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But what of the Democrats? The two candidates can each make a case that he or she is the most electable. Senator Clinton has the advantage of having been on the national stage and seared into global consciousness for almost two decades. This familiarity lends an aura of authority, especially as she has had the imagery of the White House and the presidency behind her for eight years. It calms nerves among jittery Democrats worried about another narrow loss to a Republican. She is a creature of the past generation, which means to say she grew up developing scar tissue under conservative assault. In battle, you tend to respect the warrior with the most battered physique.
She has endurance rather than experience. Nobody doubts her competence or eagerness for hard work. She also has the contacts and network of the most powerful brand in Democratic politics: the Clintons. If you are an insecure or not too clued-in Democrat, she reassures. If you are a working-class Democrat, you think she knows what she’s doing and you fondly recall the years when Bill was running the country. Her facility with policy helps to cement the idea of her as a competent representative.
However, outside her core base of support, all this electability has a dark side with Clinton. She has extraordinary negatives. She galvanises the conservative movement in ways no other Democrat can. Against McCain, she and she alone enables the Republicans to forget their deep internal divisions and unite. Nothing – nothing – unites them as she does. The money she will raise for the Republicans is close to the amount they can raise for themselves. If you’re a hard-nosed Democrat, especially in a state that leans Republican or that voted for Bush, she is potentially toxic to your chances. No Democrat in Nebraska wants to counter an advertisement morphing his face with Hillary’s.
Hence the endorsements Obama has secured: Janet Napolitano, Democratic governor of Arizona; Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic governor of Kansas; Claire McCaskill, Democratic senator from Missouri; Tim Kaine, Democratic governor of Virginia, and Ben Nelson, Democratic senator from Nebraska.
What do all these states have in common? They are all states that George W Bush won twice. If you’re the next generation of Democrat, trying to appeal to the centre of the country, Obama is your candidate. Clinton takes the party and national politics back to the polarised red-blue ideological past. The danger of this is that if you are someone in the middle – on the purple edge of the red-blue divide – then the polarising nature of Clinton might mean that if she were the candidate you might vote Republican. Obama is the salve for this syndrome.
The polling data are clear on this as well. Obama’s margins of victory over most Republican candidates are greater than Clinton’s. He is more liberal in some respects but he tends to be more liberal in those areas where the Democrats are strongest, primarily Iraq where his antiwar stance has resonance. On healthcare his plan is less coercive than Clinton’s. In the debate last Thursday in Hollywood, he subtly made the case that he could also be more credible in withdrawing troops from Iraq – since Republicans could not accuse him of having changed his position on the war, as they can with Clinton. He made his liberalism a positive in the electability wars, which is the first time that has happened in American politics since 1976.
The winnowing of the field to two has oddly helped his electability. You could see it at the Clinton-Obama debate last week. Clinton did not do poorly. All her strengths were on show: the policy mastery, the gaffe-free talking points, the Clinton record in the 1990s. But that made his ease all the more impressive. Most crucial, Obama seemed like a president. In his body language he carefully upstaged her without looking as if he were trying. By the end of the debate he was pulling her chair back for her. If Obama’s main drawback in the electability game has until now been gravitas, he erased that gap in two short hours.
Can it work? Can Obama win? I don’t know. Clinton is still a formidable candidate and her massive institutional advantage may eventually give her the nomination. Any objective observer would have to say she is still the favourite at this juncture. But she has not won this primary argument or this primary battle. If she becomes the nominee, it will be because she survived the primaries. Obama won them.
The national polling keeps getting tighter. In every state where Obama has had a chance to be exposed to voters in real time, he has won. But the states up for grabs on Tuesday are big ones where retail salesmanship and organisation are not as powerful as name recognition. Obama has the money – in fact, he raised a staggering $32m in January alone, mostly in small sums from individual donations. He has the momentum: Gallup’s national poll shows Clinton’s lead evaporating in the past two weeks.
Will Democratic voters realise that he is now their best bet against McCain or will inertia and fear keep Clinton alive? One thing I’ve learnt in American politics: never underestimate the capacity of the Democratic party to screw it up.
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Link:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article3294433.eceLike I been sayin...
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