Hillary's Arrogance, or How Barack Gets His Groove Back
Mon Mar 10, 2008 at 06:43:28 PM PDT
Let’s start by stipulating that the Hillary's "big win" on March 4th, which has been debunked in numerous diaries, was overblown by a media desperately hungry for a prolonged fight. Let’s also stipulate that Hillary can't win the nomination without destroying the party for a generation. That fact will become increasingly clear to SuperDs, who are likely to continue to gravitate in his direction. Even stipulating all of that, I think it’s fair to say that Hillary has taken control of the media narrative since March 4th and thereby increased the odds of a protracted messy fight.
The good news is that in taking control of the narrative, Hillary has planted the seeds of her ultimate undoing and I think Obama began to sieze on that opening today.
The opening Hillary provided came in the form of the grotesquely cynical suggestion of a Clinton-Obama ticket. Today, Obama rightly siezed on the Clintons' hypocrisy and is getting great press coverage for doing so. Now, I think Obama needs to go one step farther and turn this into a broader attack by focusing on the arrogance implicit in three of Hillary's recent talking points:
- The Obama VP talk.
- Hillary's wild exaggerations of foreign policy achievements.
- Hillary and surrogates demeaning the caucus process.
By tying these three points together into an attack on Hillary's arrogance, Obama goes from defense to offense. But, he does a lot more than that. Hammering on #2 (e.g., Hillary's laughable claim to have helped broker a peace deal in Ireland) helps undermines Hillary's phone call in the middle of the night argument, which has been her most successful line of attack to date. But, #3 is the one that Obama can turn into a real knockout punch.
Let me illustrate by putting some words around it:
"One final argument from the Clinton campaign lays bare their arrogance and also demonstrates how perilous her strategy is for the Democratic agenda. Hillary and her campaign team have missed no opportunity in recent weeks to demean the caucus process, essentially portraying this decades-old tradition as a sham. Now, first of all, let’s remember that the rules of the game have been known for years. Why don’t we just play by the rules and see who wins--what’s wrong with that?
"But, beyond changing the rules in the middle of the game, denigrating the caucus process is insulting to millions of American voters—telling them their votes shouldn’t count. Imagine the arrogance. Hillary prevails upon tens of thousands of her supporters to spend lord knows how many hours caucusing for her and persuading others to do so—God bless them. And, then she turns around and tells them the whole thing was ‘undemocratic.’ And, it’s part of a broader pattern. Think about it. First, Hillary says that Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to vote in our primaries. There goes 30% of the electorate. Then, Hillary says it’s not fair that independents get to vote in our primaries. There’s another 40%. Then she says red states don’t count. And, oh yeah, caucuses shouldn’t count either. By her logic, the only voters who count are registered Democrats in blue and purple states that held primaries, about 15% of the electorate. How in the world does she expect to build a coalition for change?
"But, it gets worse. If you’ll recall, my opponent has tried to paint me as a hopemonger and told you that she’s the one who knows how to get things done. Well, if there’s one thing Hillary and I have learned since November of 2006 it’s this: nothing big gets done in Washington without a working 60 vote majority in the U.S. Senate. That probably translates into 57 or 58 Democratic senators, a pickup of six or seven senators. That means if we want universal healthcare and a sane energy policy and policies that will get this economy on its feet, we’re going to need a Senator Tom Allen from Maine and a Senator Al Franken in Minnesota. And, we’re going to need a Senator Tom Udall from New Mexico and a Senator Mark Udall from Colorado. All of these superb candidates are in tossup races from states that held caucuses. How can we expect to win these four races that are essential to achieving real change if the top of the ticket has spent months denigrating the caucus process? And, they think I’m the dreamer?" [From here, Obama would segue into standard stump speech language about building a broad coalition.]
I see five benefits from this line of attack on Hillary’s caucus bashing:
• It’s part of a sustained narrative on arrogance that Hillary’s campaign will be continually feeding into over the weeks to come. The overall narrative on arrogance puts Obama back on offense and demonstrates that he can fight back.
• It helps to undermine the idea that Pennsylvania has some exalted status.
• It blunts Clinton’s gambit to demean the caucuses in the eyes of the super delegates
• It helps to undermine Clinton’s claim that she’s the one who can get things done.
• It fits in perfectly with Obama’s theme of building a broad coalition, which is one of the reasons I think so many of us are attracted to his candidacy.
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