Dick Polman is one of the most perceptive and on-target political commentators on the journalism and blogging scenes today — and his quote of the day is one you should copy and save.
By tomorrow if, as expected, Clinton’s big Kentucky Democratic primary win will be offset in the media by Obama’s expected win in Oregon, more political eulogies for Hillary Clinton’s campaign will trickle in from pundits and some bloggers due to the pledged delegates totals.
Why couldn’t she clinch it earlier, since she had been the front-runner? Why haven’t the many arguments used by the Clinton campaign in recent weeks gotten much traction?
In the last part of his post today Polman hits the nail on the head and says what many other journalists have hinted at in recent weeks:
One feature of the slow-motion Clinton funeral ceremony is the ongoing procession of euologists, all of them offering reasons for the demise of the Clinton candidacy. Clinton herself, naturally, doesn’t believe it’s her fault; she blames it on sexism (“people who are nothing but misogynists”). Her husband doesn’t think it’s her fault; he blames it – naturally – on the press (he said in Kentucky, “this has been the most slanted press coverage in American history”). And her in-house loyalists – quoted not for attribution in perhaps the best article of all – pin the blame on various top aides for alleged messaging, tactical, and strategic deficiencies.
And yet, all these eulogies seem to overlook the biggest factor of all: Clinton fatigue. The inescapable truth is that a huge Democratic constituency was hungering for an alternative to the Clintons. I heard this repeatedly, as far back as 2002. While interviewing Washington-based Democrats, I was struck by how often they would trash the party’s golden duo. (I knew it was coming when they would preface their remarks by asking, “Can I go off the record for a moment?”) As one prominent party woman – this is someone who appears regularly on national TV, in a neutral mode – remarked to me in 2003, “We need to put the Clintons in a cage somewhere, with a blanket thrown over it.”The point is, millions of Democrats were poised to support a strong not-Hillary candidate. Obama filled the bill, and the Clintons, convinced of their entitlement, were way too slow in taking him seriously – and in recognizing that his early support was, in some important ways, a referendum on them.
All of which leaves Hillary with basically one argument, and I suspect we’ll hear it again tonight: the notion that, in the wake of a Kentucky win, she is actually ahead in the national popular vote…as long as one ignores the party rules and counts Florida and Michigan. Right. And if she only had wings, she could win the Boston Marathon.
If there was latent Clinton fatigue out there (as I also believe there has been) Bill Clinton’s red-faced campaign appearances and controversies which helped Clinton with some groups could have sandbagged her in the long-run.
Of course, it isn’t over until THIS LADY sings, and she’s not singing yet.
But she’s starting to hum.
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So what are the superdelegates waiting for? Marc Ambinder has a Clinton talking point on this — and compares it to the actual situation.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.