Will Bill Clinton Blow It For Hillary?
I had a dream last night that went something like this:
After a months-long slugfest, Hillary Rodham Clinton had the Democratic presidential nomination wrapped up. But Bill Clinton kept piddling on her Ferragamos with repeated red-faced, anger-drenched attacks on Barack Obama and her other opponents – real and perceived. The precious goodwill that the Missus had accrued was squandered by the Mister, and by the time the presumptive first woman president was crowned at the Denver convention she was saddled with extraordinary double negatives. In a stunning denouement of a race that was the Democrats’ to lose, John McCain eked out a narrow win on Election Day not so much over Hillary Clinton as she and her destructive husband.
Then I woke up and realized that I hadn’t necessarily been dreaming.
There is so much in play at this point in the relatively young election season that it’s easy to feel like a whiplash victim. But the Bill Clinton as Bigfoot story line just won’t go away. And shouldn’t.
Note that I am not calling my dream a nightmare because while I have beaucoup problems with Hillary and will not be voting for her in my state’s Super Tuesday primary, I might end up voting for her in the November election. Unless the Republican candidate is John McCain, with whom I also have problems, but at this juncture not enough to rule out voting for.
But I digress.
The mainstream media has taken up the issue with a vengeance.
Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post calls Bill Clinton a “political hit man,” and writes that:
“[His] brilliance was in the way he surveyed the post-Reagan landscape and figured out how to redefine and reposition the Democratic Party so that it became viable again. All the Democratic candidates who are running this year, including [Barack] Obama, owe him their gratitude.
“But Obama has set his sights higher, and implicit in his campaign is a promise, or a threat, to eclipse Clinton’s accomplishments. Obama doesn’t just want to piece together a 50-plus-1 coalition; he wants to forge a new post-partisan consensus that includes ‘Obama Republicans’ — the equivalent of the Gipper’s ‘Reagan Democrats.’ You can call that overly ambitious or even naive, but you can’t call it timid. Or deferential.
“Both Clintons have trouble hiding their annoyance at Obama’s impertinence. Bill, especially, gives the impression that Obama has gotten under his skin. His frequent allegations of media bias in Obama’s favor recall the everybody-against-us feeling of the impeachment drama, when the meaning of the word ‘is’ had to be carefully parsed and the Clinton White House was under siege.”
Then there is Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, who in her latest bit of MoDo snark reprises a New York Post headline that calls the Clintons “The 2-Headed Monster,” and writes that:
“Bill’s transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy.
“After Bill’s success trolling the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, Hillary handed off South Carolina and flew to California and other Super Tuesday states. The Big Dog relished playing the candidate again, wearing a Technicolor orange tie and sweeping across the state with the mute Chelsea.
“He tried to convey the impression that they were running against The Man, and with classic Clintonian self-pity, grumbled that Barack Obama had all the advantages.”
Now I understand that while Robinson and Dowd are media heavyweights, their clout does not extend that far from New York and Washington. But I also understand that there is something about Hillary Clinton’s smug self-assuredness that invites criticism; her husband only makes matters worse.
That so noted, at this point in the campaign, my not-a-nightmare dream doesn’t seem all that farfetched because there is no way that the Missus is going to send the Mister home to Chappaqua to play with his HO trains.
And at this point in the campaign, even with a big Obama victory in South Carolina on Saturday, I believe that Mrs. Clinton is thisclose to running away from Obama if a few things break her way.
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12 Responses to “Will Bill Clinton Blow It For Hillary?”
I do think that Bill should tone it down. A lot. But McCain as a serious alternative? After all your posts about the Iraq war, I don't know how you can possibly consider him as a viable president.
CrisWWW:
The U.S. is in deep do-do and I will not go into the voting booth in November refusing to cast my ballot for someone whom I can abide in general but don't like on particular issues.
I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. You can call me Mr. Pragmatic in 2008.
Hill doesn't need Bill to screw up the General. She can lose it on her own. She's the only of the 3 D's left who can lose.
“Swift Boat Willie” has changed this into the same old politics of division that we have seen for many many years.
It would be interesting to know more about what the Democratic National Committee thinks about this. Word on the street is that there is a good deal of (deserved) uneasiness about a party machine which has been grinding along for Hillary and now risking damage from the Clintons' behaviors. Driving home just now, I heard about the latest Field Poll in California. The Clintons have had a solid double-digit lead in that Feb. 5 state — a lead which is now diminishing in favor of Obama. What's holding Obama back in California, aside from the Clinton gang, is John Edwards' persistent candidacy, according to the analyst. As someone who agrees with Edwards' positions on corporations and poverty, I'm glad he's still in the race to keep those issues alive. But as someone who prefers Obama over the Clintons — to put it mildly! — I hope Edwards is canny enough politically to step aside at the right moment.
The Clinton campaign says having Bill go to bat for her is a conscious strategy. A lot of Democrats who don't read blogs or watch the media are very fond of both the Clintons.
While the strategy may backfire, it might be that some voters consider the prospect of the potential “return of the 2-headed monster” to be a good thing. It's possible that the Clintons are as hated among members of the general public, particularly among independents and moderates, as they appear to be on the blogosphere. It's also possible that the average voter isn't following the debates or paying all that much attention to the hillary/Obama sniping (?) Most of the people I talk to don't know a thing about it.
She's not my choice either, but she's never seemed especially smug to me, or not more than the other candidates. I might argue that all of them are (comparatively) smug, entitled, full of themselves rich people surrounded by sycophants and the glow of their many successes; campaign finance laws ensure that we will go on being represented by such.
I wanted Edwards. I don't like Obama any better or worse than Hillary. I might throw him my vote if I decide that he is less “polarizing,” and that I need to be worried about this, though I think her platform (pretending for a moment that she could implement it) would be better for me personally. I'm sort of at the place where I am quite prepared to vote for someone I might not personally like on the theory that he or she will work overtime to implement policies that I think would serve my interests.
I wonder whether voters (having had seven years of the likable W) care as much as all that what she or Bill Clinton says or does?
I like Obama simply because I detest the lethal self-centered solipsism of Clinton Inc, with a smug nanny & narcissistic dildoid playing tag-team against Obama. McCain was right on Iraq and wrong on immigration, but it would be his election to lose if the Dems nominate the Clintons.
B.J. is giving us a preview of what the country has to look forward to if his spouse is elected.
I'm not saying you should have to agree with any candidate 100% of the time, but issues do matter. And I'm not talking about wedge issues like gay marriage and abortion. I'm curious to know what your top 3 or so issues are, and whether or not McCain or Clinton is closer to your view on those issues.
That last comment was directed at Shaun
Chris WWW:
I not going to take your bait because my vote will not be based exclusively on issues. Example: I would vote for neither Clinton nor McCain just because of their stands on the Iraq war.
I am also concerned with character and leadership ability. McCain gets the edge on both of them.
I'm not trying to bait you into anything. I just don't see how these nebulous character concerns outweigh what each candidate plans on doing with their time in office. What would be the positive effect of McCain's supposedly superior leadership abilities? Is that effect more important than a drawn down in Iraq or a push for universal health care?
I can tell you that myself, some friends and family have gotten turned off by the Clinton's behaviour to do anything to win and we will not vote for her if she gets the Democratic nomimnee. Their behavior and distortions like at Meet the Press in which Hilalry said: “Sen. Obama's chief strategist accuses me of playing a role in Benazir Bhutto's assassination.'' When in actuality David Axelrod never made such an accusation. He said former Prime Minister Bhutto's death will ''call into issue the judgment'' of ''taking the eye off the ball and making the wrong judgment in going into Iraq.'' and their recent attempt in voter suppresion in Nevada has shown a lot of people another side to them we did not know existed and it does not look pretty. They have divided the paty and it is a deep division. They seem more like Karl-Rove Republicans than Democrats and it is a shame to see their moral demise!
In the future, there will have to be some kind of Campaign Reform: Rules and Regulations from the Perspective Partiese in the way politicians run their campaigns to keep them truthful and from distorting one another's records.