Today's revelation that Hillary Clinton is (subtly) invoking Barack Obama's race in her private appeals to party leaders got me thinking about Hillary Clinton's psychology.
In recent months, Clinton's psychology has really been an enigma for me. I didn't understand what kept her going despite the increasingly slim odds that she would be nominated. And, more than that, I didn't understand why she was putting her reputation amongst Democrats on the line by attacking Obama from the right. The arguments that she was, deep down, a neo-conservative, or that she was allying with McCain to ensure that Obama would lose this November just didn't add up to me. She had spent too much time working on center-left issues over the years, had staked out a bold healthcare plan in this election cycle, and generally seemed to care too much about the fate of the Democratic party for these explanations of her behavior to make sense.
But today's revelation that Hillary Clinton thinks -- in essence -- that America is not ready to elect a black president suddenly made everything click into place for me.
Hillary Clinton's behavior (as well as the behavior of her husband) can be explained as an expression of a paternalistic outlook on the world, and especially a paternalistic outlook towards the black community.
When Clinton seemed on the brink of defeat in New Hampshire, her paternalism was partially revealed when she equated herself with LBJ and Obama with MLK, suggesting that King needed Johnson in order to make any progress on civil rights. At the time, debate raged about whether Clinton was "denigrating" or "downplaying" the historical significance of Martin Luther King. What wasn't commented on as much -- at least not in the mainstream press -- was the fundamental irrationality and absurdity of Clinton's analogy in the first place. Think about it: since both she and Obama were running for President, upon being elected they would both be in a position analogous to LBJ, rather than MLK. It's as if Clinton couldn't imagine Obama in the role of president; as if she couldn't imagine a situation in which a black leader didn't need to appeal to a white president in order to make progress on racial equality. She was having trouble thinking outside of a paternalistic framework. Admittedly, I am extrapolating and interpreting here -- I may be reading too much into this. But let's face it: it's hard to make sense of Clinton's analogy if we don't make reference to race (and, more pertinently, a history of white leaders' paternalism vis-a-vis black Americans).
So here we are, two months later, and apparently Clinton is still having difficulty imagining Barack Obama winning the presidency. Despite the fact that he is raising more money than she is, winning more states, apparently doing better in polling against McCain, energizing democrats in a way that no democratic politician has done in a generation, etc., Clinton is having trouble seeing how Obama can win in November. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she thinks that she is the only person who can save democrats from ourselves. She has even developed something of a martyr (or persecution) complex around this issue, imagining that -- no matter what happens -- she will be blamed for Obama's (inevitable) defeat. This is textbook paternalistic behavior. She can't see how we can win if she isn't in charge. And she really can't see how we can win if we have a black man in charge.
Despite my outrage at what I perceive to be an expression of white paternalism on Hillary Clinton's part, I have to say that, in a weird way, it makes me a little bit relieved to hear that she is staying in the race because she doesn't think America is ready to elect a black president. It means that the world hasn't suddenly come off its axis. I can sleep soundly at night, knowing that Hillary Clinton is not a secret neo-con, in league with McCain and Murdoch, cynically plotting to destroy the democratic party for a generation. Instead, she is just another white leader who hasn't yet gotten past a deeply ingrained paternalistic outlook towards the black community. She is, like all of us, a product of a profoundly racist society -- a society that we are working, day in and day out, to reform, to make a little bit less damaging for the generations who will inherit it after we pass on.