(no subject)
A small bit of politics, for which I apologize in advance...
This article in the NYT is both welcome and interesting. As much as the Democratic primary makes me sick to my stomach these days, I think by rationalizing what's going on I might feel a bit better.
For all the disingenuous bluster about Obama taking too long to repudiate Wright, what he's doing is exactly what he should be doing. It is very unlikely that Clinton is going to win, and if you're the front-runner with that kind of lead, engaging with your opponent only makes you more vulnerable to their attacks. Moreover, fighting back runs the risk of alienating their supporters, which polls have shown Clinton has done with Obama supporters. This is not good for the general election. Obama's strategy at this point, then, is not to "fight back" against Clinton's attacks, as pundits want him to do. Instead, he's trying to do things that allow the media to write stories like this one, reminding people that Clinton basically cannot win at this point. Getting the Clinton superdelegate to publicly switch over is one. Winning primaries is another. As long as he can stay in the lead until June (one more month, bless all that is good and holy), he will be fine. It's a waiting game at this point.
Clinton, on the other hand, has a very different task. While it's not true that any other candidate would have quit at this point, it is true that any other candidate would have been dismissed by the media at this point. This campaign has demonstrated that the media doesn't have as much effect in early primary states, where voters' first contact with candidates is often through those candidates' campaigns. But in these later states, which usually don't count, almost any voter is getting at least some of their information about the candiates from the media. And if the media either stops covering a campaign or treats it as dead in the water, then that makes it much harder to win future primaries. Voters are already reluctant to go out and vote; if they get the impression that their candidate has no chance, then why would they go to the effort? I'm usually distrustful of theories that give the media too much importance, but in this case, given Clinton's weak position, I think they hold her fate in their hands.
Clinton's strategy then, more than anything else, is to continue to give the impression that she's a viable candidate. That's why she's making this insane number of campaign stops, because that continually generates news. That's why she was so quick to release the fund-raising numbers after the PA primary, because if she's out of money then she's ipso facto dead in the water. And if she can at least keep her people coming out, she can scratch and claw her way to a majority of delegates, which would then give the superdelegates cover to go over to her.
Which I think is the only way it's going to happen at this point. Dean's comments on the Daily Show last night indicated pretty strongly that they're going to seat Michigan and Florida's delegates by simply splitting them 50/50 between the candidates. And, as the Times article says, the superdelegates are really just waiting to see who wins before making their decision. I don't think Clinton's really going to lure too many of them over to her camp, nor would they stay if Obama had a clear lead at the end of the election, barring Obama eating a Christian baby on national TV or something. The superdelegate are a veto, not a constituency, and unless there's a reason to veto the chosen candidate, whoever gets more votes will win. That's it.
Do I think that Clinton should drop out? At this point, yes. I was mildly convinced before by the argument that she was just testing Obama and that these elections were going to drive up Democratic turnout and registration. But what she's doing to Obama is the worst thing you can do to a Democrat: she is making him look weak, and she is making the party look disorganized and indecisive. Obama's appeal came, I think, not so much from his post-ideological rhetoric or his "change" stuff as it did from his ability to project confidence. It's hard for Democrats to do, usually, and it's what people want in a president. Hillary is wearing that away, and I think it's a fairly destructive move for someone who almost certainly isn't going to win.
But what about the people who want Clinton? What about those voters? Shouldn't their voices be heard? Sure. They can still vote. But they lost. There was an interesting example of this sort of rhetoric on this week's Boston Legal. James Spader was suing the Democratic party on behalf of a pledged delegate who wanted to change sides, and there was all this rhetoric about how the superdelegates are bad and what about the will of the people and so forth and so on. The judge essentially agreed, but since you can't actually tell the Democratic party what to do, the party won. There was a sense that this was an unfortunate decision.
I think it's reasonably indicative of people's misperceptions about politics, though. Politics is not an individualistic enterprise. Your opinion does not, in the grand scheme of things, matter. It only matters insofar as it adds up with other people's votes to come to some sort of consensus. Politics is a game of collective action, not individual action, and parties are there to channel and shape that collective action so it's effective. The point of an election is not to get behind a particular person, but to perpetuate and increase the party's power so that it can accomplish its goals. The modern media has made us much more focused on individual political actors, so maybe that's why we've gotten the impression that politics is individualistic, but it's not. It's about large masses of people coming together to get something done, not to elect a particular candidate, but to acheive particular goals. "One man, one vote" is not an issue of that man's opinion being expressed, but of the people's will being accurately measured. When blacks were disenfranchised, the issue wasn't really that they couldn't vote, it was that their representatives were a bunch of racists hostile to the interests of a significant portion of their constituency. That's undemocratic. Your particular candidate not getting nominated? That's just life.
This article in the NYT is both welcome and interesting. As much as the Democratic primary makes me sick to my stomach these days, I think by rationalizing what's going on I might feel a bit better.
For all the disingenuous bluster about Obama taking too long to repudiate Wright, what he's doing is exactly what he should be doing. It is very unlikely that Clinton is going to win, and if you're the front-runner with that kind of lead, engaging with your opponent only makes you more vulnerable to their attacks. Moreover, fighting back runs the risk of alienating their supporters, which polls have shown Clinton has done with Obama supporters. This is not good for the general election. Obama's strategy at this point, then, is not to "fight back" against Clinton's attacks, as pundits want him to do. Instead, he's trying to do things that allow the media to write stories like this one, reminding people that Clinton basically cannot win at this point. Getting the Clinton superdelegate to publicly switch over is one. Winning primaries is another. As long as he can stay in the lead until June (one more month, bless all that is good and holy), he will be fine. It's a waiting game at this point.
Clinton, on the other hand, has a very different task. While it's not true that any other candidate would have quit at this point, it is true that any other candidate would have been dismissed by the media at this point. This campaign has demonstrated that the media doesn't have as much effect in early primary states, where voters' first contact with candidates is often through those candidates' campaigns. But in these later states, which usually don't count, almost any voter is getting at least some of their information about the candiates from the media. And if the media either stops covering a campaign or treats it as dead in the water, then that makes it much harder to win future primaries. Voters are already reluctant to go out and vote; if they get the impression that their candidate has no chance, then why would they go to the effort? I'm usually distrustful of theories that give the media too much importance, but in this case, given Clinton's weak position, I think they hold her fate in their hands.
Clinton's strategy then, more than anything else, is to continue to give the impression that she's a viable candidate. That's why she's making this insane number of campaign stops, because that continually generates news. That's why she was so quick to release the fund-raising numbers after the PA primary, because if she's out of money then she's ipso facto dead in the water. And if she can at least keep her people coming out, she can scratch and claw her way to a majority of delegates, which would then give the superdelegates cover to go over to her.
Which I think is the only way it's going to happen at this point. Dean's comments on the Daily Show last night indicated pretty strongly that they're going to seat Michigan and Florida's delegates by simply splitting them 50/50 between the candidates. And, as the Times article says, the superdelegates are really just waiting to see who wins before making their decision. I don't think Clinton's really going to lure too many of them over to her camp, nor would they stay if Obama had a clear lead at the end of the election, barring Obama eating a Christian baby on national TV or something. The superdelegate are a veto, not a constituency, and unless there's a reason to veto the chosen candidate, whoever gets more votes will win. That's it.
Do I think that Clinton should drop out? At this point, yes. I was mildly convinced before by the argument that she was just testing Obama and that these elections were going to drive up Democratic turnout and registration. But what she's doing to Obama is the worst thing you can do to a Democrat: she is making him look weak, and she is making the party look disorganized and indecisive. Obama's appeal came, I think, not so much from his post-ideological rhetoric or his "change" stuff as it did from his ability to project confidence. It's hard for Democrats to do, usually, and it's what people want in a president. Hillary is wearing that away, and I think it's a fairly destructive move for someone who almost certainly isn't going to win.
But what about the people who want Clinton? What about those voters? Shouldn't their voices be heard? Sure. They can still vote. But they lost. There was an interesting example of this sort of rhetoric on this week's Boston Legal. James Spader was suing the Democratic party on behalf of a pledged delegate who wanted to change sides, and there was all this rhetoric about how the superdelegates are bad and what about the will of the people and so forth and so on. The judge essentially agreed, but since you can't actually tell the Democratic party what to do, the party won. There was a sense that this was an unfortunate decision.
I think it's reasonably indicative of people's misperceptions about politics, though. Politics is not an individualistic enterprise. Your opinion does not, in the grand scheme of things, matter. It only matters insofar as it adds up with other people's votes to come to some sort of consensus. Politics is a game of collective action, not individual action, and parties are there to channel and shape that collective action so it's effective. The point of an election is not to get behind a particular person, but to perpetuate and increase the party's power so that it can accomplish its goals. The modern media has made us much more focused on individual political actors, so maybe that's why we've gotten the impression that politics is individualistic, but it's not. It's about large masses of people coming together to get something done, not to elect a particular candidate, but to acheive particular goals. "One man, one vote" is not an issue of that man's opinion being expressed, but of the people's will being accurately measured. When blacks were disenfranchised, the issue wasn't really that they couldn't vote, it was that their representatives were a bunch of racists hostile to the interests of a significant portion of their constituency. That's undemocratic. Your particular candidate not getting nominated? That's just life.