Lanny Davis says Hillary is like Lieberman
Thu Feb 21, 2008 at 01:57:52 AM PDT
The title should speak for itself, without further analysis. Allow me to pad this out a little.
http://blogs.tnr.com/...
Most Counterproductive Spin of the Night
(Unofficial) Clinton flack Lanny Davis just explained on Fox News that Barack Obama is like Ned Lamont (who, whatever you think of him, won that Democratic Senate primary), and Hillary Clinton is like Joe Lieberman (who, whatever you think of him, refused to abide by the primary result, ran and won as an independent with massive GOP support, and has subsequently endorsed John McCain). Lest anyone miss his meaning, Davis noted that he had been a devout Lieberman booster.
Will Clinton run as a Republican-friendly independent if she fails to get the nomination? Of course not. But that's the scenario Davis has gone out of his way to sketch metaphorically. That's the way to help Clinton get the Democratic nomination.
What's wrong with this? I won't even go into the part where TNR implies that Lanny Davis is suggesting a Hillary third-party run. That's ludicrous, but I don't think even they would do that. For one thing, I don't think they could find the money.
The thing I find most amazing about this is that Lanny Davis, long-time Clinton surrogate (remember him from the Monica days, as a regular on Geraldo's MSNBC show?), thinks that there is actually something useful to this analogy. Lanny Davis, let's not forget, was one of the biggest supporters of Lieberman during his run against the blogsphere-supported candidate Lamont in Connecticut. Lamont won the primary but lost the election to Lieberman, who then ran as an independent and won.
As they ever did, the Democratic establishment didn't seem to get why the rest of us so opposed Lieberman. He was the prime example of DLC strategy: tack to the right, denounce the left, and win the middle. A Democratic victory, even at the price of scuttling Democratic values, was more important than the risk of loss.
The analogy to the Clinton political style is profound. Chuck Todd brought it up in a prophetic National Journal article in November of 2006:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...
Hillary Clinton's primary problem
Don't be so sure she'll be the Democrat's 2008 nominee
By Chuck Todd
updated 5:01 a.m. PT, Thurs., Nov. 30, 2006
Too many of us have awarded Clinton the '08 nod too soon and too easily. The conventional-wisdom crowd is easily impressed by two things about her candidacy:money and her last name. There's also a dirty little secret that those of us in the media are leery to admit:She's good for business (particularly expense reports). [...]
There's one flaw in all of this, though, and that is the electorate. As the likelihood of a Clinton campaign becomes a reality, more reasons turn up that suggest why she could lose the nomination. In fact, the primary may be harder for her than the general election. A bad three-week period at the wrong time in the wrong state could doom a bid, particularly with this front-loaded primary calendar. While the same thing can happen in a general, the same ridiculous scoring of expectations doesn't apply to general elections the way it does in primary battles. [...]
She's been far more critical of the war recently, but fundamentally she's still a hawk, and the Democratic primary electorate (especially in Iowa) is full of doves. Can her semi-pro-intervention argument on Iraq withstand an onslaught of criticism from each one of her opponents? She's no Sen. Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., but could she end up accumulating Lieberman-like hatred in the blogosphere because of Iraq? It's possible.
There is a lot more, but the Lieberman analogy stuck out like a sore thumb and got some play at the time in the blogosphere.
Here, in what may be the last days of the Hillary candidacy, it's sad to realize that even at this late date, her people don't realize how badly they misjudged the sentiment of the Democratic Party. Lanny Davis's comments only emphasize that.
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