Daily Archives: May 22, 2008

He Said No

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Al Giordano writes for The Field —

The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.

And that is all that anybody needs to know to understand the childish and wounded behavior of Senator Clinton yesterday, grandstanding hypocritically to senior citizens in Florida, telling them they should consider themselves under sniper fire in Bosnia, er, Zimbabwe, aggrandizing herself as some kind of civil rights leader (MLK? or LBJ? She didn’t say this time) and attempting to corner 30 members of the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee that will meet on May 31 to resolve the disputes over whether, and, if so, how, delegates from Michigan and Florida might be seated at the convention in August.

If it’s true that Obama has ruled out Clinton as veep, this is great news, for reasons I gave in the last post.

Earlier today, RJ Eskow wrote,

Hillary’s rhetoric of the past 24 hours has gone from conciliatory to cataclysmic, turning on a high-speed dime like some UFO over the Florida swamps. An awful lot of Democrats are shocked and outraged at her use of civil rights rhetoric over the primary dispute, especially after winning two primaries with the help of some white voters who admitted their choice was influenced by race.

Some are suggesting a personality shift explains the change of tone, but she’s cooler and smarter than that. It’s more likely that this sudden transformation is premeditated, brought on by a simpler and more ruthless motive: She’s demonstrating to Obama and the superdelegates what she’s capable of doing if she’s crossed.

Think about it: She’s showing that she is willing to ignite a firestorm, amplify the misguided rage of her supporters, and split the party in two if her demands are not met. She no longer expects to get the nomination. She has another list of demands, which might include the vice presidency but definitely involve high-level appointments for herself and/or her supporters. She spent a couple of days showing how good she can be for the party. Now, the purpose of her recent comments has been to show how much damage she can do.

I’d call it a “hissy fit,” but I’d be accused of being sexist. I agree with Arianna — it’s time for the superdelegates to step in and put an end to this nonsense before Senator Clinton does any more damage.

Also, here’s a video with clues about why Obama didn’t bother to campaign in Kentucky.

Just Say No

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The question at hand: What does Hillary Clinton want? Karen Tumulty writes in Time that Bill Clinton thinks his wife should be Vice President.

In Bill Clinton’s view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama’s running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill “is pushing real hard for this to happen,” says a friend.

However, the Senator is harder to read, her friends say. And if she wants to be on the ticket, her recent behavior seems, um, counter-productive. Jaws are still dropped over her bizarre performance in Florida the other day, in which she compared the “disenfranchisement” of Florida and Michigan delegates — an act in which she was fully complicit until she realized she might lose the nomination — to the Florida recount disaster and historic civil rights milestones.

Josh Marshall has a post up that deserves reading all the way through, but I’m just going to quote the last line —

What she’s doing is not securing her the nomination. Rather, she’s gunning up a lot of her supporters to believe that the nomination was stolen from her — a belief many won’t soon abandon.

She’s like a cult leader who’d rather kill himself and his followers than allow the cult to be broken up. Note to Clintonistas — beware the Kool Aid.

Jonathan Chait:

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It’s obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don’t want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton’s character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton’s gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she’s consciously lying, it’s a shockingly cynical move. I don’t think she’s lying. I think she’s so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It’s not just that she’s convinced herself it’s okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

I used to think that, although she was far from my first choice, she could do the job of POTUS competently. Now, I don’t think so. Bill Scher notes that “Everyone is focused on how to handle Clinton to avoid deep fissures in the party.” If she had her head screwed on straight she wouldn’t need to be “handled.” And who’s going to “handle” her if she’s POTUS?

Is she trying to blackmail the Obama campaign and the DNC into giving her the veep spot? If so, that’s just one more reason Obama should just say no. First, giving in would make him look weak. Second, having Billary with him on the campaign would seriously compromise his message of change. It would signal he’s going to be forced to compromise with Old Establishment Washington, after all. And the two of them would upstage him every time he turned around.

Here’s another question, asked by Marie Cocco in today’s Washington Post: If this woman, Hillary Clinton, is not an acceptable presidential candidate, then what woman would be acceptable?

Let’s think — how about one who doesn’t mismanage a campaign? One who doesn’t have to pad her resume? One who isn’t playing identity politics even as she complains about sexism? One who doesn’t have a long history of taking positions based on what she thinks is politically expedient rather than on what’s right? You may be able to think of some more attributes we’d like to not see in a future woman POTUS contender.

She doesn’t have to run for the Senate again for four more years, and maybe by then her public image will have been rehabilitated. But, frankly, I think she’s not only hurting the Democratic Party, she’s also hurting herself.

Update: See Jonathan Alter, “Popular Vote Poison: How Hillary’s latest math hurts the party.”