Dan Balz asked Democratic strategists to assess whom would be a stronger general election candidate. This assessment stuck out for me:
The most negative view came from a pro-Obama Democratic strategist. “He has a chance to be a transformational leader,” this Democrat wrote. “She has been a huge disappointment as a candidate, her campaign a depressing joyless slog through the mud, her presidency would be a disaster.”
Something just rang true in that for me. Looking at the bloggers I know that have decided to take Clinton’s side in this, ‘joyless’ stands out as about the best descriptor I can think of. They have been engaged over a very long period of time now in a kind of relentless naysaying, arguing against the Audacity of Hope, nitpicking, and apologizing for campaign tactics they’ve spent years deriding.
There is no ‘joy’ in that. It comes across as a kind of sustained petulance, often veering into gross pettiness. This can be seen in their response to Clinton’s lies about her 1996 visit to Bosnia. Clinton bloggers mechanically trot out the most banal of countercharges, as if the disputed memories of childhood are the same electoral dynamite as a YouTube that flatly contradicts concocted tales of heroism.
The Clinton campaign has been an enormous disappointment, even for those of us that never harbored it any good will. It chose the wrong message (experience) in a ‘change’ election. It chose a front-loaded ‘inevitability’ primary strategy premised more on an initial name recognition advantage than any superior political vision. It has sought, ever since Iowa, to turn Barack Obama into a ‘black Jesse Jackson-style Democrat’ and thereby marginalize him, and has thus squandered all the good will it had built over the years in the party’s most loyal voting bloc.
The Clinton campaign has not spent its money wisely. It has not put together a competent team that can stay on message, avoid leaks, and avoid becoming the story. The whole Campaign apparatus exudes a kind of ‘no we can’t’ attitude that is a severe downer. At this point, they are transparently clinging to the profoundly disturbing hope that the superdelegates will buy into the unoptimistic belief that a black man cannot win the general election. In fact, they are actually pitching that line of pessimism to the superdelegates and encouraging the media to press that storyline.
It’s a slog, and a distinctively joyless one. And it is taking a toll on the people that have decided to enlist themselves in the cause. The Clintons, much like the Bushes, seem to diminish everyone that comes into contact with them.
does it for me. When you truly and passionately believe in something, promoting the message is a joyful exercise. When you have no passionate beliefs but only the goal of winning, the process becomes a burdensome task, something you must do to accomplish your goal. Not something you do because you believe in it.
“…a depressing joyless slog through the mud”
Isn’t that the very definition of Clinton fatigue?
Yes her candidacy would be a disaster. Much as her husband’s came across as “a kind of sustained petulance, often veering into gross pettiness”, so would her term.
And I’ve always thought that pettiness inspired pettiness in the GOP which led to their endless attacks on the Clintons.
And their arrogance has simply been replaced by that of the Bush administration
Time for change
You write:
I see that too. It’s always made me curious. I mean, how do you write pages and pages over the years decrying something, then all of a sudden it’s IOKIYAC? Huh? I don’t understand how that works.
What makes it even funnier to me is that in the bits and pieces I’ve read of Crashing the Gates and the few interviews I’ve seen (blog posts I’ve read), it seems that Markos and Jerome’s roles in this election would be reversed. It was Markos who seemed to champion the dirty pool tactics of the GOP, while Jerome seemed to champion a higher message. Ironic.
But about those bloggers…I think that some of them just have the need to be morally outraged at being the underdog, even when they aren’t. They’re in a “can’t catch a break” mentality and have the need to be a victim and blog their superiority; if people were smarter they’d think like these bloggers. It seems like it would be very tiring to live in a me vs. the world bubble. “Joyless slog” is a very appropriate term.
One of the most interesting to me was Eriposte over at LeftCoaster whose stock and trade has been relentless research. I noticed early on, with the supporting posts, that there was an element of determination that somehow the case could be proved. As time and manipulations grew, the words crackled with anger and the defenses much more labored. A part of me reflects that if Eriposte can’t defend HRC’s campaign, no one can.
I don’t know about their roles but their personalities certainly seem reversed. I always found Jerome to be fairly even tempered and Markos more prone to being short tempered.
Now it’s reversed. Markos is all happiness and light and Jerome seems like a grouchy old man and — bitter. He should go back to doing politics by horoscope – he was happier.
Looking back, I now realize that the Clinton era fiascos were really all hers, except for the frosting on the cake when Bill fell for the blue dress. But that’s what Monica was, the frosting on Hillary’s cake. Cynical, yes, admitted.
The thing that strikes me most about Clinton and her supporters is that they absolutely refuse to face reality. They are so like Bush, living in a fantasy of their own creation, that it’s really frightening.
If Hillary can’t face the facts about her campaign, how will she face the facts about the world, about the war, about the economy? You just can’t wish problems away. Obama seems to tackle things head on. Hillary and camp deflect. That’s just not gonna get it.
That first ‘debate’ they did together made me feel happy to get either one of them.
Ever since then I’ve felt that when Hillary says “we” she means her and Bill, and when Obama says “we” he means all of us together. Now that’s a trip we all want to take.
It has become a slog, and paying attention to that is a job that has turned everybody off. I know I don’t want to see any more.
Exactly! I felt the same thing about the first debate between the two of them. An embarrassment of riches. Now, just an embarrassment.
I remember feeling proud of both candidates then too. How many weeks ago was that?
5000? BTW, “depressing, joyless slog” sounds like my marriage. đŸ˜‰
That is so true about the debates. That debate in California made me feel so good to be a Democrat.
I think that’s really it in a nutshell Alice-the inclusive yes WE can as opposed to Clinton’s yes SHE can reply of her supporters.
The stark contrast of Obama wanting to have a government under him by the people and for the people rings true while Hillary is basically saying ‘trust me’ I’ll do what’s best for you with no input from the people. A very very typical gop authoritarian mindset.
The Clinton Family are not interested in the Democratic Party or the American people; they are soley concerned with self-perpetuation. They believe they have a kind of divine right to produce American presidents and that their succession should be accepted by the population; a `keep it in the family’ at all costs attitude. They are their own Costra Nostra.
Having writtten the words above I immediately thought of the Bush family.
The joyless slog of bubble politics.
Malcolm
Part of the slog nature of this has been the Clinton campaign’s relentless attempt to diminish any people and any states that vote for Obama as insignificant. No joy is to be allowed over the huge turnouts and all the people coming over to the Democratic party for the first time in years or maybe the first time ever.
In connection with that, I was reading Ezra Klein and this leaped out at me:
And I thought – this is the Clinton campaign.
Fits to a T, as they say.
Stripped of its context, that sentence could equally well describe what it was like to a Clinton supporter during Bill’s presidency.
You can see it on the faces of the people at her rallies. They’re not hopeful. How can they be, when their candidate has belittled hope?
The weaseling, rule-twisting and constant redefining I expected. What discourages me most about Hillary is her refusal to admit mistakes. Watch her on her Iraq vote: she’ll say everything but “I was wrong.”
I grew up in the midwest, where admitting a mistake was encouraged. If you did, you got another chance. It’s humbling but also uplifting. Asking for forgiveness is good for both the wronger and the wronged. Bush cannot do it because it would violate his perfection. Hillary cannot do it because she thinks it shows weakness.
Hillary has made that old baseball poem come to life. I’ve tried to discover what her supporters want for the future. The answer appears to be nothing. They are a sullen lot whose only wish is to return to the past.
Indeed. It first really hit me when she was speaking to Rhode Island supporters and started her “and then the skies would open up and everyone would agree” diatribe. The true believers really ate it up, of course. But I felt that Hillary was making fun of Obama supporters like me. Her campaign is just depressing, and I don’t want eight years of it. Just thinking about it makes me tired.
I can’t vote for Hillary, until she at least denounces the “judas” comment directed at Gov. Richardson. She is insulting the Latino community by not denouncing Carville’s comment. Now that she doesn’t need the Latino vote from Texas she revert back to insulting everyone and anyone.