March 3, 2008--The Texas Hold 'em Flop Card
In South Carolina, Bill Clinton played the race card in a sad attempt to mobilize support for his wife. Recall how he compared Barack Obama to Jessie Jackson in an effort to scare the bejesus out of voters. He could easily have compared Obama with Pat Buchanan or John Edwards, two white guys who won the SC primary but not the nomination. So we know what Bill Clinton was up to--race baiting.
We know where that got both Bill and his wife—Hillary lost by 19 percentage points and Obama was off to the races propelled by more than 80 percent of the black vote and, even there in the heart of Dixie, by a significant percentage of the white vote. And the former president and aspiring co-president was relegated to the dog house where he has been only partially contained. Since then he has poked his nose out and lost his cool a few times, but in front of smaller and smaller crowds.
But here we are, about a month after Obama did well on Super Tuesday and after he won a string of 11 victories in a row. For any other opponent, this certainly would have been curtains. But the Clinton campaign, with the complicity of the media who have agreed to go along with the constantly changing definition of what constitutes victory (sort of like Bush in Iraq, no?) in order to boost ratings by having this race continue as long as possible, the Clintons are doggedly lumbering on.
Now, with time running out, the Clinton campaign tells us that to succeed tomorrow she either has to win Ohio or Texas, or both, or Texas and Ohio and Rhode Island, or get more popular votes than Obama, or more delegates, or more delegates if one discounts those that will be awarded via the caucus portion of the Texas vote.
Get it? Well, I don’t. But one thing I do get is what the desperate Clintons are up to as the days before Tuesday evaporate:
It’s all gender all the time. It may appear that Senator Clinton is playing the Experience Card, but in truth she is more and more blatantly linking the fate of her candidacy to the potential of becomng the first woman with a real shot at the presidency.
This is not my favorite way to think about the viability of a candidate. Shouldn't we be weighing who would make the best leader, who can get real things done, who can repair our role and reputation in the world, who can help fix the economy, and who can keep us safe?
But I am far from naïve and realize that for as long as people have voted Jews have tended to vote disproportionately for Jews, Catholics for Catholics, blacks for blacks, Hispanics for Hispanics. And of course men for men and women for women.
So I understand and am sort of OK with Hillary Clinton unabashedly calling out to women (and to as many men as possible) to elect her in order “to participate in making history.” Which of course would be true. As it would also be to elect Barack Obama, though neither he nor anyone can say that for fear of being accused of playing the race card and thereby dooming his candidacy.
What I’m not OK with is her recent attempt to play both the Gender and Fear Card simultaneously. Since by conflating them Hillary Clinton, who more than anything prides herself as having been a lifelong feminist, patronizes and diminishes women by pandering to the stereotype that women are so weak and fragile that they are incapable of taking care of themselves and their children and, since men cannot be trusted to do this, require the protection of a strong and caring female president.
Her three-o'clock-in-the-morning TV ad running in Texas does just that (see NY Times article linked below). It shows children asleep in their beds, their mothers quivering with fear in the background, while Hillary is dressed and ready to go in the White House when the red phone rings in the middle of the night because there is "a crisis somewhere in the world."
We will soon see if this will work any better than the race cards they played in South Carolina because Obama countered with an ad of his own that uses the same images as the Clinton spot but ends with the tag line that when he answers the phone in the White House, unlike Hillary, he will have the judgement to know what to do to keep us safe.
In the state that invented Texas Hold ‘em I hope that if the Flop doesn’t get the Clintons either the Turn or River will since it’s All-In time for them.
We know where that got both Bill and his wife—Hillary lost by 19 percentage points and Obama was off to the races propelled by more than 80 percent of the black vote and, even there in the heart of Dixie, by a significant percentage of the white vote. And the former president and aspiring co-president was relegated to the dog house where he has been only partially contained. Since then he has poked his nose out and lost his cool a few times, but in front of smaller and smaller crowds.
But here we are, about a month after Obama did well on Super Tuesday and after he won a string of 11 victories in a row. For any other opponent, this certainly would have been curtains. But the Clinton campaign, with the complicity of the media who have agreed to go along with the constantly changing definition of what constitutes victory (sort of like Bush in Iraq, no?) in order to boost ratings by having this race continue as long as possible, the Clintons are doggedly lumbering on.
Now, with time running out, the Clinton campaign tells us that to succeed tomorrow she either has to win Ohio or Texas, or both, or Texas and Ohio and Rhode Island, or get more popular votes than Obama, or more delegates, or more delegates if one discounts those that will be awarded via the caucus portion of the Texas vote.
Get it? Well, I don’t. But one thing I do get is what the desperate Clintons are up to as the days before Tuesday evaporate:
It’s all gender all the time. It may appear that Senator Clinton is playing the Experience Card, but in truth she is more and more blatantly linking the fate of her candidacy to the potential of becomng the first woman with a real shot at the presidency.
This is not my favorite way to think about the viability of a candidate. Shouldn't we be weighing who would make the best leader, who can get real things done, who can repair our role and reputation in the world, who can help fix the economy, and who can keep us safe?
But I am far from naïve and realize that for as long as people have voted Jews have tended to vote disproportionately for Jews, Catholics for Catholics, blacks for blacks, Hispanics for Hispanics. And of course men for men and women for women.
So I understand and am sort of OK with Hillary Clinton unabashedly calling out to women (and to as many men as possible) to elect her in order “to participate in making history.” Which of course would be true. As it would also be to elect Barack Obama, though neither he nor anyone can say that for fear of being accused of playing the race card and thereby dooming his candidacy.
What I’m not OK with is her recent attempt to play both the Gender and Fear Card simultaneously. Since by conflating them Hillary Clinton, who more than anything prides herself as having been a lifelong feminist, patronizes and diminishes women by pandering to the stereotype that women are so weak and fragile that they are incapable of taking care of themselves and their children and, since men cannot be trusted to do this, require the protection of a strong and caring female president.
Her three-o'clock-in-the-morning TV ad running in Texas does just that (see NY Times article linked below). It shows children asleep in their beds, their mothers quivering with fear in the background, while Hillary is dressed and ready to go in the White House when the red phone rings in the middle of the night because there is "a crisis somewhere in the world."
We will soon see if this will work any better than the race cards they played in South Carolina because Obama countered with an ad of his own that uses the same images as the Clinton spot but ends with the tag line that when he answers the phone in the White House, unlike Hillary, he will have the judgement to know what to do to keep us safe.
In the state that invented Texas Hold ‘em I hope that if the Flop doesn’t get the Clintons either the Turn or River will since it’s All-In time for them.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:51 PM
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