The Democratic party: Caught between Barack and a hard place

Great Debates
1

I had this thought the other day while listening to a bunch of Democrats argue amongst themselves on talk radio: IMO, if Obama does not win the nomination, the Democratic Party is fucked, completely and totally fucked. My impression is that no matter how clean, how above board, how right the process is, if that process results in a Clinton nomination, then a significant portion of Obama Democrats are going to sit on their hands come November or even actively work for McCain. Now, I am not saying that a clean and fair election would inevitably result in a Clinton victory, I don’t know that it would, but by the same token I think those that are anointing Obama the nominee at this point are premature. There’s a lot of voting left to go, and nobody knows how it will turn out until it’s over. Obama’s got the momentum right now, but Hillary could easily turn that around in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The question of what happens with the delegates from Florida and Michigan has yet to be decided (and boy oh boy is that a thorny issue-either way. Amusing too, as I saw in the news this week that Al Sharpton has promised to sue for discrimination if they are seated, while the head of the NAACP has promised to sue for discrimination if they are not. Is that a calliope I hear playing “Enter the Gladiators” in the background?). They could go into the convention neck and neck as they are now and have the superdelegates hand it to Clinton. Or to Obama. We just don’t know yet.
Am I reading too much into this party infighting? I don’t think I am, and I’ll tell you why. A great deal of Obama’s popular support is because he is such a charismatic leader. He’s campaigning relentlessly on the theme of “change”, and from what I’ve seen, many of his newly enthusiastic supporters are supporting that idea without caring what changes Obama represents. They simply want change, change from the Republicans in the general election and change from the party old guard in the primary. That is their reason for being involved and passionate. If they don’t get it I see them as being disillusioned and withdrawing from the whole process. That’s the strength and the weakness of charismatic leaders-they get fanatically devoted supporters, but those supporters tend to lack staying power in the face of adversary. Their support is broad but not deep. In my estimation, Hillary needs every single Democrat behind her to win vs McCain in November, it’s going to be hard enough for her to pull enough independents into her camp (a problem she would not have had facing Huck or Mitt, against them she gets a majority of the centrists and they are the ones with the problem), with a weakened base I think she’s a cooked goose.

So, I suppose the debate is this: Can Clinton win the nomination without fatally weakening the Democratic party in the process (at least in the general election)?

2

Sure, let Obama pull a Gary Hart or a Macaca. If Obama shoots himself in the foot, the party will accept Clinton

3

If Hillary blows Obama away in the upcoming primaries and takes the nomination fair and square I believe she’ll get a lot (though undoubtedly not all) of the Obama supporters, those of us who believe it’s vital for the Democrats to take the White House in order to change the course of the country. She’s not all we want but she’s better than McCain. (Mind you, I also believe she’d lose to McCain and probably drag down a number of Dems lower on the ticket, given how strongly the Republican base would come out to vote against her.) The party won’t be any more scuffed up than it normally is in sorting out candidacies.

If she takes the nomination in what is – or appears to be – an underhanded way, yeh, a lot more Obama supporters will say the hell with her, and the Democratic Party will be badly weakened.

My two cents.

4

I keep waiting for the thread “How Badly Will a Heavy Snowfall in the Rockies Hurt the Demoicratic Party?”. Dirges are premature, November is eight months away, in politics, that might as well be Alpha Centauri. Plenty of time for rifts to blossom, heal, and be forgotten.

What I wonder is do the Beach Boys get paid everytime somebody runs the clip of McCain singing “Bomb, Bomb, Iran”?

5

If Hillary has a total blowout in Texas and Ohio that will shift the momentum back to her. Ohio will be a battleground state in the regular election and if she’s much stronger than Obama there, that’s a strong argument that she will run better overall against McCain than Obama will.

Basically to preserve party unity the nominee needs to come across as the candidate of both the party leadership AND the rank and file. If Hillary wants to win the nomination without damaging the party she needs to get enough non-superdelegate votes that she and Obama are basically tied (no more than a few dozen votes apart). Then the superdelegates can break the tie without breaking the party.

However, if Obama clearly has won the rank-and-file by a significant margin, it would be political suicide for the leadership to throw their weight behind Hillary.

6

Here’s the way I feel about it. I don’t think the problem is the Democratic party, but rather the way that Hillary is running her campaign.

This would never have been a problem had Obama never surged ahead. The Democrats would be united and there would be no issue.

But Obama began to do much better than expected. Hillary is now saying that the winner is the one who has the most delegates. She doesn’t care if she wins the most pledged delegates or not. 50% +1 is what she’s all about. She is also talking about having the delegates from Florida and Michigan count.

This is the crux of the problem plain and simple. Both of these ideas sound like dirty tricks and that’s what she wants. I say that if it really comes down to it, Florida and Michigan vote again. They should be happy about it because they would have a lot of pull.

The superdelegates should vote for the candidate with the most pledged delegates pure and simple. The Super D system was put into place to provide a bit of protection against a horribly unelectable candidate winning, but this time they are both viewed as capable candidates (not like Dukakis).

That’s the simple way to keep the Democratic party alive. How crazy is that? Fairness! Only will Hillary accept that? I have read about some rumblings involving Gore, so I am beginning to think that “the powers that be” will make something happen late march if Hillary doesn’t carry either Texas or Ohio for sure. It could even possibly go to PA.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to vote for Hillary now though, after it has become so abundantly clear how much of this is for her only.

7

The party originally overwhelmingly supported Clinton prior to Iowa. The change towards Obama came from outsiders and grass roots Democrats drunk from Obama’s oratory with the hope of his promises for victory and change.

The Democratic party will remain as it was if Hillary wins. Just all the new “Democrats” will return to the woodwork.

If Obama wins, the party will either strengthen if Obama delivers or implode if his promises fail. He’ll have no excuse. the Democrats will have both houses. There’s a hell of a lot riding on his shoulders.

8

This is pure unadulterated bullshit. [sorry mods] Seriously, I have nothing against you Flying Dutchman but that is crap plain and simple. I have been a devout democrat my entire life, and I did not support Clinton before Iowa and I do not support her now. To insinuate that Obama supporters are “drunk” from his oratory is crap. Is he a good speaker, yes of course - but he’s also a brilliant Senator and a man with not enough years to be as tainted by the process as others in the race. I have nothing personally against Hillary or Bill Clinton. But once a young man started beating the suit pants off Hillary, BOTH of them got down and dirty. Bill looks appauled that Obama is winning and gaining momentum over his wife. Why the hell is he appauled? Because people are getting up and goig to the polls for someone besides his wife? Or is it because he doesn’t get to play house on Pennsylvania Avenue again?

Gross misrepresentations of the demographic voting for Obama in this forum are uncalled for in my opinion. Perhaps I take too much personal disdain from that comment. Again, I have nothing against you Flying Dutchman but that comment was wrong.

The answer to the OP is NO. The party will be weakened, not to a mortal degree, but to a significant degree that will bring down many, many democratic Americans.

9

That means the Pubs only lose by 5% points instead of 10.

10

I think the Democrats should also be worrying about something else - Obama himself. If I were a Democrat, I’d be worrying that the over-the-top Obama love will result in a candidate who didn’t get properly vetted. The media is taking a kid-gloves approach to him. Anyone on the Democratic side who dares question him gets attacked and shut down.

Is anyone at all worried that they are going to settle on a nominee who hasn’t had a whole lot of scrutiny, and who on paper is eminently beatable?

There’s no doubt that Obama is an electrifying speaker. But how far will that take him once the Republicans put him in their crosshairs?

Looked at objectively (and ignoring his powerful stage presense and speaking ability), Obama is no great shakes. He’s very young. He hasn’t even completed one term as a senator. He has no private industry experience. He has no foreign policy experience. He has no executive experience. He’s never fought in a national campaign. He’s decidedly to the left of the American public - probably the most liberal candidate to ever run for President. The last candidates who were overtly liberal were destroyed in the general election.

I’m not saying he can’t rise above these problems, but Democrats should at least be doing the hard work of making sure he’s up to the task. I suppose Hillary will be it, but you guys should realize that she’s doing you a favor. Do you really want your guy to breeze through the nomination process, then take a largely untested team in the general election?

In the meantime, the Republicans managed to blunder their way to the best candidate they could have hoped for in McCain. A guy who has substantial cross-over appeal himself. Someone with a record for honesty and courage, and who was sitting in a tiger cage in Vietnam when Barack Obama was in grade school. Count on McCain to go after Obama’s lack of experience in foreign policy and the military, and plausibly so. Obama is going to have to convince the country to vote for him in spite of this obvious weakness as compared to his opponent.

I think a substantial amount of Obama’s popularity right now is due to his anti-war positions and his demand to bring American troops home from Iraq. That’s popular today - but the election is a long way away, and Iraq is improving daily. Unless things deteriote there badly by November, this advantage is going to fade.

Obama’s certainly a star, and maybe he’ll make a good president, but he’s also a pretty big risk. McCain is likely to play the stability card if the economy is shaky - when people are feeling insecure, they might want a fresh face to come in and save the day. Or they might be more comforted by haiving someone who, while maybe not as inspiring as Obama is not as likely to make any huge mistakes, either. I honestly don’t know which way the public will break, but it could easily be either way.

Finally, Obama is very vulnerable to the ‘tax and spend liberal’ charge. His current plans are estimated to cost some 850 billion more over his first term than the current budget plan calls for. That means dramatically higher deficits or higher taxes. Neither is particularly palatable to the public. McCain has a much better reputation as a fiscal conservastive than does Bush. He opposes earmarks (and doesn’t engage in them), routinely votes against bills that are porked up, opposed Bush on his prescription drug benefit and steel tariffs, opposed Bush’s strategy in Iraq and recommended a ‘surge’ and the switch to the current tactics more than three years ago. He’s going to plausibly say, “Elect me - I know what I’m doing.”

Obama wasn’t as spectacular a debater, either. A lot of pundits thought Hillary generally had the better of him. McCain will be a tougher opponent than Hillary, if only because he can more plausibly attack Obama’s weaknesses.

This has happened to the Democrats before - a candidate they love and who they think is going to sweep the nation off its feet gets destroyed in the general election, and they can’t figure out why. McGovern was an anti-war candidate who lost during the height of the Vietnam War, when public opinion was actually against the war. There are some fairly good parallels here.

11

Damn, Sam, you’ve summed up my concerns about Obama perfectly. Every time Clinton goes after Obama on issues of substance - which she has to do, since the media isn’t going to do it, and the GOP is all too happy to send bon mots his way until the nominee is decided - she’s accused of negative campaigning. (The NYT actually called her ad going after Obama for not agreeing to debate in Wisconsin “all-out negative.” Have we gotten so candy-assed that we can’t spar among candidates?)

More importantly, the media has abdicated its role as the fourth estate, choosing to cover the huge rallies instead of hard-hitting investigative journalism that would expose Obama - and force him to come up with answers for questions that are for sure coming from the GOP if he should win the nomination.

I have been a Democrat since my 18th birthday. The kid gloves for Obama demonstrates in my mind the most troubling weaknesses in the party - the fear of being tarred as racist for applying the same scrutiny to candidates of color as one would apply to White candidates, and our tendency to fall in love with the promise of what candidates represent rather than what they’ve actually done. If Obama is who many in the party think he is, he’ll only be that much better in four or eight years. If he isn’t… it could be very bad come November.

12

If Hillary wins a majority of pledged delegates, the party will perceive her nomination as fair – disappointing to many, but fair – and they will vote for her. If she gets the nomination any other way, the party will fracture. I think the supers know that, though and I think they’ll follow the majority if they have to decide the outcome.

Sam, I think you’re engaging in a lot of wishful thinking there. Obama supports immediately embarking on a staged withdrawal from Iraq. McCain says he wants 100 more years of war. That’s game over on the issues right there. Most Americans also want health care reform, they don’t care if billionaires don’t keep getting their tax giveaways. McCain opposed the tax cuts himself, so that issue doesn’t help him. He agreed with Obama.

Public sentiment is going to be with Obama on most of the issues (and the suggestions by many on the right that Obama does not offer substance or detailed plans show a lack of familiarity with the man) and like it or not, charisma matters. Obama is going to own McCain in debates, not just on style but on substance. He’s right on the issues and McCain is wrong. McCain doesn’t stand a chance. We’re going to see an electrifying and inspirational speaker in the JFK/MLK mode, with the intelligence of Clinton and crossover appeal of Reagan going against a curmugeonly old war hero who’s the anti-hope candidate saying he wants a 100 more years of war and who can’t get more than tepid support from his own party.

Don’t think the independents are going to save McCain either. Obama’s got the longer straw this time around. He’s going to drink McCain’s independent milkshake. He’s going to drink it up.

13

OK, for instance, what? I’m only guessing here, but I’m guessing there is nothing more in his closet but rather tasteful menswear picked out by his wife.

Sic the most aggressive investigative reporters in the world on Mitt Romney, for instance, and they’re still going to come up with American cheese on white with mayo, because that’s Mitt.

Worry about the lies more than the truth, and don’t worry about the lies at all.

14

“He’s going to drink McCain’s independent milkshake?” Are you spending the weekend at 'luci’s place, or something?

:smiley:

Other than that, well said.

15

You know, I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

16

Think I’ll stay right here in Anaheim, then. :stuck_out_tongue:

(Don’t let him bogart the breakfast cereal.)

17

I can’t speak for other Obama Dems, but if nothing else convinced me to get out of the house in November John McCain’s pledge to appoint judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade if they ever get the chance would make me vote for Hillary.
I personally find abortion ethically qray and believe it is tragically overused, but then as a gay man I’m not likely to ever to be in a position to need one. I think all women should have the right to one whether the pregnancy was caused by rape/incest/alien abduction, or because she feels she can’t physically or financially support a child, etc… For that matter, if a woman is the least sympathetic Jack Chick stock character slut who has the morals of an alleycat and just likes to screw around without protection, I still think she should have the right to an abortion (and in fact it’s probably best for society that she not have the kid if she doesn’t want it). Also, the judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade would probably support other ridiculously socially conservative shit that doesn’t need to be supported.

What really pisses me off is that this “moral stance” on abortion comes from a divorcee and an adulterer. (Hey Johnny: did you know that Jesus never said Jack about abortion but said that a man who divorces his wife and remarries is living in sin?) While I certainly can’t prove it, I highly suspect that had one of McCain’s girlfriends become pregnant while he was still married, or for that matter if one of his daughters got pregnant at 15, he’d probably carry them on his back to the nearest women’s clinic. Even if I’m wrong on the latter counts, he’s still imposing his own morality on those who do not have his wealth and his life options and I will gladly support Hillary rather than put a pro-Lifer in office.

18

Thing is, seems like McCain is not running to be President, but to be Commander in Chief.

19

Would that be this honest fellow who stated that he just came from a safe Baghdad neighborhood where he had 100 US soldiers, three blackhawk helicopters and two apache gunships to protect his old ass?
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:rolleyes:
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Also do you have a cite for Obama’s plan costing 850 billion dollars more than the current budget? Thanks.

20

This sums it up. How can mass produced knock off art compete with Michelangelo’s David? :wink:

Obama will beat McCain. There is no doubt in my mind. I believe Hillary can beat McCain if she doesn’t dismiss the Obama factor and captures his message, but she has to somehow carry his message into the general election because it is what voters respond to. It is probably moot because I don’t think Clinton will be the nominee. I will be genuinely surprised if she is on the ballot; however, if push comes to shove, I will vote for Clinton and sleep well at night.

I also agree with Hippy Hollow’s point about the media. It is obvious the media has (my noun/verb agreement is my choice) played a major role shaping this election