Pennsylvania Station 2008
Pennsylvania was clearly going to be either the semi-finals or the finals in this game. Looks like the semi-finals are headed into overtime. And that’s a good thing.
In the pre-internet old days of backroom politics, the party powerful would long ago have taken these two candidates into the proverbial smoke-filled room and knocked heads together until the smoke cleared and they struck up some kind of deal that resolved which one would be the party’s nominee.
Today, we have a much more transparent, much more participatory, much more democratic-with-a-small-d process.
The superdelegates are the closest thing the party has to the backroom now. Clearly, if they continue their trend to supporting Obama, then Clinton is sunk even though she won Pennsylvania. Quite likely they’ll ultimately go with whoever they perceive as a winner. Yesterday it was Obama. Tomorrow it could be Clinton, for three reasons.
First, Hillary Clinton has shown that she—she—the pronoun is important here—is tough, resilient, focused, and able to stand all the heat the kitchen can produce. Whatever the ultimate outcome of this race, no one can say women aren’t able to hold up through the hard knuckle political contact sport. She won by that vaunted double digit in Pennsylvania despite being outspent three to one. She hung in there despite being badgered mercilessly to drop out, despite despicable gender-biased media, despite her husband’s foot-in-mouth disease. Even the arch-conservative Bill Bennett praised her perseverance. The woman just keeps slogging through.
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) Good
The new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
Second, her argument that she has won the big battleground states the Democrats must carry to win the general election has become more visibly potent in Pennsylvania. Obama’s predictable dismissal of that fact overlooks the distinct possibility that many (like my 88 year old uncle, a lifelong Democrat and social liberal) prefer McCain over Obama. I caught up with Dana Kennedy, a Clinton campaign volunteer who went to Pennsylvania from Arizona to help during the last few days there, at the Hyatt hotel in the midst of the victory party. “I am amazed at all the support she has,” said Kennedy. “Voters went to the polls confident that she would win. We talked with several Republican women voters who reregistered as Democrats’s to vote for Hillary. The scary thing is that they say if Obama wins, they’ll vote for McCain.” People are wondering whether Obama, attractive as he is, can throw the knockout punch to Clinton and then to McCain.
But perhaps the most significant factor to have come out of Pennsylvania is this: Six out of ten new voters broke for Obama. But the late deciders broke for Hillary in exactly the same percentage. Late deciders often decide general elections. They tend to go for safety over sizzle, the person they feel they know best over the newer entry. That’s why incumbents almost always win. In addition, most elections are won or lost by very narrow margins, often a swing of two percent or less. So that small group of voters who wait till the last minute to decide make all the difference. Hillary can now build on her contention that she is the more electable of the two candidates by pointing this out over and over.
Pundit Tim Russert, who has typically been extremely hard on Clinton throughout this campaign, observed tonight that whoever captures the headlines captures the momentum, and whoever captures the momentum captures the money to go forward. Clinton, he said will have all of those tomorrow. We’ll soon see whether that is true.
For while the economy is the top issue for voters right now, and Clinton’s positions on those matters are viewed favorably by voters, the economic issue she must pay most attention in the short term to is that of her own campaign. If she can raise the money, she can stay in the race. If not, not. On that point, politics has not changed much since the backroom days.
Hillary Clinton’s victory speech began, “It’s a long way to Pennsylvania Avenue and the road goes straight through the heart of Pennsylvania.” Wouldn’t you know, just when we thought the exhausting game might be over, the finals have been rescheduled until at least the early June primaries, when all the people will have spoken.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
9 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Thanks for the focusing post. I know so many people who have been offended by any talk that Hillary could still be viable, casting her as the spoiler to Obama’s coronation. Whoever is tough enough — as Clinton is — to weather what has been thrown at her, surely would be an amazing representative of the people in the White House.
Gloria, you write, with what can only be mock wistfulness, “Wouldn’t you know, just when we thought the exhausting game might be over, the finals have been rescheduled until at least the early June primaries. . . .”
This is a disingenuous post. Why? Because there was never any question that Clinton would win Pennsylvania. You know this. The question from day one has been how much would Obama cut into her longstanding lead? As it happens, he cut deeply and impressively, reducing the margin by exactly half. Let’s see if Hillary can pull off a similar miracle in North Carolina, where the roles are once again reversed.
As for Clinton’s argument that she can carry the big battleground states, let’s recall that when the dust settles and the nominee is selected, the party will rally behind its candidate. You offer a false and intentionally misleading scenario. Only senile Democrats, or profoundly stupid newcomers, would vote for McCain in the general election should Hillary lose. How does a lifelong Democrat, out of pure spite, vote for a man who will stack the Supreme Court with conservative justices and carry forward the failed policies of an administration that is an affront to every last Democratic ideal? Yes, they exist, but not in significant enough numbers to make the difference.
And your most absurd contention of all? “First, Hillary Clinton has shown that she—she—the pronoun is important here—is tough, resilient, focused, and able to stand all the heat the kitchen can produce.” You forget, though, that Hillary Clinton herself has been the one in that kitchen, cranking up the hellish temperature for months. Even Pennsylvanians acknowledge this, with three-quarters of Democrats in the state acknowledging in a weekend poll that Hillary has launched the vast majority of negative and misleading attacks.
As for Bill Bennet’s praise of Hillary’s perseverance, what sort of praise is that? Is this the standard you’ve set for your candidate? Of course he admires Hillary’s campaign. As an “arch-conservative,” he deeply admires effective smear politics, from Lee Atwater and Karl Rove to Hillary Clinton, who has adopted, and is currently perfecting, their tactics.
Yes, Gloria, women can in fact compete in what you call “the hard knuckle political contact sport” — but only, it seems, when they emulate the most despicable men of our political generation.
I’m sorry, Stout but how do you support this claim:
This is a disingenuous post. Why? Because there was never any question that Clinton would win Pennsylvania.
I think someone is being a sour loser. AG on the other hand as a voter of PA is doing her happy dance and realizing that come what may — anything but McSame and the Republican’ts!!
Sour loser? Nonsense. Obama is leading in states won, popular vote, and pledged delegates. If I’m sour, it has nothing to do with yesterday’s predictable loss.
That Hillary Clinton would win Pennsylvania was a foregone conclusion to pundits and candidates alike. It’s a waste of energy to provide links and footnotes to bolster a claim that has been common knowledge for many weeks. Why don’t you know this? As I mentioned above, the question has always been about the margin of victory. Obama is winning, and according to the political math, Hillary can’t overtake him without a coup by superdelegate. Is that the kind of Democracy you support?
Oh my, singed eyebrows here. Look, even Obama admitted that a win is a win, Stout House, and Hillary won by 10% over the mega-funded Obama phenomenon.So let’s let that one go.(Thanks for the support, PM and AG)
I want to point out that yes indeed, we have seen Democrats vote for a variety of reasons for Republicans rather than support a Democratic candidate they think isn’t good for the country. Republicans are much more disciplined voters and more likely to “go home” at the polls even when they aren’t so enamored of their candidate, as witness W’s second term. In the cases I cited, one feels Hillary is much better equipped to restore America’s standing globally than Barack and the Republican women will have lost their excitement over a viable woman presidential candidate at last and with it their motivation not to “go home” in November.
After the next two Primaries, Hillary will need at least 80 percent of the remaining states as wins. She will certainly lose Oregon, so that number will jump past 80 to something like [impossible]. It’s over for her. She cannot garner the Popular Vote, or Delegate Count lead. This is of course based on facts, not opinion.
Gloria –
Of course Obama said that a win is a win, although he “admitted” nothing. You’re very clever. You use misleading language to anticipate and defuse critical responses, and even employ tortured passive constructions to inoculate yourself against fact-based critique – skills vital, I think, to defending one of the ugliest campaigns ever run by a Democrat. To say that Obama “admitted” defeat is to imply that his campaign anticipated a win in Pennsylvania, which it did not.
Or how about this one: “Hillary Clinton has shown that she . . . is tough, resilient, focused, and able to stand all the heat the kitchen can produce.”
All the heat the kitchen can produce? I’ve already pointed out that camp Hillary is doing the cooking at this point, effectively carrying out the Republicans’ smear job for them. And according to that oft-cited weekend poll, three-quarters of Pennsylvanians agree. Hillary, not Barack, has launched the vast majority of negative and misleading attacks, a self-evident fact that you’ve chosen to overlook.
Or this Feldtian gem: “In the cases I cited, one feels Hillary is much better equipped to restore America’s standing globally than Barack. . . .”
One feels? Who might that be? You might speak for people like PunditMom (who’s mysteriously reversed the “coronation” narrative to favor Obama now that Hillary’s crown has been snatched away) and AdorableGirlfriend (who is somehow unaware that Obama never expected a Pennsylvania win), but you do not speak for me or for the millions like me.
Not that I expect an answer, but how exactly is Hillary Clinton better equipped than a brilliant, inspirational black man named Barack Hussein Obama to restore America’s standing globally? How is a woman who voted for war in Iraq better equipped to get us out again than a man who publicly condemned the invasion from the start? A man who remains seated when Bush talks of the surge working, unlike Senator Clinton, who leaps to her feet applauding like a trained seal in a deliberate televised pander to the hawkish right? A woman whose saber-rattling grows louder every day (“we can obliterate Iran”), a chickenhawk like her husband whose studied emulation of despicable men may lead us into another Middle Eastern fiasco during her first term in office?
I admire you a great deal, Gloria, but you’ve got it wrong this time. You see so much and influence so many, and yet on the Huffington Post and elsewhere you remain silent about Hillary’s misleading insinuations and, as Obama himself recently put it, “eleventh-hour attacks.” Is it not possible to praise what you admire about your candidate and criticize her when she goes astray?
In the end, what does it mean to claim a dishonorable victory, and to sell your political soul in the process?
Thank you, Stout House; you’ve nailed it all down for Gloria, and with eloquence..
Only thing I would as is this article at Huff Po by James Zogby: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/end-it-now_b_98265.html
(The URL slot does not work in the preview); please visit us at: http://www.urantiansojourn.com/
Hey, isn’t anybody interested in Cindy McCain’s recipes? Just kidding…
The odds for Hillary are indeed not looking favorable right now, but that’s no reason not to allow the race to continue until all the people have spoken. And as Yogi Berra said, it’s not over till it’s over. Are you Obama people so insecure that you have to push Clinton out rather than simply win the race?
To me, the most heartening thing about this political cycle, is that it illustrates how democracy has a way of rejuvenating itself, just when people are getting most cynical and despairing about it. I wish some of you lovely commenters–and I appreciate you all-would pick up that thread of the discussion. In previous elections, the back room would have trunkated the process; this time it didn’t.
And may I remind you all that in 2004, John Kerry became the Democratic candidate because he was the least objectionable, least controversial candidate. But he hadn’t really been tested on the national stage and he took us right down the rabbit hole to defeat. If Barack Obama prevails, and it appears he well might absent some egregious new mistake on his part, he can only become a stronger candidate for the general election as a result.
Meanwhile, there are many of us who are inspired by Hillary’s candidacy believe that substantively she is the better leader,and prefer her position and past performance on key issues. Her health care proposal, for example, is hands down better than his for the very simple reason that non-partisan health care economists have been trying to tell us for 40 years–make that 60, since Harry Truman’s time: if you don’t cover everybody costs will continue to skyrocket despite leaving some people out. The only way to bring health care costs down short of rationing is to have everyone in the pool. More on this in another post, but I just wanted to give an example of where I and many others believe Clinton is preferable to Obama on issues of utmost importance to Americans.