It’s the Thought that Counts

Well, the convention got better last night.  Schweitzer gave the kind of speech that I think should fill all the time in between the big headliners.  It was interesting and engaging.  It was exciting.  It got your attention, and it used that attention to make a point.  I really have trouble imagining that the Democratic Party, which includes half the professional politicians in the country, can’t find more people who can pull off that kind of speech.

Warner’s keynote speech was solid.  Obama’s keynote last year was the best contemporary political speech I’ve heard, and no one could be expected to follow with anything that would really live up to it.  Warner’s isn’t going to be historically noteworthy, but it was fine.

Of course, the big speech of the night was Hillary’s, and it was very good.  I can definitely nitpick it, but it was strong, and it did what it needed to do.  It’s particularly important because there has been some polling evidence recently that the movement of Hillary voters towards Obama was stalling short of completion.  This is surprising, since revelations since the campaign ended really undermine the only rationale there ever really was for picking her over Obama.  Anyone who hasn’t should definitely read Politico’s “Relentless” series.  It explains how Hillary chose less competent, less experienced staff because she wanted people who were personally loyal to her, and how she allowed (or maybe requested) those who tried to alert her directly of the horrible mismanagement of her campaign to be punished, rather than rewarded.  It’s exactly the loyalty-over-competence, dissent-squashing environment that led to intelligence failures and Katrina mismanagement in the Bush administration.  So much for the wonders of experience.  With these new revelations, there is little remaining ground for believing Hillary would have been a better president.

But that’s not really the point.  Even if Hillary was better qualified than Obama and deserved to be president, and even if she was unfairly blocked by a sexist media, responding by elimating constitutional protection of abortion rights, lengthening the war, and giving up all hope of healthcare reform is illogical bordering on insane.  This is obvious, but for some reason a large number of people haven’t seen it.  I don’t know why.  It might be feminist-oriented identity politics, or it might be racism, or it might just be that most people are dumb, but for some reason many people seem devoted to her in a way more fitting of a cult leader than a politician.  Nonetheless, it’s good that Hillary herself pointed this out.  We can only hope it worked.

Tags: brian schweitzer, convention, hillary clinton, mark warner

I think the media has largely written Clinton off as a possible VP choice, but I think it’s actually been making a lot more sense recently than it did before.  I should be clear - I’m not saying it’s my preferred choice or that I expect it, but I think it makes a lot more sense than most people seem to realize.  I should also say that I’m not a bitter former Clinton supporter.  I was ambivalent and happy with both during the lead-up to the primary, started to lean towards Obama around Iowa and New Hampshire, supported him clearly after the crap Clinton pulled in South Carolina, and got increasingly annoyed at Clinton as she stayed in and went negative after she had no hope of winning.

A lot of the reasons for not picking her have disappeared.  Early on, it looked like if he had picked her he would have been caving to pressure from her supporters, but expectations of her being selected are now so low that I think Obama has clearly established his ability to pick someone else.  If he picks her, it’ll be seen as a proactive choice by most, I think.  I also think it will be much more surprising.  Most of the reasonable choices are widely suspected, and only a few (Richardson?) would come as much of a surprise.  Most of the ones that would be surprising would also be obscure.  Clinton seems like a unique way to generate a lot of excitement.  It was also help with her former supporters, most of which seem to have come around to Obama, but are less stable in their support and less enthusiastic.  (This boost can even be tied to specific states like Florida, where her supporters are greater in number.)

More importantly, Clinton has secured in the primary - deserved or not - the status of the experienced, well-qualified candidate.  She brings with her the image of someone with good national security credentials without generating the stories about how he picked her to fill in his national security gap.  She is also someone who could add these credentials without seeming to some to overshadow the nominee.  They’ve gone against each other and she lost, so no one will wonder about why it is that Obama was picked over Clinton.  Well, some will, but the answer is clear - his greater ability to inspire, his better campaign management skills, and so forth.

That’s not to say there won’t be downsides.  The biggest downside is named Bill Clinton, who will be difficult to control and very tricky to use, but could end up being a benefit if all goes optimally.  There will also definitely be some stories about satisfying disgruntled Clinton supporters, but it wouldn’t be assumed without question that this was the reason for picking her.

Biden or Bayh or whoever definitely might be better, but I think Clinton does deserve at least another quick look.

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton, politics, vice president

Is Hillary Clinton a victim of sexism? Undoubtedly she is — along with just about every other woman in a position of power, particularly in politics. (For some examples, check out this video compiled by the Women’s Media Center.) In fact, just about all women have, at some point or many points in their lives, encountered sexist attitudes or actions that made their lives unfairly difficult. Fine, I think we can all agree on that. But the Clinton campaign has been making a stronger statement: that sexism is costing her the nomination. Oh, wait — not that she’s lost the nomination, of course, still fighting! — but in the event that she might not be the winner of the Democratic primary election, that would be a key reason.

Clinton was the focus of a lot of negative attention when the campaigning began because, at that point, she was the front-runner. That makes strategic sense. Yes, she is female; yes, the other candidates are male. That does not mean that their negative comments were sexist. Yet Clinton and many of her supporters tried to frame it that way, and have continued to push that perspective about the race overall.

Eleanor Smeal, Feminist Majority Foundation president and endorser of Clinton, was quoted as saying about one early debate, “It goes beyond logic — it’s a gut response. …Every woman — it was just so visceral — that panel was all male. It didn’t matter almost what was being said.” I think Smeal is saying something very true: the belief that there is sexism at play here is a visceral response that (mostly) women are having. It has little to do with whether any sexist behavior actually took place. Clinton is the first woman to make it this far, so she’s surrounded by men. People expect to see — and therefore, see — sexism everywhere.

From a campaigning perspective, the sexism angle is just an easy way to play to the sympathies of a politically correct population, and to incite righteous anger in the generations of women who really did have their careers ruined (or didn’t have a chance at careers at all) simply because of their gender. The message, sent both implicitly and explicitly, is that women ought to vote in solidarity with a woman candidate, and that men who oppose her candidacy are just being sexist. Clinton has carefully crafted her message around identity politics, including rather hypocritically playing the race card against Obama. You might suppose she’d believe the argument analogous to hers, that opposing Obama means you’re a racist. However, she’s been comfortable bragging about the powerful and large-scale ways that racist voting has helped her campaign.

This just doesn’t make sense. She’s happy to focus on her gender in a variety of ways when it wins her votes superficially, from inane jokes about her arduous morning routine to entire rallies implying that the only way for US laws to treat women fairly is to have a woman physically in the Oval Office signing federal legislation. Use her gender as a superficial reason to vote against her, though, and she’ll cry foul. She can’t logically have it both ways, since the reason sexism is bad is that gender ought not be a determining factor in political decisions. That problem is just as present when the decision goes in her favor as when it goes against her.

As a woman I resent being told that I ought to vote for another woman, ignoring all other considerations. If I am really to be viewed as a complete person with a fully developed personality and set of valid opinions, I should be allowed to decide which issues are more important to me and whom I trust most to represent my stances on those issues. Even if I decide that goals such as equal pay rank highest in my priorities, I should be allowed to believe a particular male politician can achieve those goals better than a particular female politician. I am stunned that Clinton can pretend to be supporting women’s rights while telling me I am allowed none of these things.

Tags: gender, hillary clinton, politics