Why Bill — and Certain Hillary Supporters — Should Let Hillary Drive the Car

Don’t get me wrong. In my opinion — and as a Clinton supporter, I followed the exchanges extremely closely while they were happening— Bill Clinton has every right to be angry about the way Hillary was treated by the Obama campaign.  I don’t think his anger is productive, mind you; and I think he is undermining Hillary’s chances.  But if Hillary values her political career, she needs to give Bill a time out. 

Hillary, as a mature woman, knows the best way to prove someone wrong is just to prove them wrong. You don’t get there by sulking in your tent or complaining; you get there by rising above the slurs and gossip, as Clinton-supporter and lifelong civil rights activist Maya Angelou advised Hillary to do in this poem.  Bill used to know how to rise above the fray. Why isn’t he doing it now? I can understand why he would be wounded by the racism charges. To accuse someone of being a racist — a vile thing for a person to be — is, by definition, to accuse them of vileness. It is a grave insult. It seems to be principally these allegations that are fueling Bill Clinton’s outrage and wounded feelings. Most of us would feel the same.

Even so, he needs move on —for his own and Hillary’s sakes.  

Instead, he’s engaging in the pointless exercise of trying to get Obama to concede that his campaign deliberately engaged in, and benefited from, unjustified personal attacks against Hillary. He wants some sort of concession. It’s hard to see that happening.

Clinton has not been hesitant to make his feelings…known far and wide.

"I think that they [the Obama campaign] played the race card on me," Clinton told Philadelphia radio station WHYY on April 22. "We now know, from memos from the campaign, that they planned to do it along."

On June 2, Clinton told Huffington Post Off The Bus Reporter Mayhill Fowler:

"They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he [Obama] didn’t do anything about it. The first day he said ‘Ah, ah, ah well.’ Because that’s what they do– he gets other people to slime her."  (HuffPost)

What he said about the memo is true, according to this piece at HuffPost. The rest of what Clinton said is also true according to me, though I don’t expect to convince any diehard Obama supporters of this.  I know that there are people out there who fell for the argument that the Clintons were trying to use Obama’s race against him. My colleagues and I addressed the race card crap here, here, and here (and elsewhere as well). 

But if Obama supporters, not to mention others, can’t see this for the abject nonsense it was then, they are not going to see it now.  I mean, come on — two weeks ago, normally reasonable people were gleefully accusing Hillary of accidentally-on-purpose expressing a hope that Obama would be assassinated.

Even Republicans thought the Obama crowd were taking it a bit far.  My mother, who till recently always hated Hillary, thought they were taking it too far.  Women throughout the Democratic party thought so and still know so.

So I can understand why Bill feels the way he does; I just can’t understand why he is letting people see it.  Because the following, reported by the British paper The Telegraph, isn’t good for Hillary. 

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told   friends Mr Obama could "kiss my ass" in return for his support.

Forget the party; I can see why Bill Clinton would be angry with the powers that be, even if Thomas B. Edsall would have me write it off as mere petulance. But Hillary is one of the Democratic party’s chief assets and — I believe — has benefited tremendously from having her profile raised. 

So Bill needs to settle down. I get why he and others are angry at the way the Obama campaign contrived to brand Hillary with a big white ‘R’ and at the way that Obama supporters who weren’t too stupid or partisan  to believe it pretended to believe it.   (It was the ones who were pretending that made me crazy; the ones who really did believe it are too young, too ignorant about the Clintons and their history, too insanely partisan, or too dumb to bother about.) 

Sadly, that’s the way the Democratic primaries went:  a chance remark would be picked up, examined for nonexistent content, pumped up by lifelong Clinton-haters or Obama’s allies, and exhibited round the world as proof of some scurrilous belief or latent evil intent on the part of Hillary and Bill. 

That some actually pretended to be horrified by the assassination crap as well shows exactly how far some people were willing to go to try to discredit Hillary.  I mean, one of Obama’s aids compared Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy.

And of course Bill Clinton has another reason for feeling ill-used. Somehow, during the course of the primaries, his whole generally successful administration was reframed as something quite different from what most of us who were there experienced. Clinton was  the only Democratic president since well-meaning but useless Jimmy Carter.  Those of us who were sentient/paying attention in those days remember his reign as a time of peace, prosperity, jolly carnality, Seinfeld, and hysterical, red-faced Republicans — some of whom have since had to resign for various degrees of misconduct, may I say  — having conniptions over the Big Chief’s sexual escapades.  Oh and no war crimes or Halliburton.

But — if Bill calms down — I fully expect not only that Hillary will prove everyone wrong but that within a few months, people throughout the party will be re-examining this campaign to ask, ‘What were we thinking?’

By letting his understandable anger show, he is delaying the time when this could happen and giving opponents in the party the chance to ‘loftily’ dismiss him.  So shut up, please, Bill.  I love you, but you need to chill out and let Hillary drive the car for a bit.  She knows exactly where she’s going.

The same goes for any supporters of Hillary who really do support her.  Strangely, some who are who most devoted advocates don’t seem to see that their continued defiance of Obama and bitterness at his supporters isn’t really what she needs. 

I don’t mean that they shouldn’t remain critical of Obama; as Democrats, we should call him out when he disappoints us. .Many of his biggest advocates among progressives are not shy about letting it be known that they feel let down.. 

On the other hand:  letting McCain win would endorse the GOP’s shameful record under the Bush administration and gives comfort to those who desperately want to believe that Bush might have been right about something.  I am staggered at the number of people who tell me that it’s worth ‘only four years’ of McCain to signify their displeasure at Obama.  Four years?  In political time, four years is practically an eon.  Look at the damage Bush managed to do in his first term.  Look at the damage he’s done since.

As for Obama, I hate to admit it, but Joe Klein  is right.  I hate it when that happens.

[I]t’s probably time to swallow his pride and give the Big Dog a call, perhaps under the guise of asking specific policy advice… and then Obama should casually let slip that he doesn’t at all consider Clinton a racist, and never has. Maybe a joke, "I’m looking forward to becoming the second black President…"(Swampland).

While I can’t agree with Klein that Obama has been making ‘a lot of the right moves since nailing down the nomination’, Obama should probably make this clear, and not only to Bill Clinton.  But somehow I don’t think he will. 

I think that’s up to Hillary.  And Bill, as well as some of the Hillary supporters who won’t let go, are simply delaying the moment of her ultimate vindication.  Come on, guys — don’t drive angry.  Let Hillary take the wheel.

CROSS-POSTED AT BUCK NAKED POLITICS