It has occurred to me that Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer share a certain quality that I haven't heard expressed. Both of them positioned themselves as fighters. What led Spitzer to his downfall, could be leading Clinton to a similar fate.
Since the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke, almost all commentary about his career has included anecdotes about how he was elected to fight Wall street, corruption and white collar crime. We also heard how his brash take-no-prisoners style left him with few friends and many many enemies. Nobody came to his defense when he needed someone to stick up for him at a time of crisis partly because he burned so many bridges.
Hillary Clinton seems to be following a parallel track with her campaign against Barack Obama.
When Eliot Spitzer ran for Governor in 2006, he ran an ad describing how he will fight for the people of new york:
A male announcer says: "For every New Yorker whose husband or child has to go somewhere else just to get a job. For every New Yorker drowning in property taxes. For every New Yorker who's been ignored, left out, who's been told you can't fight City Hall so many times they've come to believe it. For every New Yorker without a voice — listen: There's one strong enough for all of us."
But when Spitzer got caught up in his own hypocrisy, nobody came out to fight for him and he didn't put up much of a fight to save his career. Unlike Larry Craig, Spitzer acknowledged his wrongdoing and resigned appropriately.
Before she became the underdog, last summer she began positioning herself as a fighter of special interests who will fight for the middle class:
She has often mentioned that only she is prepared to get universal healthcare passed because she fought the special interests when she attempted reform in the early 1990s. But the reason her attempt was unsuccessful then was because she fought everyone who disagreed with her and refused to compromise.
During the campaign, Hillary has repeatedly claimed that only a fighter will be able to get things done:
Hillary's "Fighter" ad:
But once it became clear that Hillary's campaign would not be as inevitable as everyone had previously assumed, she became a fighter of a different feather. Instead of focusing on how she will fight for the middle class, she focused her sights on Barack Obama. She says that Obama is not tough enough to stand up to the special interests in order to accomplish his goals nor is he tough enough to stand up to the Republicans because she has been fighting them for more than a decade and never backed down. But this wasn't enough, he kept winning state after state. Then came the kitchen sink.
By going negative, she has proven she surely will go down fighting. In the process she has managed to alienate many people who thought she would be an acceptable nominee. I have seen several diaries here by people who have been so turned off by the way she fights that while they would have once supported her if she became the nominee, now they wouldn't lift a finger to support her or maybe even not vote. This is not what the Democratic Party should be about.
Hillary Clinton needs to talk to Eliot Spitzer. There's a lot he could teach her.
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Note: While writing this diary I was reminded of an incident in the past which could be compared to the way Hillary Clinton has conducted her campaign and a possibility of what the convention may look like if she continues fighting in this manner:
I suggest watching the entire video. It's 6 minutes long but I don't think I could have found a more apt metaphor.