Statement from Robert Kennedy, Jr.

"It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June. I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband's 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June. I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense."

Anglachel

Jackals

I'm reading the reports on the mendacious attacks the Bogger Boyz are making on Hillary by completely perverting her comments about RFK.

Rather than weigh in on the current idiocy (which is being handled very nicely by Riverdaughter & Co. over on the Confluence. If you have not read that blog, stop, go there, read and bookmark. I'll be here when you're done.) what I've done is go back in time, to the summer of 2006, when Obama was not such a darling to Left Blogistan. The blow up occurred right around the time of Yearly Kos. Here are a few links:

• Entitlement and the Deserving Middle Class - June 29. The fury of the netroots over Obama's was making itself known. I prefaced a longer article about Edwards' economic arguments with reference to the spew.
• Adopting the Frames of the Right - June 30. This is my initial commentary on the brutal attacks launched at Obama for a speech he gave about the role of religious belief in politics.
• Battle for the Entrenched Power Broker Positions - July 04. While not directly about Obama, it is a commentary on just what game the netroots movers and shakers were playing.
• Reimagining the Beloved Community - July 05. My commentary on the commentary of Kevin Drum and Ed Kilgore on the attacks upon Obama by the blogosphere.
• Over the Edge They Go - July 06. Why I gave up reading Digby a long time ago. This assault on Boxer was, for me, a defining moment in understanding the real intent of the Blogger Boyz (and, yes, Digby is one of the "Boyz"), which was to destroy any politician who, in their eyes, was connected to "the DLC", which is their shorthand for the Clintons.
• The Curious Case of Obama Bashing - July 15. A short note on the optics of what the netroots was continuing to do to Obama, fully two weeks after his original speech.

What is my point here? Namely, that the Left Blogosphere has always behaved like this, they have always swarmed and spewed at their favorite target of hate, the Clintons, and that their embrace of Obama is purely instrumental. They don't give a damn if he can win the general. They are obsessed with preventing the Clintons from returning to power. If he can do that, then they'll be back to bashing him since he will have served his useful purpose.

My other point is to make very deliberate note of the straightforwardly racist sneers aimed at Obama. He was called "Lieberman's boy" (Hell-lo? WTF?!? Racist and gay bashing in one insult?), a demonstration of the failure of affirmative action, accused of "sucking up to massa", and a whole host of other hideous insults in the same blogs where he is now lauded as some kind of demi-god. This was also the election season where Jane Hamsher of FDL posted and refused to take down a photoshopped image of Joe Lieberman in black face standing next to Bill Clinton. The willingness of these bloggers who are so offended by Hillary's "racism" to shovel it out without apology is beyond hypocrisy.

They are jackals.

Anglachel

Legitimacy, Not Unity

The continued calls for "unity" in this campaign have bothered me for some time. As I alluded to in an earlier post, unity means something very different in politics than being in agreement. It would mean that contestation for the resources and social goods of the nation had been set aside. Rousseau and Machiavelli were both vital to helping Madison develop his theory of countervailing power in a system of institutions. Machiavelli, quite in contrast to his popular image, was a man who very firmly believed in laws, independent institutions to counter the power of princes, and humane rule. The result of any political excess would be chaos and death unless power was used to check power. Rousseau was the first theorist of "the general will" and thought that perfect unity is the absence of legitimacy because there is no possibility of dissent. He was always uncomfortable with the formation of the general will due to its tendency to consolidate power to depotic levels, yet feared social dissolution almost as much.

In a democratic political system, the consent of the minority to the majority's power is the measure of legitimacy. The majority, after all, has what it wants. How dissenters are treated and the degree to which they assent to the majority's possession of power while retaining the ability to dissent from the majority's policies and objectives shows how much the majority is trusted, respected, and considered within the bounds of acceptable political behavior. One of the markers of the Bush regime is the degree to which it has no legitimacy with most of the citizens. They are still trammeled by the institutions of government, but have continuously sought to dissolve these boundaries and rule through sheer force.

The increasing rejection of Obama by voters is a measure of his declining legitimacy. People who once thought they would gladly vote for him, like me, are now implacably opposed to him. He is no longer legitimate in our eyes. He has not sought legitimacy, which would mean facing up to oposition and allowing himself to be challenged, questioned, and probably be found wanting by some people, but has opted to pursue power at any price. Participating in and profiting from the media hatred of the Clintons, throwing out accusations of racism to try to forestall criticism and inflate AA vote counts, encouraging people to be "Obamacans" not Democrats, the "Democrat for a Day" strategy, engaging in intimidation and threats to extract caucus votes, aggressively trying to monopolize money specifically to silence alternative voices, and treating voters who do not choose him first with contempt.

Lack of legitimacy means relying on force to win. If you have to bully people to make them be quiet, you have lost legitimacy. If you have to remove votes from the contest in order to win, you have lost legitimacy. The objection Hillary supporters have to "teh Rulz" to exclude Michigan and Florida is how nakedly they are used to force the numbers themselves into submission. The rules, as Hillary made clear in her incredible speech today, have a legitimacy problem just like Obama himself because of their instrumental use for the benefit of a particular candidate, not just to the detriment of a competitor, but to the detriment of democracy itself. Insisting on unity as a substitute for legitimacy corrodes the institutions meant to defend democracy. Insisting on unity in order to avoid dealing with dissent is self defeating.

Take a moment to read comments by CMike, documenting the highly contested election of 1972, and Esmense, relating a personal memory of that election, and the ways in which the Democrats have fought over these questions of contestation and legitimacy before.

BTD on TalkLeft has spent many inches of blog posts trying to talk the Obamacans down from their rarified atmosphere and get serious about this Unity stuff, but the part of the puzzle he misses (or has missed in the past, as his recent posts have been of much sharper caliber) is the failure of the Obam camp to establish the conditions for legitimacy, starting first and foremost with seating Michigan and Florida as is. Failure to create the conditions under which vast majority of the party will have no doubts that he will serve the interests of the party and be protective of those who dissent from him will leave not just Obama but the party itself in dire straits in the months to come. Riverdaughter has a brilliant post up on The Confluence. You need to go read it all beause it is good in every regard, but these two paragraphs get to the heart of the matter:

Who is giving them permission to set aside their ethics and shuffle off the standards of acceptable behavior? Who is running the party that allows for the brutal suppression of one half by the unleashed id of the other half? I put the blame at the top of the party and Obama himself.

There is a price to be paid for such aggressive and insensitive behavior. People do have free will. The party belongs to the people who believe in its principles. Those principles of social justice, equality and shared responsibility can not be discarded for Change! without the party suffering some severe blows to its foundation. Going forward, the party becomes a fragile shell, easily blown to bits by outside forces because its foundations of support have been carelessly undermined.

Tuesday: Bird Brains

You gain legitimacy by being willing to risk power. This is the root cause of Obama's failure to be a unifying figure even as he preaches Unity. Obama would have lost some power in relation to Clinton early on by being willing to seat Florida and revote Michigan (I have said before that had he agreed to an immediate MI revote he would have won that state), but he would have gained an immeasurable amount of legitimacy with the voters, which would be paying off now. Clinging to a formal numbers count and defending that as the measure of victory rather than leaping for the chance to be affirmed by the voters is may garner a party nomination, but it makes Obama look like a beleagured dictator bleating about how he won an election that everyone knows was dirty and compromised.

Unity is power to quell dissent, legitimacy is power under conditions of dissent.

Anglachel

Equivocal Oregon Win

I am watching Obama's margin steadily erode. I grew up in Washington and have family and many friends in Oregon. The voting patterns do not surprise me.

Portland is in Multnomah county and is a solid urban area. It is going for Obama, as expected by more than 60%. Hood River county which is a beautiful county right on the Columbia Gorge and rather ritzy has margins at or above 60%. Eugene and Benton counties, home to UO and OSU respectively, are over 60. Washington county which really part of Portland is hovering at 59%.

Th rest of the state is much closer, with Obama in low 50s and Hillary in high 40s in most counties, and many rural counties still to report in. Somewhat surprising to me are Yamhill, Marion (home to state capital Salem), and Clackamas counties, all with much lower margins for Obama than Iwould have expected given that they are part of the larger Portland metropolitan area. They all have significant argricultural portions. The eastern Oregon counties that have not yet reported in should go to Hillary, but their populations are very small. The suburban counties are giving Obama a bare 6% lead.

The other interesting thing is the voter breakdown on my 100,00 base scale. If Hillary were the nominee, she would get 84% of the Democratic vote, which is actually higher than her percentage in Kentucky. So, it appears she is not that weak in the Northwest. When factored out, the numbers look like this:

	Total	Clinton	Obama
Clinton	84,000	38,640	45,360
McCain	11,000	2,640	6,600
Abstain	3,000	N/A	N/A

Out of 100,000 Democratic voters, Clinton would enjoy strong support from most voters regardless of initial affiliation. When the nominee is changed, the results are slightly, but significantly, different:

	Total	Clinton	Obama
Obama	82,000	28,700	53,300
McCain	12,000	9,600	1,080
Abstain	3,000	N/A	N/A

Yes, that's right, Obama would get fewer number of voters per 100,000 based on the exit poll data than Hillary. There is an attrition of 2,000 votes, 1,000 of which would go to McCain. The numbers can't quite account fo the extra 1,000, but that would probably go to abstain. What I get from this is that fewer Obama supporters would sit out or vote McCain if Hillary was the nominee than would Hillary supporters should Obama be the nominee.

What this says to me is that Hillary's supporters are less likely to transfer their affiliations than are Obama supporters. This is a relative amount, of course, but a double digit defection in a majority Democratic state (which is what affects both candidates according to the exit poll) is not a good sign.

I suspect the margin between them will decrease a bit more over the evening. This is a blow to Obama as he is the presumptive nominee with massive support form the media, the party leadership and the donors, yet he cannot replicate his early caucus margins in a western state with a primary. In the west, Hillary has won:

California
Nevada - caucus
Arizona
New Mexico - modified caucus

One of these is a blue state, two are swing states and the fourth might be a swing state were it not for McCain being from there. Obama has won:

Alaska - caucus
Hawaii - caucus, native son
Washington - caucus
Idaho - caucus
Wyoming - caucus
Colorado - caucus
Utah
Oregon (I don't see the results changing)

Colorado is the only possible swing state in this group - unless Washington goes red, which it has been known to do. Montana is the only western state left outstanding, and it votes June 3rd in a primary. BTD keeps insisting that Obama has some secret strength in the West, yet he owes his wins to low turn outs in undemocratic caucuses. Washington state's follow up primary was much closer to Oregon's primary than to its own caucus. I suspect Colorado would have shown much the same pattern. Should the ratios hold true, Obama may have difficulties in Oregon due to internal defections. Washington state would be similar.

The longer the campaign goes on, the weaker Obama looks for the General Election.

Anglachel

Crushing Victory for Clinton

Clinton scores another crushing victory over Obama tonight, giving her four of the last five contests. Her popular vote margin in Kentucky is 249, 374, which is 39,603 votes more than Obama's total vote count. Think about that - the margin between them was bigger than his vote total. Her win over him was larger than the difference between them in North Carolina.

I'm returning to my extrapolation of the percentages of who woul/wouldn't vote for which nominee in November by comparing them to a 100,000 baseline.

	Total	Clinton	Obama	Undecided
Clinton	77,000	54,670	21,560	0
McCain	16,000	8,800	4,480	1,760
Abstain	5,000	N/A	N/A	N/A

Out of 100,000 Democratic voters, 77,000 would vote for Hillary were she the nominee. 21,560 of those voters are currently supporting Obama. 16,000 would vote McCain, a smaller number than all the Obama voters who would support her, and numerically sshe would lose more votes from her own supporter's defections than from Obama's supporters, oddly enough. This means just l;ess than 9% of Clinton voters would go McCain, not quite 4.5% of Obama supporters and just shy of 2% of undecideds.

	Total	Clinton	Obama	Undecided
Obama	50,000	21,500	27,500	500
McCain	32,000	27,200	2,240	1,600
Abstain	15,000	14,550	1,050	300

If Obama were the nominee, he would get approximately half of the Democratic votes, and would get almost as many votes from Clinton supporters as she would get from his supporters. His own supporters would not give him that much more in terms of raw vote. Almost as many Clinton supporters would vote against him and for McCain as his own supporters would vote for him. The big number is the high level of abstentions, which could go either way for returning to Obama or defecting to McCain.

The other interstiong question of the evening was should the nominee pick the other person as their VP? When asked if Obama should pick Clinton, there was a definite majority who said Yes:

	Total	Clinton	Obama
Yes	56,000	43,120	12,880
No	42,000	21,420	20,580

Many more Clinton supporters liked the idea than Obama supporters. However, more Clinton voters than Obama supporters as a proportion of Democrats said he should not pick her. When the tables were turned, the pattern intensified:

	Total	Clinton	Obama
Yes	45,000	24,300	20,700
No	52,000	40,040	11,960

Most people did not want Obama on the ticket with Hillary, with Obama supporters more eager for him to be picked by Hilalry than for Hillary to be picked by him. Hillary supporters really don't want anything to do with Obama. I look at these numbers and see a much stronger resistence to Obama from Hilalry supporters than to Hilalry from Obama supporters, which also indicates that there is a greater chance for Hillary to win back disaffected Obama supporters than for him to get her supporters. Not that this is any great surprise to anyone following the polls.

I also think this indicates that Clinton would make McCain have to contest Kentucky, wasting resources and time there, while Obama would be an instant loss.

I'm off to have dinner while the Oregon results come in. So far, Obama's big counties are the ones reporting in and he's not as far ahead as he should be, given the hype and the money.

Anglachel

Teddy Kennedy

I had been sitting in a programming training class most of the day when I opened up the NY Times to check news while on a break. The lead was Teddy.

The news of the possible stroke over the weekend was troubling, but I am devasted by this. The tumor he is suffering from is the same thing that killed my beloved father-in-law just over two years ago. I pray that they caught the thing in time because they grow quickly and kill horribly.

Anglachel

Unifying the Party

I've tried to come up with some sophisticated, nuanced, theoretically meaningful way to say this but nothing is working, so I'll just say it plainly.

I don't see the Hillary campaign saying a bad word about the voters, even those who vote for her opponents. I don't see the campaign explaining away their losses because of some flaw or failing in the voters. Even the group of Obama voters most vociferous and adamant in their objections to her do not get criticized or condemned. To the contrary, she defended MoveOn from politically motivated attacks. She went to Yearly Kos and spoke without rancor or defensiveness to a deeply hostile group.

When she says she is impervious to attacks from the right-wing noise machine, the MSM and political opponents, it shows up in the way she will not be badgered and baited. She can look Richard Scaife in the eye and tell him exactly what she intends to do as President without belligerance and without apology. Their cruelty and crudeness cannot disrupt her calm civility, though she may poke some sly fun at them.

This is not someone who has burned bridges on the Democratic side. In a hard-fought campaign, she has been firm that there will be nothing from her side to prevent resolution and reconciliation within the party. She pulls no punches on issues, but has not stooped to personal attacks of the kind leveled at her by her opponents and even by some party leaders. When somone on her campaign has behaved dishonorably, they are told to leave at once.

Unity is not obedience or falling into line. It is being able to strongly and persuasively present yourself and your objectives and be victorious, but do so in a way that does not demand the humiliation, denegration or destruction of your opponents. It is to treat others as valued colleagues to be won over, not as enemies to be obliterated.

In short, when people speak about the need for party unity, the person who most perfectly embodies this stance is Hillary. These qualities as much as her specific policies, are what make Hillary a compelling candidate for me. No one person, no matter how talented, can achieve the goals of the party. All must be done in concert. All must be done under conditions of cooperation, not coersion.

I do not find any qualities in Obama that indicate he is capable of bringing about this cooperation. I see arrogance, imperiousness, inflexibility, and contempt for those who do not hand him what he wants. He does not appear to want unity, only capitulation.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the person who is best suited to unify the Democratic Party.

Anglachel

Note to Obamacans

Starting now, you get one (at most) post per 24 hour period. That is for the entire blog, not per comment thread, btw. My blog is not a forum for your lies and intimidation tactics. If your post is just more of the same BS, you don't even get that.

If this is unacceptable to you, the "Back" button is in the upper left hand corner of your browser. Feel free to leave anytime.

Anglachel

The Electoral Map Trumps the Party Math

I have been talking about the Electoral College and the way in which the primary wins for Obama simply do not add up to victory for a few months:

• There is No National Election
• Life of the Party
• Fun With the Electoral College
• Legitimacy = 2214
• Cause for General Concern

Hillary's campaign and most of the major blogs are reinforcing the argument that she is a stronger candidate in the general because she has stronger support than Obama in states that A) the Democrats have a real chance of winning in November and B) have a high enough Electoral College vote count that it will add up to 270.

I have already made the formal arguments for this position in the above articles. Below, I simply list the reasons why the general election and its electoral map trump the party delegate math:

• The general election (Electoral College) is winner take all based on a simple majority of votes in that elector’s state. They are all secret ballot elections. All voters are eligible.
• No candidate can win in November by gaming caucuses or manipulating delegate counts. The majority vote that day is all that counts. If you don’t win the state outright, McCain gets it.
• All 50 states are counted, including the places that didn’t vote for a candidate in the primaries and including the states the Democratic Party is currently refusing to allow to vote on the eventual nominee.
• A candidate can manipulate their way into a high delegate count, but if they have failed to be the winner of primaries in the must-win states, they are at an electoral disadvantage in November.
• Obama has his pledged delegate majority by leveraging unrepresentative caucus votes in Republican dominated states and by blocking attempts to revote Florida and Michigan. He does not have the support of the majority of Democrats who voted. He is at a disadvantage in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, and the party needs three of those four in our column to win November.

Long story short: The ability to manipulate the primary race to eke out a whisker thin majority of pledged delegates is irrelevant in the general election because it does not reflect the way in which the Electoral College votes are awarded. Our current contenders are both able to get the necessary 2209 party convention delegates, but only one of them is also able to win the necessary number of Electors – 270.

Hillary can deliver the White House. Obama can’t.

Impervious

Yes, I was on the conference call with Hillary yesterday, just like every other pro-Hillary blogger. If you weren't on the call, Taylor Marsh recorded it for everyone. Take a few minutes to listen to it, and give Taylor a donation while you're there for having the foresight to record it and the generosity to provide the bandwidth so it's generally available.

My impressions: Hillary herself was great, but the combination of her hoarseness, which made it difficult for her to speak, and the short duration of the call, which limited the amount of questions that could be asked, left me wanting something a little more substantial. I was impressed that the entire conversation was on the record and that no one was pre-screened for questions. She was ready to handle anything we could (quickly) throw at her.

The opening remarks started a little slow because of her voice, which made her sound flat and slightly disengaged. I winced a few times in sympathy. Things picked up when she talked about the Oregon Townhall she was doing that night. Humor and energy showed through - she obviously loves that kind of event. We moved to some talking points where she said they were ahead in the popular vote and that she is devoted to making MI and FL count because enfranchisement cannot be subordinate to punative rules. She wrapped up by talking about viability in the general election and that she is a stronger candidate than Obama. I had to chuckle a bit at the "the map not the math" meme, as I've been talking about the importance of the general election and how it is a simultaneous 50 state vote, not a national election per se, since last February.

Then she spoke about her treatment by the media, Obama, the Blogger Boyz, and the rest of her detractors, and I cheered on my end of the line. Hillary stated something that is just as important as the Electoral College calculation: I am impervious to the attacks.

Why does this matter? First, she's not running around making excuses for why she didn't do so well here or there and blaming others for being mean to her. Compare this to Scan's post on Taylor Marsh of Obama making excuses for why why he won't do well in Kentucky, and on how mean (!!!) the press is being to him. What. A. Whiner.

It also means that she is not going to be distracted from her goals because of the hubbub around her. This should be reassuring to voters who want someone who can concentrate in the middle of crisis. No "My Pet Goat" moment or watching a major US city drown for days before taking action.

Finally, and this is crucial for the general election, she is not going to let the screamers on the TV or in the blogosphere make her quit. She flatly said she was not leaving the contest, no matter how much bloviators like Timmeh, Tweety, the New York Times and WKJM rant and rave. She will not be swiftboated, intimidated, or backed down. She is not ready to make nice so that an unvetted opponent can waltz off with the nomination, and she would never allow herself to be bullied into conceding an election before every last vote had been counted. Considering that Gore and Kerry both conceded rather than be termed sore losers, I'm behind the candidate who will take it to the mat.

Hillary also wryly noted that the vitriol spewed at her was a perverse form of flattery. This is also true. You don't attack people who are not a threat. They must pay attention to who she is and what she does, even if it is only to try to tear her down. Well, it's been years now and they haven't succeeded.

Listen to the audio for the five questioners. I have lost a good deal of respect for Armando/BTD due to his cluelessly insulting opening statement. Everyone else was cool and I got a giggle over the backstory on Lambert's rather strange call noise.

While the campaign may want to get out the message about the general election map, the impression that came through to me is that Hillary is in this to ensure the Democrats win in November. This is someone who wants a win for herself, but understands the larger political picture. She is in this for the party and the country.

Anglachel

Ponies, Cows and K Street

The last three posts, Presence and Absence, Fear and Loathing, and 1968 or 1976?, are part of my attempt to think through what this current campaign can tell us about the state of the Democratic Party as we enter a period of great political opportunity. The last Democratic period of dominance was with LBJ and ended because of the Democratic embrace of Civil Rights. As Paul Krugman elaborates in The Conscience of a Liberal, (and if you have not read that book, hie thee to a library or bookstore at once), a large enough block of middle and higher class Southern whites, especially former Democratic party bosses, defected to the Republicans to cause an electoral shift. Mark Schmitt has also documented this.

While we had two Democratic presidents during the sea-change, overall it was a time of loss and retrenchment for Democrats as the pre-New Deal Southern wing of the party abandoned it over race, and significant portions of the pre- and post-New Deal Northern working class wing have wavered in their support due to a mix of school integration, perceived weakness in national defense and thoroughly deserved disgust at Congressional corruption. One of the reasons that Bill Clinton was not able to consolidate a restructured party was because his term in office coincided with the final exit of the Dixiecrats and a wholesale house cleaning of a lot of old machine Democrats. Anybody here remember Dan Rostenkowski? Big Dog was also being rejected by his own party because he represented (as Hillary does now) a challenge to existing power structures. One of the reasons Kennedy & Co. so strongly support Obama is because he has not yet developed a full political entourage and thus another faction's network can be substituted, allowing that faction to retain control even as the leaders age and retire. We're talking politics here, not tiddlywinks.

I have written extensively about the fear of the reemergence of the South as a power center in the Democratic Party and the various strategies being deployed to try to alloy the "West" (note - there is no "West" just as there is no "South") with the Northern tier to neutralize the Democratic Southeast. (Dumb move, in my anything but humble opinion. I myself am left very uneasy by the "F*ck the South" attitude of certain party thinkers, but that is a post for another day.) One of the reasons given for celebrating Obama's ostensible strength in "the West", as demonstrated by some caucus votes (Oh, and when did California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada stop being part of the West? Just askin'...), is that he will bring the western states into the Democratic fold and thus we can safely abandon the South. In the wilder flights of fancy, you see the liberal elite hoping that the unreliable northern working class can be done away with as well, leaving just us arugula eaters. You're right, it is as incoherent as you think, but that's what we're reading.

That the clothes have no emperor is a realization that people are coming to as they understand the claim to be recruiting new kinds of voters is not holding up when tested through actual elections. The Unity Pony is not quite the fine steed we’ve been told to Hope™ for.

But the other animal in this contest is the Cash Cow, and this is something that The Precious appears to have on a leash. The money issue is fascinating, and may have as much salience as the obsession with driving the Clintons from the party. While I don’t think Obama has managed to create a substantially new voting base, he is clearly trying to control all the money. Whether or not he can do that is another question. It will depend on the outcome of the general election.

The candidate whose appeal is to the big bucks donors (and not always Democratic donors, if the attendees of his Bittergate San Francisco fundraiser is any sign) is now trying to monopolize Democratic cash flow to create the simplest and crudest of political machines, a straightforward cash-exchange patronage system. He’s done some time-honored practices like giving to large sums of money to other politicians’ campaign chests, and handing over donor lists in exchange for endorsements. The new twist (and I have to admit a certain admiration for the sheer chutzpah of it all) is to demand that his donors not provide money to any other outlet than himself so that he can be the Godfather of campaign funds, dispensing it to reward loyalty and punish defections and opposition. You do business with us and only us or else (sound of knuckles cracking). Got it? It does fit well with the bully-boy tactics we’ve seen in everything else this guy has done.

The demand that other modes of political communication and action be denied operating funds is savvy in several ways. It makes Obama the arbiter of political viability. It boosts the power of his message by reducing the number and efficacy of competing voices and alternate views. It enforces loyalty to his agenda, preventing an internal opposition from forming. In its structure, it is the same as the Republican’s K-Street project, a shake-down racket.

Hmm, maybe The Precious should have been a little more specific about exactly which Republican ideas he thought were so good.

The DNC has struck a Faustian bargain with Obama over this money. They have cast their lot fully with the Obamacans to root out the Clintons and to gain access to the cash cow. Here’s the problem with that bargain, which I’m sure is really kicking in about now. The drive to destroy a wildly popular candidate is drying up the donations that would otherwise have been coming from Clinton supporters, which will make the DNC and similar party organs increasingly reliant on the Obama ATM, which demands greater loyalty in exchange for the operating capital. The more aggressively Hillary is demonized, the fewer independent sources of funding and the more dependent the party is upon The One.

Dean has bet everything on this one horse, not just an election but the future of the party and the cohesion of the constituencies under the Democratic umbrella. As all of the contests since early March have demonstrated, money can only buy you so many votes. The rest you have to earn. If Obama gets the nomination and is defeated in the general, it is unlikely he will be able to maintain his hold on the donors, who want access to power, after all. It is unclear what condition the party would be in after such a defeat having tied its fortunes so closely to this single candidate.

Anglachel

Friday Cat Blogging

Here is my cat, enjoying a warm patch of concrete while she surveys the yard for birds.

Anglachel

1968 or 1976?

There's a lot of memage zipping around the InterTubz on how Obama's run for the White House is or is not going to be "another 1968." I've done some analysis on that point myself, and as far as Democratic Party history goes, the parallels are not good. There is even a group (no I won't link to them or give them more publicity) that intends to protest at the Democratic convention in mimicry of the protests of 1968.

There is another election parallel going on here that the spousal unit and me have been discussing since the Drexel debate, which is 1976. And I don't mean the Democrats. As we've been watching the ebb and flow of the campaign, who is aligning with whom, where support is coming from, how the rhetoric is deployed, we're seeing a tectonic shift in the organization of the party that resembles nothing so much as Reagan and the Movement Conservatives' capture of the Republican Party.

This post is going to be willfully misunderstood by a lot of people because they will think I am comparing policy when I am comparing structure. I'm also going to say things neither Obama nor Clinton supporters will want to hear, but which need attention and thought. What I am seeing over the course of the campaign is that a disdained and mocked politician backed by a somewhat patchwork coalition has consolidated message and support to become the insurgent opponent to the establishment, business-as-usual candidate.

Yes, you heard me right. Hillary is to the current Democratic Party as Reagan was to the Republicans in 1976. Which puts Obama in the position of Gerry Ford, the person who was supposed to present a change for the Republicans, but who ended up being the muddled choice of unsatisfied party regulars who had nothing new to offer and who could see the danger presented by the Movement Conservatives. OK, I can hear Paul Krugman passing out in the back row, but stay with me on this. Remember, I'm talking about the structure of party power relationships, not the content of policy. While there are key points on which this breaks down (mostly with the money machine backing the conservatives), I want to draw attention to the party electoral dynamics.

People talk about Reagan in the 80s, but they tend to forget his much longer build up to that point. This is someone who was the butt of jokes (Tom Lehrer "Hollywood's often to tried to mix/Show business with politics/From Helen Gahagan/to...Ronald Reagan?") part of general amusement in pop culture (I remember a Monster Squad episode where someone used a "Ronald Ray Gun"), but who was also an unrelenting party stalwart and workhorse (never speak ill of another Republican). His governorship of California tended to get dismissed by his critics as somehow not quite a real position though it was a major coup for the Republicans after Pat Brown's tenure.

In 1976, Reagan ran against Ford and it was a highly competitive contest. It went all the way to the convention and Reagan very nearly pulled off the nomination. His campaign was condemned by the party leaders as divisive, though Ford was little more than an accidental incumbent. Ford had the backing of the east coast party power brokers, had the money people behind him, and was seen as a moderate and centrist who would not polarize the electorate. Except, he had pardoned Nixon and this pissed off so many people that he simply could not summon an electoral majority. The party split and the Republicans lost. Four years later, the insurgent of 1976 swept the field, buoyed by a voter coalition based in the South and West, but which tapped into deep pools of political dissatisfaction and economic anxiety in the opposing party. Whether or not you like the cultural mix represented by that coalition, it was a winning one and completely reorganized the traditional sources of power in the Republican Party.

Reagan was not an outsider to the party, though he was not taken seriously by the party leaders or by the press. He knew how to campaign and he built his support the hard way. You can detest what he appealed to in voters and loathe what he did when he gained power, but people need to recognize that he built a very effective coalition that is only now losing steam nearly thirty years later.

On the Left, people want to identify what Obama is doing with the 1980s Reagan (not the least Obama himself), both to praise Obama's strategy and to condemn it, but the comparison doesn't hold water, because Reagan's realignment work was done in the 70s, laying the foundation for the success of 1980. Obama may have the rhetoric down pat, but he is not restructuring the electoral map. His backers are part of the usual coalition the northeast liberal elite has relied on since, well, Hubert Humphrey to try to gain power - AAs, Stevensonians, and a contracting pool of New Deal style working class party loyalists. There is no new message or new promise being delivered, just the same abstract, reform the system, clean up bad government, the know-it-alls will manage the machine, yadda-yadda, that's been around since Adlai bombed in 1952. It appeals to the intellectual part of progressivism, but arguments about process just don't move people. He is running a priestly campaign complete with exhortations to have a politico-religious conversion. Under the hood, we can see it’s mostly about the Benjamins, and I will have a post on that topic soon enough.

Wherever these two candidates began their campaigns, they have ended up in very different places. The Conventional Wisdom was that HRC was the Establishment candidate, the ultimate insider, but those who have been watching the cracks in the party since Big Dog battled the Village in the 90s knew this wasn't so. Obama is completely the choice of the party power elite.

Over the course of the campaign, as much from the defeats as from the victories, Hillary has taken on the mantle of the progressive warrior in a way that Edwards never managed to secure. Hers is not progressivism in the mode of the saints; it is of the Jacksonian persuasion. Regardless of her starting point, which I think exists more in the minds of her detractors than anywhere else, Hillary has become the candidate of concrete progressivism, just as Obama has become the ultimate establishment insider. She is building on the base that is under-represented in practical policy terms though necessary for electoral success, working class voters (And, yes, she would have the Black working class in there, too, save for Obama.), and then she has both realigned and expanded that base - women voters are more radicalized, Hispanic voters are looking to her and not to the right, Asian voters are entering the electorate for her, pocketbook voters are lining up behind her. Geographically, she is bringing out a new set of voters in the Southern tier, replacements for the well-off white voters who used to vote Democratic and who used to be the electoral majorities in those areas. Latin@s gave her Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California, and contributed to the Florida win, for example. Best of all, she is reclaiming the "Reagan Democrats" as specifically Clinton Democrats. They are not transferrable to the old Democratic school of Kennedy, Kerry and Daschle.

Of course, the comparison to Reagan in 1976 holds a bitter pill - he lost the nomination. My point here is that even with that loss, Reagan ended the electoral cycle with a stronger base than the old guard Republicans which set him up for the final transformation of the party in 1980. Key to the transformation was the conversion of voters into partisans. The blogosphere amplifies and distorts things, but it is not my imagination that more people are explaining that they have been won over by her in a way that other candidates have not done. (I also remind readers of a poll - can't find link - done by Gallup late last year that shows her supporters were already more likely to be strongly partisan in her favor than those of other candidates.) They want the kind of champion who will not surrender, who will defend the party and the voters from all assaults, who is dedicated to ensuring that the needs of individuals are placed above the abstract theories of procedural reform. Why reform procedure if you can deliver the goods directly? Of course, since Hillary, like Bill, is equal parts Stevenson and Truman, she will do both. Her partisans see a savvy political actor who is squarely on their side, speaks their language, and will never stop fighting because she is in it precisely to fight. She does not have the technocratic aversion to political battle.

Thus, the fear of the old guard Democrats, just like their Republican counterparts of 1976, is that she can complete consolidation of her new coalition in time to take the nomination. The juxtaposition of the low-turnout red state caucuses versus the over whelming turnouts of the blue state primaries shows how weak the establishment candidate is this round, the delegate margins due to depressing Democratic votes rather than bringing in new people.

The key to creating Democratic dominance is breaking the hold Republicans have on the Southern tier, which you will get through direct appeals to concrete issues by a candidate who is dedicated to the interests of those voters.

Her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Anglachel

Fear and Loathing

What is up with the Obama campaign?

Given the ostensible "insurmountable" lead that he has, given all the advantages of money, delegates, money, party leadership backing, money, fawning press coverage, money and legions of adoring fans, why are they staying so relentlessly nagative not just on Hillary, but on her entire base of support? Why the obsession with forcing her out and declaring the contest over, done, finis, kaput, no more?

Because they know it isn't.

At this point in the campaign, if his win was truly in the bag, Obama should be making a wholehearted effort to try to win over his opponent's supporters, yet the exact opposite is happening. The win in West Virginia is dismissed as simply racists voting against Obama. Bloggers loudlly trumpet how they don't need no stinkin' working class. Nothing is being offered to answer the substantive complaints about his policies or campaign style. Instead, we get Edwards whoring himself for a donations list, flatly lying that Obama's policies have anything to do with even the shadow of what he himself campaigned on. Or we get Obama mouthing off to a female reporter who tried to ask about a bread and butter issue, uncaring of how he appeared to millions of people in his arrogance.

Fear is in the air.

They know Hillary's growing support makes them look bad. They know they are hemorrhaging voters with each primary. The very astute ones know that even if they can wrest the nomination win, they are sinking for the general because money does not equal votes. If it did, Mitt Romney would be the Republican nominee. So why the unrelenting hostility? Mostly because they know that they haven't won and they have boxed themselves in. Just as Obama did by race-baiting, their sneer at the hicks and the chicks mode of politics has put them between a rock and a hard place. To keep up the barrage will probably cost them votes (and the longer it goes on, the more votes will be lost), but, given her strength, if they try to be conciliatory, then she may push past them with his own wavering supporters who want to see everyone make nice.

Hillary herself is simply having fun and it does her no harm to be gracious. Even in her sharp and powerful victory speech, clearly laying out for the party and the super delegates why she is the more viable candidate in the general, Hillary repeated the message of party cohesion and identity, making clear her loyalties. Then, today, she went after Bush for his smear against Obama, demonstrating how a Democrat should speak and act when confronted by Republican mendacity. There is no conflict in her between being competitive and being a party loyalist.

When I look at Hillary and hear her talk, I am struck over and over by the incredible calm that surrounds her. She said in Texas "I'll be fine," no matter the outcome and it is unassailably true. This is someone content with who and what she is and thus can dedicate herself with joy to presenting her plan for the country.

What has vanished from her campaign, as far as I can tell, is the weight of doubt. I don't mean that they know they are going to win, but that the campaign is no longer burdened by the fear of loss or the savaging of the critics. You could see it getting chipped away after New Hampshire, more chunks dropping after Florida and Super Tuesday, a stasis in mid-February and then nothing but energy since Ohio. Whatever the outcome, Hillary is fine with it. She promotes herself, the party and, yes, even Obama, with a zest that is delightful.

The more generous and exuberant she is, the more selfish and resentful Obama's campaign becomes. It is going so far as to try to cut off funds to voices other than his own. Looked at with a cold eye, this is self-defeating behavior. So why is this happening?

To some degree, and this is more the behavior of the surrogates and hangers on than the campaign proper, they have drunk their own kool-aide and really, truly think they can create an electoral majority from Whole Foods shoppers. Within the campaign, a lot of it is political style. This is just how they operate, their mode of politics, and they will not relinquish their hatred. Mostly, though, it is recognition of the danger of the trade-offs they made in their campaign and that there is nothing they can do to prevent the contest from playing out. All they can do is try to distract.

By allowing the campaign to be personal, legitimizing the demand that "we" had to drive out a loathed "monster" opponent and her miserable supporters, the Obama camp has dug itself into a very deep hole. They appear determined to bury themselves in it.

Anglachel

Presence and Absence

A few things strike me about the West Virginia results that are not getting much attention, even on the blogs.

First, it is not just that Hillary won the WV primary. Hillary won it with an incredible turn out. I'm looking at the NYT page with 93% reporting and her vote tally is 223,509. CNN is a little ahead of the Times on its count, its numbers being 97% and 232,773. To put this into perspective, Bill got 331,001 in 1992 and 327,812 in 1996, Al Gore got 295,497 in 2000 and Kerry got 326,541 in 2004. Thoise aren't primary numbers - those are general election totals. Her current (not final) numbers show her getting between 71% and 79% of what the last three Democratic presidential candidates got, and it's only the primary.

The fantasy that she's somehow not attractive to swing state voters needs to be laid to rest. Had Gore or Kerry won West Virginia - just that one state - they he would have won it all. (Caveat that Gore really did win Florida, of course...). Just as Obama appeals to AA voters, Hillary appeals to Scots-Irish whites. This is a benefit to the party because it means more votes in border states that have been red recently but can be moved back to the blue column.

Hillary is a presence in this election. People in primary states are turning out in the millions for her and are growing increasingly loyal as the political powers that be refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of her run and the reality of her support.

Second, there was the complete absence of the much lauded Obama machine bringing in new voters and transcending politics as usual. Again, here's some perspective. He currently has 86,861 WV votes (NYT) in a hotly contested campaign for the nomination. John McCain, in a "Hi, nice meeting you, give me money," victory lap in WV is currently at 83,791 votes, barely 3,000 behind the odds-on-favorite for Dem nomination. OK, I can see a loss in a state where demographics favor your opponent, but 41%? Of the front-running presumptive nominee? Who outspent Hillary 2-to-1 and has the entire MSM lined up singing his praises?

Where's the beef, Barry?

In contest after contest, we see him failing to turn out the massive numbers that his allegedly unstoppable movement says they command. We see dominance in highly restrictive caucuses. We see him turning out super-majorities of AA voters. We see him dominating urban areas where you have upper income liberals. We see the college aged children of those liberal families voting in university areas.

What we aren't seeing is any new coalitions for the Democratic Party coming out of his organizing. We aren't seeing his share of the electorate increase. If anything, it is declining, given his defeats in OH, TX, PA, IN and WV, and what looks like a royal shellacking in the works in KY. His Oregon numbers are equivocal, as it turns out, as people who claim to have voted already report voting for Hillary at the same rate as Obama. In a Nebraska primary held today, which was like Washington State's with no delegates awarded, he's barely 2 points ahead. This was a caucus state that went for him 60/40. Hmm, maybe he didn't have all that much support there? Maybe he won big there because the voters didn't turn out?

It is beginning to look like the main reason for Obama's red state caucus successes is the absence of voters, not the presence of new ones. I'm reminded of a tornado that tears through a landscape and can exert tremendous force, but when the motion slows, it vanishes, leaving nothing but destruction behind it.

Anglachel