Man Bites Blog

This whole conversation is only possible because at least Obama makes some attempt to ground his positions in logical arguments that emerge from stated principles.   I happen to disagree with those principles, but at least with Obama, we know what those principles are and can debate them.

This is a far more fruitful discussion than the, “prove you’re not a sexist!” or “how many babies have you adopted?” conversations that we have had over the past few years, and that we would be continuing to have if Hillary Cliton were the nominee.

Take Obama’s “above my pay grade” answer.  It was a bit of a dodge, but at least it contained some substance of an answer, and revealed something about how Obama thought about issues like that.

Imagine how Clinton would have answered that question.  I think she would have either changed the subject by saying something like, “I think we all agree that children should have the status of personhood, and right now there are X children who do not have access to health care, so I think it’s best that we focus on them.”  Or she could have “hit back” by saying that victims of abortion clinic violence (not that there have been that many in recent years) surely have the rights of persons, or said that women have the rights of persons, including the right to map their reproductive destiny.

None of those answers would be a surprise, nor would they have taught us much about how she thinks about these issues.   There would be some grumbling from right wing circles about how she dodged the question, but it wouln’t have been a big deal.

Obama believes that defending Roe v. Wade entails opposing things like Illinois’s Born Alive Act.  Clinton voted for it in the Senate.  At least Obama is willing to accept the implications of his positions, so that they can be examined.  The same would not be true of Clinton.

So I think it would be unwise to focus right now on bringing down the candidacy of Barack Obama, at least while there is a possibility the Democrats could have a change of heart and substitute in Clinton. 

At least now we’re having a debate.  And I think it’s a debate we can win.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

The Clintons don’t care. This is not about the interests of the Democratic party. It’s all about them.

Well, duh.  Rhetoric aside, the Obama campaign is all about Obama, and the McCain campaign is all about McCain, and all the other candidacies were about themselves.  Nobody is in this, or ever has been in it, purely for the good of their party of the country for that matter.  They all really really want(ed) to be president.   If you don’t really want it, you’re not going to be willing to do everything necessary.  As the Fred Thompson campaign showed, even a bit of ambivalence about wanting to win can be deadly.

And since when did Andrew Sullivan give a damn about “the interests of the Democratic party” anyway?

To put it another way, as daunting as the delegate math looks right now, this is Hillary Clinton’s best chance to be president.  The minute she ends her candidacy, the probability she will ever be president will plummet.  She’s supposed to give that up because Andrew Sullivan finds it unseemly?  Please.

First of all, my headline notwithstanding, the decision whether to stay in the race is one based on her values and priorities, which I’m not privy to, so for me or any other pundit to day what she “should” do is quite presumptuous, as I’ve said before.

Second, if, as appears likely, Clinton actually wins a large swing state like Ohio, I don’t think you can say the race is over. Someone who has the race tied up should be able to win a primary in Ohio.

Third, Obama is still somewhat untested. I don’t think he’ll falter, but the recent NAFTA fumbling shows that he’s not invulnerable. It seems that Clinton servers her party by keeping herself as a viable alternative, and continuing to test Obama.

So, even though I too am eager for the Clintons to shuffle out of the spotlight, and she would be my fourth (even behind Huckabee) choice among the remaining candidates, I don’t blame her for staying in the race.

After arguing for months about how terrible the Clintons are, how they cling to power, and how Republicans’ only hope is for the Democrats to nominate Clinton, he suggests that she should be the recipient of a President Barack Obama’s first nomiation for a lifetime position on the Supreme Court.

It would be hard to think of five words that could do more to motivate Republicans to vote for McCain than “Supreme Court Justice Hillary Clinton.”

Jonah Golberg writes on the Clinton campaign’s failure to establish a comparing narrative for the legitimacy of the superdelegates.
One metaphor that has been offered in support of superdelegates is that they are the Senate and the pledged delegates are the house.It seems to me that the Clinton campaign would be able to cite many examples of how things would be worse from the Democrats’ perspective if the House were not tempered by the Senate.  The only power the Democrats have had in Washington for most of the past eight years is a significant enough minority in the Senate to support a fillibuster.

Of course, the most obvious case for Senate tempering would be impeachment and conviction of Bill Clinton.  This might not be a topic the Clinton campaign might not be eager to bring up, but it seems like they could find a way to spread the meme that without the Senate’s “undemocratic” influence, Kenneth Starr would have been allowed to run a successful president out of office for oral sex.

This would require some finnesse, but then so would being president.

IMO, the proper role of the superdelegates is kind of a “break glass in case of emergency” role.  If Obama were to take the lead in regular delegates, and then be wounded as a candidate by some sort of scandal that he is in denial about, the party should not have a suicide pact to nominate him anyway.  Having the superdelegates change the outcome under any other circumstance would strike me as illegitimate.

or more accurately, the Democrats’ path to defeat.

• Obama continues to win primaries and caucuses, building a significant but not decisive lead in delegates.
• Clinton wins the nomination on the basis of superdelegates going for her and the Michigan and Florida delegates being seated.
• Nader runs; those disgusted with him who are more moderate go for McCain, leftists go for Nader, and McCain ekes out an electoral victory.

It would seem almost impossible for the Democrats to cede the high moral ground coming into the general election, but if party bosses manage to thwart making Obama the first African American nominee after he had won most of the primaries and caucuses in order to nomiate someone who has already spent eight years in the White House, well, it could get ugly. 

It might make McCain’s problems with consrevatives seem like child’s play.

I guess one key is how Obama would play this.  A Clinton nomination and loss would position Obama very strongly for 2012.   But it seems like anybody who just had the nomination (and more than likely the presidency) taken from him would have a very hard time getting behind the person on whose behalf the stealing was done, whether he wants to transcend politics or not.

I’ve got to believe the Democrats know what a disastrous scenario this is, and won’t let this play out, but this is also the same party that thought Michael Dukakis and John Kerry would be good candidates.

Apparently, others share (video) my observation of the resemblance.