Wanting vs. Deserving to Win

It can be gratifying when opinions or advice one has given proves out to be accurate. Beyond the cliché and impolitic attitude of saying “I told you so,” let’s look at the reasons why the opinion held merit. Specifically, my prior opinion was that Hilary Clinton should be concerned not just with whether she could win, but how she could win. To use another cliché to explain the point, we could look at the “Rocky” films. Even when the star prizefighter Rocky Balboa was getting the crap pounded out of him in the ring, he was perceived as a winner because of his character and how he engaged in the battle. Later, when he pulled through from underdog status to win the championship, the audience was gratified by their confidence that the spirit of a champion would prevail.

The case of Hilary Clinton is different. The tactics that her campaign has chosen and the way that she has engaged in her battle for the Democratic Presidential nomination have not inspired confidence in either independent observers or in veteran Democratic Party officials – the “Super Delegates.” As noted in a recent MSNBC commentary, Hilary Clinton began the campaign with the built-in advantage of support among the party insiders of the Democratic National Committee [DNC]. That advantage began to erode almost immediately as the Clinton campaign stuck to worn out and often unsubstantiated slogans that failed to resonate with a voting public famished for change from the status quo. The advantage of being an “establishment” candidate and a successor to the Bill Clinton legacy was a double-edged sword. Hilary seemed incapable of wielding that weapon effectively. The result was a string of 10 losses in important early primaries.

The presumptive strong support from the Party veterans and insiders changed to tepid patience as their anointed leader continually lost ground to a candidate that Clinton said lacked experience and could not be elected. The Clinton Legacy of hope [remember Bill’s campaign theme song of “don’t stop dreaming about tomorrow”?] turned to a Hilary campaign of pessimism and derogation. In desperation to win at all costs, Hilary forgot that how you wage the war is equally important to the outcome of a single battle. Whether a candidate deserves to win is as important as whether the results show a victory. This should have been clear to Clinton after the disgraceful victory of George W. Bush in which a very large part of the voting public still believes that the election was stolen or handed to him by Supreme Court that was motivated more by politics than jurisprudence. The hard lesson the Bush Administration has taught over the past 8 years is that if a candidate will lie and cheat to win, he will probably continue to lie and cheat after he wins.

Over the past month, Clinton has played the reverse race card and tried to win by destroying the other candidate more than by extolling her own virtues and why she deserves to be the Democratic nominee. She has tried to portray Obama as “elitist” and out of touch with the poor and middle class white voters, while lending her own campaign more than $10 million of her own wealth. Playing on the racism and fears of beleaguered whites helped Clinton in the battles of Pennsylvania and, to a lesser degree, in Indiana. But Obama still won in the major population centers where voters tend to be more informed and more sophisticated [less easily duped]. Like it or not, voters tend to personalize candidacies. While it would be wonderful if more focus were placed on issues, many voters decide on the basis of whether they view the character of the candidate to be aligned with their own. Simply put, many voters rejected the racist notion that a Black Man could not be elected President, as the Clinton message subtly suggested, and refused to identify with the politics of division and negativism.

To be sure, there are many fine personal qualities that Hilary Clinton possesses that could make her a President far superior to the incumbent. Perhaps her reliance upon the Democratic Party “establishment” tools and consultants has been her greatest mistake. Clearly a person running for and serving as President cannot know or do everything. The choice of advisors and support personnel becomes as much a test of character for the candidate as the display of personal characteristics. Yet Clinton began with and has stuck with the “advice” of these high priced Beltway "experts" despite the evident flaws in their thinking and their ability to develop new strategies to reshape or replace failed strategies. [Does this sound a bit like GWB?] It is very possible that the positive qualities of Hilary Clinton have been overshadowed by the mistakes of her “handlers.” However, the decision to stick with them is a strategy for which Hilary is ultimately accountable and responsible.

The effect of this strategy has been a weakening of support for Clinton and a continuous stream of Super Delegates moving into the Obama column. These delegates are coming not just from the uncommitted positions, but many defections from the Clinton column. Clinton has done us a service by showing that the negative and malicious campaign practices of smear and deceit that the GOP are quite likely to use have failed to bring down the Obama candidacy. It has not, however, gained Hilary Clinton any advantage in her own quest for the nomination. By choosing to fight an unprincipled battle strategy based upon negativism rather than hope, Clinton has won a couple of battles and lost the war. She has trumpeted the message that she wants to be the Democratic nominee, but failed to deliver a convincing message regarding why she deserves to be that nominee.

The Crippled Fourth Estate

The charge is not new from this quarter that one of the most tragic failures of the past 5-6 years has been the abdication of responsibility on the part of the media to perform its essential function in a successful democracy. The failure has been systemic and has not only allowed but enabled the decline in the quality of democracy as well as the diminution in the quality of life for United States of America citizens. The function of the fourth estate is to foster and promote a full and open discussion of information and ideas so that a reasonably informed body politic can make decisions on how it is to be governed and how society will operate. When the fundamental principles upon which the society has functioned are challenged, a free and functioning press will expose the problem so that the public can decide collectively how to deal with the problem.

This process has failed miserably in the past years in which the Bush Administration has broken virtually every tenet and moral principle upon which the Republic was founded. The fundamental principles of jurisprudence, including the Fourth Amendment prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure, the Fifth Amendment prohibiting forced self incrimination, First Amendment involving privacy and rights of free speech and association and the due process right of Habeas Corpus have been abridged or denied. The press has failed to aggressively expose each of these transgressions and failed to challenge the Administration’s efforts to conceal and suppress the information that existing laws require to be made public.

The principle that the Armed Forces are to be deployed only for legitimate purposes to protect and defend the citizens of the United States and its allies has been violated by the unilateral invasion of Iraq when no actual threat to the United States or any ally existed. The country is ensnared in a fiasco that has lasted longer than World War II and has cost the country more financial resources than any war in the history of the nation. More than 4,000 service members have died, and the number rises each month. Estimates of over 300,000 service members have suffered physical or serious mental impairment as a result of the continuing conflict. All this has occurred without clear legal justification of the invasion or the grounds for continued presence. The Bush Administration is attempting to bypass Congress and to negotiate agreements that would obligate the United States to maintain a presence in Iraq after Bush leaves office. Not until recently have such under-the-table dealings been exposed by the press.

The obligation of the Executive Branch and the responsibility of Congress to oversee the public fisc have been largely abandoned during the past 5-6 years. Reports now coming to light prove that the US Government has been defrauded of billions of dollars by contractors who took the money and failed to perform the contract obligations. Many of those contracts were given to political cronies of the Bush Administration without competitive bidding. Rampant abuse of the supply systems has been revealed with supplies intended for the troops being diverted and sold on the black market. In one recent revelation, major supply items were diverted and returned to the US for sale on E-Bay. During this time, Congress has repeatedly opened the national “checkbook” and repeatedly poured billions of dollars more into this sewer of corruption without the most basic functions of audit and oversight. Whether the public would support this type of massive corruption if given the objective facts is unknown, because the facts have been largely hidden or obscured.

Blogs like this one, which lack the resources and exposure to effectively inform the public, are poor substitutes to supply the public need for learning about and debating the problems that are threatening the democracy of the United States. The traditional “Fourth Estate” is now concentrated in the hands of the large corporate interests, many of which are allied with the corporate cronies that are profiting from the pervasive corruption. Even the New York Times organization has reluctantly acknowledged its failure to aggressively follow and expose stories of fraud and corruption by the Bush Administration. Fox news is little more than a press and publicity agent for the Bush Administration and cannot be relied upon for balanced news. The major networks have been converted into “infotainment” organizations where spin and shock value are far more important than truth and reliability. And the greatest tragedy seems to be that there is no end in sight for the deterioration and collapse of one of the fundamental pillars of a free and democratic society – a free and independent press.

Democratic Nomination - At What Price?

One has to admire the grit and determination shown by Hilary Clinton in her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. A nagging question that must be considered regarding her value judgment is the price that she is willing to pay for that personal ambition. There is an old cliché about winning the battle and losing the war that has added relevance now. Many have questioned whether Clinton will do anything and fight for the nomination at any cost, including the division of the Democratic base that could risk losing the general election in November. In this regard, HOW you win is as important as WHETHER you win. Doubt about the Clinton campaign’s grasp of this important principle is evident. The proof is no more apparent than in her campaign’s management of the race issue.

The fact that one Democratic candidate is a woman and the other is non-white has long been recognized as an issue that the GOP might seek to exploit in the general election. As such, the primary and caucus contests have been a useful process to test the receptivity of the public to a “non-traditional” candidate, i.e. someone who is not a white male. At this point, however, the huge turnout and the astounding support that both candidates have received suggest that the United States could elect either a woman or a Black.

The current contest has gone beyond that question and taken a distinctly negative turn. The Clinton campaign seems to be playing the reverse race card in a way that potentially threatens Democratic Party cohesion necessary for the party to win the November election. Party officials and veterans have recently expressed concern about the divisive nature of the continuing contest. Conventional political wisdom suggests that it is better to seek to distinguish candidates within the same party on issues that are not fundamentally divisive and in ways that do not give substantial advantage to the other party’s candidacy. Obviously, such divisions can more easily be healed and permit the entire party to unite behind the candidate ultimately selected. Division on fundamental issues tends to cause the “losing” faction to sit out the campaign for the general election. For example, differences over ways to handle health care are issues that can differentiate without permanently dividing the party. Promoting division among the party electorate on the basis of race or gender, on the other hand, could cause permanent rifts far more difficult to heal.

Unfortunately, the Clinton campaign seems to be playing the negative side of race while we have not seen Obama’s campaign play the gender card. This is a bit surprising in light of the goodwill that Clinton began with as a result of the legacy of her husband’s Presidency. Yet Clinton’s campaign has promoted her candidacy among poor uneducated whites and on several occasions deliberately injected race into the public debate when it was unhealthy to do so. When the potentially harmful comments by Clinton supporters [e.g. Geraldine Ferraro] were made public, it seemed that Obama left Clinton alone to deal with the issue. On the other hand, when issues like the Rev. Wright commentary have surfaced, Clinton’s campaign has quickly and repeatedly jumped on the negative bandwagon. Similarly, Clinton tried to turn a candid reflection by Obama about disaffection by the poor and undereducated into a racial issue.

Obama’s comment about bitterness leading to “guns and religion” was not a inherently race based reflection, although it did note a class distinction [one that is real]. It is equally true of black poor constituents as it is of poor whites. The fact remains true of both groups that when they face difficult challenges that they can neither understand nor control, they tend to cling to familiar comforts. Finding a message that speaks effectively to them is a real problem for Clinton and for Obama. Unfortunately, the Clinton campaign seems to have opted for a negative “message” to poor whites suggesting that a Black candidate cannot understand their troubled situation.

The “message” that is either being intentionally broadcast or recklessly disseminated by Clinton’s campaign is that Obama should step aside, despite his lead in popular and delegate counts, and let allow the nomination to go to Clinton because the country is not ready to accept a Black president. It implies that there is a large segment of ignorant and bigoted voters who would ignore the leadership qualities of Obama and ignore their personal best interests simply because of distrust of the candidate’s skin color. For Clinton to suggest at this point that she is more “electable” than Obama is just “code” for the message. Clinton’s “experience” claim has been largely debunked. It has been distilled to the essence stated by a woman responding to a pollster in Indiana who stated that one reason for favoring Clinton is that “she has her husband to help her.” In short, Hilary does not have substantial advantage in terms of personal experience. Her candidacy can make an “experience” claim only if viewed as the candidacy of Hilary and Bill Clinton. In fact, both candidates have substantial political experience and neither has a distinct advantage in that regard.

The press, of course, will be inclined to play up the racial divide because it is salacious and because it may favor a GOP base with which many media owners are allied. The campaigns of the candidates should recognize that they are playing a very dangerous game. The history of the United States is complex and difficult with regard to race relations. There remains difficulty even talking openly about the manifest problem. Lyndon B. Johnson was not always a stalwart advocate of the rights of minorities. At a crucial point in history, however, he had the courage to stand against his traditional southern [and typically bigoted] power base to promote passage of the Civil Right Act. It takes courage to choose the difficult path over the easier or more convenient one. Playing to fear, ignorance and bigotry is the easy and convenient path, but it is neither courageous nor in the best interests of the country.

The question of the moment is whether Clinton remains willing to exploit the racial divide at a time when the country so desperately needs healing, change and unification. Is Clinton willing to stand up publicly and counter the ugly and negative tone that seems to be infused in her candidacy in order to display the necessary courage? Would she rather choose to stand by and allow that message to be promoted by her subordinates in order to win the nomination without regard to the potential cost to the party and to the country? One might argue that taking a very public stand would strengthen her chances of winning the nomination more than failing to do so. But win or lose, her play to racial bigotry will seriously impair the chances of the Democratic Party victory in November.