While reflecting on the Clinton campaign since Iowa, and thinking about how the latest bit of manufactured outrage she is peddling fits into the established pattern, I have arrived at some conclusions. I believe there are three things the Clinton campaign consistently gets wrong, and that "Bitter-gate" will turn out to be no different.
More below the fold:
In my opinion:
- After nearly eight years of Bush, the American public has become much better at detecting intellectually dishonest spin, disingenuous bullshit, and outright lies. The Clinton campaign operates as though this were not the case.
- Given that the country’s current state of affairs is tangibly bad for the vast majority of the people, the public’s tolerance for said spin, bullshit, and lies, is much less than previously. However, the Clinton campaign appears to repeatedly, vastly overestimate the public’s stomach for such tactics.
- Last but not least: The public is not really dumb; it’s just that when politicians treat us as if we are dumb, we might understandably feel there’s no point in making the effort to prove them wrong. Unfortunately for the Clinton campaign, they continue to assume that we actually are irredeemably, immutably dumb.
"Bitter-gate" is just the latest example of Senator Clinton making these three miscalculations. We all know that Hillary knows exactly what Barack meant, as inartfully as he may have stated it. Yet she pretends she doesn't know so that she can, without a trace of irony, deny that people are bitter while deliberately trying to make people angry. And not angry about the sorry state of affairs in this country; rather, angry at "other people", in this case, those nameless, faceless "elitists"; a group to which she assumes we are too dumb to figure out, she actually belongs herself.
Other recent examples are her NPR interview, where she peddled one blatantly intellectually dishonest argument after another, for example:
"Well, I don't know what it means because there is no way for Senator Obama to win unless he also obtains a significant number of superdelegates," said Clinton. "I understand that there has been, throughout this campaign, something of a double standard. I accept it; I live with it."
Asked what the double standard is, Clinton at first demurred.
"Well, I think that it's pretty obvious to anybody who has followed it," said Clinton.
When Norris followed-up again, saying, "Just in case it's not clear to someone, I don’t want to assume. I just want you to tell me what you think the double standard is because I don't want to assume," Clinton unloaded.
"No, but you know – for example, why is the question directed at me?" she said. "I mean, neither of us has the number of delegates to win. It is a problem for both of us. And Senator Obama's supporters refuse to support a revote in Michigan, which I thought was rather odd for the Democratic Party to be against another vote. Senator Obama's supporters wanted to end this contest and short circuit it so that the votes of the people in the next upcoming contest wouldn't count because he has a slight lead. And it's by no means definitive. It would have been like calling the championship game last night with two minutes left to go because somebody was ahead. And that’s not how it turned out."
Another is President Clinton’s attempt to spin his resurrection of the sniper fire lie by once again flogging the "misspoke" meme. I’m sorry Mr. President; you can call it "misspeaking" all you want. The public can, in fact, recognize a lie. Sadly, you gave us some practice with that skill while you were President.
It’s hard to imagine that the Clinton campaign would continue to rely on intellectually dishonest, disingenuous arguments if they thought that people would see right through them after applying just a bit of critical, independent thought. Therefore, their continued reliance on such arguments makes clear they must assume we, the voters, will not or cannot apply such thought. What can be more "elitist" than relying on the assumption that your audience is, well, not as smart as you are?
In any other election, such tactics might still have worked, just as they have worked too many times in the past. But the problem for Clinton this time around, is that she has an opponent who talks to the American public from the assumption that we are intelligent, that we are capable of critical and independent thought, and that we can handle even the difficult, unpleasant truths.
I never thought I’d see the day when such a candidate for president would come along. And now that I’ve seen it, I’m completely unwilling to go back to the days of Clintonian parsing and spin. I am no longer willing to support a politics that depends on repeatedly, shamelessly insulting the intelligence of the public. I am certain that I am far from alone in my hunger for a president who talks to me with honesty, candor, respect for my intelligence, and with respect for basic American common sense.
Now that we have seen this "New Politics", we will not go back.
Or as kitteh says (albeit in a very different context):