Mayhill Fowler in HuffPo on "bitter ... cling to" (interestingly, she writes it was the cling to, not the bitter). A fine, interesting retrospective on winning, "losing," how the discourse gets shaped, and who gets credit (all senses). The bottom line:
If he did not figure out how to talk about small-town Americans [that is, working class Americans who live in small towns like those in PA that the banksters have de-industrialized] to more worldly coastal folk then even if he were President he would get no chance at "change."
Well, yes.
But who wants to talk to the unterbussen, anyhow?
NOTE This paragraph is so sad and so wonderful:
The night before Haverford, I was fidgeting in a Pennsylvania school gymnasium while waiting for Hillary Clinton and weeping over a dog. Senator Clinton, of all the candidates, brought out the pet-mania in a supporter. Canine attendance at her events was a phenomenon of the trail, and I had begun to take photographs of the various dogs, all wearing Hillary regalia, many squeezed into little Hillary costumes. On the evening of Monday, April 14, however, I realized that this penchant signaled more than enthusiasm. It was a sign that here sat a room full of losers--their loss magnified by their obliviousness to the reality that their candidate also was a loser. By April, despite Clinton victories in Texas and Ohio and a likely upcoming win in Pennsylvania, no one in the press, except for those prone to Super Delegate conspiracy theories, believed that Clinton would get the Democratic nomination.
But this was the time when Hillary Clinton, nourished perhaps by the respect she had received in the poor Hispanic communities of Texas, began to get her voice and a receptive audience--always now in a town's meaner streets and not, as only a season before, in the nation's professional enclaves [the "creative class"], which had begun to drift into the Obama camp. Here filling the gym risers at the Bristol Borough Junior-Senior High School, listening to John Mellencamp's "Small Town" and chanting Hillary-Hillary-Hillary! were the working class folk who would stick with her until the end in South Dakota because she, more than any other candidate in decades, was finding a way to speak to the many and varied losses in these Americans' lives.
This is retrospect.
Obama never found a way to speak to these Americans in the campaign, and after a year, he hasn't. That means he hasn't tried and doesn't care. That's a recipe for right wing populism. Well done, Democrats, and especially the "progressive" access bloggers who did so much to help this process along!
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oh gees
I should have stopped reading when you said "so sad and wonderful." The last para. had me in tears.
I probably won't ever really 'get over' the primaries -- certainly not the misogyny, or the creative-cough-class wilding which trashed the political discourse to the profound disadvantage of us all. But the longest lasting impact, the one that continues to most affect and enrage me, is the loss of opportunity for the unterbussen to have representation in their nation's leader. That was the real story for change and hope of 2008 -- it came so very close to a different outcome, one where a president was beholden not only to Versailles
interests, but others' interests as well. The "opportunity cost" was lost, as economists would say. And it is looking to be far worse than even I predicted at my very most bitter/working class/middle-aged white bitch moments, because Obama and the New Democrats have yet to miss an opportunity to hand populism over to the right wingers to twist into their sick, bizarre form of populism as they wish.
Not that Clinton would necessarily been The Working Class Savior Goddess or anything like that, she is, after all, still part of the "establishment." But it was clear (much earlier than April, when Fowler seems to date it) that somewhere along the way Clinton had hit on some sort of two-way resonance with the wide swath of people who never feel represented by politicians. And I think she had the chance to reorient an entire class leftward (if not actually left).
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
Then I wish she had run a better campaign.
Say what you will about Obama, but he, Axelrod, Plouffe, and the rest were meticulously organized and prepared for every step of the primary process. However much he employed racism and misogyny against Clinton, he also had a spectacular grassroots apparatus to rely on.
Obama built himself a nationwide political machine, and if we want to beat him in the future we're going to have to do the same.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Good for one time only
The machine didn't seem to last beyond the election.
Granted, a nationwide political... something.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Did it need to?
It did its job, Obama is president.
Fortunately, the single-payer movement already has some significant grassroots elements, so we're not starting from scratch. But we'll need to get a whole lot more people on board, and be a lot more visible. These sit-ins at insurance company buildings are an excellent start.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
When I hear "political machine"....
.... I think the Daley machine in Chicago, for example. As opposed to a marketing campaign, say.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I can tell you for a fact that in Texas
and some of the other caucus states, his campaign was frequently dishonest and laws, as well as party rules, were broken with impunity. Lies were told, threats were issues, fire alarms set off, police called, paper work stolen. The Clinton campaign, in Texas alone, collected hundreds of affidavits signed, under penalty of perjury, alleging campaign improprieties - and not all of them were from Clinton supporters. In Iowa, the stories are frequently as bad. One woman I spoke with told the story of her rural caucus being overwhelmed by young African Americans in an area where there are no African American families. Additionally, there were no middle aged African Americans voting - just late teens. Those stories can be heard all across the nation. One woman in Indiana discovered that her 16 year old grandson had been given a palm card instructing him who to vote for, and was bussed to an inner-city voting district and given lunch and an Ipod after casting his illegal vote.
It's hard to run an effective campaign when the opposition is filled with bullies and people willing to break the law on behalf of their candidate.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
I'd stick with the affidavits....
Just saying.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
I got those people on camera
using their name and talking about their district. I'll be happy to show people the footage.
My favorite oddball story that goes to how nuts the opposition was, came from an urban precinct in Kansas that was going to go heavily for Obama. A handful Clinton supporters showed up to caucus for her, and the Obama supporters kept streaming in. Finally, they ran out of chairs, and they held a vote to force Clinton supporters to stand up and give their chairs to Obama supporters. Why? Because there was more of them.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Ah.
That makes a difference. Thanks.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
The Clinton campaign shouldn't have been afraid to respond
in kind. As knock-down drag-out as the primary was, they should have met dirty tactics with their own. It's about keeping up with the political arms race and wanting to win just that badly.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Clinton couldn't get away with reading an AP article last year
I've used that line before, but it's true. Clinton could never get away with a fraction of what Obama did last year. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't have.
The Obama campaign prepped everyone
with tales of how Clinton was going to cheat and steal the election. that's apparently what they were teaching people at Obama camp. All over the country, when Obama supporters would start breaking the rules, their defense was frequently that they had to because Clinton was going to steal the election if they didn't.
When someone as corrupt as Obama is willing to poison the well for the whole party, there isn't much you can do. Obama broke the rules knowing that if Clinton called him out, she would shatter the Democratic party's ties to the African American community - and she would never do that. But Obama, Obama was willing to let that happen. He was willing to call Bill Clinton, who gets up everyday and goes to work raising money to buy AIDS medication for hundreds of thousands of poor Africans, a racist. There are no scruples there, no allegiance to the Democratic party. No fundamental decency.
In the end, he's proving to be the worst Democratic president since the 18th century. History will not be kind.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Are you talking about caucuses?
Especially in red states? Caucuses were incredibly vulnerable to outright corruption and fraud. And then there was the RBC decision. Is that what you mean by political machine or a good campaign? I'm being honest here. The Obama campaign came off as a blunt, tone-deaf, top-down operation, not some smooth, grassroots phenomenon. It's difficult to have a true grassroots movement based on personality. Movements depend on policies, ideology. Obama chose a more substance-free campaign, while Clinton was primarily wonk with some "I feel your pain" thrown in.
The people came out for Clinton time and time again, in spite of the disinformation and slurs spewed by the MSM and the fact she was facing an opponent with a ridiculous war chest. She won primary after primary, scoring all the battleground states except Missouri, which she barely lost. Obama had everything going his way, from a fervently anti-Clinton media to the Kennedy crown being placed on his head, and yet he couldn't even knock her out on his own. The superdelegates had to drag him across the line and even that was set up by the fraudulent RBC decision. She made mistakes, as all people do (e.g., IA, VA), but it didn't come down to who ran a better campaign. On that point, Clinton did a good deal better than Obama--especially considering the circumstances she was up against.
Thank you!
I still cringe when I see anything about that masterful campaign stuff.
oops, you forgot a few things
DNC-sponsored cheating during the RBC meeting, Wall Street and DNC big bucks backers, and gaming the caucuses. The sneering condescension of the creatvie-cough-classes and online ravening bullydom? Icing. On. the. cake.
In the end, though, that Obama and Axelrod were better hypemasters, con-men and exploiters of the political process than Clinton is fundamentally irrelevant to my point. It's hardly Clinton's fault that the DNC and Obama in particular and have purposely chosen to abandon both the ethical and practical advantages in terms of populism traditionally enjoyed by Democrats. Her loss in the delegate contest in no way prevented or hindered them from using Obama's enormous bully pulpit to put forth and fight for single-payer, a populist stimulus-package, regulation of Wall St., punishment of Bush-crony criminals, a cessation of torture, pulling out of either or both wars, or closing Guantanamo. She's hardly the reason Democrats have ceded the field to right-wing tea partiers.
If anything, after Clinton conceded Obama could have leveraged the reasons for her enormous popularity with working-class and other non-Versailles
demographics to help push the Overton windown leftward. Instead they left it all on the table.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
And yet they WON.
Be as stubborn as you like, but there are lessons to be learned from Obama's victory in the primaries and in the general election. If the primary lesson ultimately boils down to 'be ruthless,' then it's still a lesson worth learning.
Don't try to deny that Obama did some things right over the course of his campaign.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Enough with the ad hominems and
1. Strawmen: No one asserted Obama did nothing right during his campaign.
2. Any Stick: Please note that no one argued against 'ruthlessness'. Although there are many arguments that can be made against ruthlessness, they weren't made here. Instead, people are protesting against the cheating, gaming the system, and ruining political discourse. Those are all things from which little good comes, esp. if you care about policy outcomes and not simply about the horserace. As Lambert repeatedly observes, "any stick to beat a dog" is crap. (well, he says it better than that).
3. Irrelevance: Still irrelevant to the main post and my comment to which you replied; Obama's skill as a campaigner is of no relevance to the fact that the FKDs are f*cking over the middle class and working class. It's rather bizarre in fact that at this late date, people still offer Obama's campaign prowess as a counter to his failures. I'm sure all the millions who will be forced to buy crap health insurance because Obama couldn't even get behind a weak public option will draw great comfort from that.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
It's not that no one acknowledges
That Obama did things "right".
It's just the plain and simple facts, for many who were here at Corrente, during the worst of the primary fights, the benefits aren't worth the cost.
The "right things" Obama did included creating a training camp that instructed activists how to disrupt the caucuses. It includes the delegitimization of the entire primary process.
He may have done these things "right", but even today we are still counting the opportunity costs. Many of us asked, "What about after the election?" Because it seemed this strategy wasn't going to pay off the dividends of good policy, and we were correct.
So, since the only good thing that came out of his "right" actions was his election, and that's a dubious good, since his election relied on the complicity of Versailles
, which is always a barrier to progress, what good came of it. That Obama learned how to run for office like a Republican? Why must his example be followed, since it's basically an example of "How to become an ineffective figurehead beholden to those in power"
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- Sir William Drummond
The Machine That Lost California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas...
and every other large state except Illinois? That vaunted political machine?
If you had told anyone going into 2008 that one candidate won California, New York, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan (and, yes, I know Obama pulled his name off the ballot but that was because he was going to lose) and was NOT the Democratic nominee, people would've been shocked. Because previously those large states and swing states were the most important to primary victory and, other than Illinois and maybe Georgia, Obama lost them all. He lost many of them even after he was the "inevitable" nominee.
What made Obama the nominee was not some vaunted campaign of his, although he did do some things right, it was the media campaign against Clinton and the support of the party leadership as well as the ability to game the undemocratic caucus system (which is arguably something that Obama did right even if it appalls me). If Obama had really had such a wonderful campaign operation he would've won some of those large state primaries. That he couldn't is why he limped across the finish line in June and was having trouble shaking McCain until Lehman crashed in September.
At this point, as far as I'm concerned, so much of the 2008 election has been rewritten by the victors, which is how these things happen, that there's no point in talking about it. Agreement is impossible because we're each working from different realities.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
Or, visually
Oh, and history is written by the ultimate winners.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
A fair point.
I suppose I'm sorry I even started this discussion.
I feel betrayed by Obama, and to pay him back there's nothing I'd like more than to beat him at his own game. Maybe part of my desire to emulate his strategy is a desire to stand over his battered form in triumph and bellow out how the student has surpassed the master.
Nothing is true; everything is permitted.
Oh, don't be sorry, why?
As I keep saying, "Your argument is not you."
As far as "there's nothing I'd like more than to beat him at his own game" -- we can't do that. Morally, I don't want us stealing caucuses. Pragmatically, I don't think we can make it stick. It's the same idea as trying to out-bullshit FOX on the left. Can't be done. We don't have enough money to fund the lies, which are always more expensive than the truth. So we have to find a better way.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Your inclination about Obama and the primaries is right
I do think there are lots of things we can learn from looking at the 2008 primaries and use against Obama in 2012 if he doesn't start shaping up. I just don't think we can use the "official" version of the campaign - where outsider uses little people's money to beat the Clinton machine in caucuses against all odds (or something like that) because it's not true (and I'm not saying that's your version, that's the movie version). Obama went into 2008 with millions in hedge fund dollars, support among some of the more important members of Democratic Party elite (Pelosi, Dean, etc.), and the love of the corporate media (I'll let you decide if those three things were related). No one in 2012 other than Obama is going to have any of that, at least no one with a left agenda (the GOP candidates could get the corporate media love).
But things I think we can learn from 2008 for 2012 are:
1) People will donate money to political campaigns and even small donations can matter. I've always thought Obama's numbers were inflated, but he still had a good number of small donors as did Clinton near the end and Ron Paul throughout. So there are non-corporate fundraising methods if people are motivated enough.
2) You can get outspent by an inevitable nominee and still win. See Clinton in Ohio. And that doesn't count the free media advantage had. So money is important, but it isn't everything. Neither is MSM bias.
3) Caucuses are undemocratic and corruptible.
4) The dynamics of the narrative will be different in 2012, while Obama could limp across the finish line in 2008 carried in large part by the media and the national party, he won't be able to get away with that, IMO, as an incumbent President. In fact, any real sign of weakness would be very damaging. Think McCarthy and LBJ in 1968 (although you also have to think about the anti-war protests already under way in 1967 that laid the ground work). So he can't limp across the finish line again.
5) Independents and Republicans can play critical roles in open Democratic primaries and caucuses. Whether they will do so on behalf of an incumbent Democratic president with a 10% "official" unemployment rate is questionable, IMO.
6) While he got a lot of the white working class, older voters (particularly women) and latin@ voters in the general election, he could never win them over even after becoming the "inevitable" nominee during the primary. Many of these folks, older women, are stalwarts in terms of donations and volunteer efforts and I don't think they've ever really been captured by Obama. They simply voted Dem in the general. Unless something changes in Obama's economic policies, I doubt that will change in 2012, which provides places for where he could be weak in a primary fight.
7) You have to knock out the DNC's choice, you can't have a decision because the decision will got to Obama. The DNC is willing to go so far as to count votes for a different candidate as if they were cast for him. So votes themselves won't matter. It's the media narrative and scaring the hell out of him and the party elites that matters.
There are other lessons, but those are just some off the top of my head that may be applicable to 2012 (as opposed to mistakes Clinton made but that wouldn't matter against an incumbent President, that's a different list).
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
'small donors' redefined
which i suppose isn't exactly inflating the numbers, but it sure was a slick marketing trick.