Thoughts on the Democratic presidential race (March 4, 2008)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

For some extended commentary on the Obama-Clinton race, see my post from last night.

For now, on this rather important day, here are some interesting items with some brief commentary.

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1) So you're voting for Hillary, eh? Well, it's what Rush Limbaugh wants you to do. He wants to keep Democrats divided. Which is quite funny, actually, given how much he loathes John McCain.

2) It's what her campaign is all about, it seems. Yet again, Clinton has belittled and ridiculed Obama without a shred of fairness or context: "I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House," she said yesterday in Toledo. "Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he'd bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." Right, so all Obama has is a single speech? What experience, national security and foreign policy experience, does Clinton have exactly? And as I've said before, if it's "experience" you want, why not just elect Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz to run the country? They've been around, haven't they? (In deperation, Clinton and her campaign have just gotten meaner and more mean-spirited. It's what I call her scorched-earth campaign.)

3) Check out this Q&A on the "existential realities of the Democratic race" from Marc Ambinder.

4) At Open Left, Chris Bowers looks at the latest polls in Ohio and Texas and makes this prediction: Clinton will win Ohio by 3-5 points, Obama will pull out a narrow victory in Texas. (But Texas is really, really close, and Clinton could win the primary part of the contest.)

5) Matt Yglesias responds to Bowers: "I see no real way for Clinton to make up the lost delegate lead, but at this point it does seem to me that she and her campaign staff are probably egomaniacal enough that if they pull out a narrow 'win' they'll keep running anyway hoping for lightning to strike and seeing the damage it'll do to the party as a feature, rather than a bug, since a crippled Obama who loses to John McCain could set them up for another run in 2012." They are likely that egomaniacal, yes, but Clinton will stay in the race largely because the race is so close, because she thinks she can win the superdelegates, and because winning either Ohio or Texas (or both) would catapult her back into contention -- not in terms of delegates, perhaps, but in terms of positive media coverage, with the myopic media shifting to a more pro-Clinton narrative upon interpreting the results out of the larger context of the race as a whole (which shows how Obama was well behind in both states and how even being close in those states is a sign of just how impressive he and his campaign have been).

6) John Aravosis wonders what the Republicans would "throw at Hillary Clinton in the fall" but refrains from doing to Clinton what Clinton has been doing to Obama, namely, dredging up all those rumours and scandals (and there are surely many more on Clinton's side than on Obama's). But: "[C]ome Wednesday, if Hillary doesn't win 65% of the delegates in Ohio and Texas, and still insists on staying in the race and ripping our party in two, it will be time to start treating candidate Clinton with the same golden rule she is using for candidate Obama. Why? Not for revenge, but for the sake of our party and the fall election. Hillary and her campaign are in the process of turning Obama into damaged goods in the fall. They didn't have to go there, but beating Obama became more important to them than beating John McCain." I agree. For the good of the party, it will be her time to bow out of the race.

Hopefully.