Obama’s Obstacle With Clinton Supporters: Fingers In The Ears
Maureen Dowd’s account of the Unity rally bringing Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama and former rival Sen. Hillary Clinton’s camps (purportedly) closer together has this telling and symoblic excerpt about the reaction of one Clinton supporter:
When it was Obama’s turn to speak, Carmella [Lewis] announced loudly, “I wish I had ear plugs.” Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters “can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels,” Carmella put her fingers in her ears.
This is a metaphor for all that is wrong with 21st century American politics.
As Obama tried to curry favor with Hillary, looking over at her sensible, sturdy shoes and marveling, “I still don’t know how she does it in heels,” Carmella tore up a tissue and stuffed it in her ears.
Forget about open-minded. This is also closed-eared…
When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” she put her hands over her tissue-stuffed ears.
“Maybe she’d like what she heard if she listened,” sighed [Obama campaign manager David] Axelrod.
And then this:
She told The Times that she and her friends were all voting for John McCain and that Hillary was just doing what she had to do.
“But I have a gut feeling,” she said with macabre faith, “that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.”
It’s difficult to believe that the former Clinton donors who are making it clear at meetings and in anonymous quotes to reporters that they won’t contribute to Obama and the Clinton supporters whom polls show are now in the minority of Clinton supporters who are actively working against Obama are going to help Clinton if she chooses to run in 2012. Rather, all of these reports are documented and circulated so, if Obama loses, the finger of blame will be pointed at some in the Clinton camp for not putting party principles first in the battle against the Republican Presidential nominee.
Dowd also nails it on former President Bill Clinton:
They did not, however, commiserate about Bill Clinton, who is in a self-pitying meltdown about not being Elvis anymore, trying to shake down Obama for more — more apologies for perceived snubs and more help paying off the $22 million Clinton debt.
It’s hard to fathom why Obama should be mau-maued into paying off the debt that Hillary and Bill accrued attacking and undermining him, while mismanaging the campaign and their nearly quarter-billion-dollar war chest so horribly that one Hillaryland insider told The New Republic that it bordered on fraud.
But the former president can’t stand being a loser, so he’s taking it out on the winner. When it comes to Bill, there’s a lot of vanity but very little humility in Unity.
The bottom line: if, as some polls show, this could be a close election (some other polls show Obama way ahead) and every vote counts, then Obama faces a tough road in winning the votes of people who aren’t really opposed to his stand on issues or his general principles. They just are opposed to him.
Even Supreme Court 5 to 4 decisions won’t change their mind.
And how can Obama make his case when they have their fingers in their ears?
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