irrelevance in lieu of grace
by Ari Holtz
Published: May 21, 2008
In Tuesday night’s primaries, Sen. Hillary Clinton reigned supreme in Kentucky and Sen. Barack Obama was victorious in Oregon. Obama claimed a majority of overall pledged delegates and Clinton vowed to fight on. Nothing substantive, however, changed. Obama’s milestone was just a marker in his long, inevitable mathematical march toward the nomination. Clinton, once again, produced a new, convoluted metric – a lead in the popular vote – by which she claims to still have a shot at the nomination. No bother, of course, that she includes states that Obama didn’t campaign in and excludes many caucus votes. She, yes, once more, donned the mantle of fighter, scrapper, working man’s hero with $100 million in the bank. She did not, however, label herself as what she truly is, as what she truly has become – irrelevant.
Obama, prior to Kentucky and Oregon, moved on from the primary fight. He spent the early part of this week bickering with Sen. John McCain, not Clinton, over foreign policy. McCain has moved on as well, treating Obama as the presumptive nominee. The punditry has moved on. After Clinton failed to pull off a game-changing upset in North Carolina and barely squeaked out a win in Indiana, NBC’s Tim Russert declared the race as over and was quickly followed by just about everyone else in the mainstream media. Outside of Clinton zealots, the public has also moved on, long tired of the Democratic contest, mocking Hillary as stubborn, power hungry, selfish and irrational. She is seen as someone who does not know when it is time to leave the stage, who does not know that her time has come and gone.
Clinton is Nora Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She is a weak-voiced performer getting harassed by the Sandman at the Apollo. She’s an NBA team, down by 13, calling a timeout with eight seconds left in the game. She’s Spencer Pratt. She’s a cast member on the Surreal Life hoping, praying that we are still interested.
Clinton is having a conversation with herself. She is fighting a battle alone, her erstwhile opponent having stopped responding to her attacks, seeing them as futile and pointless.
It didn’t have to be this way for Clinton. She didn’t have to slide to absurdity, slouch toward irrelevance. She could have left gracefully. There were many opportunities – after Indiana and North Carolina, after West Virginia, even Tuesday night after Kentucky and Oregon. She could have been seen as a conciliatory stateswoman, an elder of her Party selflessly doing what’s best for Democrats. She could have been complimented, respected for a graceful loss of an expected prize, empathized with for failing to receive what she thought was coming to her.
Vice president could have been hers, or Senate majority leader, attorney general, or Supreme Court justice. They still may. Not, though, because she is a pantheon member of the Democratic Party, an Al Gore or Ted Kennedy, but because she scratched and clawed her way to power, backed Obama into a corner whereby he felt compelled to give her a position of status. She’s earned political capital, not respect.
Clinton’s campaign theme was that she was ready to lead on day 1. What is leadership, though? Is it moving the goal posts for victory? Is it manipulating rules to your benefit? Is it demeaning the minority vote that once put your husband in the White House because you didn’t win it this time around? Is it placing your own interests and need for power – in 2008, in 2012 – ahead of your party’s, ahead of your country’s?
Or is it swallowing your pride, dealing with your disappointment and loss, and stepping aside?
Clinton will learn the hard way that it is the latter and that not only her party, but her personal ambitions, would have been better served by a touch of grace.
—
(email this article or post to social network)
—
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:08 am
you’re actually citing al gore (”pantheon member of the democratic party” and inventer of the internet) as an example of a graceful exit? wasn’t this the guy with the pancake makeup who sighed his way thru the debates and then sued over the florida vote? and after the vote was confirmed as going to the republican nominee, wasn’t this the guy who still claimed the vote was stolen? now that he shares the honor of being a nobel laureate with yassir arafat, i can see why the dems (even if you do call yourself a “moderate”) want him back in the “pantheon.” but why risk losing all credibility calling him gracefull?
otherwise, i liked your article.