The War!

For all I know, Robert Novak just made this up but assuming he didn't, Hillary Clinton is a lot more insightful than your average political prognosticator in the press: "In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama's emphasis on Iraq -- her Senate vote for it, his against it -- defeated her."

Of course it did and even more than that it was her vote for the war, and her next few years of war-related behavior, that made Obama's candidacy conceivable.

DoD photo by Spc. Richard Del Vecchio, U.S. Army

Comments

Well, he did make up the part about Obama voting against the war. At least in the US Senate.

Posted by Tom | July 21, 2008 11:55 AM

notice what service is providing these "infantrymen?"

Posted by Dennis Ward | July 21, 2008 11:56 AM

"In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama's emphasis on Iraq -- her Senate vote for it, his against it -- defeated her."

Actually, it was her inability to admit that she had been wrong. If she had done that well before Iowa, she would have stood a much better chance.

Posted by LFC | July 21, 2008 12:01 PM

I'll agree with your last sentence--Iraq is what gave Obama the opening, got him to the table in Iowa. But in a close race--and it was a close race--you can point to any signifant factor and say it was decisive. I would argue that the more significant factor post-Iowa was that Obama made better strategic decisions about where and how to deploy his resources. He knew how to read the rulebook, look at a map, and fight a long campaign out state-by-state and door to door, and Clinton didn't seem to be capable of any of those things. Her staff didn't even want to acknowledge that they were in a fight until it was almost too late to win--shades of the Bushies after the fall of Baghdad!

Posted by craig | July 21, 2008 12:02 PM

Just to add to what LFC pointed out above, it wasn't just that she couldn't admit she was wrong, she doubled down on being wrong: The sneering contempt ("just a speech") with which she dismissed Obama's opposition to the war (and by extension, mine and a whole bunch of other people's).

Gail Sheehy's article on the Clinton campaign only mentions the war as an illustration of Penn and Bill's bad advice (they both told her not to back down), which also tells you something about the Beltway and its worldview.

Posted by Jim | July 21, 2008 12:06 PM

This is really the easiest thing to admit: I lost because of one unfortunate vote. Harder to admit: Obama is a more skilled politician than I am, and beat me even while running a cleaner campaign.

Posted by jbd | July 21, 2008 12:08 PM

Iowa is very isolationist, on trade and humanitarian missions and all else.

Sheehy's article was very good. I think it was the war and probably not trying to win every state, i.e. some states "don't count." They spent all of their money on Super Tuesday and lost it. Then they were deep in debt.

Obama made brilliant use of the Internet because frankly Obama supporters > Hillary supporters. Edwards was a nonfactor but I hope he becomes VP or Attorney General.

Posted by Peter K. | July 21, 2008 12:15 PM

jbd: except that the MSM narrative has avoided that 'easiest thing to admit' in doing the postmortem on the Clinton candidacy, and it would be easier still to say 'oh, what they all say'.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 21, 2008 12:16 PM

Thirding--if she'd said she was wrong, and voted like she knew she was wrong and learned from it (Kyl-Lieberman...."fool we once..."), she would have stood a better shot. Worked for Edwards. Instead, she sold "ready to be CinC" so hard she shot well past the target and into "bring it on!" territory.

Posted by Deborah | July 21, 2008 12:17 PM

Re Robert Novak

Anybody who believes anything written by shithead fucktard Robert Novak is seriously deranged.

Posted by SLC | July 21, 2008 12:19 PM

It's more than just the war vote. Obama won in Iowa, as well as most of the plains and western states, largely because he talks about issues differently. He appeals to those of us in the heartland who understand empathy, but also recognize that getting yourself into trouble shouldn't be rewarded. i.e. the theme of personal responsibility.

This was something that I identified with in Obama's campaign almost from the start, and it certainly wasn't missed by Iowans. When Hillary talks, she sounds like a old-school 1960s liberal. When Obama talks, he sounds more like Franklin Roosevelt.

The war vote certainly gave him an in, but this broader difference in style is what won him the states he won. It was these states, the put him over the top.

Posted by The Other Steve | July 21, 2008 12:27 PM

At least she's not still encouraging the "sexism killed my awesome candidacy" meme. If I hear the words "sexism" and "Hillary" in the same sentence again before Election Day, I'll probably start tearing my hair out. Which means I'll be bald very soon.

Posted by Stefan | July 21, 2008 12:28 PM

Thirding--if she'd said she was wrong, and voted like she knew she was wrong and learned from it (Kyl-Lieberman...."fool we once..."), she would have stood a better shot. Worked for Edwards. Instead, she sold "ready to be CinC" so hard she shot well past the target and into "bring it on!" territory.

Yes, because Edwards did so well in the 2004 and 2008 primaries...

Posted by Alex | July 21, 2008 12:58 PM

I'm just hoping this idea (that voting for a war can be a career-killing mistake) seeps into the rest of the Senators' heads. They all ought to be petrified of voting in favor of wars. Going to war should never be a gimme, it ought to be the scariest fracking vote they cast.

Posted by jimBOB | July 21, 2008 1:23 PM

wow 13 posts and things haven't broken down into a hillary vs. Obama suckage.

Democrats have come a long way.

But wait, Nancy Pelosi just isn't liberal enough!

Much better....

Posted by jvoe | July 21, 2008 1:24 PM

Matt, you keep insisting on this, but you've done almost no critical analysis of the counterfactual you propose. The media attention given to a Senator with presidential ambitions is entirely different from the attention given to a promising young Democratic pol with a negligible national profile.

Had Hillary voted against Iraq in 2002, she would have been pilloried not merely by the Republican establishment (which was extremely powerful at that moment in history), but by their captive media as well. The fact that she would have later been proved right would have been incidental and largely irrelevant. This is a dynamic that you understand quite clearly when it comes to political pundits, but are somehow blind to when it comes to politicians.

A few discussion questions: Why have the reputations of political pundits not been ruined by their disastrously erroneous analysis of Iraq ? Why did Obama vote to support funding the Iraq war when he actually arrived in the Senate ? Is it a coincidence that Edwards supported the war in the Senate, and rejected it afterward ? Why did John Kerry beat Howard Dean and lose to George W. Bush ?

Hillary's gender also plays a role that you haven't acknowledged. There are political positions that are more troublesome for women than men.

Yes, in 2008, high-profile support for eventual withdrawal became politically beneficial, finally - and that's the position Hillary adopted. But if war opposition was so beneficial, you need to explain why Obama won the nomination instead of someone with a consistent anti-war record.

Posted by politicalfootball | July 21, 2008 3:09 PM

Hogwash.

It may be that Iraq gave Obama the idea that he might have an opening. You'd have to ask him about that.

But what did Clinton in was mostly that she came across as a total phony -- someone who would say anything and everything in her quest for the nomination. Every politician has to shade things, and they all do it in order to get elected. But most successful ones show some signs of having a core somewhere of things that they believe, and on which they will (at minimum) be extremely reluctant to compromise. Senator Clinton did not.

Posted by wj | July 21, 2008 3:23 PM

Note the guy in the front of the picture is Air Force. Just for the record, AF personnel (our nephew included) do serve on the ground with Army and Marines. Nephew was a forward artillery spotter, calling in the air strikes. Trained, served and lived Army. Two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Just saying...

PS. Sgt. Nephew is out now. Air Force offered him $65K cash to reup.

Posted by Thomas D | July 21, 2008 3:29 PM

Why does the DoD attribute the photo to a US Army soldier when his uniform clearly says Air Force?

Posted by Matt | July 21, 2008 4:04 PM

"In private conversations, Clinton has expressed the view that Obama's emphasis on Iraq -- her Senate vote for it, his against it -- defeated her."

Obama's Senate vote against it?

Posted by Octavian | July 21, 2008 4:19 PM

"Why does the DoD attribute the photo to a US Army soldier when his uniform clearly says Air Force? "

Confidential sources of mine, speaking on the condition of anonymity, have informed me that DoD allows Army photographers to photograph Air Force personnel.

What a crazy world we inhabit!

Posted by Octavian | July 21, 2008 4:23 PM

Let's remember that Hillary has not said that she was wrong about the war. She thinks she lost because of it, but that's not the same thing at all.

Should she have said she was wrong to gain votes even if she didn't believe she was wrong? That'd be an extreme pander on a critical issue.

Posted by AlanC9 | July 21, 2008 5:24 PM

You mean HRC didn't lose the primary because everyone who voted against her is a rabid anti-feminist, secretly plotting the day when women will return to being chattel? Someone might want to point this out to the lunier HRC die-hard partisans on the net.

Posted by Maynard Handley | July 21, 2008 5:33 PM