Yes, we love him. Perhaps a bit too much. But is it time to stop singing along to Yes, We Can? Should Obama bow out like Mitt and let Hillary focus on beating the crap out McCain?
Tuesday wasn’t as good to Obama as the media predicted. It made for good drama though. I walked into class on Wednesday with three hours of sleep, because I put off preparing for class until the results for California came in.
Random thought for pol. sci. geeks. If you line up Elazar’s state political culture map with the results from Tuesday’s election, Obama’s got the moralistic states and Hillary has the individualistic states. They are splitting the moralistic states.
Still, most bloggers aren’t willing to give up yet. Yglesias has interesting numbers on Obama’s popularity with the webby-types. Clinton’s $5 million loan to herself not only shows that she’s hard up, but also calls attention to the Clinton’s personal wealth. Obama is excepted to well in the upcoming primaries, though he’s going to have to deal with those pesky superdelegates.
Obama’s having a tough week. We need another good speech.
Apt. 11d 
I actually think Obama’s in a very strong position. The superdelegates aren’t committed to Clinton and many represent constituents who voted for Obama; that is not a position they will want to explain to voters in November (Democratic voters certainly aren’t going to buy the “appeal to process” argument if the superdelegates decide the election). Obama seems to be attracting swing voters and does at least as well as Clinton in head-to-head polls with McCain. Obama doesn’t have to explain his position on the war. Obama will probably have 3 weeks of (plurality statewide) wins before Clinton sees her next one; he does well in caucus states, the Baltimore-to-Richmond corridor, and the south. He doesn’t have the “blood in the water” of Clinton’s loan to herself (and if she really believed in her campaign, he can argue she’d use the money directly rather than relying on donors to pay her back eventually).
More to the point, perhaps projecting from myself too much, I can see why someone would vote for McCain in a McCain-Clinton matchup but support Obama in McCain-Obama (and by “I can see why” I mean “this is what I would do”). In the McCain-Clinton matchup, McCain is Ford, the guy who’s going to restore honor to the White House after 16 years of sleaze (how much oppo can Clinton really dig up on McCain that will stick, particularly with her own baggage?). Obama doesn’t have the WJC albatross around his neck and doesn’t have the “I was for the war before I was against it” to deal with either. And the polling, if anything, is showing an inverse Bradley effect; he gets more of the vote than the polls say he will.
I’m not a Democrat and haven’t been one since 1996 (I think), but I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb if I say that the only person who can lose this election for the Democrats is Clinton. That isn’t to say she will. But I don’t see any way McCain beats Obama, at least not without employing a level of sleaze that would probably make McCain lose anyway.
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Obama will do better in primaries now that the GOP race has been decided, since independents will have no incentive to vote in a meaningless Republican primary and will go instead to the Democratic side and predominantly with Obama.
More importantly, the Clinton campaign has been spinning like mad today, trying to get the media to focus on the March 4 states of Ohio and Texas. The interesting thing here is not what they’re saying, but what they’re NOT saying, but implying: Hillary isn’t going to win anything until then.
That may be overstating the case a bit, since Clinton stands to win in Maine, based on its older and less-educated demographic. But Maine is a caucus state, where Obama’s ground game does well. And it looks like Obama is going to win the Louisiana primary as well as the caucuses in Washington and Nebraska on Feb. 9.
What that means is that the Clinton campaign now EXPECTS TO LOSE the Potomac primary (VA, DC, MD) on Feb. 12. Obama also stands to win his native state of Hawaii a week later, and though he’s currently behind in Wisconsin, he can bring his large and victorious organizations in Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota to bear in the Badger State.
Can the Clinton campaign withstand the drip-drip-drip of seven to nine losses coast-to-coast until March 4? Even if she can, the pressure will be on for her to win BOTH Ohio and Texas to stay viable. If Obama wins either of those states, it will be Clinton, not Obama, who will be feeling the pressure to drop out in the name of party unity.
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No one is answering my concerns. 🙂
OK, let me ask this again a different way: Obama is a uniter. He inspires. He’s drawing the attention of many many left-wing/progressive elites in politics and in the blogosphere. Yet he is also drawing moderate Democrats in red states, the same people who probably tip the state over to Republicans in national elections.
While everyone is standing there singing kumbaya and holding hands, are they really *looking* at the person next to them and wondering what policy positions they could possibly have in common? Is Obama emphasizing these commonalities? Or is he making all these people feel equally good? Is it shared experience or shared policies that are uniting people?
And that is why people are accusing the Obama fandom (and hey, I have been in many a television fandom and I recognize fandom) of being a cult. It’s not really a cult; it’s a fandom. And I have yet to see a fandom end well.
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I don’t understand this assessment at all. Obama was loosing substantially in all the polls until moments before Tuesday. I predicted on your web site that he would loose the super tuesday delegate count by +100 votes; so did Elizabeth. It’s too bad everyone else didn’t make a prediction themselves. He brought the delegate count to a draw (or even to a win), both well beyond my predictions. I saw the Wash Post article that said something like “Obama was *once* expected to sweep the VA primary, but . . .” And all I could think was when was “once.” I want folks who are going to play the expectations game to make hard, not fuzzy wuzzy predictions. Then, we can actually assess whether expectations were meet.
(BTW, I lost a bet with my husband. I bet that the delegate difference would be 80+ in Clinton’s favor).
bj
PS: Are you baiting us, Laura? This post sounds suspiciously like a professor trying to spark some conversation among her apathetic students :-).
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Wendy:
I think they are (looking at the person next to them and figuring out what policies they have in common). For one thing, I could stand next to the obama & clinton supporters and measure the difference between us in policy issues in microns. Obama and Clinton have every so tiny differences between them. So, when you stand in Obama’s kumbaya chorus, you get that + more. And, I for one, prefer Obama’s positions on a number of issues (the war, for example). Clinton was there to take a stand (as Kennedy did) and she didn’t, and she didn’t again. True, we can’t be sure what Obama *would* have done. But, we know what Clinton did.
bj
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Judging from talking with my mother (a conservative independent who hates hates hates Bill Clinton), there is one policy issue where Hillary Clinton has an advantage: her health care plan. She does not want Hillary to win because then Bill gets back close to power, but in summing up the race, she said: “I like McCain on military, I like Obama for his character, and I like Hillary’s health care plan.” I was surprised that she’d even heard enough about the details of the health care plan to have come to that decision. (She watches Fox News mostly.) So it sounds like some of the policy differences might be coming out.
She would still be much more likely to vote for Obama than Clinton, however.
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BJ, but you’re still not getting my point. LMC helped a bit. Her conservative independent mother is more likely to vote for Obama, probably. So, what does her mother have in common with you? Here’s Obama, ready to unite people, ready with his bipartisan unity message. So what do you and LMC’s mother have in common other than your support of Obama? How is that unity going to be manifested? What happens when Obama actually tries to make a policy proposal happen? It’s going to have to disappoint someone. Then what happens?
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Oh, I don’t actually have an answer for why folks like lmc’s mother, or dave, or others who seriously consider both McCain & Obama are thinking. In fact, it’s hard to imagine why one would consider both of those candidates, and to quote Gail Collins from the NYT:
“I am an independent and looking for a president with integrity. Should I vote for John McCain or Barack Obama?
Didn’t we all swear to stop picking the candidate who would be most fun to go on a picnic with? You’re torn between the guy who’s been against the war from the beginning and the guy who’s willing to stay in Iraq for 100 years? Between the guy who wants to pay for a $50 billion-a-year health care program by eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy, and the guy who wants to keep the tax cuts and pay for them by cutting the budget? Get a grip.”
I support Obama because I get the policies + the civility + the inspiration. I don’t really get the people who are willing to trade policy for the civlity & inspiration (which is what I imagine folks who would consider McCain instead of Obama) would do.
Obama’s coalition might depend marginally on those people, but I think largely not — I think it’s a new and energized group of people who largely agree with his policies.
To be perfectly honest, I think those conservatives who are attracted to Obama for “character” aren’t going to vote for him when they are really given the choice. But, I never understand those people anyway. Obama doesn’t have a magical cure for resolving policy differences. But he seems to have a gift for inspiring people who agree with each other to move from lethargy to action.
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Well, bj, maybe I can help you: 1. I have Clinton Derangement Syndrome. I remember the Travel Office, the health care clusterfuck, her role in bimbo eruption containment, her remarkable success in commodities futures. I don’t like her, and I don’t want her anywhere near the Oval Office. 2. I am far closer to McCain on the war than to Obama. 3. I like civility and inspiration, and I think I will get more of them from BHO or McC than from a new Clinton administration. 4. I’ve seen the resume jockeys who are attaching themselves to the Clinton campaign, and I don’t want them running the government – I think either McC or BHO will have a wider field to pick from than the hacks now working for Hillary.
So: I dislike HRC, don’t want her in the White House. I don’t think she’s very competent at the things a President needs to do and be. I like both Obama and McCain for seeking what I think is a positive future. My politics are between them. So, if they are the nominees, I will make a choice. If HRC is the nominee, my choice is made already. Is this really so hard to figure out?
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“I have Clinton Derangement Syndrome”
Dave S: at least your honest about it. Becaue none of the rest of your post makes a lick of sense.
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There are issues on which Hillary is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. What about her stance on madatory minimum sentences? And while I should not blame Bill’s mistakes on her, I cannot stand what Bill’s White House did in the name of the drug war. The mothers in jail because of minor drug abuse–it is a disgrace. While the only democratic candidates who openly favored eliminating the unjust excesses of the drug war are out (Kucinich and Dodd), I can hope that Obama would be different than we KNOW the Clintons to be on this one.
So it is unfair in my mind to say that those who favor Obama do it only because of their preference for his personality. Personality has nothing whatsoever to do with it for me. I see Hillary Clinton as a sort of liberal authoritarian, plain and simple, and I would like something better. Obama is the more progressive candidate, and freer from ties to corporations as well.
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It might not make sense, but I think more than a few Republicans could flip in a general election if Obama was on the ticket. I’m hearing lots of anecdotal stories about that.
Props go to bj for predicting a delegate spread. Am I baiting you all? Who me?
Kevin Drum, who is not usually super funny, said that after he endorsed Obama, he received a ton of e-mails asking him if was going to get a Mac and start blogging about The Wire.
I’m starting to think that the difference between Obama and Clinton isn’t policy or even likability. It’s a life-style choice.
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“I’m starting to think that the difference between Obama and Clinton isn’t policy or even likability. It’s a life-style choice.”
Exactly. It’s a fandom. In fact, it’s kind of reminding me of Buffy fandom. I’d explain further, but I feel like excrement thanks to a chest cold. Maybe I’ll take a stab at it over on my blog where my medicated ramblings won’t take up space.
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Dave — but I think you’re going to pull the lever for McCain, and thus, your Hillary hatred shouldn’t really drive our (meaning the Democrats) decision making process. It might drive yours — you want to do what you can to make sure that Hillary isn’t president (which would be much less likely if she doesn’t win the nomination). But, unless that actually translates into a vote for the Democratic candidate or, I guess, an increased likelihood that you’ll sit out the election, or not actively support the Rep, it’s really irrelevant to Democrats.
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If you line up Elazar’s state political culture map with the results from Tuesday’s election, Obama’s got the moralistic states and Hillary has the individualistic states.
Interesting observation, Laura. It fits in with something I touched on here: that Clinton’s message isn’t all that different from old-school Progressivism, some parts of which descend in a pretty straight line to the individualistic liberalism of the Democratic party’s heyday, in the 60s and 70s; where’s Obama’s message, however webby and 21st-century it undeniably is, also partakes of an older, more civic, more moralistic progressive politics, something that hearkens back to the Populists. We’re mostly talking rhetoric and tone and all that in making these comparisons, but still, that can matter.
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“There are issues on which Hillary is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong. ”
uh huh, and the war vote (which really won’t go away), and the anti-flag burning law. If I supported Hillary on policies, I wouldn’t be moved by Barack’s rhetoric.
And, I’m coming to understand the power of rhetoric. I was playing the videos (“yes I can”) on my computer the other day. It reminded me of “I have a dream” so I hunted that down, too. I started playing it and then paused. My four-year-old son demanded that I start it again, and then sat down at my computer and watched the entire video, refusing to come to dinner until he’d seen Martin Luther King utter his last words. Words have the power to move nations. This power, can be used for good or ill, and is thus scary. But, do we let our fear get in the way of the power to do good?
(yup, just back from the WA caucuses, where the Obama precinct captain for the neighboring precinct was a seventeen year old girl, and where old white folks kept coming up to me, asking me what the tally was, and then saying “Yes!” when they heard 3/1 in favor of Obama)
bj
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BeeJay – I think Hillary has an absolutely terrible Presidential personality. McCain has big problems in that area, too. His (McCain’s) policies are closer to mine, maybe, but he has a history of volcanic eruptions at folks who cross him, and of making difference of views into good-versus-evil struggles. If I could pick a President, it might be Bill Weld or Bob Kerrey. Christie Whitman might be okay. Obama, despite being well to my left (and I really don’t see daylight between his politics and HRCs) seems to have the right kind of personality to make things move forward. So I am pretty sure the only way I will pull the ‘Hillary’ lever is if the other lever says ‘Huckabee’. But I haven’t got a decision on what I will do if the levers are ‘McCain’ and ‘Obama’.
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OK. I was being flippant before about the differences between Obama and Hillary. There are many real differences between the two, including differing approaches to the political process. Hillary is going through the conventional political process working through party elites and using confrontational methods with her opponents. Obama is doing well, despite lacking the approval of key party leaders. I like that.
And go Obama! He did very well in the recent primaries. This campaign is certainly a nail biter.
But more important to me is what Amy Winehouse is going to look like on the Grammy’s tonight.
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