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Hillary Clinton continues to have a logic problem. After her win in Pennsylvania, her campaign reiterated their claim that winning big, reliably Democratic states means she’s a more electable candidate in November. While that’s entirely possible, there’s no historical or logical evidence to back it up.
But just because it’s wrong doesn’t mean it’s easy to explain why it’s wrong. So we solicited Trailhead readers’ help to come up with the catchiest metaphors to help explain why Clinton’s logic is bunk.
You responded in record numbers and came up with some truly creative—and odd—responses. Our personal favorite one-line metaphor came from Trena Klohe, who wrote:
You may know how to saddle a donkey, but that doesn't mean you can tame an elephant!
The simplicity, yet coy vagueness of the particulars delighted Trailhead’s imagination. Have either Obama or Clinton truly saddled the donkey? Does beating McCain entail taming him or attacking him into submission? It’s the most existential metaphor we received, and we’re suckers for existential politics.
Other all-star oddballs came from Billy G. who sent in a lengthy, MadLibs-style post about FHM’s 100 Sexiest Women in the World list. It’s too lengthy to quote in full, but Billy G. was totally convincing in his assertion that Megan Fox is Barack Obama, Jessica Biel is Hillary Clinton, and Matthew McConaughey is John McCain. A snippet:
In FHM's survey [the democratic primary], a sizable minority supported Biel [clinton] over Fox [obama] because they find tattoos [reverend wright] repulsive, or because they prefer blondes [a candidate of the same race/gender], or because Fox [obama] recently made a prominent and profoundly stupid movie [comment] about vehicles that turn into crime-fighting robots [bitterness in small-town america], or because they rallied behind Biel's [clinton's] call for mandatory universal healthcare.
It gets better from there, but unfortunately doesn’t perfectly explain away Clinton’s faulty logic. Billy’s assertion was that straight men who preferred Fox would always choose Biel over McConaughey. Sure, but the differences between Fox-men and Biel-men weren’t fleshed out quite enough to take the crown.
Outside of the wildcards, the responses generally broke down into two categories—food and sports. The most common response involved a trip to a restaurant, grocery store, or pie shop that forced consumers to confront a painful decision—what to do when your favorite flavor of your favorite food is out of stock. In a nice allusion to McCain’s age, Ryan wrote:
Just because I choose green grapes over purple grapes now, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t choose purple grapes if the alternative was raisins.
True, but raisins have their own unique taste that you aren’t automatically opposed to. Plus, if raisins come out with a great ad campaign, there’s nothing stopping you from switching sides. The trouble with Clinton’s assertion is that almost all Democrats—even the ones who prefer her over Obama—aren’t going to jump ship just because of a flashy ad. The grape-raisin metaphor doesn’t pick at that weakness.
Instead, let’s turn to the bland world of sprouts, veggie burgers, and tofu. K. Richardson gets closer with his metaphor:
As a vegetarian, I may have a hard time choosing between the pasta primavera and the grilled veggie platter, but I’m still not ordering steak.
Much closer. Vegetarians have an automatic distaste and unwillingness to eat steak, which fills the void of the last metaphor. But this setup—choosing between two similar items at first, then being forced to choose the loser of the two over a totally unpalatable third item—ignores the big-state, little-state issue. For that, we’re forced to turn to the sporting arena.
The key knot we’re trying to unravel is why Clinton’s success among core, big-state Democrats in the primary doesn’t mean she’s the stronger candidate among all voters in the general election. Plenty of people tried a sports metaphor and missed the mark, but John Zepernick nailed it. I’ve edited his response down a tad.
Hillary has a good passing game (big states), but Obama has been grinding out yards on the ground all game (smaller states). … But it isn't clear that any particular game plan would be better or worse versus McCain. And even if Hillary has more passing yards in the championship game, there's no reason that Obama couldn't throw the ball well versus McCain. Especially since he has a weak secondary defense.
Spot on, but I’d posit that nobody knows what McCain’s defenses are yet. It may be his secondary, but it could just as easily be an injury-prone offensive line. As the great and clichéd sports aphorism goes, the only way to find that out is to play the game.
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On the last stop of John McCain’s umpteenth tour in recent memory—this one visitng “America’s forgotten places”—he swung through New Orleans for an opportunity to slam President Bush for his handling of Hurricane Katrine in front of the dilapidated houses of the Lower Ninth Ward. On its surface, the event was meant to look like the return of the maverick, unafraid to dis the current administration. When asked whether he blamed the country’s highest leadership, McCain replied, “Yes.” Sure, he has criticized Bush on Katrina, but never this harshly.
But come on—these days, saying Bush botched Katrina is like calling the sky blue. No one is going to challenge you. Heck, even Bush would upbraid himself if he were running again.
Since entering the race, McCain has been accused of abandoning bold stances and drifting in line with the administration. Back in 2001, McCain opposed Bush’s tax cuts; now he favors extending them. (Advisers say he’s “looking forward, not back.”) During his first run for the presidency, McCain opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade; since then, he has said he would support it. His feelings about ethanol have improved over the years, as has his relationship with Christian right leaders like Jerry Falwell, whom he once denounced as an “agent of intolerance.”
All this, combined with McCain’s unwavering support of the Iraq war, has allowed the Democratic candidates to paint McCain as Bush 3.0. So, McCain has to perform a balancing act—embracing the positive aspects of the Bush administration while distancing himself from the negative. It’s the distancing that’s supposed to earn him maverick points.
Unfortunately, slamming Bush on Katrina isn’t being a maverick—it’s common sense. Plus, it’s a subject on which McCain’s record is hardly pristine. In the wake of the hurricane in 2006, McCain said he was willing to commit “$4.2 billion, $10.5 billion, $50.5 billion” to recovery. Yet two months later, he voted against a bill that devoted $29 billion to Gulf Coast recovery, claiming the bill included unnecessary spending. Now McCain is hitting Bush without offering any specifics on how he’d rebuild the city.
Of course, this isn't really being discussed. Instead, critics are harping on McCain’s faux pas: After visiting the Lower Ninth, he said we need to “have a conversation about what to do—rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is.” He later clarified that he meant the community should decide for itself. But the damage was done. If you’re trying to win over New Orleans, you don’t talk about tearing it down, whatever the merits.
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Clinton's
win in Pennsylvania changes the whole Deathwatch calculus. Back when
things were really dismal for her, no news was good news. As my
colleague Chris Beam aptly put it in early April,
her odds were like the health meter in Gears of War: It went up any
time it wasn't actively going down. Now that she's on the up-and-up
again, the adage about sharks applies: She has to stay in motion
constantly to stay alive. (Note: Apparently this is only true of some sharks.) So a new poll
that has Obama up 41 percent to Clinton's 38 percent in
Indiana—functionally a tie, given the margin of error—is a giant
inertia killer on the horizon. But continued attacks on Obama from
several fronts offset the damage, so we're only docking her 0.2 points,
bringing her to 11.9 percent.
Let's cover the bad news for Obama first: As Deathwatch mentioned yesterday, pastor-pariah the Rev. Jeremiah Wright recently gave an interview on PBS, which airs tonight. While some argue
that any humanization of Wright can help Obama in the long run, the
mere reminder that Wright exists cannot possibly help Obama today.
Wright continues to be a liability for Obama, as we are reminded by this ad that the North Carolina Republican Party claims it will run ahead of the state's May 6 primary.
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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Responding to our earlier post, Slate's James Ledbetter weighs in with a few more reasons Clinton shouldn't count on a 2012 win:
1)
HRC is not getting any younger; she
will turn 65 in 2012 and 69 in 2016. Multiple presidential bids are going to
take their toll on her;
2)
Let’s say Obama loses to McCain ’08.
Will Democratic voters really conclude that the problem is Obama (even if,
arguably, they should )? I don’t think they will. I think the standing
Democratic wisdom will be that Obama did a remarkable job on his first
presidential run, and another 4 years and he may be able to pull it
off.
3)
Leaving aside McCain’s age, in
general it is much harder to win an election against an incumbent president than
it is to win when the job is open. On this point, Bill Clinton’s election in ’92
was the exception that shows the rule – and remember, he won that year with only
42% of the vote, thanks to Mr. Perot.
Couple thoughts on #2: Obama has intimated that despite his
youth, this is his one shot at the presidency, as if to say he won't run
again. It’s a good ploy to disarm voters who argue that it’s "not his time" yet, but it’s
also hard to swallow. Even if Obama lost the 2008 election, he’d probably maintain
enough support to sustain another run.
But so would Hillary. If Obama lost to McCain, Clinton would find some
way to blame it on Obama, perhaps deservedly. In retrospect, she would be the Cassandra of 2008. Her 2012 campaign slogan would be, "Told You So." Think about the fallout after George McGovern's loss in 1972—party leaders
(and a lot of other Democrats) thought they'd taken too big a chance on the
guy, clearing the path for a low-risk establishment figure, Jimmy Carter. I
wouldn't be surprised if something similar happened after an Obama loss.
Hillary would return as the establishment savior.
Of course, it would all depend on McCain’s margin of victory.
McGovern got trounced by 23.2 points, pegging his candidacy as not
just a failure but a disaster. If Obama got beaten by a hair, the reaction
probably wouldn’t be so heated. But either way, I still think Hillary could
carve out a rationale for a re-run.
Update 3:11 p.m.: Whaddayaknow, Huffington Post has an interview with McGovern on this very subject. Turns out he does see parallels between his campaign and Obama's -- not that Obama will lose in the general, but that he'll be a victim of the same intramural warfare that dogged McGovern even after he won the nomination. There's also this fascinating parallel:
In '72, after he won the California primary and clinched the
nomination, McGovern's Democratic opponents argued that the delegation
should have been rewarded on a proportional basis, rather than
winner-take-all. It was, McGovern says, a changing of the rules in
mid-game that resulted both in the weakening of his campaign and his
limping into the convention. Thirty-six years later, he sees parallels
with the Clinton campaign's push to count the results of the
non-DNC-sanctioned Florida and Michigan primaries.
If Obama spent the summer fending off Florida and Michigan-related litigation, that's less time to focus on building a machine against McCain. Now that Clinton's case for winning the popular vote hinges on whether those two states "count," don't expect it to disappear anytime soon. As a matter of fact, they're ramping up the fight yet again.
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The Maximum Damage Theory has been floating around for some time now. It holds that Hillary Clinton knows she can’t win the nomination but wants to hurt Obama as much as possible so he’ll lose in November and she can run against McCain in 2012. So far, the theory hasn’t gotten much traction beyond blog comments.
But in an interview with the New York Times today, Rep. James Clyburn becomes one of the first leaders to articulate this view. Here’s the paraphrase:
Mr. Clyburn added that there appeared to be an almost unanimous view among African-Americans that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton were committed to doing everything they possibly could to damage Mr. Obama to a point that he could never win in the general election.
Note that Clyburn doesn’t endorse the theory—he merely points out its existence.
But there’s a big problem with the notion, which is that both candidates have pledged to support the Democratic nominee in the general election. "I will do everything to make sure that the people who supported me will support the nominee," Clinton said this month. Obama also said that "the Democratic Party will come together" once the nominee is chosen. Even the spouses are onboard: Bill has said he would campaign for Obama were he to become the nominee, while Michelle Obama told ABC that "everyone in this party is going to work hard for whoever the nominee is."
So if that’s true—if the loser is going to campaign for the winner—it makes no sense that Clinton would simultaneously try to inflict damage on Obama. You can’t praise him and undermine him at the same time, at least not without the calculation looking awfully transparent. If anything, she'll have to do some serious atoning for her negative attacks on Obama in order to get back in the party's good graces.
I suppose it's not impossible that the primary will get so nasty that neither Clinton nor Obama will want to look at each other again, let alone campaign for each other. Or maybe Hillary secretly hopes Obama won't ask her to campaign for him, which would make the current negativity productive for a 2012 run. But in presidential races, unity is necessary, and necessity heals all wounds. Just ask Mitt Romney.