The joke in that title belongs entirely to Professor Bérubé whose endorsement of Barack Obama at TPMCafe you should read as much for its wit as its wisdom, even though I don’t quite share his Clinton fatigue.
Let me start by discussing all the talked-about reasons for choosing Obama over Clinton that did not, I repeat, did not influence my decision.
I do not believe that Hillary, or her ex-president husband, have run a Rovian smear campaign against Obama.
I do not believe they played the race card.
I do not believe that either Hillary or Bill will say anything or do anything to get elected.
I don’t believe that what either or both Clintons’ careers in politics and governance have always been about is themselves.
I don’t believe Bill Clinton has a pathological need to hog the political spotlight, nor do I believe Hillary’s would be a co-presidency, nor that “Bill” would be rattling around the White House with nothing to do. Clearly, he would resume the work he has been doing with his foundation, his Presidential library and the graduate school of public service he has founded at the U of Arkansas, that is also part of the library.
I do not believe, as William Greider, a writer whose work I have admired and probably will again, would have it in The Nation, that “…the Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn’t we?”
No, some of us didn’t and we still don’t.
Greider continues:
The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package.”
The thought of the Clintons back in the White House makes Greider “queasy.” :
The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.edit
The style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons’ partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came to expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.
Reading Mr. Geider’s unsourced assertions made me queasy, and not about the Clintons.
I hope most of you will recognize that Greider is writing from that eye of the perpetual perfect storm of Clinton Hatred that has been distorting and degrading our political discourse since the day the Clintons walked into the White House. That has always been my worry about a Hillary Clinton candidacy, and the war against the Clintons has been even worse this time around, mainly because it has been joined by so many Democrats, especially Obama supporters. Not only do I fear the SCLM
will be relentless in their pursuit of bringing another Clinton down, I don’t think it will end if she is elected.
Doesn’t it distress me to allow the conservative movement and the press which serves its interest so relentlessly to choose whom we choose to be our candidate? You bet it does. I’m not suggesting that we give into the right-wing war against the Clintons, which emerged out of the three decades war against liberalism, the sixties, and the Democratic Party, and morphed into the war against Gore and against Kerry. But I’m reluctant to fight it during a campaign for the Presidency that Democrats have a chance to win, and possibly even to win big.
On the other hand, if Hillary does become our candidate, fight it we must, and fight it we will, I hope. This is such an important subject I’m saving my further thoughts on it for a separate second part to this post.
I also want to make clear that I have had my own problems with both Clintons. I’ll never forgive Bill Clinton for what he did to Lani Guinier. Then again, I’ll never forgive FDR for what he did to 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Persons disappoint us; those who wield power often disappoint us deeply. In this post, I think my disappointment with Senator Clinton is palpable.
Hillary has turned out to be a better candidate than I had expected. She’s taken positions that are genuinely liberal. If she wins the nomination I will work for her election and vote for her gladly.
So why am I trending toward Obama?
Well, first, there is Iraq. Let us face it; Hillary’s votes for the AUMF and against the Levin amendment are a problem for her she hasn’t yet found a way to talk about, or to get out from under. It keeps her from being as clear a harbinger of change than Obama. That and the drag on her candidacy the press will exert, with constant references to the Clintons’ past struggles, make it hard to see how she can be as effective as Obama as a messenger for change.
As you can see my decision is based on razor slim differences between these two candidates. Nor do I wish to suggest that Obama is without his own negatives from my perspective.
Like my compatriots here at Corrente, I’m suspicious of the unity theme, especially when Obama stays vague about the kinds of policies around which he wishes to unite us. More problematic than that, I resent the decision of his campaign to use their change trope as equally against Bill Clinton’s presidency as against its Bush bookends. It’s clear to me that is exactly what they have been doing, eliding Clinton and both Bushs, and worse still, using some of the nastiest right-wing anti-Clinton tropes to do it, all the while claiming to be the victim of that “vile Clinton” machine, as Bob Somerby might put it.
It has made me angry that they have been able to pull it off, altough the SCLM made it relatively easy for them; note, I hold Obama himself responsible for this gambit. On the other hand, it was a neat political move, and if he can do that against McCain, I’m prepared to forgive him.
I would never vote for anyone just because he had the right political chops. If I hadn’t become convinced that Obama is a genuine liberal/progressive candidate, I would not be voting for him. I won’t go into the specific data which has led me to this conclusion here, since it is not my purpose to persuade anyone to vote for Obama today. I suspect that by tomorrow we will know that this campaign for the Democratic nomination is far from over. My purpose in this post is to lay down a different set of observations than some of my blogmates as part of an on-going discussion about how this election is related to the movement most of us feel we’re part of that seeks to move this country in a genuinly liberal/progressive direction.
I recognize that Obama represents a gamble, and that the Clinton camp has a point when they talk about a role of the dice. But change elections are always that. In Obama’s case we’ve seen him pull together a first-rate campaign, fully the equal of the so-called Clinton machine, both in terms of raising money and organizationally. He’s won the confidence of people I respect, people like Ted Sorenson, for instance, and yes, Ted Kennedy, Toni Morrison, and more important than all of those, Michael Bérubé. And Barack does seem to be inspiring new and younger voters.
There are important minuses. Obama’s health plan is to the right of Hillary’s, and I fear he’ll find it difficult to get out of the corner into which he’s painted himself. I haven’t liked some of the intra-party divisiveness he and his wife have introduced into the campaign, and her reluctance, yesterday, to say without hesitation that she could vote for Hillary were Obama not to become the nominee almost tilted me back to voting for Hillary. To keep my support past today, Obama is going to have to show me that he can first unite the Democrats behind him, and second, that he will unite his voters behind Hillary if she is the candidate.
The risk is bigger with Obama; he might not be ready for the kind of dirt that will be thrown at him as the actual candidate. Hillary is. Worse still, he may not be as ready to be the President, on day one, as Hillary likes to put it, as he thinks he is.
Bottom line time: I’m willing to take that risk because I also think the gain may be bigger, not only with a bigger win, including increasing the Democratic majority in both houses, but also with a better win than would be possible with Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, on behalf of a true liberal/progressive mandate that is rooted as firmly in the future as it is in the past.
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Great post
It’s nice to have the case made in a sober fashion.
It’s all about risk, isn’t it?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Agreed, it is a good post,
Agreed, it is a good post, though in defense of Greider I must point out that the Bill-Hillary tag team was observed in his governor’s races here; it absolutely does exist, though I’m in agreement that I haven’t seen a Rovian smear campaign or the playing of any race cards. Interestingly, the Clinton tag team only showed itself in Democratic primary races. In one very well documented example, Hillary ambushed candidate Tom McRae at one of his press conferences in the 1990 Arkansas governor primary race. So the phenomenon is established in the public record; Greider may well be privy to ways in which the weight gets thrown around behind the scenes as well.
And I’m with you in your thinking on Obama; I’ve never been one to fall into a cult of personality. I voted for him today for a couple of reasons: one, Iraq: Hillary is running on “experience”, but if you are party to the single biggest policy disaster in a generation and refuse to admit your error, no amount of “experience” will excuse the lack of judgement. If you do not gain good judgement from your experience, what good is it? And two: because he IS a gamble. I already know what I’ll get from Hillary: triangulating centrism. It’s possible I’ll get the same from Obama, but that leaves me no worse off than I’d be with Hillary. And with Obama, it might be that we’ll get something considerably better.
There are some other plusses I see to an Obama candidacy…first off, I feel better about his chances in the general election (I feel not at all sure about Hillary’s). Some of them are related to the cult of personality he inspires in others…I see a potential to finally put race behind us as an issue in a way we’ve never managed to do before (not an end to racism, sadly, but a big step towards defusing its more casual variants) and the other thing is his obvious youth. I’m ready for a post Woodstock generation president; maybe it will help our politics shed some of this bullshit about perpetually fighting the battles of the 60s. Not to denigrate those battles as many of them are ongoing, but just to move past the 60s as the frame of reference, if that makes any sense.
I think if it were to come down to it, I’d not be real enthusiastic about voting for Hillary in November, though needless to say I would do it. But it will feel more like renewing my car tags as opposed to getting a new car.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Leah
Thanks for a beautiful summary of the factors that have led you (and me) to make this decision. Your clearheaded, non-rose-colored assessment of the rollercoaster that any thinking person, as opposed to a celebrity-mad Obama fan, might go through to wind up on the Obama side of the fence, is both a comfort to me and an outstanding explanation.
Barack Obama is better than his OFB
friends, though not as “awesome” as they think him to be. There were points on each side that had to be weighed and considered. At the end of the day, you’re right, it’s a gamble. Both have electability problems, Obama being the unknown quantity, Clinton starting behind the eight-ball of Hillary-hatred. In the end Obama’s upside won out over Hillary’s more liberal domestic policies.
There is nothing shameful and much honorable about being thoughtful.
Rain on the parade
The parade of “it’s a good post’ must stop, we are Democrats after all and we don’t agree on everything by definition.
I totally agree on the Clintons hate theme. I’ll make it worse. It’s a right, center and left conspiracy against two politician, one of which was a damn good president. Voting for Obama contributes, at least implicitly, to the hate; Obama did and does exploit this hate and is at least a hate-collaborator.
Berube, Kennedy and the Rabbi from Lobavitz may support Obama, to me it means absolutely nothing. You either think for yourself or you cannot think.
It isn’t a change election more than 2004 was. The word change means absolutely nothing, zilch, nada!!!
If you think that Reagan was great, that social security needs fixing and that health care should not be universal, you are not progressive, you are not a Liberal
, you are, at best to the right of Hillary, way to the right.
nothing, zilch, nada!!!
Berube, Kennedy and the Rabbi from Lobavitz may support Obama, to me it means absolutely nothing. You either think for yourself or you cannot think.
This is where you are exactly wrong. Everyone knows that either you think like me or you cannot think at all.
Voting for Obama contributes, at least implicitly, to the hate
Again, you are exactly wrong. Voting for Obama means you are a limousine-liberal cult follower and a sexist. Statistics show that only three out of four Obama voters are implicitly contributing to the hate.
And last but not least, I love Obama completely and totally because he thinks Reagan was great!!!
tomorrow belongs too....?
Leah? Why do you hate my dead mother? You are obviously a Nazi cultist! And now we are in further danger of the scary Nazi cultist Garrison Keeeeler being put in charge of all radio! Oh my gawd.
*
The Hampton Girls and you
The Hampton Girls and you !! Oprah, Caroline and Maria Shriver. AKA on plutocrat and two aristocrats.
I'm voting for the Democrat.
I am not anti-Obama, I am pro-Hillary. But if Obama wins, he will have my full support.
I agree with Bob Somerby that the main thing that the wingnuts hate about the Clintons is that they win.
Bill is the only Democrat since FDR to win two terms in the White House.
That’s electability.
I’m not gonna argue with your reasons for supporting Obama, I just see it slightly different.
It bothers me when I see liberal Democrats echoing right-wing memes, but you’re not doing that.
No matter what happens, let’s agree to vote for the Democrat in November.
myiq2xu - a slight disagreement
No, not talking about you now being for Clinton and me for Obama - this is not even worth considering. The important thing is to have thought the thing through to have solid reasons for your choice and not echo rightwing talking points - on that we agree and I believe we have both done so.
But -
Is that Bob Somerby’s message? The Howler seems much more interested in why the MSM and even the SCLM
hate the Clintons. His most enduring point is that Liberals in the media WILL NOT call their colleagues out on how readily they repeat lunacy from the wingnuts. That it’s easy and cheap to scourge the wingnuts - and oh so hard to to criticize those who should, and on some level do, know better but won’t stand up to them. These are the people who the Howler howls at most vociferously, and most righteously IMHO.
Before I decided for Obama (and Somerby last indicated he may do so too, for identical reasons - that Clinton just can’t win in this poisoned environment), I thought that standing up to this crap was the most important thing to be done - and that this could be done by supporting Hillary. Finally, I realized that I could only do that by cutting her as much slack as the OFB
cuts Obama, ignoring her triangulations and obsessing about his. But I can only fight so many monsters at once. We have to defeat the GOP to have any hope of moving forward.
koshembos, you sussed me out
Yes, it’s true, I am a Berube groupie.
I have all his books, I cut his author picture from the book jacket of one of them to place in a little frame I keep close to my bed, next to my Berube scrapbook, regrettably not filled with many clippings; even a hot prof like Berube just doesn’t get the kind coverage a George Clooney does; not fair, but there we are. And yes, I hung around his blog worshipfully, too intimidated by all the academic star power over there to join in his comment threads, until the day he shut it down, (no causal factor implied). I’ve even taken to watching ice hockey. So naturally, when Michael endorsed Obama, my membership in the Berube Fan Base meant I’d be immediately applying for a membership in the Obama Fan Base.
As for Reagan, what’s not to like? Didn’t he personally bring down the Soviet Union, by way of Grenada? And let’s face it; Catsup isn’t animal, it isn’t mineral, so it must be a vegetable.
And who exactly is the Rabbi from Lovavitz?
Playing cards...
Poisoned environment…
Just sayin, Leah.
I understand the argument, but I maybe the only way to defeat the infection here is to cauterize the wound, which a Hillary win would definitely too (as opposed to just putting the Unity
bandage over with the infection still underneath).
If the disenchantment with the Republicans is great enough, that can happen. And Hillary ended up doing very well in upstate New York, and apparently does very well in small groups. I think it she pounded on that, it would be good.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
I refuse to endorse
It is ze mark of death ven I endorse. I can no longer bear ze weight of ze responsibility for bringing so many good candidates down through ze years: McGovern, Mondale, Fred Harris, Jerry Brown, LaDuke, Dean, Gravel, Billy Pilgrim.
I can wield my vote, but only with my tongue idle, I fear. I zinglehandedly made McCain rise from his crYPT.
Billy Pilgrim?
You voted for Billy Pilgrim? Well, Kevin, I hope you’re enjoying this war and this Supreme Court. Thanks, Billy.
i wish you would stop making me laugh, berube
and annoying me with all those pretentious marks over your vowels, what are you- a diacritic? how in the hell am i supposed to be Dour and Serious
and talk about why both candidates suck and we’re all doomed anyway, if loosers like you keep littering my blog with your ivory tower post-parisian “humor?”
Just how
Just how is it preferable to give in to nastiness and hate instead of confronting it to defeat it?
Kevin, It wasn't an endorsement
I was only sharing my views with some pals, precisely because I know the feeling you are talking about. All too well.
I didn’t vote for Hubert Humphrey in 1968. I mean when the alternative was Nixon. I was that angry about the treatment of Fannie Lou Hammer at the convention, along with some other features of that convention, you know, the one held in Mayor Daley’s Chicago. How much worse could Nixon really be, I asked. Better to teach the Democrats a lesson. And I grew up in California, I should have known.
McCain, eh? So it was you? And his risen self isn’t even a maverick anymore; he’s the undead embodiment of every rightwing meme of the last three decades. Lordy, he’s even become a supply-sider.
I’m curious; how afraid of a McCain candidacy do any of our readers think we should be, and does the degree depend on which of our two candidates is running against him?
I am keeping low
I am keeping low expectations from the next president.
While I can’t imagine either of them doing anything as outrageous, I don’t see either Hillary or Obama going through the archives and publicly burning all the Bush signing statements and national directives.
And there is what Digby has said and continues to say, in this instance about the stimulus bill:
If you look at the race so far, it’s clear that it’s no easy task to even unify the Democratic Party. And as long as the Republicans have 41 votes, they’ll never stop- obstructing. They are doing this now simply because they can. (After all, they could pass a popular bill like this and let the president veto it if they wanted to play at bipartisanship for the sake of the public who everyone claims is desperate for it.) The truth is that as they have at least 41 safe Republican senate seats, they just don’t give shit. The regional heart of the party is solid and strong and whether they are in a minority or a majority they will make damned sure there isn’t any compromise. They don’t need it and they don’t want to dilute their message or their brand for the future.
And they will make damned sure the villagers proclaim the Democrats to be weak and loathsome losers whose refusal to reach across the aisle is failing all Americans. I wish I knew how either Clinton or Obama planned to deal with this, but I confess I haven’t the vaguest idea.
Hillary was probably the most vilified First Lady since WWII. But she came back and won a Senate seat in NY. She is popular throughout the state, even the more conservative parts. I have heard that she is respected in the Senate as a hard worker who is able to work well with other senators.
The right has never stopped dissing her even before she became a presidential candidate. Monica Crowley, who is like a dumb Ann Coulter, claimed that Kerry was really a beard for her in 2004. Don’t ask me to explain that one. Much of the trash is recycled, over and over again. But she has overcome these things to the extent that they haven’t been able to kill either her or Bill off.
Obama got a big lift from being the keynote speaker at the 2004 convention. As I remember it, he became a national figure overnight. He has been able to take good advantage of it. He has campaigned effectively and had good work on the ground.
But the “gutless, feckless beltway dems” we hear about here and on other blogs are still stong in the party. I get wary when I hear Rahm Emmanuel talking about increasing the military by 100,000 or Harold Ford saying he loves big military budgets.
So, I will certainly vote for either of them in the election but I will give the winner a chance to show what they are going to do without hoping for too much. The next dem president is going to need shoring up, not overly high expectations.
Thanks
Even my diehard Republican father said that the Clintons had a raw deal with the “liberal democrat owned press”.
We used to argue over that all the time, but watching the press eviscerate Hill, makes me believe he might have had something to say about it.
The annoyance that I feel towards the media and towards the DNC is bigger than the annoyance I had during the Florida recount in Gore’s presidential bid.
Gore was a bad politician period, he did not rally behind Bill and that is why he lost the election, he refused to let Bill campaign for him. Unlike McCain who does allow Bush to campaign for him and remains loyal despite I am sure some personal feelings on the subject.
The lack of loyalty that the DNC shows towards the Clintons in general makes me ashamed to be a democrat.
Watching Donna Brazile in her rant against Michigan and Florida democratic voters was enough for me to heartily dislike the DNC DEAN and any person who thinks they are Queens above others because they were elected or appointed into positions of leadership.
This seems to be the types of peeps that Obama has around him. I would rather have Bush for 8 more years than these Dictators.
If Hillary is not elected, I will vote for Cthulu (R), better my freedom than my pride.
“But Obama has rejected any solution based solely on the statewide outcome of the Florida and Michigan primaries.
“Our response to that has been essentially crickets chirping,” said Kirk Wagar, Obama’s finance director.”
Look out, someone's suffering from a bad case of sensible...
I’m not sure we need this sort of conciliatory attitude contaminating the current political climate.
What the hell, I’ll join the parade; that’s a great post.
myiq2xu said, “I am not anti-Obama, I am pro-Hillary. But if Obama wins, he will have my full support.”
Ditto, guvna. But, regardless of how many of us throw the dummy out of the pram and rend the heavens with our impassioned cries of indignity in the coming months, when the hammer comes down on this thing everyone is going to pull together behind the winner, IMHO. All but perhaps a tiny handful who have likely been sitting on the fence between D and R for far longer than this campaign. I don’t think I’m being overly optimistic about that (hell, I think Nov is going to be seriously tough for either D candidate).
But the alternative to punching D for anyone who even vaguely associates themselves with the progressive movement is just too absurd to ponder; McCain has shown clearly where his allegiance lies, now, and that path is running well to starboard. One would have to be a seriously twisted and bitter piece of work to cut that deeply into one’s own nose just to get a quick rise out of the face.
Whatever the turn out, it isn’t going to seem fair to half of all Democrats, but that’s politics. Bill said so himself, and he was right. Obama isn’t (indirectly at least) suggesting Hillary should get out of the race because he thinks she can’t win, he’s suggesting it because he knows she can. Similarly, Hillary isn’t backing inclusion of Fl and MI because she has had a sudden epiphany about the importance of the voter (after her previous epiphany about the importance of the SD), she is backing it because she wants to win. And why not. Who wants a quitter for a Prez?
Let them ruck this out, and when it’s all done, I’m betting there will be hugs and tears all round, followed by everybody getting into that dirty word, which gets the Clintonistas in such a frenzy these days, U-N-I-T-Y.
On that note,
“If Hillary is not elected, I will vote for Cthulu (R), better my freedom than my pride.”
Either my /sarc filter is out of whack again, or I have just read the most asinine statement made on this website since I’ve been lurking on it. Apologies if the former, sincerest sympathies if the latter.
Leah, this post came alive again
because we linked to it.
But it’s from February.
Please, can we have a newer one?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.