Hillary Clinton Will Lose
Let’s say Mitt Romney wins Florida and consolidates Republican regulars, winning the nomination within the next few weeks. Say Hillary Clinton does much the same, grinding down the Obama campaign through a combination of managerial prowess, voter suppression and intimidation, slander by proxy, and enthusiastic efforts to fuel interethnic antagonism. (Who knew that Hillary Clinton, she of the Children’s Defense Fund, would so adamantly try to bring Peter Brimelow’s vision of American politics to life.)
Remember, the Clintons are always saintly victims. Indeed, one wonders if the Obama campaign was in fact financed by Richard Mellon Scaife in an effort to prevent Hillary Clinton from single-handedly solving all of America’s problems through vigorous application of stick-to-it-iveness and unsurpassed intellect, an approach that, as you all know, worked brilliantly for Robert McNamara in Vietnam. That Clinton hasn’t been named Maximum Proconsul of North America by unanimous acclamation itself demonstrates that the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is alive, well, and stronger than ever. If you haven’t heard about the Obama-Scaife connection yet, rest assured that it might appear in a robocall to come, or an email forward like those alleging that Senator Obama is an anti-Semitic black nationalist.
Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow …
Most people think that Senator Clinton would easily win a general election against Romney thanks to Democratic unity, Bush fatigue, Iraq, economic woes, and Romney’s many weaknesses: his Gore-like unctuousness and Kerry-like flip-flopping, his Mormon faith, and, worst of all, the fact that he actually ran a large and successful for-profit corporation, which is apparently grounds for execution.
But recall that John Kerry very nearly defeated Bush. We’re still dealing with a very polarized electorate. And note that accusations of ferocious anti-black racism leveled against Romney, which by the way will almost certainly be made (and will center on long-abandoned aspects of Mormon teaching) probably won’t pass the laugh test. Mitt Romney is many things, but a Dixie-whistling good ol’ boy isn’t one of them. Threatening he’s not. It’s easy to imagine black voters staying home in large numbers. Add in the fact that, as Brad Plumer reminds us, Sheldon Adelson is prepared to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into issue ads targeting Democratic opponents of staying and fighting (and dying) in Iraq.
Much the same logic applies a fortiori if John McCain is the Republican nominee. Of two old, tired, overfamiliar faces, which one will be more appealing to swing voters after a slash-and-burn campaign in which the Clintons bashed Hope Personified in the kneecaps, in part by aligning with the most nationalist slice of the Latino political class?
Viva Hillary! Viva!
Like Ross, I think Obama has a bright future. I also think that he will probably be our next Democratic president whether or not he wins he nomination this year.
Let me explicitly state my biases. I have many friends working on the Obama campaign and, as I’ll explain, I think Obama has a broadly plausible worldview, which is more than I can say for Clinton. Also, I’ve long been a McCain enthusiast. The trouble, of course, is that Obama wants to run against McCain: the contrast in age and vigor works powerfully to Obama’s advantage. As for Romney, I’ve softened on him as a candidate, perhaps because I have a fairly low opinion of almost all politicians. And despite his technocratic mien, Romney sometimes appears to be the only candidate who doesn’t believe that American workers are tiny children.
Then there’s Senator Clinton. Close friends of mine know that I have a soft spot for her. I often remark that I think we would’ve been great friends during her Alinskyite days, and I often defend her as a sober Midwestern centrist, not a left-wing radical. (A baseless and ridiculous charge, in my view. But again, I like many left-wing radicals.) She also can’t imagine being wrong. That’s terrifying. We’ve lived through two terms of a president who can’t imagine being wrong! Who in their right mind would want to go through another?
Reihan: if you don’t want another President who can’t imagine being wrong, why are you a McCain enthusiast? Or do you see an important distinction between not being able to imagine oneself being wrong, and not being able to imagine one’s opponents being right (which is probably a better description of McCain)?
— Noah Millman · Jan 24, 08:57 PM · #
obama vs. any republican – i go for obama
clinton vs. mccain – i go for mccain
clinton vs. romney – toss up
i’m not a clinton hater. i really want to punish the republicans at this point for various reasons. but i’m tired of dynasty, and i’m tried of entitlement.
— raz · Jan 24, 09:19 PM · #
Noah: You make an excellent point! I suppose I do think of McCain as someone who is willing to right the ship, but I could be wrong.
— Reihan · Jan 24, 10:50 PM · #
noah, i don’t follow politics closely, but my impression is that mccain has flipped & flopped around due to the contingencies of his situation. he sure is a self-righteous dude, but i don’t get the same tunnel-vision sense that i get out of bush.
(speaking as someone who knows very little about politics, but hey, i’m an independent now so my opinion matters a lot!)
— raz · Jan 24, 11:13 PM · #
Reihan: McCain might well be the right guy to right the ship – he’s got many virtues. But it depends what you’re looking for, and he is definitely somebody who divides the world into friends and enemies (as does Clinton, as does Bush – but unlike Romney or Obama), and he is definitely someone with a powerful sense of his own righteousness (again, like both Clinton and Bush; Obama’s self-regard is something rather different, more solopsistic, and Romney strikes me as a more ordinary kind of egotist).
raz: I both agree and disagree with you. Bush is the kind of person who will block out information that might lead him to question the direction he’s going. McCain is much less likely to do that – but he’s mighty stubborn, and has a powerful sense of honor, and once that honor’s engaged, he’s pretty likely to keep going in the same direction in spite of whatever information he got that the way he’s going isn’t working out. In terms of actual policy: McCain is much less likely to start a war with Iran than people think, but he is just as unlikely to withdraw from Iraq as people think.
Full disclosure: I was a McCainiac in 2000, and I’m uncommitted in this race.
— Noah Millman · Jan 24, 11:43 PM · #
I really don’t understand why everyone assumes that a nasty primary fight is going to hurt Hillary in the fall. The only people paying attention now are:
1) Political junkies of all stripes, and
2) Hardcore Democratic partisans.
Group (1) is laughably small, and group (2) is strongly pro-Hillary. Sure, if she runs a nasty campaign all manner of highly educated, idealistic naifs will refuse to vote for her in the fall.
All five of them.
I know that journalist-types find it impossible to believe that there are actually people who LIKE the Clintons, but they do exist.
— gustav · Jan 25, 12:02 AM · #
But, Reihan and Noah — and I say this as someone who is not policy aligned with McCain — it’s less of the problem if the guy thinks he’s always right when there’s some possibility that he very very often is right. That’s just not the Bush modus operandi.
— Sanjay · Jan 25, 01:35 AM · #
Hilarious post. I also believe that Hillary would lose almost any general election, much for the reasons expressed therein. Guileful cynicism and calculation is not transparent, and the people have a very good nose for it. That said, I still think this is why Obama will win the primary; I think we’re headed for a Super Tuesday surprise.
That being said, the one thing that can make naked, amoral calculation win, is even more naked and amoral calculation, and that’s the Romney campaign.
— PEG · Jan 25, 08:27 AM · #
“She also can’t imagine being wrong.”
Could you provide some plausible evidence of this?
— William · Jan 25, 06:41 PM · #
William, i’ll take a stab at that. If you remember way back in that cafe in NH, when HRC found her voice, right after her voiced cracked she went on to say(paraphrased) some of us are right(her), and some of us are wrong (Obama), concluding with the quip that those other some-of -us just haven’t thought things through. I think the implication is clear enough to take as circumstantial evidence.
— jjcoop · Jan 26, 03:42 AM · #