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.