Every day, the Democratic nomination fight seems to get nastier. Both the Clinton and Obama campaigns are good at taking offense at everything the other (or their surrogates) has to say. I don't see any way for Hillary to get the nomination at this point and I consider that a good thing. The question is whether she is spoiling a golden opportunity for Democrats to take the presidency, which Republicans have dominated since the 1960s. I am of two minds about how to interpret this dogfight for the nomination while McCain gets to snipe from the sidelines.
On the one hand, the biggest complaint against Obama is that he doesn't have enough experience to be President. Clinton rightly points out that he has not yet faced the Republican Slime Machine (tm). Is she doing him a favor by allowing issues like his religion, his pastor, and his leadership qualities to be brought up? Its possible that getting some of these stories out now will make them "old news" by the time McCain's campaign tries to flog Obama with them in the fall.
On the other hand, McCain and his people can say: "See, even Democrats have problems with Obama." He also gets months to raise money while the Democratic candidates (who used to have a huge advantage) spend their money beating on each other.
As a Democrat, I am saddened to see my party so divided that in a recent poll, a number of Clinton and Obama supporters said they would support McCain in the fall if their candidate loses. If he were the McCain of the 2000 election, I might agree with them, but I am a lot more suspicious of the 2008 version.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Well, as someone who is far further from the Democratic Party than Belton, I have to say that McCain leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The fact that he refuses to back down from this farce of an imperialist invasion in Iraq baffles me. The fact that he was miles better than Huckabee or Romney simply highlights why the Republican party is in such trouble.
What really bugs me, though, is that this strong fight between two candidates is universally seen as a bad thing, because what our system craves is a unified voice. Debate only hurts your party, so shut up and fall in line. We wind up talking about the stupidest parts of the candidates and thier campaigns. This is what marginalizes so many of us who are looking for intelligent discourse .
I'm not a Democrat, so I don't necessarily have a problem w/a catfight in that party--seems to me the breast-beating over that is because there was not much of a fight over the nomination before, which is a pity--look who ran in 2004. The Democrats could have used a bit more Darwinism in selecting a presidential candidate then. I mean, they found someone who couldn't beat George W. Bush? That was truly a crime.
Even I couldn't vote for Kerry, and you don't have to be a part of the Republican Slime Machine to believe he was momzer who would have made a crappy President--which is why he didn't win. Believe me, I was LOOKING for reasons not to vote for Bush. It would be wise to bear James Carville's comments in mind after the last election. He basically said that the Party needed to quit whining and stop blaming the voters for its own failures to win, and to suck it up and field candidates and positions that will win elections.
Traditionally, Republican nomination fights are just as bad when there is no incumbent, and frankly, so are Democratic ones until relatively recent history. Republican Slime Machine? Gangsta, please: politics is politics, and NO party has a patent on dirty tricks. FDR? JFK? LBJ? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Be your age.
Sure enough, the '06 elections, which many see as protest votes against the administration, produced the first Democratic House in 12 years and a split Senate, giving the lie to Belton's theory that, w/gerrymandering, Congress and the White House would be perpetually Republican.
If you care about party politics, maybe you should be upset or take seriously the nomination fight. If you don't, because you think internal party politics are stupid and a waste of time as a voter, and merely insulates you against what is important as opposed to what is ephemeral during a general election, then all you care about is who they're going to produce who is more electable against McCain (just as in any other year, I'm curious as to whom the megalomaniacal congenital defectives from either party will be--not how or why they were chosen).
The answer there for me would be Obama. Along w/roughly 50% of the population, I could never support HRC, but a lot of Democrats don't understand that doesn't mean I would never vote for a Democrat--just not her. And that seems to be a problem for Democrats--they have linked HRC and the Party together for so long, when someone new comes along, it's as if it's a betrayal. It isn't--it's someone saying, "Look, I'm more electable! Pick me instead!" And he should at least be listened to if he is and you're a Democrat. Best ya'll find that out now, and find the person most electable against the Republican candidate, whoever that is, in each election--and in this election, it's McCain. Obama is. He'll at least have a shot against McCain, who has some real weaknesses when it comes to a widely unpopular war.
Unlike my glass-is-half-empty Democratic friends, I do not perceive the Republicans as having an advantage in the election--an eight-year incumbent is usually NOT a help to a candidate, since the candidate is in the position of defending a record he had nothing to do with, for good or ill, and resentment against the incumbent tends to make people vote against the incumbent's party-candidate who is supposed to take his place.
Recent history makes me think Belton's theory-of-Republican-advantage is again, faulty, or are you forgetting the eight years in the 90s the Democrats had the Presidency? Granted, six of the years were w/a Republican Congress, but that redounded to incalculable advantage to the American people, who seem to understand on an unconscious level that grid-lock is their greatest protection. Sometimes we get away from it, and then we realize the mess we're in w/a unified government, and instinctively react or try to find a way around it. I think that is what voters will be doing this election--trying to figure out how to get gridlock back.
Some think electing McCain is the way to ensure it, w/a Democratic House. I don't like McCain at all--not because he isn't conservative enough, like a lot of the social wing of the Repoublican party complain of, but because he's a fascist bastard. His attitude toward civil liberties is atrocious and his belief in them constitutes an obstacle to be worked around, not rights to be protected. Interestingly enough, Obama's published position is much better on gun-rights than McCain's, although he's running for office, so it may not mean all that much. Problem is, McCain has a record on civil liberties, and it's awful--despite having served honorably as a career military officer, McCain does not understand the oath he took as that officer--to SUPPORT and DEFEND the CONSTITUTION.
You're not defending the flag, the territory, or the administration when you take an oath as a military officer or an elected official--your oath is to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights is, arguably, the most important part of that. To treat it with the contempt that he has, and the administration he seeks to replace, gives Democrats ammo aplenty in the upcoming election. In addition, the hysteria over illegal immigration I think has crested, along w/hysteria over homosexual marriage. I think those issues, while still important to a lot of people, have come and gone as deal-breakers for a majority of voters--and that makes a Democrat more competitive. Throw in the reluctant support of the hard core Republicans, and I think it's a shoe-in for Obama if he gets the nomination.
I think Obama may be the best way to restore gridlock--basically, he's the opposite of "the devil you know" argument--both of the other devils are pretty bad so I'm hoping he won't be, and is my best chance to restore gridlock via a Republican Senate and a less Democratic House in the '10 elections. But I'm wrong a lot.
What I want is more freedom, not less. No one running is offering me more freedom, so my fallback position is gridlock. GO GRIDLOCK!
Tertius is absolutely right that I thought gerrymandering would maintain the Republican hold on the House for a generation or two. Like most people who follow politics a lot, I am often wrong.
I disagree with the "all politicians are all equally bad" argument. My running joke is that Republicans don't have a monopoly on corruption and nasty campaign tactics, but they do have a controlling interest. Here I am not talking about the 40s or the 60s, but the lows that Karl Rove and Lee Atwater have brought political discourse to. Show me anything in Democratic ads for the last eight presidential elections that matches the Willy Horton spot, the Swiftboat campaign, and the absurd flap over gay marriage. Republicans are the very best at going negative and seemingly not being punished for it. In contrast, notice how going negative has harmed HRC the last few weeks. She seems to have scored against Obama with the Rev Wright flap, but her negatives go way up and Obama now leads her solidly in national polls for the first time.
I frankly think that the Republican Party has gone insane in the past 14 years. Gingrich had some good ideas, but they got swamped in a tide of corruption and power madness. Bush is just the ultimate expression of this. I think that the only way for the GOP to come back to sanity is for them to lose some elections. 2006 was a good start, but it isn't enough. They need to lose 2 or 3 elections before the current madmen in charge will be discredited enough for the moderates to retake the party.
I thought McCain was one of those moderates in 2000, but the more I read about him, the more that seems to have been just a screen. Maybe if he wins, he WILL be a TR and bring the GOP back to the middle. I am not holding my breath.
I think the best hope to break this cycle is for Obama to win the nomination and the presidency. Choosing him is a risk, but I think it is a risk worth taking given the other two alternatives.
Typically I have a candidate I vote for, which is usually the Libertarian party candidate (unless he/she is too ridiculously crazy, which sadly, some of them are) and the candidate I cheer for, so that I am not perpetually disappointed by being on the losing team.
In this election, I think my "go team" candidate would have to be Obama. I don't agree with his economic policy, but he's a great public speaker and he is so much less slimey than the other too -- at least he seems less slimey. Both Clintons have always bothered me, because of their ability to tell the most absurd lies and get the American people to believe them. They are not singular in this talent among politicians, but Billary happened to be in power when my political consciousness was still idealistic and I wasn't yet too jaded to pay attention and actively participate in the process. So I am not going to cheer for HRC unless her opponent were one of the wackier uber-religious creationist Republicans. So ranking the three, I'd have to say: Obama, McCain, Hillary. There is surprisingly little distance between the policies of any of these three candidates in any case.
I have been mortified to see the level of passive acceptance with which most Americans seem to regard the heinous attacks on their civil liberties throughout the Bush administration. The sad thing is, I think the Republicans really tricked America. I was on board with the Gingrich-led Republican revolution of the mid-nineties at least in theory. For the first time in a long time, one of the parties was espousing a classical liberalism that I could mostly support. Unfortunately, the Republican power brokers, who would seem to be little more war-mongering authoritarians, pretty much tossed out many of the ideologue freshmen who were elected to congress in the mid-90s because their first loyalty was to their ideology rather than to the Republican Party machine.
All that said, I think Jefferson might have been right when he advocated a rebellion every 20-30 years or so. In my view, politics have been unfixably broken since Jackson, and it's all been downhill from there.
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Cyndi
Oh, Gods!
Belton, I had no idea how much I needed this blog until reading these comments. What a breath of reason. Tertius is right on when he speaks of the problems besetting both parties (which is, by the way, why I also usually vote in the Libertarian Party). And, of course, breuddwydiol must be congratulated for reminding us of our civic duty for revolution.
Since I assume I'm the only one who stockpiles military-grade weapons. . .I mean, nothing. The question becomes how to overcome the problem of starting the damn thing in the first place. I agree with Belton (politically speaking the equivalence of snow balls, Hades, and what not - heh) that Gingrich had some solid ideas that got a lot of idealistic young Republicans elected and then went exactly nowhere two years later. The third parties of this country have tried for over a century to bring the major parties around with little actual success beyond a few local and state elections and the addition of the odd plank to a platform. When I talk to people who are disaffected with politics as usual (and I think we all have had many experiences along those lines) and I point out some of the options that run outside of the major parties, the resulting cry is universal.
"But then you're just throwing your vote away!"
The self-defeating cry of generations X through Z.
But it's a bit of a conversation stopper. What do you reply?
Belton,
Carville's modus operandi is the negative ad. Democrats do it just as much as Republicans do. Look at Ken Starr and Newt for that matter. They were both well and truly demonized by the Clinton machine.
The problem is that the American people (at least the majority) aren't paying enough attention to sort fact from fiction. The media, for some reason plays the game and we get little intellectual discourse and a lot of sensationalism and horse race coverage.
But what can you do?
Cyndi
Post a Comment