competence had damn well better run a competent campaign. To stick to that message after a month of news stories about how Clinton wasn’t ready after Super Tuesday suggests that maybe even the messaging people — the ones who’ll have to take on the noise machine — don’t have it together. So even the substance of her style argument is lacking. And she’s telling us it’s time to “get real”? Please.