April 25, 2008--What's She's Really Up to At 3:00 a.m.
According to Hillary Clinton’s New Math, after Pennsylvania she is now ahead in the aggregate popular vote. Being ahead in this aspect of the contest is one of Barack Obama’s strongest pitches to the Super Delegates—she may have won most of the so-called big states but I’ve won more total states, have by far the most elected delegates, and am still ahead by about 400,000 popular votes. Hillary, with a straight face, is claiming, on this crucial latter point, that that is not true—she’s leading. (See NY Times story linked below.)
To get to that popular vote total you have to give her the votes she received in the phantom Florida primary and all those she garnered in the Soviet-style Michigan primary where Barack Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. That is unless you contend that those who voted “Undecided” were really voting for him.
The real point here is the straight-face thing. How Hilary seems to tell these kinds of whoppers with that kind of face and, most significantly, why she appears to be getting away with it.
In truth both candidates have credibility problems—the recent debate on ABC tore mainly at Obama’s scabs--but Hillary’s and Bill’s and her surrogates’ make Obama’s look like semi-innocent fibs and misspeakings.
Why then is she getting away with this and perhaps regaining enough momentum to make it likely that she will win in Indiana and, who knows, maybe even in North Carolina? If that happens, I suspect she will go on to win the nomination and then . . . look out John McCain. And look out America and the rest of the world. From what she’s been saying recently in her Hillary Doctrine we may soon be seeing nuclear clouds all over Iran.
I suspect that her renewed momentum is the result of a complex double perspective that the public is developing about her:
On the one hand even many of her supporters are turned off by her lack of trustworthiness, her grating personality (i.e., what the pollsters call “likeability”), and her negative campaigning (in Pennsylvania, for example, about two-thirds of the voters, including most who voted for her, in exit polls said she was most responsible for “unfairly attacking her opponent). But still they voted for her.
What is more interesting to me, since if you’re inclined to vote for someone you are willing to overlook her or his perceived faults, is an emerging begrudging respect for Hillary among even those who most dislike her and who are either undecided or support Obama.
It is a respect for her dogged tenacity. Her unwillingness to give up in the face of seemingly hopeless odds. Simply put--she refuses to lose. To give in to the seemingly inexorable numbers from the Old Math.
OK, that could simply be a form of respect for the bloody loser who put up a good fight. But I suspect it’s much more than that and ultimately might prove fatal to Obama’ prospects. Because I’m sensing that among those not inclined to support her yet, underlining the yet part, they may be feeling that Obama’s cool, thoughtful approach (some might call it detachment) is not the kind of quality that succeeds in the nasty world of Washington or beyond.
These folks may be coming to think that Hillary isn’t just waiting at 3:00 o’clock in the morning for the Red Phone to ring but would as president be rattling around in the White House thinking and scheming and plotting and kicking and scratching and lying about how to take the bark off members of Congress in order to get her healthcare plan approved or figuring out how to scare the piss out of Ahmadinijad and the world’s other bad guys.
Because that Red Phone is also connected to the Pentagon and she as president has her hands on the Red Button. Just what we need to have our president doing, they might be thinking, in the ugly world in which we are trying to survive.
To get to that popular vote total you have to give her the votes she received in the phantom Florida primary and all those she garnered in the Soviet-style Michigan primary where Barack Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. That is unless you contend that those who voted “Undecided” were really voting for him.
The real point here is the straight-face thing. How Hilary seems to tell these kinds of whoppers with that kind of face and, most significantly, why she appears to be getting away with it.
In truth both candidates have credibility problems—the recent debate on ABC tore mainly at Obama’s scabs--but Hillary’s and Bill’s and her surrogates’ make Obama’s look like semi-innocent fibs and misspeakings.
Why then is she getting away with this and perhaps regaining enough momentum to make it likely that she will win in Indiana and, who knows, maybe even in North Carolina? If that happens, I suspect she will go on to win the nomination and then . . . look out John McCain. And look out America and the rest of the world. From what she’s been saying recently in her Hillary Doctrine we may soon be seeing nuclear clouds all over Iran.
I suspect that her renewed momentum is the result of a complex double perspective that the public is developing about her:
On the one hand even many of her supporters are turned off by her lack of trustworthiness, her grating personality (i.e., what the pollsters call “likeability”), and her negative campaigning (in Pennsylvania, for example, about two-thirds of the voters, including most who voted for her, in exit polls said she was most responsible for “unfairly attacking her opponent). But still they voted for her.
What is more interesting to me, since if you’re inclined to vote for someone you are willing to overlook her or his perceived faults, is an emerging begrudging respect for Hillary among even those who most dislike her and who are either undecided or support Obama.
It is a respect for her dogged tenacity. Her unwillingness to give up in the face of seemingly hopeless odds. Simply put--she refuses to lose. To give in to the seemingly inexorable numbers from the Old Math.
OK, that could simply be a form of respect for the bloody loser who put up a good fight. But I suspect it’s much more than that and ultimately might prove fatal to Obama’ prospects. Because I’m sensing that among those not inclined to support her yet, underlining the yet part, they may be feeling that Obama’s cool, thoughtful approach (some might call it detachment) is not the kind of quality that succeeds in the nasty world of Washington or beyond.
These folks may be coming to think that Hillary isn’t just waiting at 3:00 o’clock in the morning for the Red Phone to ring but would as president be rattling around in the White House thinking and scheming and plotting and kicking and scratching and lying about how to take the bark off members of Congress in order to get her healthcare plan approved or figuring out how to scare the piss out of Ahmadinijad and the world’s other bad guys.
Because that Red Phone is also connected to the Pentagon and she as president has her hands on the Red Button. Just what we need to have our president doing, they might be thinking, in the ugly world in which we are trying to survive.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
10:04 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home