In my view, tonight's the big night. Hillary doesn't have to win Wisconsin, but she has to come darn close. If she loses badly, she may limp on to March 4, but the pressure to quit will be immense. If she comes unexpectedly close, however, then the Obama wave will have been slowed, and a TX-OH-PA-RI-VT turnaround becomes possible. If she wins tonight and rips off five more wins, then the pressure flips to Obama to quit regardless of his lead in delegates. He won't have a winning total and he'll be on a losing streak.
I've got no basis to say this other than a gut feeling but I think she'll win tonight in Wisconsin.
So, for the last time, for the 2 people out there who are undecided, here's why I support Hillary.
There are essentially three reasons why I support Hillary.
The first and most important reason to suport Hillary is that she will frame the 1990s as the apex of America. It was! That was our golden age, and a democratic president, Bill Clinton, achieved it. We had record economic growth, and real wage growth for the only time in the last 40 years. We were welcomed around the globe as the leader of the world and a benevolent hyper-power. Even in muslim countries we were held in high regard.
To gain traction in a primary, Obama's campaign (especially his wife) has denigrated the 90s, which will make it much more difficult to compare that period of excellent democratic rule to the last 8 years. It strikes me as Al Gore's tepid 2000 campaign all over again. The republicans have managed to convince most Americans that the Reagan-led 80s were better for us than the 90s when, in every category and on every scale, Americans did better in the 90s.
I still can't figure out why democrats won't run on their superior economic record. Hillary, of course, has no such qualms. She will make this election a comparison of the economic policies and results of the 90s to the Bush malaise.
The second reason that drove me to Hillary is Social Security.
Obama's David Broderesque rhetoric on social security scared the crap out of me. Back in November, when I was still undecided, I was stunned when Obama trashed the democrats great win of 2005 by accepting the George Bush - Tim Russert -- Washington Post editorial page framework that there is a Social Security "crisis" that responsible politicians need to fix immediately. Hillary's response was, in essence, it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This not only suggested to me that Obama just didn't get it on Social Security, but that he didn't get it in terms of dealing with the ruthlessness of republicans. President Obama could naively agree to increase payroll taxes in order to shore up the social security trust fund, but he doesn't seem to understand that republicans treat that trust fund as a fiction. If he succeeded in shoring up the social security trust fund in 2010, it would merely allow a republican president in 2016 to use those funds to pay for tax cuts for billionaires (or at least extend the existing rates) and leave SS no better off.
Even his writings on this site have shown a Liebermanesque love for "bipartisanship."
There is a reason why John Edwards has been reluctant to endorse Obama -- he's not a fighter.
My Third Reason -- Demagogueing on Health Care.
Obama is wrong on mandates, but I could forgive him for that. What's unforgiveable is that he so stridently attacked Hillary on this point -- to the point of copying the Harry and Louise attack ads -- that he has made it impossible for President Obama to even consider using mandates. I was disappointed that he chose to attack Hillary from the right again, and eliminating his abilty to use a possibly critical tool to achieving universal coverage.
What truly amazed me was that until early February or so, Obama didn't choose to differentiate himself from Hillary based on the Iraq War. He preferred the right wing attack angles. I thought that was telling.
Foreign Policy
That leads to the last point -- the Iraq War vote. It's not a reason to vote for Hillary, but its not a reason, for me at least, to vote for Obama either. Obama gets points for his 2002 position for sure, but he wasn't in the Senate at the time and he wasn't planning to run for president in 2008. He faced none of the countervailing pressures she faced. His big upcoming fight was going to be a democrat primary in a liberal state where supporting the war would have been a political liability. So Obama's Iraq War position wasn't a profile in courage. He certainly was no Paul Wellstone.
On a going forward basis, I think their foreign policy approaches will be similar. I have a lot of faith in Hillary's foreign policy advisors, like Wes Clark.
So that's it in a nutshell. I trust Hillary more on the issues and on her willingness to fight the most viscious elements of the republican party. For those who criticize her for her supposed willingness to do anything to win, I disagree that she's unethical, but I like the fact that she won't be bullied into unilateral disarmament, as too many dems have in the past. She's not trying to get an award for playing "fair," she's trying to win. And she will.