Matthew Yglesias (May 17, 2008) - Don't Talk About the War (Politics)

A perfect post. If she had done that, I would have supported her. That's all she needed to do to win. She wasn't willing to do that and that's her own damn fault.

Posted by Reality Man | May 17, 2008 2:40 PM

I think it's a testament to how little the media wants to discuss who stood where on the war back when it counted.

Posted by aleks | May 17, 2008 2:41 PM

In retrospect, the war was a terrible idea.

The war was a terrible idea before retrospect, too, as many people realized at the time. But I understand why you might have a hard time acknowledging that.

Posted by hello | May 17, 2008 2:44 PM

Or for that matter, most of the Dems.

Posted by aleks | May 17, 2008 2:47 PM

This race would also be looking a lot different were Clinton able to admit to any possible hint of a mistake. Admitting she was wrong to authorize force and then blaming the doctored "evidence" on which the Senate was given seems like a workable strategy - though it would have required not voting for Bush's saber-rattling resolution on Iran. Ooops.

Posted by Angry Sam | May 17, 2008 2:49 PM

Or for that matter, the liberal media.

Posted by aleks | May 17, 2008 2:50 PM

. In many ways it's a testament to how brilliant her campaign was all throughout 2007 and 2008 that they never allowed the war issue to bury her

Or maybe it's evidence that her campaign staff is even stupider than regularly assumed, in that, even now, in the face of unexpected failure, they lack the imagination to see that her war vote was a problem.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 17, 2008 2:50 PM

It was the combination of the Iraq war vote AND her voting for the Iran condemnation resolution (which looked like a Bushco ploy to authorize preemptive strikes) last fall that made me lose interest in supporting her.

I was until the Iran vote willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and I suspect that opinion is shared by many. Also, since it looked like this was sign she was already running a general election campaign it made me wonder what other race-to-the-middle stands she might take.

Posted by hopeless pedant | May 17, 2008 2:50 PM

OK, but Matthew Yglesias was for the war and I see no evidence that Democrats are going to get us out of Afghanistan and only a glimmer of hope on Iraq. President Bush and our general officers and foreign policy specialists are tying us in more all the time, but Yglesias wishes not to know this.

Posted by Jennifer | May 17, 2008 2:52 PM

I agree with Matt about Clinton and the war.

The following is a supposition, but a pretty good one.

Both Clinton and Kerry supported the war resolution to further their political ambitions. Many Democrats in the senate and the house did not. But Clinton and Kerry both had presidential ambitions. Neither figured that the war would go as sour as it has, and neither thought their votes would be pivotal. Each thought it essential to move to the center, to avoid a "peacenik" (or "appeasement") attack from the right.

Clinton's speech before her vote was wacky. It said almost all of the right things. She then performed logical jujitsu to vote the wrong way. She still says that the resolution she voted for did not empower Bush to go to war even though its name is "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002".

Posted by cube | May 17, 2008 2:56 PM

It was always already a lousy idea. There were ten million of us anti-war types on the streets in Europe on a Sat. back in February of 2003 who knew that then. When I came back stateside on March 1st that year to house hunt, there were nonstop war propaganda infomercials on ABC's Good Mornng America and scattered clumps of protestors. Lots of people knew that Bush was engaged in a vendetta, including, I suspect, Hillary. But she's bloodthirsty when all is said and done and she keeps repeating her 2002 AUMF vote, doesn't she? Kyl-Lieberman last September? Her "Obliterate Iran" comments last month? Her making a lonely heroic stand against the war is sci-fi material. Robert Dick anyone?

Posted by John Shreffler | May 17, 2008 2:56 PM

There's an irony about Hillary Clinton's defeat that nobody seems to have mentioned yet.

During the 1990s, especially after 1994, there was a sense among Democrats that speaking out forcefully against Republicans was a political loser. The strategy that emerged from this period was triangulation--basically, give the right what they want and hold out on a few technical points so that you can claim victory. Hillary Clinton's career has internalized this logic, and it was fairly evident that her entire Iraq decision was based upon triangulation.

It is ironic that the strategy that gave Bill Clinton some of his biggest successes would cost Hillary Clinton her shot at his job. There's a lesson there.

Posted by Lev | May 17, 2008 3:01 PM

I would also have supported her.

Posted by Korha | May 17, 2008 3:01 PM

Being for the war at the beginning was probably essential for her to have the "tough fighter" persona she has today. Without this it would be very difficult for her to overcome the inherent resistance many voters would otherwise have against electing a female president. I agree with the post above, though, that her mistake was not to apologize for her stance on Iraq in recent years.

Posted by Sybil | May 17, 2008 3:01 PM

But she's bloodthirsty when all is said and done and she keeps repeating her 2002 AUMF vote, doesn't she? Kyl-Lieberman last September? Her "Obliterate Iran" comments last month?

It's easy to claim that she was making the AUMF vote out of a cold, political calculation. The truth is, I think, that these votes are a reflection of what she actually believes. She differs from Lieberman's views on the matter online in that she refrains from self-righteously rubbing the voters' noses in her support of these misguided middle east policies.

Posted by Tyro | May 17, 2008 3:02 PM

There's an irony about Hillary Clinton's defeat that nobody seems to have mentioned yet.

During the 1990s, especially after 1994, there was a sense among Democrats that speaking out forcefully against Republicans was a political loser. The strategy that emerged from this period was triangulation--basically, give the right what they want and hold out on a few technical points so that you can claim victory. Hillary Clinton's career has internalized this logic, and it was fairly evident that her entire Iraq decision was based upon triangulation.

It is ironic that the strategy that gave Bill Clinton some of his biggest successes would cost Hillary Clinton her shot at his job. There's a lesson there.

Posted by Lev | May 17, 2008 3:03 PM

Damn straight, Matt. It's always been the war. This has what has so frustrated me about the mainstream Democratic party. You didn't need to be a pol to realize at the time, that the politically astute vote when the AUMF came up was to vote "FUCK NO!!!!!" The calculus is simple: in 2004, if the war was going well, Bush would be invincible. If the war was going poorly, Bush was vulnerable, but only to a candidate who didn't have to explain why he was for it before he was against it. Kerry could likely have been Bush if not for his craven pro-war vote in the Senate, and Clinton would have been light-years ahead of any rival if she'd played it smart. But noooooooooooooo!

Posted by Egypt Steve | May 17, 2008 3:06 PM

"Being for the war at the beginning was probably essential for her to have the "tough fighter" persona she has today. Without this it would be very difficult for her to overcome the inherent resistance many voters would otherwise have against electing a female president. I agree with the post above, though, that her mistake was not to apologize for her stance on Iraq in recent years.

Posted by Sybil | May 17, 2008 3:01 PM"

If she had voted against the war, she would have likely have retained the support of the vast majority of 1) younger women 2) educated women 3) anti-war men and 4) upscale liberals. It would probably have cost her no support among Latinos and since Obama would not have had any political room into which he could maneuver for a run (beyond running for VP, which he could have probably secured without having run in the first place), she would have also likely retained 5) African-American support as well. In the end, she was left with enough people to get a large minority of the vote to a more anti-war candidate. You can't move right without securing the left. When she voted for the war, Kyl-Lieberman and then proceeded to diss anyone to her left on foreign policy as dirty fucking hippies (including on Cuba, cluster bombs, etc.), she took a shit on the left. Well guess what, when you repeatedly take a shit on a huge part of your party they start hating you and try to defeat you. Anyone with a brain could have told her this, but instead she hired Mark Penn.

Posted by Reality Man | May 17, 2008 3:12 PM

I think Tyro has it right. She believed and does believe ousting Saddam was a good idea. Kerry's vote for the war was far more triangulating than Clinton's vote. Paraphrasing somebody smart (Ezra?), 'The fact that there are consequences for being wrong in a democracy is a good thing!'. Obama was right and won. Clinton was wrong and lost.

Hooray democracy!

Posted by joejoejoe | May 17, 2008 3:19 PM

I think her vote for Kyl-Lieberman was far more disastrous, in terms of consequences this primary season, than her original AUMF vote. Obama's attacks on her vote for Iraq just hadn't been gaining much traction until she also went and voted for Kyl-Lieberman. That's when he was really able to hammer her.

Posted by jbryan | May 17, 2008 3:20 PM

http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/F15/

Posted by coomaraswamee | May 17, 2008 3:22 PM

Hillary and I were proven fucking RIGHT!!!!!!

Posted by Judith Miller | May 17, 2008 3:24 PM

Ironically many who oppose the war and oppose Kyl-Lieberman are her staunch supporters. Who would have thunk it. Obliterate Iran, why the hell not. No blood for oil! What?

Posted by bjd | May 17, 2008 3:28 PM

To me, the central error of the Clinton campaign was their inability to find a way to talk about race.

Given that the Democratic electorate is over 25% AA, a candidate that can win the AA vote as a bloc needs a pretty low share of the rest of the vote - only a bit more than a third - to get to a majority.

To win a two way race with Obama, Team Clinton needed to find a way to disqualify Obama's wins in the black belt states, and they needed to do it early and often.

They tried various ways, from Bill Clinton's Jesse Jackson reference in SC, to Mark Penn's assertion that certain states "don't count", to Hillary Clinton's recent clumsy phrasing of saying that Obama wasn't winning white voters. But none of those ways were even close to being correct.

The correct way to do it was to hit the topic head-on and repeatedly. They needed to have the candidate - Hillary Clinton - repeatedly go in front of AA audiences and say something along the lines of:

"I know that most folks here aren't going to vote for me. I understand that many of you feel immense pride in Barack Obama's accomplishments, and I respect that. But I just want to let you know that if I am the Democratic nominee, I will fight for you and your interests."

Clinton would have been slammed over and over again for being patronizing. But being patronizing in a forthright manner was the answer to her problems. By taking the issue head on and bringing it to light in a way that only the candidate can do, it would've had the effect of disqualifying Obama's black belt wins.

By bringing up the issue in less direct ways, they helped Obama's use of the racism card, without ever receiving the benefits they would've received by a more direct discussion of the issue that Obama was getting killed among non-AA voters.

Clinton lost her narrative early in SC, and then after regrouping, she lost her narrative again late in NC. Conceding the AA vote in the correct patronizing manner would've been saved her narrative in both places.

Posted by Petey | May 17, 2008 3:34 PM

I'm watching Hillary on CNN right now; she's talking about expanding Pell grants and regulating student loans. It strikes me that--as someone with several good ideas about domestic policy and a lot of very questionable ideas about foreign policy--the job of New York Sentator or Senate majority leader is actually a better fit for her than president or vice president. Just a thought.

Posted by southpaw | May 17, 2008 3:36 PM

In response to Reality man--I was referring to her electibility in the general, not against Obama. I think she probably thought the nomination was going to be the easier part.

Again, I think it was a bigger strategic mistake for her to resist apologizing than being on the wrong side of the issue in the first place.

I also think Obama is the far superior candidate for many reasons--not just Iraq.

Posted by Sybil | May 17, 2008 3:43 PM

http://www.punchdown.org/rvb/F15/

Posted by coomaraswamee | May 17, 2008 4:02 PM

It's important to remember the optimism a lot of people had on the left when Hillary got elected to the Senate. Here was the woman who pushed for health care and was beaten back by the Repubulicans. Now, in the Senate, free from Bill, who had just defeated the Republicans on impeachment, she was going to be resurgent.

Then, when 9/11 happened and she joined Giuliani in insinuating that being from New York gave her a stronger intellectual footing in talking about the issue. Once she voted for the AUMF, and gave a long floor speech in its favor, it became clear that Sen. Clinton was just like all the rest of them. At best, a politician without the courage of her convictions. At worst, either a neocon or a politician without any convications. While there's ample evidence in her public record that she was never going to be another Eleanor Roosevelt championing progressive causes, when she voted for the war she confirmed that she had no time for anything other than conventional wisdom, political gain, and running for president because she was famous.

In running for the Senate, all she really did was suck up funds and media that Al Gore could have used.

Posted by David B. | May 17, 2008 4:09 PM

Petey,

The Obama campaign never cried racism. There were several discussions on black blogs and black radio about the race-baiting that was going on in the campaign since Dec. 2007. It was just that the mainstream media and blogs were not paying attention to them.

Besides many blacks were very skeptical of the Obama campaign. Iowa was the turning point.

Posted by Micheline | May 17, 2008 4:10 PM

How are your Clinton shares on Intrade doing, Petey?

Posted by Korha | May 17, 2008 4:11 PM

Yeah, I was astonished (though I shouldn't have been in retrospect) that nobody on her team mentioned the war, and by extension her hawkish voting record. It was by far the biggest consideration in my opposing her nomination from before she even threw her hat in the ring. I know for a fact that I wasn't alone. And that nobody on her team thought that was remotely relevant to her downfall just goes to show how terrible of a campaign they ended up running.

Posted by Hunter H. | May 17, 2008 4:42 PM

John Shreffler said:
[i]It was always already a lousy idea. There were ten million of us anti-war types on the streets in Europe on a Sat. back in February of 2003 who knew that then. When I came back stateside on March 1st that year to house hunt, there were nonstop war propaganda infomercials on ABC's Good Mornng America and scattered clumps of protestors.[/i]

Over 500,000 of us protested in NY that same Saturday... and heard not a whisper about it in the US news save for scurrilous yellow journalism about "black-masked anarchists." It finally reduced me to tears to be out protesting in NY, to hop a plane to London that evening and turn on the BBC the next morning, and to see running nonstop exactly the kind of coverage that was ENTIRELY ABSENT on the US news.

I'm sorry to come on to Matt's blog (which I read regularly) and to insult his views like this, but anyone who supported the war "even" before its inception was simply not following the region's history, the facts on the ground, or the record of evidence presented by BushCo, which was flimsy at best.

Posted by Mayur | May 17, 2008 4:50 PM

In many ways it's a testament to how brilliant her campaign was all throughout 2007 and 2008 that they never allowed the war issue to bury her, considering that an overwhelming majority of Democratic primary voters think she made a mistake.

The sad truth is that it would have been impossible to bury her campaign on that issue, given her stature and relative popularity among the base. I say sad, because I think it's unfortunate how many are completely willing to ignore the implications of that vote, not just for a potential presidency, but also for the (perfectly justifiable) opening of the same attack angle that was used on Kerry. And like many have said above, Kyl-Lieberman was arguably even more damning, given the fact that it took place in 2007.

So I don't think in any universe could one legitimately describe her campaign as brilliant, except in how its utter ignorance (of process and the voters' interests) brilliantly allowed a far superior candidate to become the nominee.

Posted by Hunter H. | May 17, 2008 5:10 PM

Obama did use her war vote against her during the primary. He used it in response to her "ready on day one" bullshit. He said having good judgement on day one was more important than having (so-called) experience on day one. He tied that comment to her vote to authorize the war.

Posted by doug | May 17, 2008 5:10 PM

The war vote gave Obama an in and a focal point but did not appear to have much salience after Iowa (at least according the exit polls). This is probably partly due to Democrats backing a ticket featuring two yes votes in 2004. I believe Clinton even out-polled Obama among voters who stated the war was the most important issue in a few states.

Posted by august | May 17, 2008 5:19 PM

Also, there's a bit of Occam's Razor with how you deal with Hillbillery. Obama doesn't want to destroy her; he only wants her to come in second. So he would use the war vote against her in a judicious way, and in the least conspicuous manner possible.

Posted by doug | May 17, 2008 5:20 PM

She's going to lose for two reasons: (1) Her crack campaign staff was too dumb to understand the importance of lower-population, lower-Democratic states. Obama's majority is based on those states. (2) She didn't fight back when Obama's campaign slimed her and Bill as a racist prior to the SC primary. She's had to labor under that wholly ridiculous charge ever since.

Posted by Rich | May 17, 2008 5:27 PM

I absolutely agree that if Clinton had had a different foreign policy stance over the last 5 years, she would have been the nominee in a cake walk (and I myself may well have been a supporter).

Out of the block, the AUMF disqualified her for top consideration. She was third out of 3 for me, with Edwards second (as at least he had apologized for his vote).

But it's not just Clinton's AUMF vote, alone, as many have pointed out, it's also voting against the Levin amendment, voting for Kyl-Lieberman, voting against a land mine ban in civilian areas, giving interviews where she gives cover to GWB (& the 24-viewing audience) by suggesting that the U.S. President should have the right to torture in certain circumstances. Great. Just great. And in 2006 you hear her sabre-rattling against Iran & Richard Holbrooke is out bragging how she's more hawkish than her husband.

I cannot fathom EVER supporting someone with this kind of record for the nomination -- but the only thing that leaves me perplexed & confused is that I have no idea if she really IS some kind of neocon hawk believer, or if she only tacked to the right in this way because she thought she had the Dem nonimination locked up & that she needed to appear "tough" for the GE. Neither is OK in my view, but I honestly don't know what she really believes any more -- or if that's even a relevant question when you're talking about a politician like Clinton.

On the fifth anniversary of the war vote, I went back & read her AUMF speech (and others) -- and I have to say her speech is the most craven, cover-all-bases-say-a-lot-of-crap-so-I-sound-smart-but- avoid-actually-SAYING-anything-at-all speech that I have ever read.

Posted by Lynn | May 17, 2008 5:28 PM

Around Iowa she was asked about her authorization for the war, and sticking firm pointed out that if you wanted someone who opposed the war from the beginning, or someone who said he was wrong, there were other candidates you could vote for. Then those two candidates beat her in Iowa.

Petey, the idea that Clinton's failure comes down to not being forthrightly patronizing is....well, it's Clintonian and wondrous.

Posted by Deborah | May 17, 2008 5:33 PM

(1) Her crack campaign staff was too dumb to understand

In other words, she wasn't ready on day one.

Posted by doug | May 17, 2008 5:34 PM

Obama didn't lead on the war. His voting record since he joined the Senate is one vote worse than Clinton's. Obama changed his rhetoric and shifted his positon on timelines and funding. Obama used the AUMF and Kyl-Lieberman to question Clinton's judgment but could not hit her any harder because of his votes/evolving positions.

Posted by better not best | May 17, 2008 5:35 PM

Two -- when you lose a big race by a close margin there are a million things you can second guess and no one true answer.

I'm not sure about this. The delegate margin is relatively close, but most of the individual states have been won in blowouts by either side, and the ups and downs of the campaign have had very little effect on the underlying demographics that seem to be the main determinants of voter behavior. These demographics would likely have voted the same way so long as the narrative of the campaign remained the same - that is, so long as Obama was the candidate of "change" and Clinton the candidate of "experience."

I think the race was decided on Super Tuesday, when Obama racked up huge margins in small states that the Clinton campaign ignored.Obama's winning because of superior tactics, not ideology or his positions on specific issues. If the war actually did have an impact, it was in Iowa, where it probably did actually sway voters, and where an early victory by Clinton would have put an end to the campaign.

Posted by euphen | May 17, 2008 5:39 PM

She didn't fight back when Obama's campaign slimed her and Bill as a racist prior to the SC primary.

She didn't fight back because they slimed themselves as racist. Obama's campaign didn't say anything. Their crass opportunism was exposed for all to see by their own words and deeds.

Posted by blah | May 17, 2008 5:51 PM

The Clintonistas' folly was not about under-estimating Hillary's latent vulnerability on the Iraq vote but on misreading the total shift of the black vote to Obama.

Answer this: How fast did the Clinton's go, in the eyes of the African American community, from being street-cred brothers and sisters to common white folk?

Had Hillary retained, say, 10 percent of the black constituency, she could have sang soprano for the neocons during the Iraq invasion, and it wouldn't have mattered one iota.

Posted by resh | May 17, 2008 6:06 PM

very well put, this is exactly right. if she had opposed the war and stood her ground, I wouldn't have been looking for an alternate candidate to her. she would have steamrolled completely to the nomination, there would have been not much real ground on which to oppose her from my POV.

but what we saw yesterday, with and unencumbered Democrat - Obama in this case - able to attack the Republicans fiercely, and more deeply, over the war is what we need to win this election. or a large part of it anyways. I was behind Obama pretty much from the beginning, although I started to give up on him in late Oct., early Nov., because he didn't seem to be fighting very hard. but he certainly won me back over easily - mostly because I wanted to be able to watch a Democrat attack the Republicans over this war, their corruption and their abuses of power, and I wanted that person to be someone who wasn't himself / herself guilty of being on the wrong sides of these issues.

Posted by onceler | May 17, 2008 6:20 PM

Deborah at 5:33 pm

-- That's a great line in response to Petey. But I think he has a point. Whites really don't need much reminding that a candidate is black and therefore receives much of his support from blacks. What whites needs is reassurance that the person who does the reminding is not a racist.

For Hillary to go before black voters and say, in effect, "Black people, I know you're not going to vote for me but I'm still on your side" might have worked quite well on white voters. They could have filled in the desired blanks without seeing Hillary do anything that was overtly hostile racially. So, in the shitty world we live in, the dodge Petey outlines doesn't seem so far fetched.

Posted by kyle | May 17, 2008 6:28 PM

Kyle,

Clinton's mistake was ceding AAs to Obama instead of making efforts to get a sizable percentage of them. There are many blacks who are not taken by Obama and they feel that his support is illusory.

Posted by Micheline | May 17, 2008 6:40 PM

Whites really don't need much reminding that a candidate is black and therefore receives much of his support from blacks.

Hillary polled really well until about NH when her surrogates started trotting out all sorts of racially-tinged bullshit in order to discourage white support of Obama. In the beginning of the race, Obama "wasn't black enough", but the Clintons painted him as the blackest of black candidates.

For Hillary to go before black voters and say, in effect, "Black people, I know you're not going to vote for me but I'm still on your side" might have worked quite well on white voters. They could have filled in the desired blanks without seeing Hillary do anything that was overtly hostile racially.

The last couple of months of primaries have been influenced greatly by a region (Appalachia) whose white voters have had no trouble "fill[ing] in the desired blanks". A significant minority of white voters in that region have had no problems telling live people that race is a deciding factor in them voting for Hillary.

Posted by ben | May 17, 2008 6:44 PM

I also think Lieberman-Kyl was worse than the AUMF. At the timepoint of Lieberman-Kyl it was in my opinion crystal clear that the sponsors of the resolution wanted war with Iran, and that they were willing to say anything to get it. And she voted for it anyway.

I think there is a unified theory of what is the problem with Hillary: she has a problem with judging the honesty of others.

Formally, the AUMF only allowed the President to use force as a last resort. Of course, it was fairly clear that Bush didn't think of it this way. So Hillary voted according to the letter, but did not judge the intent; same with Lieberman-Kyl.

Also her campaign problems may be seen as a problem of judging honesty. Mark Penn, for example, may claim he knows everything but he doesn't. Judging competence is about comparing what somebody claims with their results - it's about judging honesty.

Posted by Bengt Larsson | May 17, 2008 7:55 PM

Obama has won the working class white vote in 1 primary - Wisconsin- and even lost this group in Illinois. It is a downscale non-AA Dem problem not an Appalachian problem. When you run an outsider/wine track campaign it isn't surprising that you lose the beer track vote.

Roughly 7% of Clinton voters in West Virginia said race was the most important reason for their vote 0% of Clinton voters in OH, PA and IN said it was the most important reason. In North Carolina, 2% of Clinton voters said race was the most important reason whereas 4% of Obama voters did.

Posted by check the numbers again | May 17, 2008 8:03 PM

As several people have pointed out (including Ben Smith and Ambinder) the biggest single reason she lost was Barack Obama. He completely flat-footed her in innumerable ways.

Without Obama, you'd still have John Edwards running to her left (repudiating his war vote, etc.) And he would have gotten trounced, mostly because he wouldn't have been able to raise enough money.

Petey's basically arguing what Buchanan argued -- that Obama wins because he's black. Petey seems to be assuming that Obama was automatically going to win 90% of the black vote. It's just not true. He was behind among Af-Ams until Iowa. His ability to beat her there among white voters was key. Even so, if she and Bill hadn't gone out of their way to dismiss black voters, (and if Obama hadn't been very careful to reach out to black voters), the margins wouldn't have been so disasterous.

Clinton had enormous structural advantages going in. She ran a mediocre campaign, which in most years would have been good enough. But Obama's a once-in-a-generation politician, and he smoked her.

It doesn't really make sense to talk about what the campaign would have been like if Hillary had taken a lonely, principled stand way back when and held to it through thick and thin. That isn't who she is; it's never been who she is; and if it was who she was, her entire career, and, indeed, her entire life would be so completely unrecognizable that she wouldn't even be Hillary Clinton anymore. It's like saying that the only way she could have won is if she didn't exist.

Posted by NoahB | May 17, 2008 8:06 PM

Matt is right on with this post, and his point in any case is not about her ex post facto campaign woes. The war (and Kyl-Leiberman as underlining) gave Obama a ready made base, and the vital initial elbow room to show what an extraordinary politician he is. Without it she would have sewn this up, and just about now the US would be finding out how lousy a pol she is and how many more skeletons are in the Clinton closet.

I think anyone trawling (not trolling) the lefty blogs in the fall would remember that long before the Clinton campaign began to stink, a lot of commenters were seriously alienated from her because of - and almost completely because of - her stance on Iraq in particular and foreign policy in general. All that has been obscured by the more recent toxicity of her campaign, but it's what I remember very strongly about the anti-Clinton Dems on blogs from summer 2007 to early winter 2008.

So - Iraq gave him a field to run in. If she'd played better defense on her war votes, her staff wouldn't be talking about essentially mechanical issues like the post-Super Tuesday world and caucus organisation. She would be the 'incumbent'.

As a non-American, I'm very glad that didn't happen. I hope that the historical meme of this campaign becomes: voting for a war for political brownie points can come back and bite you in the ass.

Posted by Estrien | May 17, 2008 8:12 PM

I would add that not once since the war's inception did that piece-of-shit husband of hers speak out about the travesty of it all, thus aiding and abetting the cause of war. Their combined lack of principles of the two of them is astonishing.

Posted by doug | May 17, 2008 8:22 PM

I can add some anecdotal backing to Matt's main point because in the summer of 2003 I made a decision and informed all my political-minded friends that I would never under any circumstances vote for someone who voted to authorize the war. This is why I never for a second considered voting for Kerry in 2004. 4-5 years ago I thought this would mean I wouldn't be able to vote for the democrat in 2008 either, because I thought it would be Hillary, and I am happy to have been wrong. The exact moment I came to actively embrace Obama rather than merely support him by default was when he made the remark about "changing the mindset that got us into the war." It showed he was light years ahead of every other candidate in the race.

Posted by Mitch Schindler | May 17, 2008 8:50 PM

The exact moment I came to actively embrace Obama rather than merely support him by default was when he made the remark about "changing the mindset that got us into the war."

That was the same for me. That was the moment that I said to myself: this guy understands what the problem is. And he was one of the few people to point it out publicly.

Posted by Tyro | May 17, 2008 10:27 PM

I think the underlying problem dates back to her decision to kick off her run at the Presidency by moving to New York and running for Senator. That decision prevented her from becoming an authentic politician in her own right (as opposed to being primarily a surrogate for Bill), and her subsequent underperformance as a Senator (including but not limited to her AUMF vote) and as a Presidential candidate reflected the insecurity and lack of genuine political experience that resulted from this decision.

Incidentally, if she had instead run for some lower office in Illinois (which would have been a more authentic first step into politics), she might well have taken the slot in the Senate currently held by Obama in 2004, and not had to deal with him at all in 2008.

Posted by DTM | May 17, 2008 10:45 PM

I don't think her support for the War was based on anything beyond... support for the War. Not triangulation or an insincere desire to appear "tough" to a hypothetical GE audience - she supports the substance if not the style of the broad push of Bush's foreign policy. She's been running as Scoop Jackson in a pantsuit for a while now. After Kosovo this shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone.

Posted by Slothrop | May 17, 2008 10:57 PM

Hillary's support for the war was a huge reason why she lost. And as you point out if she had been against the war from the start, and been vindicated, she wouldn't have faced the Obama challenge.

But here's another very big point: had Hillary, and thus presumably Bill, opposed the war, then this war may not have been authorized or fought in the first place.

Hillary and Bill in 2002/2003 were the only Democrats with the profile to stop this war. They abdicated their responsibility to do so and that is one reason why Hillary's vote on the war is even worse than other Democrats who voted for the war. She was the single biggest enabler of Bush in the Democratic party.

Posted by cm | May 18, 2008 12:11 AM

I think both Matt and Petey are right, but Matt is right in a more important way.

If Clinton had voted against the war, she would be the Democratic nominee. (She might even be the current Democratic president.)

If Clinton had forthrightly repudiated her Iraq War vote, she would most likely be the Democratic nominee.

If Clinton had found a way to address the racial divisions in the Democratic electorate that didn't come off as terribly racist, she might well have picked up enough votes around the margins to hang on to the nomination.

All three points are correct, but the narrative is massively different in the first two cases and marginally different in the third. The race really turned on that Iraq War vote and the refusal to repudiate it, even if Clinton's campaign was still salvageable after those decisions.

Posted by DivGuy | May 18, 2008 12:34 AM

This is ridiculous. Team Hillary had a ton of victories in 07, but they were entirely pyrrhic. They won a ton of spinwars about how inevitable she was, because she was raising all of that money, doing well in national polls, had an unbeatable team, etc. Only: most of the money she raised was wasted; national polls are meaningless; her team was not only beatable, but was actively being beaten by Obama's superior ground team, more numerous and effective volunteers, better fundraising apparatus, and better long term strategy.

Her campaign was so incompetent it took all of her unpresidented advantages in influence, money, control of her husband's machine, name recognition and democratic star status--as well as a completely pliant media--and she still lost. That is some epic mismanagement, no matter much the lazy media bought the mythical inevitability narrative.

Bad Counterintuitive Matt, Bad!

Posted by Client #11 | May 18, 2008 12:52 AM

How fast did the Clinton's go, in the eyes of the African American community, from being street-cred brothers and sisters to common white folk?

Bullshit. Black voters have the least racially polarized voting profile of any ethnicity in the electorate. Case in point--Sharpton. He came in third in SC in 2004, with only 19 percent: 15-20 points behind both Edwards and Kerry. He got only 10% of the black vote in Mississippi.

Clinton led Obama in nearly every poll until roughly December, when he took a slight lead over her in the wake of comments that, as has been said above were seen as playing the race card by black media and some leaders. After Iowa, when she really went after him with increasingly racially charged language, that's when her numbers crashed and she started pulling support like Sharpton in Mississippi.

Posted by anonymous | May 18, 2008 2:28 AM

Sorry for misreading you Sybil. Good point. After all, if Obama hadn't been in this race, Edwards, who did apologize, would have become the de facto anti-war / change nominee. He probably would have had an easier time at fundraising than he did because a not-insignificant portion of Obama's money probably would have gone to him. However, the fact that Edwards did vote for the war in the first place means that he ended up playing second fiddle to Obama on that score.

anonymous brings up a good point. If African-Americans only voted for the African-American candidate when given a choice, then the GOP would just have to run a black candidate in every blue state and district to hold onto them. Instead, that strategy failed with Steele in Maryland in 2004 against Cardin.

Posted by Reality Man | May 18, 2008 3:06 AM

Matt's point is not that the AUMF vote explains everything, but that it was a huge factor, and one that Clinton staffers seem oddly unable to see -- even in retrospect.

Among other things, this tells me that I voted for the right guy, because Clinton seems to have surrounded herself with people for whom politics is the real point, and policy is an afterthought. People like Lanny Davis are not a huge improvement on the other side's thugs.

Petey's suggestion -- "better and more effective strategies to marginalize Obama as the black candidate" -- is a classic maneuver for situations when you've become more attached to a particular strategy than you are to victory itself.

You can't admit that the strategy doesn't work, so you say "we didn't go far enough with my strategy" or "we were stabbed in the back by weak people who weren't willing to carry out my strategy." You can go on telling yourself that for decades. "Next time the young voters will finally turn out. Next time Bob Shrum's populist message will finally connect. Next time we'll finally defeat England and Russia at the same time."

Fortunately, I don't think many Democrats besides internet trolls are deeply attached to racial marginalization for its own sake. I think that may prove to be the last time we see that strategy deployed in a Democratic primary. (General elections and Republican primaries are another matter.)

Posted by Ted | May 18, 2008 8:00 AM

Roughly 7% of Clinton voters in West Virginia said race was the most important reason for their vote 0% of Clinton voters in OH, PA and IN said it was the most important reason. In North Carolina, 2% of Clinton voters said race was the most important reason whereas 4% of Obama voters did.

Hey, "check the numbers again": you might want to check the numbers again.

Instead of, you know, hiding the real figures behind weasel-word qualifiers like "most important." You're conveniently ignoring the voters who say race is "one of several important factors," who have overwhelmingly broken for Clinton in OH, PA, IN, and WV.

Posted by Marc | May 18, 2008 9:54 AM

I want to know if she could have tried to compete in smaller states with caucuses, and the big ones as well, simply to take away some of his wins. She's come very close without doing that, and without doing the math, I imagine she would have been a lot closer, if not ahead, if she had taken about half of the caucus states away from him. (I'm not talking about Iowa so much, as a win there by Clinton would have likely knocked Obama out far sooner, but rather states like Idaho.) We all know that for a few reasons, the Clinton campaign didn't seriously try to compete there. Whether that was because they were stupid or because they knew that they simply couldn't win, because of issues like the war, isn't clear, but I think ceding far too many states was one of her more prominent problems.

Posted by Brian | May 18, 2008 11:19 AM

I want to know if she could have tried to compete in smaller states with caucuses, and the big ones as well, simply to take away some of his wins. She's come very close without doing that, and without doing the math, I imagine she would have been a lot closer, if not ahead, if she had taken about half of the caucus states away from him. (I'm not talking about Iowa so much, as a win there by Clinton would have likely knocked Obama out far sooner, but rather states like Idaho.) We all know that for a few reasons, the Clinton campaign didn't seriously try to compete there. Whether that was because they were stupid or because they knew that they simply couldn't win, because of issues like the war, isn't clear, but I think ceding far too many states was one of her more prominent problems.

Posted by Brian | May 18, 2008 11:36 AM

I think ceding far too many states was one of her more prominent problems.

This is a reflection/replay of the DLC's failed strategy of the last two presidential elections - ceding a couple dozen states to the GOP and trying to run the table in the remainder. By contrast, Obama is embracing Dean's 50-state strategy.

I hope that the results of this primary race will bury the former strategy for once and for all. It is a losing strategy and that has been proven repeatedly.

Posted by r€nato | May 18, 2008 11:53 AM

I can remember early on in the campaign before a single vote was cast,when I wanted to vote for Hillary, but the war was in the way. I was looking an Edwards type moment when she capitulated and said it was big mistake, instead, she said, and I paraphrase, "it was the best decision at the time, and if you disagree with that, there are other candidates that you can vote for." I thought it an was arrogant statement, full of front runner hubris, and I said to myself, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Posted by erickh | May 18, 2008 12:51 PM

Matthew is right to wonder about the affect of the war. In my case, I should have been the easiest sell ever to support Hillary and would have done so without a moment's hesitation pre-Iraq. But because of her disgraceful performance on that issue -- while the Dirty Fucking Got-It-Right Hippies were documenting the lies in real time -- I voted for Obama instead.

Posted by Junius Brutus | May 18, 2008 1:08 PM

Micheline

With all due respect, Obama has played the race card and his South Carolina campaign was the eptitomy of hypocrisy.

Obama Supporters

You are so full of yourselves. Hillary hasn't lost. The great voters of PA, IN, and WV sent a message to the pundits and the DNC. They want Hillary.

He has benefited by the proportional delegate rule. The loser receives a higher amount of delegates.

Hillary has won the big-swing states of PA, OH, MI, and FL. Their electorate votes matter more than others. Obama won in KS, ID, LA. These states have always voted for a Republican in November.

I have read the argument that by adding in FL and MI, she would still be behind. If this is the case, why has Obama blocked the revote? This matter could have easily been settled long ago. By not including MI and FL, the Democratic nominee is damaged. No one is going to fall in line behind Obama.

Cokie and Steve Roberts wrote a column about the Democratic race. The Party does not want to deny the first viable AA candidate a chance at the White House. However, the electoral map and Democratic voters needed to win in November favor Hillary. It looks like, if Obama is the nominee, the Party will lose.

Posted by EWard | May 18, 2008 1:36 PM

EWard, every time you post you just make Clinton supporters look silly, stupid and delusional. If you want to help your cause, stop making your side look crazy.

Posted by Reality Man | May 18, 2008 1:54 PM

I think that the reason that nobody that Cottle talked to mentioned Iraq is simple: Cottle talked to political people rather than to policy people. Nobody she talked to mentions any policy positions. Even policy decisions made during the campaign, such as Clinton's support for a gasoline tax holiday, are not mentioned.

I suspect that Clinton's decision to vote for the AUMF was basicly political; she voted for it because opponents of the first Gulf war got clobbered. But Clinton's policy people, even those whose primary job is to think about the political implications of policy decisions, don't seem to have been willing to talk to Cottle.

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | May 18, 2008 1:56 PM

EWard,

Please give me specific examples of Obama using the race card. And please don't use that Sean Wilentz piece as an example. You don't seem to get it that many people didn't need the help of Obama campaign to see that there was some race-baiting going on. People do can think for themselves.

Obama has also won in swing states such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Virginia.

Michigan doesn't count because Edwards and Obama's name were not on the ballot.

As for Florida, I will say this as a Floridian, HRC is popular among the Cubans and Jews, but none of the candidates were campaigning there. On that day you thought the primary only had to do with Republicans.

In the case of Indiana, it was a tie.

If you are in fear that Obama will lose in the general (which is a legitimate concern given that McCain is a formidable candidate) then phonebank, donate money, etc.

Posted by Micheline | May 18, 2008 2:02 PM

"In many ways it's a testament to how brilliant her campaign was all throughout 2007 and 2008 that they never allowed the war issue to bury her"

I disagree. If she'd done an Edwards - "I was bamboozled and I was wrong. I trusted the president and I made a mistake" - she would have won the nomination. That bullshit formulation her brilliant campaign came up with - "If I knew then what I know now I would have voted against the war" - was an insult to our intelligence. It was another "who could have predicted" moment along the lines of 9/11 and Katrina. It left the door open to a true anti-war candidate that she couldn't overcome.

Posted by Bloix | May 18, 2008 2:19 PM

Not to mention that Clinton, who has been preparing her entire life to be president, was not ready on day one to work the primary season variables to her own benefit. Obama was, and did. Hillary got caught with her pantsuit down on a start date that was imminent, knowable, and cast in stone.

Posted by doug | May 18, 2008 2:24 PM

One can argue that without the war vote or even having repented of her war position Hillary would have won. It certainly helped Obama that b/c Feingold and others didn't run he got to be the only candidate who opposed the war from the beginning, except Kucinich, who was deemed "not serious."

Still it's not surprising that Iraq was not focused on by the media or the politicos they talked to about HRC's campaign. In part, as has been said, it's b/c campaign people and journalists really don't do policy. Yet beyond that her war vote was over five years ago and she was widely seen as the favorite as recently as early February. It could have all been a mirage, but unless you assume that (which people covering politics don't want to do generally, it makes a lot of their activity seem pointless) it is reasonable to look for a more short term explanation of the "what went wrong?" variety.

Not saving money for post Feb. 5 and not having offices in caucus states (!) are egregious mistakes that didn't have to happen, even in a world in which HRC made the Iraq vote and didn't repent of it. Obama didn't open his offices until November or later. This is when the crucial decisions were made. People compared Clinton to Walter Mondale as an uninspired establishment candidate. Well, Mondale had more support than she ever did, e.g. the AFL-CIO endorsement, while labor split this year, and he organized the damn caucus states! He won some and lost some, but he was there. The Hart people complained about caucuses being unfair! If she had just narrowed Obama's margins in those states -a reasonable goal given the low turnout and the big payoff to mobilizing a small number of people- she could have been the nominee without winning a single one of them.

Furthermore the exclusion of Florida and Michigan was very bad for her. That is more in the category of bad luck than a mistake. Even had she taken her name off of the Michigan ballot it's not clear that would have changed things.

Posted by Vito Marzullo | May 18, 2008 3:51 PM

I have read the argument that by adding in FL and MI, she would still be behind. If this is the case, why has Obama blocked the revote?

He hasn't. One, Michigan doesn't have enough money to vote again, thanks in large part to NAFTA and related programs championed by the Clintons.

Two, Michigan's Democrats came up with a plan to seat their delegates as Michigan sees fit. . . and Hillary torpedoed it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/08/politics/main4079278.shtml

But at least she had a good reason for doing so (naked self-interest).

Posted by Notorious P.A.T. | May 18, 2008 5:42 PM

FL & MI
"The Democratic Party is the party of inclusion, not exclusion." It's one of the major reasons that people are attracted to the party.

Using the argument about the "rules" to justify excluding MI & FL, only serves to demoralize these voters. In good faith, they turned up in record numbers to vote and have become victims of a flawed system. Do you really believe that they will vote for the Democratic nominee, if their votes are thrown away or only counted after the nominee is selected?

In addition, the Democrats will lose the moral high ground. Arguments against another Republican President will be pushed aside because the voting rights of two states have been jeopardized.

Winning / Governance / Loyalty
As Democrats, we seem to forget this is all about winning in November. Which candidate is the most electable? Obama appeals to a narrow constituency. I've read your comments about Iraq, race, Hillary's flawed campaign, and so on. The most important factor is the electoral map in deciding a winner, and Hillary is way ahead of Obama. The second key point is bringing in a large coalition of groups. Hillary trumps Obama with Hispanics, Asians, the working-class, women, white men, Republicans, and elderly Americans.

As I recall, the Republicans lost in 2006 because they chose loyalty to Bush over governance. They blindly followed his policy in Iraq and on many issues. Also, the Republican scandals disgusted the voters, and it was an anti-Republican election.

This is another watershed moment that will spell doom for the Democrats. The pundits and the left wing of the party are controlling this process. There is such a divide among the electorate about Obama's experience and qualifications. This is unimaginable for the Obama believers, but the longer this process plays out, he is perceived as the weaker candidate.

Many of you stated that the race was over in February. If this were true, why would Hillary win between four to five million votes from OH, TX, RI, MI, WY, PA, IN, NC, and WV?

His endorsements from key Democratic leaders are paraded as proof of his electability. Yet, how many of them have won the Presidency? This is all about winning and Hillary has reached that threshold. The question is will the Party choose governance over loyalty to win in November?

Posted by EWard | May 18, 2008 7:26 PM

EWard,

HRC never ran as President. You make the assumption that none of those groups will vote for Obama.

Posted by Micheline | May 18, 2008 7:49 PM

Notorious P.A.T.: "He hasn't. One, Michigan doesn't have enough money to vote again, thanks in large part to NAFTA"

MI doesn't have enough cash to run an election? And it is due to a trade agreement from 1993?

Posted by Andruw | May 18, 2008 8:02 PM

As an aside, the notion that Clinton got wiped out in so many states because she didn't try to win them is a myth, propagated by the Clinton people themselves in a successful effort to get the media to pretend those losses indicated no fundamental problems with her appeal. The truth is that she tried very hard to do well in states like Iowa, Maine, Wisconsin, Washington, and so on, and got blown out anyway.

Posted by DTM | May 18, 2008 10:06 PM

"As Democrats, we seem to forget this is all about winning in November. Which candidate is the most electable? Obama appeals to a narrow constituency. I've read your comments about Iraq, race, Hillary's flawed campaign, and so on. The most important factor is the electoral map in deciding a winner, and Hillary is way ahead of Obama. The second key point is bringing in a large coalition of groups. Hillary trumps Obama with Hispanics, Asians, the working-class, women, white men, Republicans, and elderly Americans."

If Clinton had a broader constituency, she would be winning. It's the Clinton's inability to see past demographic labels that led them to follow such bad strategies. He has more delegates, more popular votes and more states. He came from behind to beat the establishment candidate. That shows how strong he is and what a poor campaigner she is. She has higher negatives, lower positives and no crossover appeal. He has more support among independents and moderate Republicans, both of whom tend to hate Clinton. You don't have an argument, which is why every time you open your mouth you make Clinton supporters seem even stupider. In addition, you assume that working class whites (who have voted for Obama outside of Applachia), Asians and Latinos aren't going to vote for him just because they didn't in the primary, but if this is how elections worked no one would ever become president. Similarly, Bush lost the NH primary in 2000 yet won it in the general. These factors simply aren't predictive of general election trends.

At this point, even if Clinton wins Kentucky with about 55% of the vote (according to current polls) and Obama wins Oregon with 60% of the vote (according to current polls), Obama needs only around 25% of the vote in the remaining contests to pass 2,025. That means that Clinton needs an absolute miracle to be the nominee. You talk about how it is all about winning in November. However, at this point she has around a 5% chance of winning now. The way she attacks Obama just drives up both of their negatives without helping her get ahead. As such, her tactics objectively make it less likely than any Democrat will win in November, including her.

Posted by Reality Man | May 19, 2008 7:43 AM

I think if Hillary had been as anti-war as Obama, she still would have lost. Obama ran a better campaign. She was beat fair and square.

Posted by Peter K. | May 19, 2008 10:47 AM

Oh

Another Iraq-centric post from Matt, yet no mention that he supported this war as well.

Gross. Misleading. Stupid.

Posted by volum | May 19, 2008 1:09 PM

Don't Talk About the War

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