So, I know what you Obama folks are thinking. We’ve all seen that Hillary’s name will be up for the nomination in Denver, we know her supporters are planning a “big” protest, and yeah I bet you even saw that post on Digg about Hillary registering a site for a 2012 campaign. Now, us Obama people, the primary battle was very emotional for us, so I know our first instinct is to tear into the Hillary supporters. And why not, Hillary herself.
But we can’t. Unless we want to spend the next few months bickering amongst ourselves and all but hand the election to John “Bush” McCain, Obama supporters and Hillary supporters need to come together in unity behind our party’s nominee. Of course, in order to do this, we’re going to have to swallow some our differences. Let’s see what we can do about just a few issues dividing us…
The FISA Vote
This might seem like a point of contention between the camps, Obama voting for broader executive power over intelligence, Hillary voting against it, this is actually best interpreted as the first real act of unity between the two camps. Both of them used their greatest strengths to help the Democratic party. First, Obama’s “flip-flip.” Most people on the left, including my fellow Obama supporters, completely interpreted this vote the wrong way, assuming Obama was afraid of being painted as “soft on terror.”
Here’s the thing: the vote itself passed 78 to 22. If Obama had voted against it, the vote would have passed 77 to 23, and Obama would still have to worry about being painted as “soft on terror” simply because he’s the Democratic nominee. The difference is within that 77 are several very weak freshman Democrats who are in very real danger of being voted out of office exactly because they would appear weak on terror. Obama, most beloved Democratic nominee, “flip-flopped” on FISA simply to deflect any “soft on terror” criticism to himself. By eating that criticism, Obama helped buoy a lot of down ticket candidates in November.
Hillary, on the other hand, by voting against it, also carried the democratic flag by voting the party’s actual position. Both of them used their strengths to help to the Democratic Party. Obama used his popularity to quash any criticism against downticket candidates and Hillary used her invulnerability to conservative attacks by voting the Party Line. When Obama saves us from another “Democrats bend over big time” story and Hillary saves us from another “radical left wing blogosphere” story, that’s not division, that’s teamwork.
The John Edwards Affair
Now, I know with this one I could link you to a hundred million places that will break down the polling math for you. Kos can break down the exit polling, the Edwards campaign has shown its own inside data shows it, and even the big media networks are showing it in their horrible polls: It is simply not true that if John Edwards had not entered the race, Hillary would have won. In fact, the data shows Obama would have won bigger, sooner. But let’s chunk all this math garbage and get down to something we can really unify on: Mark Penn.
We absolutely cannot ignore the context and timeline of this whole story. The whole idea of Edwards causing Hillary to lose came from Mark Penn at the exact same time that the Clinton campaign was releasing memos revealing a very unflattering picture of the campaign, and of Mark Penn. He said his bullshit about Edwards to distract us from what we should really be doing, and that’s hating Mark Penn. If we’re to pinpoint one thing, out of all the post-campaign “what happened” Hillary Clinton obituaries out there, the one thing that cost Hillary the most in this election, it would be Mark Penn. His shameless pollmongering and divisive negative attack strategy did more to damage Senator Clinton’s reputation than 8 years of Bill Clinton’s dithering and constant Republican attacks.
So yes, the answer to party division over the John Edwards affair is, indeed, “Man, fuck Mark Penn!”
Hillary for President 2012
For us Obama supporters, the prospect of Hillary coming after Obama again in 2012 is very frightening. We know from history that these divided conventions, where a fellow party member tries to steal the nomination from the sitting President, always end in failure. And rest assured, the Clintons are nothing if not students of political history. They understand this kind of division would be fatal to any party. More likely, this is Hillary cutting off any future media hype about party division. If Hillary didn’t buy up all the 2012 stuff, be sure the PUMA radical Hillary supporter surely would. And the media would love nothing better than to interject that little storyline into any campaign.
Look at it from Hillary’s point of view. If she enters the 2012 race, not only would she derail any chance for a Democratic victory, but the entire Clinton legacy, including any possible careers for Chelsea, would be completely destroyed. The story of the Clintons would begin with Bill’s affairs and end with Hillary’s string of defeats and dismemberment of the entire Democratic Party. It’s not likely this is their goal in life. On the other hand, if she keeps her feet firmly on the ground in the Senate, a few years into a roaring Obama administration, the entire primary battle will be forgotten and the Clinton legacy will be that of transformation and power, perfect for Chelsea to step right into.
Of course, there’s always the chance that Obama could lose the election, but let’s be clear. It will be written in blood in the history books that Obama’s loss will absolutely without a doubt be Hillary Clinton’s fault. She will have torn him up and politically bloodied him so much in the primaries, to the point of injecting race, that there will be no choice but for the entire Democratic party to shun and discard her. There could be no forgiveness for such a blatant disruption of the party. After all, look what happened to Joe Lieberman!
Uh oh.
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