Every day Real Clear Politics puts together what they see from their slightly right-of-center point of view to be the important headlines. If this morning is any indication, we’re already living in some kind of five-dimensional world. The extra dimension is the one where Clinton still matters and still has a chance to be the nominee. That dimension yield headlines like this:
Hillary Rises: The Race Goes On – Joe Klein, Time
Clinton Resurrection May Mean Chaos – Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times
Fight Makes Democrats Stronger – Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe
Blood-Letting Could Damage Party – Jurek Martin, Financial Times
Momentum, Delegates & Second Looks – Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal
Hillary Has a New Math Problem – Jonathan Alter, Newsweek
Obama, Not Clinton, Faces Tough Math – Marie Cocco, RealClearPolitics
Only Gore Can Stop a Meltdown – Charles Hurt, New York Post
Five Options for Florida and Michigan – Roger Simon, The Politico
Meanwhile, the reality we all deserve is co-existing with the reality we have, and it yields headlines like this:
Obama’s Pessimistic Message – Victor Davis Hanson, RealClearPolitics
McCain’s Consistent Iraq Folly – Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune
A Target-Rich Profile of Michelle Obama – Jim Geraghty, National Review
Michelle Obama & the Politics of Candor – Lauren Collins, The New Yorker
Even within the two separate dimensions you can see dichotomous ideological splits. Michelle Obama is great…Michelle Obama is a loose cannon…etc. It all proves that in American political life, we tend to form up sides, stop listening, and start throwing bombs. While I might modestly aspire for something better, I have no problem with this feature of our national discourse. What I have a problem with is the prospect of another seven weeks of existence in a parasitic (and, therefore, slightly unnatural) national dialogue..
Yesterday, I posted a diary in orange, asking Hillary Clinton supporters to answer two questions. First, how is she going to secure the nomination. A lot of people has some answer for that question. But I also wanted to know how she would be able to accomplish that goal without mortally alienating blacks, the youth vote, Obama’s supporters, progressive activists, and people that just believe in democracy (meaning, the person with the most votes, wins).
In 237 responses, no one gave me any substantive answer other than she would achieve unity by making Obama her running mate. Of course, even Clinton seems to acknowledge that Obama has earned at least that much.
In two television interviews, hours after she scored critical primary victories in Texas and Ohio that helped revive her presidential bid, Clinton was asked about a joint bid with the first-term senator from Illinois.
“Well, that may … be where this is headed, but of course, we have to decide who’s on the top of the ticket,” Clinton said on the CBS “Early Show.” “And I think that the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me.”
But no one could explain why the person with the most delegates would agree to take the second position or, if she somehow muscled the superdelegates into negating the will of the people, that Obama would be inclined to accept a job as Clinton’s underling. Clinton supporters seem to exist in some kind of extra dimension, where they engage in what we might call magical, or fifth-dimensional thinking.
At their most grounded, Clinton supporters argue that the popular vote is not the be-all measure of popular will since these primaries take place over time, and the people’s will can change. There is some merit to that. I can envision a situation akin to Gary Hart’s 1988 run, where a candidate starts off well but them becomes embroiled in scandal. It could well happen that a candidate might win all the early contests and lose all the late ones. And then measuring the popular will becomes murky. It is for dealing with such ambiguities that the superdelegates exist in the first place. For some, this might justify the continued activity of the Clinton campaign. But that’s a false choice. Even the pledged delegates are not legally pledged to their candidate. If Obama were to be indicted or fall seriously ill or display signs of mental instability, few people would question a decision by his pledged delegates to vote for Hillary Clinton at the convention. She need not pile up pledged delegates to win the nomination if Obama suddenly presents himself as unfit for office.
The issue here is whether or not the Clinton campaign will spend the next seven weeks trying to manufacture the perception that Obama is unfit for office, and how that will serve the party and the issues that the party is supposed to represent. In asking Clinton supporters how their candidate is supposed to prevail, I heard some barely plausible answers, but I heard no answers for how she could do it in a way that did not infuriate and alienate huge swaths of the Democratic electorate. That’s because there is no answer. Ignoring that fact is what I call ‘fifth-dimensional thinking.’
What I hope is that the superdelegates will explain four-dimensional reality to the Clintons after the Mississippi primary on Monday. My sanity and our future may depend upon it.
