-
For whatever it’s worth, I shared Melinda’s sense that Bill had just sort of left his face in his other pants last night. (Now forcibly restraining myself from making the joke about where he might have left his other pants.)
Emily, you are right that the Clinton family tableaux at each of these speeches has proven a sort of still life in public social anguish—but given that it’s historically been the task of the presidential wife to look like a medicated groupie in a good suit, maybe it’s fair to say that Bill was doing a decent male impression of just that last night.
-
Emily and Melinda: I thought the ruddy and spaced-out Bill looked like his heart was under strain last night for a different reason: because he was witnessing the first chapter of his wife's valedictory speech. The whole proceedings seemed logy, so fence-mending, so puzzlingly bile-free ... and then I realized, this was her way of saying goodbye. Granted, it'll be a long, Clinton-style leave-taking, with lots of popping back through the front door for wallet and keys and an extra hug and hey, just for old times' sake, can we talk one more time about seating those mathematically meaningless Florida and Michigan delegates? But really, isn't she just marking time so she can win Kentucky and West Virginia, let Obama reach an uncontestable majority of superdelegates, and leave the race on a less ignominious note (all the while, as Trailhead suggested last night, hoping against hope for a late-breaking video on YouTube to expose her opponent as a Boy Scout-molesting flag-burner)?
-
Emily Y., I quite agree that we haven't seen the last of the rev.; he'll be with us through November and beyond. But in trying to prove that Obama couldn't stand up to the Attack Machine, Hillary put him through a pretty good simulation and wound up proving that he can so—because he just did. I didn't read Bill Clinton's body language quite the way you did; no question his wife's dramatic interpretation of gun-totin', hawg-sloppin', beer-drinkin' Amuricans was sub-par—but to me, 42 just seemed checked out. In fact, the red face, nobody's-home expression and mouth gaping open were kind of worrying.
-
Nothing like a good welfare-mom-makes-good story, Emily; look what it did for J.K. Rowling. And though Obama's mom (and everybody else's, for that matter) was obviously so much more than that, this is just the kind of pithy, shorthand description that other Democratic candidates could never really manage, so I'm going to say I can live with it. For me, last night was like jumping into a turquoise infinity pool after a forced march across the desert with maybe a pack of javelina and a few locusts...OK, you get the drift. But isn't it funny how much smarter other people seem when they happen to agree with you? Last night's result suggested that even a 24/7 cable diet of Jeremiah Wright has not done Obama in. And that even a big, shiny gas tax holiday promised by a woman doing one weird Mammy imitation is too 90s for voters now. It suggests - I'm not saying proves, but leads me to hope - that we have learned something since those 1988 debates about the Pledge of Allegiance.
-
I'm feeling better this morning: I agree with you, Dahlia, about the virtues of Obama's speech, and now that we've woken up to the slim margin of Clinton's victory in Indiana, the superdelegates should have an excuse to break for him and help Democrats bring this loooonnngg contest to a close. Which, for the good of the party and the nominee, they should start moving on. What's everyone else thinking about last night and where we are?
The line that jumped out at me in Obama's speech was this one: "This is the country that made it possible for my mother—a single parent who had to go on food stamps at one point—to send my sister and me to the best schools in the country on scholarships." The facts are true; the sentiment resonates. It's a good line for a candidate to utter when he's trying to shake the impression that he thinks about regular people as abstractions. And yet what an odd essence to reduce Obama's mother to. Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro was a college student in Honolulu when she married his father and had her son. She was in graduate school there—after marrying again and living in Indonesia—when he and his half-sister went to prep school on a scholarship. In this illuminating profile by Janny Scott, she never seems at the mercy of circumstance. She may not have had much money at various points of her life, but that seems like a chosen path, and a bit beside the point. Even in his hardscrabble food stamp moment, Barack Obama is entirely unordinary. He doesn't pretend otherwise, really, but it was odd to see his mother reduced to her one-sentence politically useful self.
-
Emily you’re right: It would have been bad enough if this Democratic primary had seen voters tearing the party in half over the war or immigration or health insurance. But it’s dispiriting as hell to see them ever more hardened along race, class, age, and gender lines. These very angry, very personal fissures in the party make Obama’s insistence tonight that “we may not look the same or come from the same place, but we want to move in the same direction” more dubious than ever. Many people who desperately wanted to believe that of themselves last January spent the better part of April torching their neighbors’ lawn signs.
Still, if tonight’s speeches were any indication, Clinton may be going down fighting, but she is going down. Without the fire of her Pennsylvania speech or scoring a knockout by any definition, she actually gave about the same speech as Obama—health care, gas prices, mistreated veterans, icky McCain, economy, fond nod to the grandparents—but somehow hers was all about Hillary, while his was all about us.
And if Clinton was going down fighting, Obama looked like he was finally, after months of wheezing and gasping, prying himself off the ropes. Somehow, Clinton is at her best when she’s on offense. Also when she’s on defense. But Obama reminded us tonight that he is at his best insisting that both offense and defense require games of “names and labels” and "distraction" and "exploitation." To that end, both he and Clinton congratulated the other, and each sounded welcome notes of reconciliation and party unity. But while she talked about “winning” and “victory” and “teams” and “tiebreakers,” he’d moved beyond it. Finally.
And just by stepping back from these increasingly small fights, he maybe reminded us that we, too, are bigger than all that.
Read more XX Factor reactions to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
-
Another night, another split decision, another unrelenting headache. (This according to CBS, which called Indiana early for Clinton, and Obama's clearer win in North Carolina.) Torie is right, we at the Gabfest have looked high and low for the best sports metaphor to describe the Obama-Clinton marathon, and our listeners sent in lots of great entries. But I'm going biblical tonight, and it's not the candidates I'm after. It's the voters. They remind me of King Solomon threatening to split the baby in half—without, necessarily, the wisdom to call off the operation before it's too late. The baby is the party, straining as it's pulled in two directions, a tug of war apparent once again in exit polls that show black people line up behind Obama (92 percent in North Carolina, according to a number that just flashed across my TV screen!) and white women, and to a lesser degree white men, trot to Clinton. The baby is also the eventual nominee, and the heady promise of unity and purpose that this primary season once held. Remember how Democrats used to marvel at their choice between two great candidates, and may the best man or woman win? Now they both look weary and torn asunder and highly unmighty.
King Solomon took out his knife to teach a lesson, and to figure out which of the baby's professed mothers was the true one. I'm not sure what lesson these endless elections could possibly have to teach (other than that too much inclusivity is a bad thing, and that the Republicans' winner-take-all system looks pretty good right now?). Or how these King Solomon voters could possible identify the true candidate. Maybe because there is no such thing, or because the knife has already drawn too much blood. Or maybe because my metaphor falls apart in the end. Fittingly. Superdelegates, save us.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?