There are a whole bunch of interesting contributions to the NYT's "what went wrong" symposium on the Clinton campaign, but Kathleen Hall Jamieson's short but sweet offering comes the best of nailing it: "key groups of Democrats tagged her as a candidate who abetted a Republican president’s unwarranted pre-emptive action." Jamieson thinks this is an unfair tag, but I still think it was a fair one, and Clinton's inability to convince me and other people like me that I'm wrong is why she lost.
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The War The War The War
08 Jun 2008 04:09 pm
Comments (74)
The animosity between the Clintons and "key groups of Democrats" was mutual. Both Bill and Hillary have been caught on tape at private fundraisers railing against "Moveon.org" and "liberal activists".
It makes it a lot harder to win your party's primary election if you antagonize the party's most active and ardent supporters.
I completely understand the desire to explain what went wrong. Clinton was the favorite based on some meaningless polls before anyone knew who Barack Obama was. You can attack her Iraq vote, but nobody would deny that a democratic woman should risk voting any other way. You can criticize her for not going negative early on Obama, but Edwards probably would have profited. You can criticize her for not having a plan for primaries after Super Duper Rad Tuesday, but those 10 states that followed were always going to favor Barack Obama. You can attack her for adopting conservative populism, but she was left with that base and had to turn them out. The thing about all of these 'what went wrong' stories is that they don't address the possibility that Hillary did the best she could do. Barack is a once in a life time candidate. His team is smart and he is a master politician. Once he won Iowa, there was no stopping him. South Carolina was going to go big for him. He was going to win 90% of the black vote and 60% of white collar and young democrats. His ability to express hope and strength was very appealing. He won it, and I think it is a tad silly to talk about how she blew it.
Matt --
Did you vote for Kerry?
One of the most annoying aspects of this campaign season has been seeing people who voted for, and often shilled for, Kerry in 2004, and even people (among the political media) who SUPPORTED the war initially, now, long after every horse has escaped from the barn and the barn itself has burned down, condemn Clinton for her vote.
I did not support the war -- at any time.
But I swallowed my objections and voted for Kerry in the 2004 general election. Having done so, when an anti-war vote would still have meant something, I can not now get up on my high horse about Clinton's vote.
Plus, I don't believe for an instant that Obama's poliicy toward Iraq, at this late date when options are severely limited, would be or could be in any way substantially different from what Clinton could or would do -- or, to be honest, from what McCain will be able to do. (He will, as Clinton would have, of course FRAME his decisions differently than McCain will probably do. He afterall has a different constituency to mollify.)
Obama has already, within days of getting the nomination, backed off from time tables for leaving Iraq -- expressing exactly the same pragmatic attitude about the realities posed by Iraq as those that got Samantha Powers fired from the campaign when she expressed them to a foreign journalist during the primaries.
And he has never supported removing contractors from Iraq (a serious failing in my view).
Also, as someone with extremely limited experience, he is likely to be, as Bill Clinton was before him, and Bush too, especially dependent on and responsive to what the military advises and wants. This will probably not lead to the policies that progressives want.
In my case, I was undecided between Clinton and Obama for months, and on primary day I made my decision for Obama because he got the war issue right and she didn't.
The animosity between the Clintons and "key groups of Democrats" was mutual. Both Bill and Hillary have been caught on tape at private fundraisers railing against "Moveon.org" and "liberal activists".
It makes it a lot harder to win your party's primary election if you antagonize the party's most active and ardent supporters.
You can attack her Iraq vote, but nobody would deny that a democratic woman should risk voting any other way.
What does this mean?
Iraq is a crime and anyone, Democrat or Republican, male or female, who supported it is culpable.
esmense, you need to distinguish between voting for Kerry in the primary and in the general. Calling someone pro-war for voting for Kerry in the 2004 GE qualifies you for some kind of prize.
Click my name to collect it.
Now the question is -- knowing that at the very least the Democratic base is voting against the war and that even many non-Democrats have turned against it, will the Democrats in Congress be able to demonstrate that with Democrats in charge (e.g. in the Whitehouse) things will be different, without falling into traps that'll make them seem like they are not "supporting the troops"?
E.g., GW Bush is still using his "Democrats gotta give me a clean bill" rhetoric. Why don't the Dems. give him a mostly clean bill but with one or two easily defendable things GW Bush would not want, e.g. robust veterans' care and a requirement to answer detailed questions about the war under oath. So that way when GW Bush vetoes the bill (and similarly get McCain if he votes against such a bill) and tries to use the "they should have sent me a clean bill" line, the Dems. can respond with "why do you not want to help those who have served our country?" and "every other American, when allocated money to do a job, has to tell his/her boss how the money's being spent -- why are you afraid to tell your bosses, the American people, how you're spending money on the war?"
My guess, though, is the Dems'll manage to screw this up.
Agreed. Kyle-Lieberman nailed it.
"Clinton's inability to convince me and other people like me that I'm wrong is why she lost."
any evidence that?
There's evidence that he ran a cleverer campaign. There's evidence that targeting caususes and small atates got him more delegates. There's no evidence the war was the deciding factor.
especially as the the media was more occupied with faux scandels.
You keep saying this but that doesn't make it true.
And why do you so desperately want to believe it?
Neil, because he doesn't even make it to Iowa if there's no strong dissatisfaction with Clinton. Period.
As an Obama supporter, I think this is pretty accurate. I think he'll make the better president, so I'm glad she voted the way she did. One of the reasons is that I subscribe to his philosophy on foreign policy and geopolitics moreso than hers (and this largely generational, I think). But the fact is that this vote and the dissatisfaction with it among a large bloc of Democrats were what allowed him to get enough traction to gain support and become a viable candidate.
dbt is right. Obama is a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime candidate, but if party regulars had been satisfied with Clinton then Obama would never have drawn enough support away from her. Three major issues for Clinton: 1) Iraq and Iran votes; 2) Clinton scandals, especially those Senator Clinton was involved in; 3) 17 years of right wing anti-Hillary propaganda that had oozed into the national consciousness.
HRC bears full responsibility for the first two, and she'll never admit they had anything to do with her defeat. I am so grateful we have selected a better candidate.
She lost because Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton was too un-American to contemplate.
From the perspective of a 25+ year Canadian reader of The Atlantic:
In the two + year period following 9/11, the Atlantic published a steam of pro-Iraq-war and torture-neutral articles, shocking the sensibilities of long time subscribers. During the recent Democratic primary campaign, the Atlantic tried to rehabilitate itself - via its blog website - by villifying Hillary Clinton. Rehabilitation by proxy is dishonest. Moreover, unlike the Atlantic, Mrs. Clinton came to admit the error of her initial judgment over the long days of her campaign.
From the perspective of a 25+ year Canadian reader of The Atlantic:
In the two + year period following 9/11, the Atlantic published a steam of pro-Iraq-war and torture-neutral articles, shocking the sensibilities of long time subscribers. During the recent Democratic primary campaign, the Atlantic tried to rehabilitate itself - via its blog website - by villifying Hillary Clinton. Rehabilitation by proxy is dishonest. Moreover, unlike the Atlantic, Mrs. Clinton came to admit the error of her initial judgment over the long days of her campaign.
dbt --
Your distinction is without merit. If you swallowed your concerns about the Iraq war vote and voted for Kerry in the general election then you already made the decision that this was an excusable act.
To get up on your high horse about it 4 years later, and condemn another candidate for the same vote you already forgave in Kerry, is pure hypocrisy.
I would suggest in this case your decision to not vote for Clinton probably had little to do with her vote on the war.
Which is fine. There are always plenty of good reasons to vote against any candidate.
I just find it amusing to see political commentators erase their own history as they go along.
Mrs. Clinton came to admit the error of her initial judgment over the long days of her campaign.
If Senator Clinton had admitted that her vote was in error, like Edwards or Kerry did, she wouldn't have had an Iraq problem. She has never admitted that her vote was wrong. Never.
She also voted for the Kyl-Liebeman "Give Cheney the OK to attack Iran" bill.
CAUCUSES CAUCUSES CAUCUSES!
The Iraq War vote was a liability for HRC, but PLEASE stop with the nonsense about the Kyl-Lieberman (Iran) resolution being a significant factor here. 95% of voters never heard about it. If you are posting in the comments section of a political blog you are radically atypical of even primary voters. You are more informed (or highly misinformed, depending) than most caucus-goers too. And own up, most of you were for Obama or at least anti-HRC long before Kyl-Lieberman came along. Some wanted the Imaginary Hip Black Friend. Some were mad at the Clintons for sundry compromises over the last 15 years. For others the Iraq vote was it. Some (I am looking at you, young white male blog commenters) just found HRC an unpleasant old lady. So stop projecting your alleged thought process onto ordinary voters with this Kyl-Lieberman nonsense.
The far larger factor was her failure to organize the caucus states (wholly avoidable) and the exclusion until it was too late of two large states that favored her (bad luck.) They start at a disadvantage in them, but the "beer-track" candidate doesn't have to get wiped out in caucuses. Mondale did quite well vs Hart AKA the White Obama, in caucuses, winning some big ones and keeping down the margins in others, b/c he organized the hell out of them. This was a very attainable goal for HRC. She could have lost all the caucuses and still won had she only kept Obama's margins down, which was very doable given the TINY turnout he won on.
Obviously peaceniks don't want to hear this. They really don't want the lesson to be "organize your damn campaign!" Their preferred interpretation is "all candidates better realize that they better be peaceniks from now on." Not really. Had the WMD that even leading Democratic war critics believed were there actually materialized this issue would have been a wash at best in primaries and Hillary's vote would have been a plus in the general election.
Obama actually knows better and as his visit to AIPAC presages he is going to disappoint a lot of you peaceniks over the years. happily.
Barack Obama being the bee's knees doesn't explain Hillary Clinton in October 2002 or Hillary Clinton's staffing decisions in 2007.
emsense, I did not forgive Kerry for his pro-war vote, I voted because I thought he would make a better president than GWB.
I would have voted for Hillary Clinton over John McCain because she would be a better president, but in the primary I had the option of choosing a better candidate (in 2004, Howard Dean).
") Clinton scandals, especially those Senator Clinton was involved in;"
Hillary Clinton was involved in scandals?
I never knew. I know she was *accused* of being involed a lot of scandals by the Republicans, but actual proof of such I've never seen.
Please enlighten us...
CAUCUSES CAUCUSES CAUCUSES!
The role of caucuses in the primary (aside from saving some money for the state parties) is to highlight the voices of party activists and to grow their numbers. The most important (but by no means only) reason why Clinton alienated activists was that she voted for the Iraq war and was unrepentent. The bankruptcy bill vote, the Kyl-Lieberman vote, and the triangulation of the 90s didn't help.
In the two + year period following 9/11, the Atlantic published a steam of pro-Iraq-war and torture-neutral articles, shocking the sensibilities of long time subscribers
Really, it was a shock? By 2000, or so, the Atlantic was well on its way to marketing itself as the magazine for people who wanted "contrarian" writing that pimped conservative ideas. Did you think they were going to turn around and come down on the side of the angels in 2002?
esmense, you're being a bit dense here. Here's the logic for you.
(1) The war is a big and bad thing, big and bad enough such that, given the choice between people who have a chance at winning, the overriding factor should be whether they supported the war or not.
(2) Kerry and Bush both supported the war. Therefore we can vote on other issues.
(3) Obama was against the war, while Clinton was for it. Therefore we support Obama.
Most of the people choosing Obama over Clinton for reason of the war, by the way, undoubtedly supported Howard over John in 2004. They sucked it up like good Democrats when the lesser candidate won.
I'd also point out that Obama's coalition is blacks, professional whites, and young activists. The only reason he got the last group (and to a lesser extent the second) is Iraq. So yeah, Iraq was the deciding factor in this election, as it should have been, and the good guys won because of it. Making me extremely happy with this primary, even disregarding everything else.
"key groups of Democrats tagged her as a candidate who abetted a Republican president’s unwarranted pre-emptive action."
As opposed to a blogger - 'journalist' is a stretch - who did the same.
esmense: If you swallowed your concerns about the Iraq war vote and voted for Kerry in the general election then you already made the decision that this was an excusable act.
Or you made the decision that between Bush and Kerry, the candidate more likely to end the war was, surprise, John Kerry.
Voting in the general election is completely different from voting in the primary. This shouldn't need this much explanation.
catherine walsh: Mrs. Clinton came to admit the error of her initial judgment over the long days of her campaign.
When? Do you have a link or a citation for that?
Spot on.
a candidate who abetted a Republican president’s unwarranted pre-emptive action is exactly how I feel. In and of itself it isn't why I didn't vote for her, but combining that with the fact that she didn't read the NIE and then says she was duped a) shows a colossal lack of wisdom and b) demonstates an unwillingness to change course if she is wrong, especially if it isn't politically expedient.
Finally, if I really thought that she voted for the war because she believed in it, I might find it in my heart to forgive her but..
nobody would deny that a democratic woman should risk voting any other way is exactly why I can't vote for her.
I truly believe that the main reason she voted for it was for political gain and in my mind that makes her no better than Bush in that regard. Someone who votes for war - where lives will be lost for the sake of their careers/image has no business in the White House, woman or not.
Zephyrus, I'll also point out that black voters broke for him late -- primarily after he proved he could win over white voters in Iowa. Who voted for him because he was against the war. And inspirational. So it really was all three parts of his coalition.
nobody would deny that a democratic woman should risk voting any other way
I deny that. Senators Boxer, Murray, Stabenow, and Mikulski, all Democratic women, voted "Nay".
Also, Sen. Clinton opposed the Levin amendment, which would have authorized U.S. use of force only if Iraq failed to comply with a U.N. resolution. Sen. Clinton could have supported that amendment, but chose not to. She's a hawk. This isn't about political strategy or positioning. It was what she believed, and primary voters were correct to take her deeply-held hawkish beliefs into account when deciding whom to vote for.
Obama said in a debate that "we need to change the mind-set that got us into Iraq," and that's when I realized that he understood what the problem was. Hillary never even realized that there was a "mindset" problem because she was part and parcel of that mindset.
When? Do you have a link or a citation for that?
She definitely said that her vote was wrong. Her problem was that she was too proud to give into the media demands for an "apology"-- a stubborn-headed refusal that fanned fears she really didn't think her vote was wrong-- which is why many well-meaning souls like other Marc above don't know she recanted in any form.
via Bob Somerby:
(on Late Edition)
BLITZER (8/29/04): When you voted for that resolution, like almost everyone else, you believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?
CLINTON: Right, right. Well, indeed I did. And if someone asked me that if we had known then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote. You know, no administration would have come to the Congress and asked for a vote that would have authorized any kind of action based on what we now know.
(that same day, talking to Tim Russert)
CLINTON (8/29/04): There would not have been a vote, Tim. There would never have been a vote to the Congress presented by the administration. There would have been no basis for it. But we are where we are, and what I think we have to do now is try to understand the series of miscalculations which for the first time ever the president admitted in an interview last week, have occurred, which have rendered our situation more dangerous, less safe, and have put back the effort to try to stabilize and democratize Iraq. I believe with all my heart that, you know, we have to have new leadership at the highest level of our government in order to be successful in the strategy we have embarked upon in Iraq. No matter how we got there, and as I said, we wouldn't have even had a vote if all the facts had been available.
RUSSERT: But John Kerry said he would vote again today for authorization, even knowing what he knows now. You don't agree with that.
CLINTON: Well, but I think the point John was making was the same one I was making, that we don't have a choice to have hindsight.
CLINTON (12/18/06): Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn’t have voted for it.
For comparison, here's a snippet of the 2005 NYT op-ed in which Edwards said "I was wrong":
The argument for going to war with Iraq was based on intelligence that we now know was inaccurate. The information the American people were hearing from the president—and that I was being given by our intelligence community—wasn't the whole story. Had I known this at the time, I never would have voted for this war.
I decided early on, long before I decided to support Obama, that Clinton had to be defeated in 2008. My determination was based not only on Clinton's Iraq vote - although that was one big part of it - but on a series of Middle East foreign policy stances which included loudly banging the anti-Iran drum back in early 2006, her irresponsible full-throated support for the unrestrained Israeli assault on Lebanon, her failure to back an early UN-UK peace initiative during that war, and her vote on Lieberman-Kyl. Her later reckless and unpresidential talk about "obliterating" Iran, and her support in the same debate statement for what I understand to be a sort of new Middle East cold war, were continuations of that hard line stance.
I was also not at all comfortable with the Democrat the Village Voice labeled "Mama Warbucks" because she was second only to Carl Levin among Democrats in delivering defense industry pork. Journalists' reports revealed she was very popular among defense industry honchos.
I, along with many others, have spent the last six years vigorously criticizing the war and the Bush agenda in the Middle East, and the neo-imperial foreign policy it represents. If, after all of the tumult of the past six years, all of that that criticism, all of that nationwide protest, all of those fierce and angry blog postings across the internet, and all of the investigative journalism, the hawks had succeeded nevertheless in getting two of their own as both the Republican and the Democratic nominees, I would count the last six years as a massive failure, and a colossal waste.
The message sent to the hawks by such a failure - that they can do what they want when it comes to national security policy, with political impunity - would have been terrible. The antiwar contingent in American politics would have been crippled for a long time. Politicians would have rightly concluded that if we can't hold politicians accountable for even such a debacle as Iraq, then there is simply no political benefit in opposing any war, ever. Defeating the hawkish candidate for the Democratic nomination, however, sends the opposite message: bad decisions on war and peace come with a political price.
So I am deeply, deeply gratified that Clinton lost. I feel we succeeded in holding the hawks accountable by politically punishing one of their representatives. Mission accomplished.
I disagree with the notion that, because she is a woman, Clinton had to support this hawkish agenda to be politically viable. If she had stood among the minority of Senators who voted against the war resolution, she would have been seen as prophetic once the war went bad, and Democrats would have rewarded her handsomely with the nomination. I suspect it would have been no contest. And then she would have been very well poised to face McCain by being on what is now the more popular side of the current national security debate.
But if it were true that a woman can't remain viable without supporting a very national security hawkish agenda, then the cause of progressive women in Democratic presidential politics would be lost. I hope now that the next woman who runs for president in the Democratic party will have the courage to be balanced, thoughtful and reasonable, instead of feeling she must take the most hawkish line possible so that she can go "toe-to-toe" with the unhinged bad boys.
Excuse the typos in my previous post. I think one of the consequences of staring at all of those blog postings on computer screens for the past six years is that my vision is now going to hell. I make a lot of typing mistakes lately.
If you're not careful Dan, making a lot of typing mistakes might result in you getting your own blog on The Atlantic.
You probably won't, because you
(a) Notice them (probably because you actually read the post after its been posted)
(b) Admit them
"Had the WMD that even leading Democratic war critics believed were there actually materialized this issue would have been a wash at best in primaries and Hillary's vote would have been a plus in the general election."
And if I looked as good as Brad Pitt, I'd be fucking Angelina.
Republican. Anybody who drags out the "well, if we'd found the WMDs" line is a Republican.
Marc: The issue is not whether she would have voted for the war based on what we know now. The issue is that she voted for the war based on NOT KNOWING WHAT EVERYBODY WITH A BRAIN AND A DESIRE TO AVOID WAR KNEW AT THE TIME.
She did NOT read the intelligence estimates. She did NOT study the dissenting views. She did NOT expend ANY effort to educate herself that numerous other people did.
She voted for the war based on political expediency.
And in all the comments you cite, she STILL does not admit that.
That is why she lost.
And today she is STILL threatening Iran with "obliteration" which even struck people who want a war with Iran as repulsive and nearly got her censured by the UN.
She's an AIPAC-controlled hawk.
Ol' Peg Noonan says in her piece "Recoil Election" that Hillary lost because there's something about her through all the fog of makeovers, triangulation, and second thoughts that just makes people recoil. That in some strange way they can sense that she's unclean and deeply disturbed. I really don't think the War, hubby, all the baggage did her in. I think Noonan is right. Hillary is a very, very, very sick person. All you have to do is look at her to see.
http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
If we'd found the WMD, then the war would be popular and the party responsible for saving the USA from nuclear annihilation would also be popular. Running against the GOP under those circumstances would be very difficult.
If we didn't find the WMD, then the war would be unpopular and running with a pro-war record would be very difficult.
In neither case does voting for the war make political sense. Voting against the war makes political sense if the war party turns out to be lying, and if they're not then you're going to lose anyway.
Basically what this proves is that the democrats didn't have any political strategists worth shit.
Finally, and most importantly, the fact that the war was a pack of lies was observable before the vote. I know this because I observed it. Plenty of others did too (protesters, bloggers, The Nation, Leahy, etc).
catherine walsh said: Mrs. Clinton came to admit the error of her initial judgment over the long days of her campaign
I asked: When? Do you have a link or a citation for that?
marc h answered: She definitely said that her vote was wrong. Her problem was that she was too proud to give into the media demands for an "apology"
That sounds like a "no" to me.
Saying "if we had known then what we know now" is not an admission of error, it's an evasion of responsibility--especially since so many people did know then what we all know now, that Bush's case for war was full of holes and outright lies. "If we had known then what we know now" only compounds the original mistake, because she damn well should have known, and it hardly constitutes admitting the error of her initial judgment. In fact, it's a way of claiming that her initial judgment was correct--if only the facts that judgment was based on had turned out to be true! It's the same line that John Kerry rode to defeat in 2004 and I'm glad Democrats didn't line up behind it again.
As to the Edwards comparison, Edwards stated, repeatedly and unequivocally, that he was wrong to vote for the war: those were the first three words of the 2005 Washington Post editorial cited here, and he repeated them many times in 2007 and 2008. I didn't care for his war vote any more than I cared for Clinton's, but at least he could bring himself to admit that he made a mistake. It spoke well to his future judgment (not as well as I thought Obama's principled opposition spoke to his, though).
All of which is to say that neither your interview quotes nor your Edwards line convince me that Clinton ever did recant in any meaningful way--certainly not to the degree Edwards did--she only attempted to duck her own culpability. But I appreciate your answering my question with quotes, dates, and citations.
Dbt: "If we'd found the WMD, then the war would be popular and the party responsible for saving the USA from nuclear annihilation would also be popular. Running against the GOP under those circumstances would be very difficult.
If we didn't find the WMD, then the war would be unpopular and running with a pro-war record would be very difficult.
In neither case does voting for the war make political sense."
Not so, although Howard Dean used to say that when he was a candidate. The war would have only been a plus for the GOP in the short-term like Desert Storm. A bigger war, so maybe a longer rally effect, but Hillary wasn't going to run in 2004. She was going to spend some time in the Senate b/c she quaintly thought that mattered. Having backed a short, successful war would have been good for her in 2008 in that scenario.
I am not saying HRC voted out of expediency, but there was a political case for her vote that makes sense, just as there was for Obama's posturing at the time, given what he was running for then. He wasn't worried about the median voter in the Presidential election in Ohio in 2008 at the time. He was courting more liberal constituencies.
Marc; The fact that Bush's case for war was exaggerated doesn't mean there wasn't a case for war at the time. Presidents hype policies good and bad. FDR was not honest on the way to World War Two either. Plenty of people who acknowledged that Bush was implying a bogus linkage of Iraq to Al-Qaeda or doubted the nuclear threat supported the war nonetheless. So you cannot damn HRC by saying everyone knew Bush's case was not honest.
Vito, you seem to be ignoring the fact that we're talking about a war of choice that was marketed to get the greatest political bang for the republican buck. That's why the GOP scheduled the AUMF vote for Sept. 02 before the elections. How they confused, scared and bullied the public into believing we had to attack now or risk the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud.
The entire run up to the war was a complete farce and millions of people stood up and protested against it. When Colin Powell lied at the U.N. it was clear to me that everyone had decided to go to war and would lie to do it.
It was quite clear that Hillary was going along to get along and had decided to play ball so should could advance her political career. It was a decidedly cowardly thing to do which is why I was vehemently opposed to her candidacy.
Y'all should be more concerned about Powers walking back Obama's commitment to have troops out of Iraq in 18 months than the many reasons Clinton lost.
ben:
The Clintons dislike the netroots like Daily Kos and organizations like MoveOn for good reason: they are left-wing extremists who despise compromise or moderation and are therefore a long-term threat to the viability of the Democratic party as a governing coalition.
I think one thing people need to remember when engaging in these postmortems is that it's highly likely that Barack Obama doesn't run if there's a strong established anti-war candidate that opposed the war from the onset. He just doesn't run...
The Clintons dislike the netroots like Daily Kos and organizations like MoveOn for good reason: they are left-wing extremists who despise compromise or moderation and are therefore a long-term threat to the viability of the Democratic party as a governing coalition.
Posted by Tim K
Well, given that only 2 years into the Clintons' leadership, the Democrats lost the Congress from 1994 - 2006, all Obama would have to do to prove the "viability of the Democratic party as a governing coalition" would be to keep Congress Democratic through 2008 to match their record, and through 2010 to beat it, so I say we take a chance on the dirty friggin' hippies and the netroots, because there seems hardly any way that the crazy extremists would have a worse record than that.
Hillary's voting to give the authorization to Bush was irresponsible because first of all it is the Congress' job constitutionally to declare war, not the president's. Her vote, therefore, indicated a constitutional abdication of responsiblity.
Secondly, Hillary's vote was a nod to AIPAC and the Israeli lobby, which everybody knows she is very closely tied to. Thus, on top, of her failure in upholding her position's constitutional integrity, it was her pandering to special interests that led to that vote, not to honest mistakes.
El Cid:
The last two years have shown just how useful having a Democratic congress is without a Democratic president. And the last 6 years of the Clinton administration showed what could be accomplished with a Democratic executive: unprecedented peace-time prosperity and fiscal discipline.
Winning ONE election at a time of over-whelming partisan advantage for your party is not a tremendous accomplished. Jimmy Carter did that. 4 years later he lost re-election, and the Senate, and the White House for the Democrats for the next decade. Senator Obama's style, rhetoric and ideology (particular on foreign policy) demonstrate that while Democrats may say McCain represents "Bush's First Term", the Republicans may be able to counter that Obama represents Carter's second.
As for the 1990's and the Clinton administration I'll ask you the same question Al Gore should have asked George Bush: what exactly is it about peace and prosperity you didn't like?
Vito: The bogus Al Qaeda connection wasn't the only blatant lie the Bush administration was selling. Buying uranium from Niger, Blair's claim that Iraq could launch WMDs at Europe in as little as forty minutes--millions of people saw the case for war was bunk, including many of Clinton's fellow senators. Bob Graham read the NIE and concluded the war would be a distraction and a debacle. Clinton could have done the same.
"If we knew then what we know now" is spineless evasion of responsibility because plenty of her colleagues did know then exactly what we all know now.
Tim: Sour grapes much? As El Cid says, the Clintons' compromises resulted in a decade-plus of failure and surrender, including eight years of George W. Bush and five years of war in Iraq. If that's your idea of viability...
Marc:
Just look at the past four months to remind yourself of one thing - Clintons never quit and Clintons never surrender. They fight on until the last dog dies and don't politely leave the stage as soon as pundits declare they should. Had it not been for the 22nd amendment, Bill Clinton wouldn't have lost the 2000 election like Al Gore did, and there wouldn't have been an Iraq war because never would have been a President George W. Bush. Failure? There would have been no Bush tax cut and the budget would have stayed in balance. Surrender? That's John Kerry, the war hero who let himself get labeled a traitor and a coward by the Swift-boat Veterans for lies because he wouldn't fight back. Bill Clinton was practically a draft-dodger and he never let that happen to him.
Barack Obama still has much to prove.
Once President Obama wins two terms and balances the budget, then we can have a debate about whether he measures up to President Clinton - not before. How about he at least wins one presidential election first.
And once Obama is counted out, kicked to the proverbial curb, told to leave the state and left for the political dead, but still managed to fight back to improbable victories that exceed expectations, then we can say Obama has shown the grit and determination of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But not before.
I wish Obama well, but so far his most fervent partisans are getting a little bit ahead of themselves.
Well, yes and no. It was a close race, and in a close race, almost anything can be considered "decisive." So, yeah, the war cost her the nomination...but just as equally, so did her decision to ignore the caucus states, and probably fifty other things. How do you really pick the one straw that was responsible for breaking the campaign's back?
"He just doesn't run..."
I think that's exactly right. An established candidate with Hilary's name-recognition, funding advantage, 150 super delegate advantage, etc PLUS an anti-war vote would truly have been inevitable. There's no doubt the war vote mattered substantially in the crucial early days of the campaign when we were defining who was and was not "in". Now, down the stretch as Iraq faded a bit as an issue, it's not clear if the Iraq vote won it for Obama. But it was certainly a necessary (if not sufficient) condition for him.
Personally, I am more or less done caring about the Clinton campaign.
On one minor point: apparently there is a great deal of research showing the value of the "extremist" groups within your political coalition. Basically, you want the range of positions in the popular discourse on any given issue to extend as far out toward the your end of the spectrum as possible, because that in turn helps move the perceived centerpoint on that issue in your direction. If you instead marginalize these people within your own coalition, you will also move the perceived center away from your position and toward the other side's position (assuming they don't make the mistake of marginalizing similar members of their coalition). Thus, by the time you do work out a compromise, you are forced to compromise farther than if you had not done the other side's work for it by marginalizing these members of your own coalition.
DTM:
I take your point. You cannot have a Sista Soulja moment without a Sista Soulja. But if a leader never stands up to the base then he'll just be labeled a left-liberal. And Obama hasn't come close to standing up to MoveOn or Kos or anyone.
Tim K, extending DTM's first thought, I'm more or less dont about caring about your worthless political opinions.
Obama is beyond the idiotic public kabuki acts you demand he engage in for your own self-gratification.
I am a voter who likes both HRC & BHO, with a temperamental preference for HRC (& her health plan is better & she is more of a policy wonk).
I voted for Obama because of Hillary's war vote, and her inability to admit it was wrong. If she had done an Edwardsish mea culpa that would have been enough for me, but she wouldn't.
Iraq was the key for this voter. I wasn't alone.
Tyro:
Then please feel free not to read them or comment on them.
Obama is beyond the idiotic public kabuki acts you demand he engage in for your own self-gratification.
You mean like his disingenuous 'I wasn't in church that day' defense in the Reverend Wright affair?
Tim K,
No, the goal is not to generate some "Sister Souljah moment". Again, these supposed "extremists" provide an ongoing value by helping to move the center in your direction. But once you use them for a "Sister Souljah moment", they lose that value.
Hence, while using them for a "Sister Souljah moment" might have short term political benefits for the individual politician in question, that will likely have long term costs for the Party in question (and indeed for the politician, to the extent he or she actually cares about policy and not just his or her personal success). Indeed, this is just a variation on the general fact that while an individual politician may maximize his or her political chances by being barely to the Left or Right of his or her opponent, candidates positioning themselves iin that way is not in the best interests of the relevant Party, since by doing so those candidates are minimizing the benefits of the Party actually winning elections.
Tim K, that you would equate the Rev. Wright kerfluffle with MoveOn and DailyKos backs up my assertion that your political opinions are worthless. You got some attention from others because we felt the need to knock down your pro-Hillary talking points. Now that events have come to their final outcome -- the nomination of Obama over Hillary -- exposing your blind failure of your judgment and ability to read the situation, there's really no point to paying attention to your attempts to give advice to the Obama campaign.
Rather, you should admit your humility and say, "I was wrong. Obama is a better judge of the political climate and has better campaign judgment than I do."
Like all super-close races, it would not have taken much to swing the outcome. Matt is right to put Clinton's war vote on the short list:
1. Obama outraised Clinton financially.
2. Obama had a better technical plan (caucusus, every delegate counts, etc.)
3. Obama is a better speaker
4. Obama made fewer mistakes (bittergate + Michelle not proud makes two. RFK + hard working white voters + Bill turns red times 4 + Zimbabwe equals a lot more than two.
5. Wright came out later rather than earlier (Clinton oppo research deficiency)
(Notice that neither racism or sexism are listed. Race hurt Obama with whites & helped him with blacks. Sex hurt Clinton with men and helped her with women. Can anyone really quantify how that played out in terms of final vote counts?)
Overall story is that Obama is a great speaker who ran a near perfect campaign, and HRC almost won nonetheless. This shows just how much stronger she was coming in.
Matt's point stands, the campaign was close enough so that any of several single factors would have tipped it to HRC. The war was one of those factors, and her vote and her stance were 100% in Hillary's control.
The idea that voting against the war was not an option for HRC is crap. Who would argue that voting the other way would have caused her to lose her senate seat in 2006? Does a claim it helped her in the primary in a strongly anti-war Party make any sense at all? It would have been a riskier vote, in this case the risk would have paid out big. She would be the nominee right now.
DTM:
MoveOn didn't help 'move the centre' when they took out an ad calling General Petraeus 'General Betray Us.' They only succeeded in embarassing responsible critics of the war and undermined congressional Democrats on the eve of the Petraeus/Crocker testimony last year. When they go on a witch-hunt against Democrats who voted for the war but have the audacity not to apologize to the anti-war Left, that doesn't contribute to maintaining a broad, governing coalition. Most of the country was for the war in 2003 but changed their minds when more was revealed and the evidence presented itself. The Democrats in congress who agreed have to be called traitors and cowards. The people we're talking about aren't anti-Iraq War, they are anti-war, period. It's not as if they were cheering when Bush invaded Afghanistan either.
As for the rest of your argument, the Party can't govern if the Candidate doesn't win. And he or she can't win if defined as out of the mainstream.
Tyro:
The victory of Obama over Clinton of 0.2% of the primary vote proves only how close and hard-fought the race was. But you can pretend it means anything you like if it makes you feel more hopeful.
Barack Obama still has much to prove.
I don't know, Tim, he did something the Republicans never managed to do--he beat those tenacious, never-say-die, fight-till-the-last-dog-dies-and-other-such-homespun-metaphor Clintons. On their own turf, no less.
And he did it without compromising Democratic values and parroting Republican framing. I'm a lot more optimistic about his ability to govern than I am about the Clintons'.
Marc:
I don't think the Democratic party of 2008 can be described as the Clintons' home turf. It is clearly a much more liberal party, having radicalized after 8 years of being in opposition to the Bush Republicans. As for Barack Obama's achievement in this campaign, it is indeed impressive. However, there is a difference not compromising so-called 'Democratic values' in a Democratic primary, in contrast to what needs to happen in a general election, or in governing. You cannot govern from the Left, one must govern from the centre. Clinton governed from the centre in what was a successful administration. Bush governed from the political extreme and it was a disaster.
Tim K,
And exactly how do you know MoveOn's tactics with respect to the war aren't working? Again, the goal isn't to get everyone agreeing with MoveOn, but rather to move the center point as far in that direction as possible. And the public is now overwhelmingly in favor of withdrawing from Iraq, and for that matter the public's opinion on this subject hasn't been substantially changed by Petraeus and Crocker. And counterfactually, if leading Democrats had not themselves been marginalizing anti-war voices back in late 2002 and early 2003, perhaps at that point as well public opinion would have been less pro-war.
In any event, the candidate who embodied your preferred style of politics has lost. So, the issue is moot.
DTM:
The public isn't in favor of withdrawing from Iraq because of anything MoveOn has done. Americans turned against the war because of 4,000 dead US service men and 13,000 wounded, or whatever the current figure is. It's as simple as that. MoveOn has influence because the Democratic electorate has turned vociferously anti-war and the public too to a lesser degree. Not the other way around.
Hillary, why won't you answer my prison love letters? Why must you deny our love?
Tim K,
You're not addressing the political theory in question as applied to MoveOn, but again it doesn't really matter, because the candidate who believed in the same sorts of political theories as you has lost.
DTM:
Right, because one candidate lost one race an entire perspective on politics is invalid. Brilliant insight.
Not necessarily "invalid", just moot.
DTM:
If Obama is elected we'll see how moot our critique is.
You cannot govern from the Left, one must govern from the centre
You're forgetting that presidents also have the ability to help define and move the political center. It isn't just some mythical grail that candidates race toward, although the Clintons and the DLC certainly view it that way; it's a consensus that they can also help construct or change. (Note that the Clintons' center was substantially to the right of FDR's, or LBJ's, or Nixon's for that matter.) But six years of Clinton capitulations allowed conservatives to claim the political center, priming the country for Bush and Iraq.
If you genuinely think the socially-moderate, economically-conservative, always-hawkish "center" is the only way to govern, I can see why Clinton was your candidate. Happily, things didn't work out that way, and now this country has a chance to repair some of the damage that Bush and the Clintons have caused.
Not that Canadians get to vote in our elections anyway. (Centre?)
Tim K, I don't know where you get the idea that the Democratic party has been "radicalized". What parts of its platform is out of the mainstream?
Senator Obama's style, rhetoric and ideology (particular on foreign policy) demonstrate that while Democrats may say McCain represents "Bush's First Term", the Republicans may be able to counter that Obama represents Carter's second.
I read this and thought it was a pretty lame line. Now I read that McCain said exactly the same thing:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/mccain_obama_would_equal_carte.php
I still think it's lame, because I don't know how he would justify that comparison. I'm not old enough to know much about Carter, I'm afraid.
Agree, agree, agree! It was the war that made this white, 55 year old woman vote against Hillary my state senator that I voted for twice. My second vote for her was because she made a promise to end the war and NEVER did so no more votes for you lady I don't care if you are a woman I vote issues, thank you very much.
I see that throughout her presidential campaign she still pandered and lied just like she did when running for senator, heh
Marc:
Yeah "centre" is the proper English spelling. I try to write in American English on this blog, rather than actual English, but sometimes I forget.
You're forgetting that presidents also have the ability to help define and move the political center.
Leaders don't change the ideology of a society. Circumstances and events do. The Great Depression moved the American public toward activist government and economic interventionism. It was FDR's Fire-Side Chats that did that. He was very skillful at exploiting the circumstances that existed to push through a progressive agenda, but he didn't create those circumstances.
But six years of Clinton capitulations allowed conservatives to claim the political center, priming the country for Bush and Iraq.
Once again you overlook actual events like the end of the Cold War, 9/11 and middle-class backlash against welfare and affirmative action, to explain changes to the political landscape. It's not as if Americans were very happy with liberalism until Bill and Hillary Clinton came along and ruined it for everyone. And Republicans didn't "seize the political center" because Clinton had an affair or compromise with the Republicans to balance the budget. That's just not how things happen in the real world.
and now this country has a chance to repair some of the damage that Bush and the Clintons have caused.
Who exactly do you think was a successful Democratic President in the past 30 years?
WarriorLemming:
Check the timing, I wrote that before the McCain interview was posted. I hadn't seen that comment yet. But I won't take credit for the idea, many commentators see the parallels between Obama and Carter.
What's the comparison?
They were both relative unknowns who ran a successful insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination, beating out more experienced opponents through a better understanding of the primary/caucus process. They both lacked much actual experience or record of accomplishment compared to their competitors or the typical candidate for president in any cycle. They both exhibit very liberal and often naive notions about foreign policy.
Look, Jimmy Carter has higher favorables than Bill Clinton or either Bush:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/favorables/presidential_favorables
Comments closed June 22, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
I still think it was a fair one,
Of course it was a fair one. Was anyone genuinely unclear about what the authorization was going to result in? Was it not seen as a momentous vote at the time?
That defense is pathetic.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 8, 2008 4:27 PM