Reader Posts
« previous | TPM CAFÉ READER POSTS HOME | next »
Democrats: A Common Sense of Purpose
I'm not going to pretend to know the outcome of next week's Democratic primaries or what fallout they may cause and I'm going to repeat by way of a disclaimer that it really doesn't matter to me, who wins. Both Dems have advantages and disadvantages for the fall and the most important thing to me is that we come out of this thing united.
With that said, I would like to toss something into the air because though it may be somewhat premature, eventually we're going to have to deal with the reality; One, or the other Democratic candidate is going to someday be victorious and though a lot of people seem to take pleasure in the whole "Encyclopedia Dramatica" nature of the blogosphere and some even appear to thrive on hate, we're still going to have to come together to further our cause. I really don't doubt that the candidates themselves will have any trouble putting aside their differences and I'm sure they'll both want to use their remaining power to affect the platform and to insure Democratic victory, but my worry is about of those who comment to the blogs.
If Barack Obama ends up being the Democratic nominee, I feel that most of Sen. Clinton's supporters will say that he ran a good race, he'll be a good candidate and he has their full support. But, if it ends up being Hillary, we've already heard from countless quarters that they'll be disappointed, they'll question the propriety of her victory and though I can somewhat understand some of the "new" voters saying that they'll stay home, I've really been surprised by the number of people who say that they'll vote for McCain (and a permanent occupation of Iraq).
Eventually, one or the other of the candidates are going to have to concede and if Sen. Obama comes out on the short end, I'm sure that he'll get lots of encouragement to run another day. What worries me is that if it's Hillary who doesn't get the nod, then a lot of the blogosphere is going to jump for joy and scream "in your face". Right now, we're still fairly close to a tied race in both the number of delegates and the total number of votes. A miniscule victory (by either side) will not be a repudiation or a total annihilation of the other candidate, it'll simply mean that one person got a few more votes than the other during the primary season.
The whole Florida fiasco caused the media to declare Al Gore's future dead and this same sense of exhaustion has apparently forced John Kerry back to the sidelines. Perhaps the Democratic nominee will find themselves in a similar boat after the fall, but the other party should at least be considered viable. Unless of course, we allow ourselves to waste another alternative for the future because a small, but vocal handful seem to have confused the primaries with the general election.
Plus, as I'm starting to remind folks -- We still need to write our platform and both candidates are going to have a significant number of delegates at the convention. We'll have to come together in Denver to plot our common dreams for the future and again in the fall, because beating the Republican nominee is not going to be a walk in the park for either of the Democratic candidates.
Comments (19)
Ah, the politics of fear.
And that's because he *did* run a great campaign. In game theory we call it "tit for tat":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
While he certainly made charges, he more or less kept things within the standards of "civil" disagreements, but if attacked he viciously counterattacked... and then immediately went back to being polite.
HRC, on the other hand, stooped to chicanery, legalistic mumbo jumbo, voter patronization (some don't count) and a pick-a-personality strategy that is frankly, in her words, "shameful."
One of the things that is clear from the blogs is that her campaign *turned supporters off*. There have been many here that jumped ship -- starting from the racist-laced comments of WJC in the SC.
And no matter how you coat it, the patronizing tone of your comments really show through:
The important thing is to get the best person in the country into the White House. Thus far, HRC has shown a surprising similarity to the tactics of GWB -- and if that's how she intends on running the campaign, there is no way I want her to be running the country. Both the Bushes and the Clintons represent what is worse about American politics today.
March 1, 2008 3:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
As far as I'm concerned, they've both run fine campaigns. Both candidates have had a couple of missteps, but because roughly half of the people voting in a Democratic primary have voted for one or the other of the candidates and they're virtually tied in two of Tuesday's races and split the other two each way, apparently others are still choosing to vote for both candidates.
March 1, 2008 4:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, they've both run fine campaigns, haven't they?
http://clintonattacksobama.pbwiki.com/Incident+Tracker
March 1, 2008 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I really don't know who compiled that list, but many of their interpretations aren't the same as mine and if someone were to put together a similar list of Sen. Obama's statements, they'd most likely be attacked in the blogosphere.
After all, I put up a post saying that we should all get along and the first comment out of the gate was that I was practicing the "politics of fear".
March 1, 2008 11:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because someone is likely to ask, I thought that I'd add some statistics from MSNBC;
As of the most recent count, Obama has received 11,061,339 votes and Hillary has garnered 10,505,833, a difference of 555,506 or
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21660914
March 1, 2008 4:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
It was supposed to say "a difference of 555,506 or less than 2.6% of the 21,567,172 votes reported on the website", but it looks like I needed to code the less than symbol and not just use it in a sentence.
March 1, 2008 4:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Uh, sure. Let's have a little clear thinking. Instead of mixing all your numbers together, let's track them as a function of time, okay?
Here are the total votes for each candidate on ever primary day so far:
Jan 3:
Obama 940
HRC 737 so Obama/HRC is 56.1%/43.9%
Jan 8:
Obama 104,772
HRC 112,251 so Obama/HRC is 48.3%/51.7%
Jan 19:
Obama 4773
HRC 5355 so Obama/HRC is 47.1%/52.9%
Jan 26:
Obama 295,091
HRC 141,128 so Obama/HRC is 67.6%/32.4%
Feb 5 (SuperTuesday):
Obama 7,605,114
HRC 7,691,342 so Obama/HRC is 49.7%/50.3%
Feb 9:
Obama 270,115
HRC 159,545 so Obama/HRC 62.9%/37.1%
Feb 10:
Obama 2079
HRC 1396 so Obama/HRC 59.8%/40.2%
Feb 12:
Obama 1,118,086
HRC 667,457 so Obama/HRC 64.0%/36.0%
Feb 19:
Obama 674,354
HRC 461,630 so Obama/HRC 59.4%/40.6%
So you can see from these numbers as time goes by, the voter fractions aren't as close as you suggest.
I submit this give you a better view on who is running the better campaign: the longer the primary season goes on, the easier it is to see.
March 1, 2008 5:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't said, nor have I implied that one or the other has run a "better campaign". I said that "as far as I'm concerned, they've both run fine campaigns" and though your timelime and all that it entails is also accurate, the fact remains that thus far, they've basically split the total number over votes.
One will eventually get the nomination and just a couple of weeks ago, I saw quite a bit of talk about the two of them together being an ideal ticket. I don't know that the possibility may still remain or that it has ever been truly considered by either candidate, but heaping a bunch of hate onto one party or the other will not serve the Democratic objective.
March 1, 2008 5:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
In calculus, we learn that the average slope of a curve and the slope of a curve at a given point are two different things entirely.
March 1, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
48% is still 48%...
I recall Obama saying one time that some of Hillary's rhetoric implied that his voters were delusional. I don't know the exact context of her statement, so I can't judge the veracity of his claim, but a lot of the blogosphere seem to think think that Sen. Clinton's 48% are somehow less important and that's my point about the split vote.
We're not going to have a do-over in the states that have already voted, so we only have the numbers that have been reported and last I saw, Tuesday appears to be headed in the same direction. However this race finishes, the other candidate is still going to have the largest number of votes and the most delegates among a non-nominee in history. Those people, the ones who voted for the less successful candidate are still going to be Democrats and they'll be needed in November, so gloating and post-victory antagonistic statements aren't going to be helpful, no matter who wins.
March 1, 2008 9:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obama said this during the debate prior to the last one. I think it was on CNN?
To focus on the average leaves you missing the curve. The point is that the winds have shifted. The curve shows the trend, the instantaneous rate of change with respect to time and that time is right now.
March 1, 2008 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Again, I'm not arguing for either candidate, I'm just saying that those who voted for one are no more valuable than the other and this isn't a grudge match in "World of Warcraft", it has been a contest between two people who agree on most issues.
March 2, 2008 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, you've insisted on sticking to this essentially meaningless metric by mixing the now with the then. I understand that this helps your case because it averages in back when HRC was considered an "inevitable" candidate to dilute current obvious trends.
Another slight of hand (since it is always tacitly assumed that Obama is VP in this situation) as a means to convince Obama supporters to "wait their turn." This meme is really outstanding in the sense that I wonder how much of HRC's more and more extreme campaigning and ridiculous spin (now trying to set expectations for Obama rather than their own campaign!) derives from her notion that "Dammit, I waited my turn and now someone else is screwing up everything."
I'm hoping that the Dems can grow as a party. It will involve chucking this notion of "waiting turns." One is either interested in fielding a dynamic candidate or not. It's not about who has been waiting in line longest.
Right now all indicators (including the data above) shows that the electorate is most happy with the idea of Obama running. He has the ability to pull indies and even some GOPs over to the Dem camp.
The Dems can decide if they want to use this as an historic opportunity to redraw the political map for perhaps a generation (a la Ronald Reagan).
THAT should be the common Dem purpose. Not about winning this election, but about winning the next 4 or 5 with strong majorities in Congress as well. Obama *may* be able to do this (realign the electorate and thus redraw the political map.) But Hillary certainly cannot.
Political parties do fall apart when they get wedded to the past. The Dems didn't really take over Congress in 2006 as much as the GOP lost it. The Dems would do well to understand the Whigs and the election of 1856. 2008 is the year where the Dems should reinvigorate themselves for a long term (20 year) strategy. Now *that* would be helping to make history -- not electing someone of a different gender or race.
March 1, 2008 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
My "case" is that the Democrats have to come together and it appears that because I'm not using rhetoric like "trounce" and because I'm not harping on either candidate, you assume that I support one over the other.
Again, I'm pretty neutral and I've said in several places around the blogosphere that I'd support either candidate and I've even gone as far as to say that I think Obama would most likely be the nominee. The first time that I said it was over the summer and when it became apparent that we were headed toward the convention, I've commented that the "compromise" would most likely be Obama at the top of the ticket and Hillary would probably be offered her choice between the Vice Presidency or the Majority Leader post.
I don't know if the circumstances may have changed (Obama seems pretty magnanimous, it's many of his vocal supporters who seem full of bile). Nonetheless, I've seen your position on this question around this website, but obviously you've projected your dislike of Sen Clinton onto me and it appears that because I'm talking about reconciliation, you're making assumptions that really have no foundation in fact.
I want to win in November. I'd also like to protect our past and keep our options open for the future. This post really doesn't reflect anything, other than an expression that I feel some in the blogosphere are beginning to go too far.
March 1, 2008 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting that you mention Reagan. I've noticed this comparison before, but for some reason the seems to be portrayed as a negative for Obama. How could Obama doing for the Democrats what Reagan did for the Republicans be bad? Reagan galvanized the Republican party in a way that defined their platform for a generation. If it does turn out that Barack Obama is able to do this for the Democratic party, isn't that a good thing? Hell, I'm not even a Democrat and I can see it. It seems that the cult of personality around the Clintons has imparied the ability of some party faithful to, as you seem to prefer, think clearly.
To use a sports analogy, this is like a football team recognizing that they've a young up and comer with the potential to play at the level of, say, a Joe Montana and then concluding that this is somehow a detriment to the team. Simply bizarre.
March 1, 2008 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw you hint at this on another thread.
Peak oil is coming, if it isn't already here. We aren't ready for it. It will be painful enough that likely nobody is going to stay in power (democratically) for a long period of time.
March 1, 2008 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, that's *another* story. But I assume the Dems want to plan for the best -- even those that don't believe that we are in a peak oil situation.
March 1, 2008 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
i hope we start thinking about it before the Great Famine that will make the Great Depression look like good times.
March 1, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
As do I, storm. Otherwise, peak oil will sever our options like oi-otoshi.
March 1, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Post a Comment