NYT's Gail Collins:
I believe that during the campaign McCain’s great friend Senator Lindsey Graham said something along the line of promising to drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama.
I think this is the quote she's referring to:
“[McCain] fits North Carolina like a glove,” [Lindsey] Graham said. “I’ll beat [Olympic gold medalist] Michael Phelps in swimming before Barack Obama wins North Carolina."
Graham added: "Don’t let me down, because I can’t swim.”
Suit up, Lindsey.
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Seriously, though, I have a few Dem roosters to roast, too. Namely: Big Tent Democrat from Talk Left. Predictably, Big Tent wrote a post-election post that fit Obama's victory into his "Demographics is Political Destiny/Politics of Contrast" analytical model. I've previously asserted that the maxim "Demographics is Political Destiny" is about as useful as saying "Geometry and Physics are Billiards Tournament Destiny". I mean, imagine the bemused look on David Axelrod's face if Big Tent went into his office and laid out his over-arching "Demographics is Political Destiny" thesis. That would be amusing. If BTD has real-world experience working in top-level campaigns, it never shows in his analysis.
The problem with the demographics idea is that it is superficial and only, say, 80% true-- which really means it is dangerously false. It works until it doesn't. It's predictive until it isn't. It feeds into Black Swan risk. If you give me timing, issue frames (to control context), and a talented candidate, I'll make mincemeat of demographic "destiny". Not every time, of course, but enough times to make a mockery of the word "destiny". Yet, throughout the primary season, Big Tent based his political analysis on demographic results from primaries, and tried to chart those out to a General Election political "destiny" for Obama and Hillary Clinton. This led to grand pronouncements like the following:
"One of the stories Obama supporters like to tell us is that Obama will put North Carolina in play and Hillary can not. I think neither can put North Carolina in play."
-- Big Tent Democrat
"In short, for Obama to win North Carolina, he needs a miracle basically. Record breaking African American turnout COUPLED with a record breaking performance for a Democrat with white North Carolinians - an 8 point improvement over a ticket that included a native son of North Carolina. It ain't going to happen people."
-- Big Tent Democrat (in a June post titled "A Realistic Assessment")
Well, it did happen. Narrowly, granted, but national politics can be a game of inches, as we know all too well. Damn near any campaign is winnable-- any campaign!-- if the right political dynamics come into play, and are gainfully appropriated. Yet, Big Tent (along with many others) are pronouncing a new Democratic Majority on the basis of demographic vote breakdowns in the recent Presidential election. This sort of overconfidence in political "destiny" is a good way to get your ass handed to you in a sling 4 to 8 years from now. Just ask Fred "realignment" Barnes. Sure, it looks like a favorable political landscape for Dems going forward, but rest assured-- that can and will change. Ignore contingency at your own peril.
I'm not finished. Perhaps it's unseemly, but I'm going to troll through Big Tent Democrat's archives because I've been so irritated with his political analysis throughout the campaign season. And when I say "irritated", I actually mean that as a backhanded compliment in the sense that Big Tent's irritations created intellectual frictions in my mind, which forced me to think through and clarify my own thoughts on the primacy of "political dynamics". A campaign's ability to predict, sculpt, and respond to political dynamics is the real key to winning an election, I believe. (I said this before here and here). Narrative and strategy won't trump demographics every time, but they will do so often enough to make a mockery of the word "destiny".
Ok, so consider these claims made by BTD. You can click the links to make sure I'm not taking them out of context:
"At some point, one hopes, Barack Obama and his supporters will start thinking about winning in November. It needs to start with seating the Florida and Michigan delegations." -- BTD ("Start thinking about winning in November"... that's such a condescending and insulting thing to say! It really irks me, especially when you see how Obama/Plouffe/Axelrod pinned Hillary and McCain down like bewildered bugs throughout the primaries and GE. You're witnessing one of the best campaigns you'll ever see, and you express the "hope" that they're thinking about winning it all. Again, I'd just love to be a fly on the wall in an imaginary meeting where BTD presents this concern to David Axelrod.)
"Clinton CAN win Florida and West Virginia. Obama can not win either.... So what is Obama's best map? CA, OR, WA, MN, WI, MI, PA, MD, NJ, NY, CT, MA, RI, VT, NH, ME, the Kerry states, PLUS CO, NM, NV, IA, MO and OH. That is Kerry's 252 PLUS new electoral votes for a total of 309 electoral votes." -- BTD, May. Only off by 55+ electoral votes. No biggie. Even Mr Gloomypants predicted (in Oct.) that Obama would get 364. And just think, earlier in the year, Mr. Jaundiced Doom had said that "Obama won't be the nominee" and he's "not buying the Obama hype".
Here's a BTD gem from late last year (my emphasis):
"Personally, I don't buy these polls so far out and do not think Hillary is very electable. But that is the least of it. more so than Obama, I find Hillary's political rhetoric and style an abandonment of the Politics of Contrast (see my posts on the subject for more detail) that I think won Dems the 2006 election and the type of politics that Dems must adopt in the near future in all national elections. To wit, Hillary is BENEFITTING from an improved Dem brand and weakened GOP brand but her style was not part of that success. To adopt it, or Obama's, is to reject success. "I do not understand why Dems would do that. But Dems have proven to be political fools in the past so it certainly is possible they will again be so in the future."
-- BTD, December
Obama's project of becoming the next President centered, crucially, on winning the Iowa caucus. He had to win Iowa to win the Democratic primaries and nomination. So, here's my question: How does Obama employ the "Demographics is destiny/Politics of contrast" model to win in Iowa? How does he do that? That's what I want to know. How does Obama "out-contrast" John Edwards, who had been running in Iowa since 2004, and was running as an unrepentant economic populist liberal in 2008? Where does Obama go with that? With a more liberal policy menu? No way. Obama had to find a new way to win Iowa, in order to win it all. And he did that. He brought new voters in, and with soaring rhetoric he picked off Hillary and Edwards voters from the left and the right.
Winning Iowa didn't guarantee anything for Obama, of course, but it unlocked the gate to enable a potential primary stampede. Without Iowa, Obama doesn't go anywhere. If he gets beat there, everyone says "Obama ran too early. It wasn't his time... Maybe he'd be a good Veep... etc." Iowa meant everything to the Obama campaign (and it still bothers me that while he was making his move in December in the Brodervilles of Iowa, too many on the left started freaking out over some comments Obama made about reforming Social Security. Then he uttered the word "Reagan" and everyone freaked out again.)
That's why I titled my Iowa primary preview post "who will the caucusing caucasians select for us?"
Not who will they select, but who will they select for us. That's how important that caucus was. I knew Obama had a dynamic campaign infrastructure, strategic depth, and a determination to win it all... but first he had to win Iowa. For all his virtues, on paper, Edwards-- who presumably waged the "Politics of Contrast" chapter and verse-- didn't possess these things. So, if you wanted someone other than Hillary in 2008, it was Obama by default. So, where precisely was the "Demographic destiny" in the Iowa caucus for Barack Obama? That's the question I'd like answered. Was that a matter of demographics or dynamics?
Credit where credit is due: BTD did use some polling analysis to predict that Obama would win the Iowa caucus, and that he would go on to win the Presidency if he faced Romney. I'd been predicting Obama/Romney since somewhere in mid-2007 (and reader bigshot had been predicting it since late 2006). However, when handicapping an Obama/McCain match-up, BTD simply stated: "McCain would beat Obama". I guess at some point Obama's political "destiny" against McCain "changed" along the way.
"I believe that 'serious electoral majority' stuff, btw." -- oyster
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Throughout the late primary season, BTD was very troubled by Obama's reluctance to join forces with Hillary Clinton and name her as VP. He didn't understand why Obama would choose the harder route to GE victory. In BTD's mind Obama was trying to win the GE by 2-5% without Clinton, when he could easily choose her as Veep and comfortably win by 7-9%. "Why does he want to win that way?" BTD asked. Well, here's one big reason*: if Obama named Hillary as Veep, the media Village gets to stagger forward for another 4-8 years, zombie-like, with all the lovely entrenched Clinton demon-tales that have been so carefully perfected since 1992.
Bob Somerby has catalogued in granular detail the press' hatred of the Clintons, a hatred which was then transferred to Gore in 2000. For nearly a decade, Somerby screamed about liberal media pushovers who let the press spin Republican demon tales about "the Clintonz" and about Gore. If Obama had selected Hillary as Veep, those tales, and that narrative continues for at least four more years. That's a lead pipe cinch. Obama recognized this vicious political media dynamic (and profited from it in the primaries), but he was smart enough to know that he could put an end to this narrative by winning and choosing someone other than Hillary as Veep. Further, BY DOING SO, he had a chance to absolutely cripple the strategic worldview of most Republican wingnuts. See, to many Republicans, "the Clintonz" are basically the source of all evil. All problems can be traced back to Bill Clinton's communist penis. Fear of the Clintons animates them like little else. Even worse (for the wingnuts) "the Clintonz" are politically unbeatable. They are the only Democrats who know how to win. For at least four years, these wingnuts have been living in mortal fear of a President Hillary. They had their stories ready. They had their pet fears ready. They were all set to resume the Clinton Wars once Hillary succeeded Bush. They were all set! Then, unbelievably, this Obama upstart somehow beats her in the primaries. It's still hard for them to process. But, if Hillary gets on the Obama ticket, then these wingnuts (as well as the Village Media) don't have to change their political frame very much. Just a few revisions to the scripts ("She really wanted to be Veep all along"), and they're good to go. Hillary and Bill Clinton are still the evil nemeses behind all the world's problems, and Obama is simply their White House
So the themes of the 2008 GE campaign would've been very different if Hillary was on the ticket. There would have been endless speculation about Hillary and Bill Clinton returning to the White House as the real "powers that be", guiding their young, inexperienced figurehead president.
More importantly, all the revived Clinton-era demon tales would persist. These tales all trace back in some form to what I call "Vietnam politics". "Vietnam politics" is short-hand for the 1968/dirty hippie/racial culture war politics that has dominated recent Presidential campaigns. The McCain campaign went back to the well, one last time, when they linked Obama to William Ayers. It didn't work.
I was going to write a post about this a couple weeks ago, but I held it back out of superstition. Since then, there have been several articles written making similar points**. I'm not saying "Vietnam politics" would have worked if Obama and Hillary were on the same ticket, but it would've persisted in the media narratives during and beyond the election. You can bet on that. Unfair as it is, Obama winning the GE sans Hillary officially rejects these narratives, and that's incalculably valuable for liberals who want to craft a more progressive political "destiny" for the country.
For example, can you imagine how Obama's appointment of Rahm Emanuel (and anyone else with Clinton ties) would appear if Hillary was Vice President-elect? How would that be covered in the media? Can you imagine all the speculation about Hillary being the next Cheney, and her being the real power behind the throne? Can you imagine all the controversies and power struggles and soap operas the press would try to concoct if Hillary was Obama's Veep? Obama would have to somehow function as a President weighed down with the millstone of all these persistent media narratives about "the Clintonz", (which always trace back so seamlessly to the Vietnam/culture war politics which many conservatives adore).
As Bob Somerby proclaims: "The end of a 16 year era is on us." He's right. And the end of this era is incalculably valuable to Obama, and to Democrats. It's damn near infinitely valuable. After nearly a generation of Clinton Derangement Syndrome, the Republicans suddenly have to go back to the drawing board for new narratives. The center of their world-- Clinton's unbeatable, communist penis-- is suddenly gone. Simultaneously, the book closes on all the sustained media village narratives about the Clintons. Now that Hillary lost, she'll get a kinder media makeover. Most heartening of all, Liberals have an opportunity to resist any new pseudo-histories and demon tales that are spun about Obama, before they become firmly implanted in the national consciousness and affect important national elections. Suddenly the air is clear. We have an incredible opportunity. All these persistent tales about "the Clintonz" and "Vietnam/Culture Politics" have been suddenly filed away (if not discredited). The electorate is tired of that stuff... it's old and dead. From now on, when a wingnut or columnist casually refers to Vince Foster, that shit will have no purchase. (Obviously, how this all played out is not fair to Bill and Hillary. I understand and sympathize with that. But in my mind Obama didn't have a choice.)
But to get back to the original point, let's pretend Obama did in fact choose Hillary to be Veep, as BTD advised, and in doing so he picked up Arkansas and Missouri in the GE and won by 8% instead of 6%. Big Schmeal. The tradeoff to that was 4-8 more years of "Vietnam Politics". All those persistent entrenched Clinton demon tale narratives would simply be expanded a bit to smother Obama. How long would it take for a unified Chicago/Saul Alinsky/Clinton/Obama thesis to emerge from the fevered swamps? Who in their right mind would choose to take on that foolishness?
To be sure, future "foolishness" will occur. That's inevitable. But the new tales that will be spun won't be supported by an adamantine narrative superstructure. Future demon tales about Obama won't become entrenched in the national consciousness-- if liberals and progressives are vigilant this time. The "end of the 16 year era" [of Clinton hatred powered by Vietnam politics] is one of the biggest stories of this election. Let's endeavor to make the political history of the next sixteen years vastly superior to this past era.
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* this is not the only reason, though, and I'll discuss some of the others in future posts
** I don't necessarily agree with the analysis in these articles, but they make a basic point
Labels: Big Dog, Cons, Elections and Campaigns, Hillary, Obama
