Why Did Hillary Clinton Lose?
First, there was the mountain.
Hillary Clinton entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination sixteen months ago with higher negative ratings and lower approval ratings than any major candidate in history. While hardcore Democrats liked the former First Lady, other Americans were more wary.
Or even hostile. They were represented to me by the legion of progressive women anxious to vote for a Democratic nominee this year, who have told me, “I will never vote for Hillary Clinton. She can’t be trusted.”
Fair or not, these women and other voters, were part of the mountain Clinton tried to scale, hoping to win over just a few of these Hillaryskeptics, adding them to her core constituency to form a winning coalition for the Democratic nomination.
But that optimistic strategy ran into a second snag: the wall.
In 1968, Earl Mazo and Stephen Hess released their biography of Richard Nixon. No campaign puff job, it sought to comprehend and convey the real Nixon. It’s been forty years since I read the book and I no longer own it, but I recall that it began with a brief vignette from the years between Nixon’s disastrous run for California governor in 1962 and his bid for the presidency in 1968. A fire hit Nixon’s home and some enterprising news photographer arrived on the scene. He snapped a candid picture of the former Vice President. But, uncertain whether the photograph he’d captured in that pre-digital era was a good one, he asked Nixon to pose. Back in the dark room, the photographer was surprised to make a discovery. The candid shot looked posed, the posed shot looked spontaneous. Although Nixon’s true character would eventually catch up to him and bring him down ignominiously in 1974, he apparently had mastered the art of faux self-disclosure.
Clinton, to her credit, has never achieved such mastery.
But neither has she learned how to disclose something of herself, or at least a plausible version of herself, an indispensable talent for presidential candidates in this hypermediated age.
For reasons both well-known and unknown, Clinton has, in spite of all her tireless campaigning–and she has been the most tireless of presidential campaigners in 2008–remained ensconced behind a wall, wary of self-disclosure.
Perhaps if I had been hurt as many times as Clinton was in the years leading up to her presidential campaign, I too would have erected a wall, preventing people from getting a glimpse of my real self. Maybe I too would have, similar to Al Gore and Bill Richardson before her, invented stories about myself, maybe even tales of harrowing adventures or world-changing achievements like those told by Clinton this campaign season. But whatever its many sources, Clinton almost never lowered the wall.
It did happen once. On the eve of the New Hampshire, Clinton responded to a maelstrom of emotions and choked up while replying to a question from a woman, herself an Obama supporter, who sympathetically wanted to see and understand the human Clinton.
The New York senator was subjected to a hail of unfair criticisms from conservative talkers and from opponent John Edwards, claiming that her emotion proved that she lacked the toughness for the job of president. I personally suspected that commentator Camille Paglia came closer to the truth when she suggested that Clinton’s emotions had more to do with the shattering of her presidential ambitions than frustration with any abuse she may have endured or suspected, although the language of victimization has always figured largely in both her rhetoric and that of her husband.
But these are only surmisals. And, in any case, it’s dangerous to put too much stock in public displays of emotion, in spite of the fact that in the post-modern West, we have become addicted to displays of emotion. Nonetheless, Clinton is a cipher. The wall makes it difficult to know her.
And what of misogyny? How large a role has it played in Clinton’s loss of the nomination. Undoubtedly, in recent primaries, some unreconstructed sexists voted for Obama because Clinton is a woman, just as some whites voted for Clinton because Obama is black. That clash of bigotries is, probably, a sad wash that hurt Clinton no more than it did Obama, likely less.
It’s a tribute to Hillary Clinton’s tenacity and the millions of chits she and her husband had to collect that, in spite of the mountain and the wall, she came within a hair’s breadth of winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
[This is being crossposted at my personal blog.]
18 Responses to “Why Did Hillary Clinton Lose?”
Obama clinched a stolen nomination with the MI delegates he hijacked. His endorsements from superdelegates have no integrity and are irresponsible.
No doubt Obama will be defeated in November when he will crash and burn and the Democratic Party will be a train wreck.
Hillary Clinton supporters should work for his resounding defeat and vote for McCain. I will vote for McCain in a swing state. Obama, his supporters, and the DNC must be “punished” for not playing fair and square.
Superdelegates have a responsibility to endorse Sen. Clinton as the best qualified and the strongest presidential candidate to defeat McCain and win the general election in a landslide victory hands down.
I would argue that Clinton lost for the simple reason that she forgot the adage about counting chickens.
Her entire campaign was premised on her sweeping to the nomination early and she had no plan at all for the caucuses during that cruicial period where Obama swept races
“it’s dangerous to put too much stock in public displays of emotion,”
i agree, but I think it's equally dangerous to put too much stock in someone's refusal or inability to display emotion in public. In general, I think too much mind reading and pseudo psychological analyses of public figures is infused in describing people in the limelight.
I heard someone explain Obama's win another way: he had a smarter strattegy.
He used the rules as to caucus states vs primary states to plot his ocurse, always concentrating on delegates first.
Ironically, Ickes, the Clinton man, was instrumental in establishing these rules in the civil rights era. Clinton has always been suportive of the rules, so it seems odd she forgot them when it counted most.
Because she was considered so invincible in the beginning, it's possible she simply neglected to have a Plan B .
runasim:
I have no argument with you about why Obama won. I was writing about why Clinton lost.
Mark Daniels
[...] photographer had arrived on the scene. He snapped a candid picture of the former Vice President. …http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/20141/why-did-hillary-clinton-lose/I am the nominee ?? Obama Herald SunHILLARY Clinton was unwilling to concede it, but Barack Obama [...]
mark,
I have absolutely no argument with you, either,
I just though that Ixks's role in establishing the rules by which Obama won was an ironic twist of fate.
BTW, as heated as the blogosphere gets, not every comment is a criticism.
Sometimes it's merely a tangental reflection.
[...] of Richard Nixon. No campaign puff job, it sought to comprehend and convey the real Nixon. …http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/20141/why-did-hillary-clinton-lose/Analysis: McCain, Obama polar opposites Lexington Herald-LeaderHeartily sick of the status quo, [...]
Did you also vote for Bush? Voting for McCain for any reason is reckless disregard of the future of this country.
runasim:
I didn't take your comments as criticism. I just wanted to clarify. Thanks!
Mark Daniels
I think many democrats were simply unable to forgive Hillary for voting for Iraq and wanted someone who did not represent the past but gave them hope for the future. Many had enough of hearing about Bill's personal failings in the 90's and wanted a candidate who didn't have that kind of baggage. The reason the race was so close, was that both Obama and Clinton were formidable candidates who ran well-organized campaigns, Most years we have to pick the best of the worst— remember Dukakis? This year either of the top two would have made a great nominee.
Senator Clinton's advisors were hurt by their own political correctness. As soon as Senator obama looked like a possible winner, 95% of the black vote went to him. Senator Clinton's ivy league educated, prep school graduates never believed that blacks would abandon the Clintons like they did. When black make up about 25% of the Democratic Primary voters, that was just a number that could not be overcome.
SD that doesn't explain the loss of the youth vote or the white college educated vote to Obama. Hillary needed to appeal to those sectors of the party as well.
“Did you also vote for Bush?” Actually, I volunteered for Kerry/Edwards and that was time and effort wasted with two innate losers.
“Voting for McCain for any reason is reckless disregard of the futureof this country.” Unfortunately, that was the choice of the DNC and Obama's superdelegates. Fair and square, the Democratic nominee should be Sen. Clinton, the best qualifid and the strongest candidate to defeat McCain and win the general election in a landslide victory.
Obama with his egghead and black supporters will lose the general election. Sen. Clinton should not play the role of winning the election for Obama, and I won't go along with that role as one of her supporters.
Hillary Clinton supporters have a cause in working for the resounding defeat of Obama and voting for McCain.
kritt,
If Clinton would have received 50% of the black vote (or higher in Senator Obama would have been white) she would have easily won. Clinton could offset the young vote with the geezer vote. Senator Clinton just never found a group that would vote for her at the 95% level like blacks were going to vote for Senator Obama.
[...] [...]
SD-She did well with Hispanics who don't trust black candidates. I actually think the media treated her the worst of the top three. Any slight gaffe that she made was magnified and repeated over many news cycles. When she didn't make gaffes she was accused of being unlikeable. By contrast, both McCain and Obama were given coverage that verged on worshipful.
[...] Mark Silva wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptHillary Clinton entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination sixteen months ago with higher negative ratings and lower approval ratings than any major candidate in history. While hardcore Democrats liked the former First … Read the rest of this great post here [...]