Hillary Clinton has lost tonight to Barack Obama in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. I believe–and have for some time–that Clinton will lose the nomination fight to Obama.
Why will she lose?
Some will say that America was more ready for a black president than for a woman president.
Some will say that people bought flash over substance.
But to understand why Hillary Clinton is likely to lose her race for the Democratic nomination, you need look no further than to her speech in El Paso tonight. Striving to energize her campaign and make an Alamo stand in Texas, the senator from New York spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of true believers.
But even if you agree with Clinton’s positions on the many issues on which she touched this evening, at her best, she is what I call a “laundry list” candidate. Her speech was a laundry list of concerns and campaign promises.
Laundry list candidates may have superior knowledge of the issues. They may be right on those issues. They may even have experience on their side. There are some years, when all seems to be going well, that laundry list candidates, some of whom are policy wonks while others are management technocrats and still others are mere panderers, are just what the American people want in a president.
But in times of crisis, laundry list candidates or laundry list presidents won’t do.
In 1980, with hostages being held in Iran and the country slogging through an unprecedented economic miasma called stagflation, people took little comfort in having Jimmy Carter in the White House. Carter was a competent and undeniably good man, a master of details who at one time even micromanaged use of the White House tennis courts. That’s why Ronald Reagan, a seemingly simple man who knew how to connect with people at a human level, beat Carter.
In 1992, George H.W. Bush sought re-election after having won the Persian Gulf War, at one point enjoying a 90% approval rating. But when the economy went into the doldrums, Bush, the president probably most knowledgeable of the inner workings of the federal government since Dwight Eisenhower, got beaten by a young upstart from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, who, like Reagan, connected with people and could, when he avoided his penchant for verbosity, make the English language sing.
People perceive that the United States is in a time of crisis. Parts of our country, like my home state of Ohio, are suffering from job loss and a resultant lack of hope. The war in Iraq is in its sixth year. Foreclosures on home loans are up. The rise of China is, at the least, an economic threat to the country. There are concerns about the environment. Millions of people live each day without health insurance.
The laundry list of concerns is mind-numbing. But what voters are looking for in times like these isn’t someone who simply lists their problems with attached solutions. They want a president who seems to connect with them and who can inspire them.
Think Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Think Ronald Reagan in 1980. Think even Bill Clinton in 1992.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t belong on that list. But Barack Obama may. And that, more than anything is why the one-time front running senator from New York is in a desperate battle to win the nomination for which she’s fought so hard this presidential election season.
[This is being cross-posted on my personal blog.]