UPDATE: While I call in this diary for the Anybody But Hillary netroots to coalesce behind Obama, I am not a particularly devout fan of his. He is not The Perfect Candidate. He will not be The Perfect President. He may not even be a particularly strong friend of the progressives as president. My point below is that Hillary has a record and a staff that speaks for her intentions regarding the Democratic Party, and those intentions are not good who have worked for people powered politics. That's the crux and the limit of it.
First, a disclaimer: I hate primary season. I hate primary season intraparty polemic. For the most part, I think we had a fine roster of candidates this year, and I never really had a horse of my own. Now that we're essentially down to two candidates, though -- sorry, Edwards supporters, I just think he's done -- the netroots need to compare to the two candidates in terms not only of policy differences, but also of their likely effect as leaders of the Democratic Party. In my view, a Hillary Clinton presidency would do more to undo the hard work of the netroots over the last four years than any other possible single event.
More below the fold...
Rahm Emmanuel. Terry McAuliffe. Chuck Schumer. James Carville. These names represent the moral rot of the modern Democratic Party, and they are Clintonistas, one and all. After a Hillary victory in November, it's hard to see how Howard Dean would maintain control of the DNC. Typically, the President hand picks someone from his/her political operation to take over the national committee, so say goodbye to cultivating small donors, say goodbye to the fifty state strategy, and say hello again to a Democratic Party owned and controlled by big corporate donors. We would be left, once again, in the cold.
An Obama administration might not play out much differently, but at least Obama is something of an open question. Certainly he has a better history with the netroots than the Clintonistas, as the mutual love was pretty unrestrained during his 2004 Senate run. Our work for him during the '04 primary may not have been in any way necessary for him to win, but it surely was beneficial. It's not evident to me that he has forgotten this, even as he runs to the right during this primary season. (I view this run to the right as absolutely necessary for him to have a chance of winning the general election. A white man like Edwards could probably win embracing progressive talking points, but I don't think that Obama could. A sad political reality but a true one.)
I ask all readers here, and moreover any progressive bloggers serendipitous enough to be reading this diary, to stop and consider where we will be as a movement after a Clinton victory compared to our standing after an Obama victory. My instinct is that a Clinton victory would so cement the hold of the beltway hacks on our party machinery that we would be forced to abandon it, even while we hold our noses to thwart the Republicans along the way. I do not think such a development would be good for progressives, good for Democrats, or good for the country. If the time is ripe to recruit Edwards supporters into the Obama camp to prevent another corporate takeover of the DNC, so be it.