hillary will win, we’ll lose
by Ari Holtz
Published: January 25, 2008
Despite a win in the Iowa caucuses and an anticipated victory in the South Carolina primary, Barack Obama is not going to win the Democratic nomination for president. Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly be the nominee of the Democratic Party. She will vanquish Obama because she knows how to wage electoral battle and he does not. While she fights hardcore from the trenches, he attempts to stay above the fray only to futilely flail back. It doesn’t work for him. The senator from New York will reign victorious. The American public will be worse off for it.
After a double-digit Iowa loss and a down-to-the-wire finish in New Hampshire, Clinton surely became afraid that Obama was no now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t mirage, but rather a legitimate threat to her presidential ambitions. She and her team clearly decided that the time for playing was over. There would be no more crying as if she were on Barbara Walters’ couch, no more worrying about morphing into a warm and cuddly version of Hillary-bot 2008. Heck, no. The call to war was sounded and would be heeded.
Clinton unleashed a full barrage of no-joke weaponry. She pounced on the issue of race and held the news cycle there for days in order to ghetto-ize Obama as the “black candidate,” thereby making him seem like just a niche-filler. She let fly nuclear Bill who manipulated the press with timely explosions. Not satisfied with simply attacking the mainstream media, he also distorted and misled on Obama’s Iraq war record and his so-called admiring comments about Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party, which actually weren’t admiring at all. In the recent Myrtle Beach debate, Hillary, floating just above the innuendos and implications of her attack-dog husband, lashed out at Barack on his Illinois state legislature voting record and the depth of his convictions.
That’s right, Hillary Clinton attacked someone else about the depth of his convictions.
In the face of this blitzkrieg Obama has looked unsure and impotent. He walked right into the Clintons’ race trap with no clear strategy of how to turn it to his advantage. He’s been simply overpowered by the Bill and Hillary tag team. He has had no counter for their virtuosity at the playing of the media. When it comes to the Lee Atwater-Karl Rove brand of dirty politics, Obama simply does not have game.
Barack can’t hang and Hillary knows it. His entire campaign is built on the premise of rising above divisiveness and attack-politics. Consequently, when shellacked with Clinton slime Obama is paralyzed; on one hand he needs to punch back, but on the other hand if he does he contradicts the entire clean, transcendent theme of his brand.
The back-alley-brawling Clinton campaign style doesn’t just serve to freeze Obama; it also works to limit the movement he has created. Obama has succeeded in bringing out young, first-time voters, cross-over Republicans, independents and apolitical individuals who have been inspired to get involved for the first time in their lives. Clinton’s success at dragging the nomination race into the mud antagonizes all of these voters - people who have been moved by the promise of a new, unifying politics. These voters will either vote with the GOP or simply be turned off by the whole process, staying home on election day as they have done previously. Dirty politics is a legal and subversive method of voter suppression and the keeping of power in the hands of those who already have it.
The policy differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are largely relegated to nuance. They are both for speedy withdrawal from Iraq, universal healthcare and a more progressive tax structure. Their respective plans in these and other areas have variations, but there are far more similarities. The significant difference between the two candidates is in their style. Clinton pursues change through political warfare. Her ends justify her means. Enemies are to be ruined, deception is to be engaged in, no tactic is off the table. Obama believes that our ability to improve ourselves as a nation is predicated on a civil and inspirational politics, one where coming together and bridging differences is valued over making gains through defamation and triangulation.
Given the simple choice of the politics of George W. Bush and Richard Nixon or FDR and JFK, Americans largely prefer the latter. Unfortunately, the Bush/Nixon/Clinton way wins elections in 2008 and the FDR/JFK/Obama way does not. And for that, we all lose.
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