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Edited on Wed Jun-04-08 12:11 PM by karynnj
even though their team made a huge effort to foster two myths since February when it became possible that they could lose. The first myth was the set of unprecedented alternative measures to winning delegates. the second was to declare that if she didn't win - it was because of sexism or media preference for Obama. All of these myths need to be dispelled because they create unjustified animousity against Obama, who won following the rules.
The fact is that the Clinton team knew they might well fail to get the majority of the pledged delegates soon after February 5th. Remember the leaked Obama memo with their estimates of the delegates they were likely to get for the rest of the primary season? The Clinton campaign would have had the same thing - to not have it would render them incapable of doing any strateigic analysis. This explains why at that time they floated the previously unheard of concept that there was a "popular vote" in the primaries. The Obama surrogates, such as John Kerry and Tom Daschle spoke of the fact that they believed the super delegates would never overturn the pledged delegate majority.
Recently, the Clinton campaign has floated the idea that "her voters" are hers only and Obama may lose a huge amount of them. I have NEVER heard this argument before. Shift it to another year, in 2000 I was for Bradley, my Senator who was more liberal than Gore. Did anyone argue that Gore would be unable to win the Bradley voters vs Bush? If they did, I didn't see it. Dean supporters were just as committed to him as the Hillary people are to her - and though it got less press because he then had no chance, Dean attacked Kerry as bitterly in February 2004 when his dream was falling apart as HRC attacked Obama. Yet after WI, when it was clear that he couldn't win, he conceded and endorsed Kerry. He represented a key part of the Democratic base, but no one insisted that he be on the ticket.
The Clinton organization, starting with Bill Clinton, have a huge amount of Chutzpah arguing that the media worked against them. The fact is that there were positive comments of a potential HRC presidency since 1993! The stories after she joined the Senate were all to build a narrative, The NYT spoke of how she humbly took her place as a Freshman Senator and never pulled rank. Then gradually went to how she was a leader in the Senate. As one who loves to watch CSPAN committee hearings - this seemed somewhat untrue. On each committee, there are people whose questions others follow up on because a productive vein was started. You also notice that people reference the comments of those same Senators when making their case. HRC was rarely one of them. So, I would say that throughout this time HRC was greatly favored by the media over other Senators.
Once the campaign began, for nearly a year there were tons of articles that spoke of how Bill Clinton was still the only Democratic superstar. Remember how Clinton's finger wagging verbal assault on Chris Wallace was praised as a Democrat fighting back, though the response was actually over the top and strange as being asked about the movie at a point where it was controversial called for him to calmly cite some of the many inaccuracies and defend himself. But, he was Clinton, so it was okay. Remember the year or so where the campaign was called "flawless" on a daily basis in the media. She was also inevitable.
They brought the bad press on themselves. The first big incident was when Clinton handled the immigration answer badly in a debate where she did a pretty good job overall while getting the scrutiny that the front runner always gets. She handled it far better than Dean did when he declared he didn't want to be a pincushion. Many Democrats, including Kerry, said that she did a good job. But, then she and Bill spun into defensive mode - with HRC saying it was all the guys against her with no insight that "all the other guys" had been hitting Dean with their answers when he was front runner - claiming sexism where it didn't exist. Then Bill Clinton spoke of the other candidates and in the next sentence claimed she was being swiftboated. He later backtracked, but not before Clark and other surrogates repeated that message. This brought back echoes of the 1990s and it wasn't pleasant.
At every point where things didn't go there way, the response was negative, divisive and angry. In many cases mystifyingly so. The reaction to yesterday is built on what they have done. They really did run a scorched earth campaign. The mythical popular vote has been used to discredit Obama's astonishing win. You only need to listen to McCain's speech to see how this is now being used against Obama. It will likely become part of a Republican campaign that will use it as one part of declaring Obama, like Gore and Kerry, candidates of the elite picked by the elite.
The speech she gave leaves open that she thinks there is still a way to win - perhaps that the Superdelegates will leave Obama and shift to her. The fact is that in pledged delegates - which represent more accurately than the popular vote the choice of the Democrats as a whole - he is about 130 ahead. Let me defend that statement. The number of delegates for a given state is based on their share of the number of people who voted for the Democrat in the last couple of races including 2004. Every state defines their own process - but it must proportionally allocate that number of delegates based on the results. Let's compare that to the weight that would be given based on the Clinton measure. A caucus state is likely to have as little as a tenth of the participation rate as a primary - strictly summing the number of "voters" overweights the primaries and underweights the caucus states. The ultimate chutzpah is that some caucus states which kept no official tally that could be called "votes" were excluded - even though they were quite valid.
Now, there would be a way to correct this. If this were statistical data and different methods were used in different strata (here the states) - an estimate would be computed via Stratified sampling where the estimate for each strata on the % for each candidate would be estimated in the state then multiplied by the weight the strata deserves - here the weights would be that percent of the national democrats. But, this is close to what is done to get the delegate estimate - the difference being that the apportionment is not based on a state level % but dealt with by splitting the delegates at the district level.
As to sexism, the problem with it being the cause was that for 2 plus years, HRC was easily 20 points ahead. Now, in all that time, people knew HRC was a woman and in fact many were excited both to get Bill back and because she was a woman. What happened is that she LOST some of this support as she and the other candidates were seen and heard. Those early numbers argue against it being sexism.
Some of what was labeled sexism actually had precedents used against previous male candidates- I hated the various comments about pant suits. But, you need to consider that there were ridiculous attacks on other candidates who were male over clothes and appearance. In 2000, Gore was attacked for wearing "earth tones". It was said there was something wrong with brown suits. Then you might remember the attacks on Gore because he gained weight and grew a beard. Richardson was diminished by comments that he was too heavy. Pictures of Kerry from the time period where he was recuperating from cancer were used against him.
There was, in fact, in 2006, some fear that it would be hard to run against a woman. The interaction of Lazio and Hillary Clinton was cited. Women in NYS found his attacking HRC and especially when he moved into her space very obnoxious. There was a concern that this could make an attack that would be fine against a male opponent backfire. What I can see is that any time the issue was raised that HRC was a woman - it was raised by HRC. In fact, in NH when the issue was "change", HRC claimed that just by being female electing her was change. Now, that was the most sexist comment made by any candidate in 2008. Why? It implicitly assumes there is a significant difference in what a woman would do versus what a man would do and ignores that in large measure she was running on what she and BILL did in the 1990s.
This was a close race. Hillary Clinton did not win and she may not be the best complement to Obama as VP. His message of turning the page and getting past the divisiveness of the last 2 decades is weakened more by HRC than any other possibility. The VP doesn't typically swing that many votes, but I think Gore, who shared a background and political philosophy (though as a person was far better) with Clinton helped more than the 2000 and 2004 choices. In 2000, a VP more in line with Gore would likely have challenged Cheney in the debate more. In 2004, Kerry's competence and experience were not echoed by Edwards and Edwards refused to use the campaign slogan. Not using the slogan and using his alternative made it look like the campaign could not decide on a slogan. The Clintons are likely to be even worse in actually taking on the somewhat subservient role as VP, as can be seen by talk - after she lost - of a co-Presidency, which is utter chutzpah. (In fact, she already had a co-Presidency from 1992-2000 considering what she took credit for)
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