Why Obama Should Quit Now; or, Why Clinton Is Right, But For All The Wrong Reasons

I would like to start by pointing out that I plan to vote for John McCain in the Fall, so I don’t have a dog in this hunt. That said, I would far rather see Obama get the Democratic nomination than Clinton, and not because I think he would be an easier target for the Republicans. As my wife commented to me some weeks ago, if the general comes down to McCain vs. Obama, for the first time that we can remember, either presidential candidate would be an acceptable alternative. Not that we agree much with Obama’s policies, but his oft-mocked message of hope would be a very welcome change from the politics of us-versus-them, cynicism, and win at all costs that has dominated the country since at least the early 90s. If an Obama presidency could lift the current level of political discourse above the current level of fanaticism and mindless partisanship, I could put up with some poor policy choices.

Hillary’s primary argument at this stage of the game is that she is more electable than Obama. She has been doing everything in her power since her campaign began its ‘kitchen sink’ attacks to make him less electable. She and her advisers are savvy enough to realize that the reverse — making herself more electable — won’t be enough to do the trick, even if it’s possible.

Wright, the Weather Underground, ‘experience’ (which has to be the stupidest argument imaginable against McCain), Obama the Islamic Manchurian candidate, Obama as an empty suit, ‘bittergate’ . . . the list can go on. Many pundits (whom I am too lazy to link to right now) have put forth the argument that Hillary is not running in the 2008 election anymore, but is rather positioning herself for 2012. The theory is that she reallizes that she will not be this year’s Democratic nominee, therefore she has an interest in making sure that Obama is, in fact, unelectable. After four years of McCain, she then has a clear shot at the nomination in 2012.

Whatever else you may think of the Clintons — good or bad — it is inarguable that they are highly intelligent. And also extremely focused on gaining political power. Anyone that thinks Hillary’s senate run was not for the express purpose of positioning her to run for president . . . well, I have this lovely bridge to sell you. They are not stupid, so they know there is little realistic chance of Hillary winning the nomination. At this stage of the game, I would be surprised if they actually still wanted her too. Voters have had their faces rubbed in the ugliness far too much, compliments of Hillary. Her negatives were always high, and now she can add the disgust of about half the Democratic party. If she were to win, many Obama supporters would hold their noses and vote for her, but I don’t think enough would. Not considering that half the country had already made up its mind not to vote for her. The anti-Hillary vote will be too strong in a general election for her to make a run from a fractured base.

So the Hillary ’08 campaign as Hillary ’12 campaign makes a lot of sense to me, but whatever her motivation and expectations for this year, I think she has done irreparable damage to Obama.

He is a wonderful and motivating speaker, and if the primary had ended two months ago, I think he could have pulled enough new voters to make a difference. The longer the primary drags on, though, the more disenchanted those potential first-time voters will become, and the less impact they will have in the Fall.

The biggest obstacle in my opinion, however, is racism. I’m not talking about Bill’s comments in North Carolina (in fact, I’d give him a pass on them and blame them on extreme arrogance rather than racism) — what I am talking about is the silent racism of a large percentage of the Democratic party. We have seen glimpses of it in various exit polls, most recently in Pennsylvania. I think that voting for a candidate based on their race (or gender) is pretty silly, but voting against a candidate on that basis is despicable. And for all those white voters that voted ‘for’ Hillary because she is white: bullshit. Those votes weren’t ‘for,’ they were ‘against’ — against the black man. If anyone wants to argue that point, I’ll say it again: bullshit. There is a world of difference between a minority voter identifying with and voting for the minority candidate and a member of a majority voting for a candidate based on their being in the same majority group.

I don’t think Obama could reasonably extricate himself from the election now even if it were possible, but based on history, if he wins the nomination and loses the general election, chances are not good for him to get the nomination again — at least not anytime soon. Certainly not in ’12, and probably not in ’16. At least he’s still a young man.

The reason I think he would be better off bailing out now is the corrollary of the Clinton in ’12 theory — if she is the nominee this round, her negatives are so high that he would have a basically clear shot at the nomination in 2012.

Nothing that Clinton has thrown at him is really significant. What his pastor said? Come on. Being acquainted with someone that was involved in a terrorist organization 40 years ago? How is that relevant now? Its relevance, along with the Muslim rumors and the mountain-from-a-molehill of Wright’s comments, springs from the fact that it gives people a non-racist excuse to vote against him.

My hypothesis is that such a large percentage of both the Democratic party and the general population harbors at least some level of racial prejudice, that once they have some way of assuaging any guilt they might feel about it, they will vote against the black candidate in a heartbeat. I love my parents dearly, but they grew up in lily-white rural areas where racism was a given. Race issues were distant, so there was no need to examine their received beliefs. I don’t think that either of them would consider themselves a racist, but although they managed to help teach me not to prejudiced, I always knew that they were. I guess that falls into the too-common ‘do as I say, not as I do’ method of parenting. Regardless, my point is this: They are not particularly gullible people, but they have completely bought the whole Obama as Islamic terrorist line. I think that if they were honest with themselves, they would admit they don’t actually believe that — it is too farfetched even for a bad movie — but it gives them something to hang their doubts on.

Whether it’s Wright, or the Muslim rumors, or the 3 a.m. call, I think Obama is in trouble in the Fall because he is not perfect. McCain was a member of the Keating 5, and hasn’t always been the paragon of virtue that he tries to portray himself as, but people that would otherwise vote for a Republican are not going to be looking for reasons not to vote for him. I think the opposite is true for Obama. There are some that are color blind, and many others that will vote for him based on race, but I think there are far too many that would otherwise vote Democrat that will find an excuse, no matter how thin, not to vote for a black man.

Does that mean Obama never had a chance? Not necessarily. I think that if Clinton had played by the unwritten rules, and gotten out when it became clear that the only way to stay in would be to drag Obama down to her level, then Obama would have had a shot. At that point, he was a rising star and a lot of people were enchanted with the idea of electing a black president. Those whose racism was more dormant would probably have voted for him just to reassure themselves that they weren’t really racist.

But now the magic is mostly gone.

Hillary argues that the Republicans would have attacked him too, so it was okay for her to do so. That is probably the biggest lie of this election cycle: a Democrat, being attacked by Republicans, could shrug off far more than he could in being attacked by a fellow Democrat. There would be a circling of the wagons at the least, and in fact I think that Republican attacks could have backfired badly. Now, however, the kitchen sink has been thrown, so the Republicans do not have to walk nearly as softly as they otherwise might have had to, because they are merely repeating what a fellow Democrat has already said about him.