The Hopester: Dutch Redux?

Georgie Will is another right-wing voice howling for The Hillster to throw in the towel. The most startling assertion in Will's piece is that The Hopester is akin to (Will's favorite president) Dutch: "people like to listen to him" and "his manner lulls his adversaries in to underestimating his sheer toughness...." Now we have the ultimate in New Age reincarnation nuttiness: The Hopester is channeling his inner Dutch. All The Hopester needs to do is start eating jelly beans and calling his wife "Mommy." If this is (fair & balanced) wacko spiritualism, so be it.

[x Washington Fishwrap]
Yankee Fan Go Home
By George F. Will

Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.

Unfortunately, baseball's rules — pesky nuisances, rules — say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's Zip code.

Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted by counting each African American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent, of sorts, for that arithmetic (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment).

"We," says Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role, "don't think this is just going to be about some numerical metric." Mere numbers? Heaven forfend. That is how people speak when numerical metrics — numbers of popular votes and delegates — are inconvenient.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: "too late." Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton's political defeat can be similarly explained — too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in understanding that she had a serious challenger, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat.

Most of all, she was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party's mania for "fairness," as mandated by liberals like her, has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama's early lead in delegates. If Democrats, who genuflect at the altar of "diversity," allowed more of it in their delegate selection process, things might look very different. If even, say, Texas, California and Ohio were permitted to have winner-take-all primaries (as 48 states have winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes), Clinton would have been more than 400 delegates ahead of Obama before Tuesday and today would be at her ancestral home in New York planning to return some of its furniture to the White House next January.

Tuesday night must have been almost as much fun for John McCain as for Obama. The Republican brand has been badly smudged by recent foreign and domestic policies, which are the only kinds there are, so McCain's hopes rest on the still-unattached cohort called "Reagan Democrats," who still seem somewhat resistant to Obama.

McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness — the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

[George Frederick Will is a Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative newspaper columnist, journalist, and author.]

Copyright © 2008 The Washington Post Company

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Hasta La Vista Hillster?

The Hillster has the "vast right-wing conspiracy" in full cry. Kathleen Parker, the corn pone Ann Coulter, now likens The Hillster to the greatest film character created by Governor Steroids: Cyborg T-1000 in "The Terminator" dystopic film series. If The Hillster is channeling George C. Wallace (according to the left-wing flack, Joe Conason) while simultaneously portraying "The Terminator," she had better be on the lookout for a loser who is channeling Arthur Bremer. The Hillster should give her Secret Service detail a mug shot of Linda Hamilton as "Sarah Connor" of the "The Terminator" films. To Parker, The Hillster isn't "the Manchurian Candidate," she is "The Terminator" Candidate. If this is a (fair & balanced) mixture of metaphors, so be it.

[x Orlando Fishwrap]
Hillary Clinton: Terminator IV
By Kathleen Parker

All politicians adapt and mold themselves to fit their audience, but Hillary Clinton has elevated the art of identity politics to a science of morphology.

She doesn't just show people what they want in order to convince them that she's their "man" — and we no longer use that word entirely metaphorically. She becomes the people she wants to sway.

Which prompts the question: Is she human or is she . . . cyborg?

In James Cameron's Terminator II: Judgment Day, the T-1000 android was made of liquid metal and could duplicate others. He "learned" a person by touching him and absorbing his data.

Hillary's life as a political spouse and candidate has been a kaleidoscope of shape-shifting and morphed identity. In the past 15 years, Americans have witnessed her transformation from a more feminine first lady to lately becoming a manly whiskey slugger with "testicular fortitude," as an Indiana labor leader recently described her.

In news stories and headlines, she's increasingly been described as tough, determined, gritty, a fighter. North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley said Clinton made "Rocky Balboa look like a pansy." James Carville, comparing Clinton's toughness to Obama's, told Newsweek: "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two."

While Obama continues trying to remain calm no matter what rains down on him, Clinton's putting up her dukes. His demeanor on Meet the Press last Sunday said, "Let's talk." Hers on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" the same day said, "Read my lips."

Clinton all but kicked sand in the face of her husband's former adviser. When Stephanopoulos asked about NAFTA, she stood from her armchair and seized the opportunity to remind viewers that Boy George used to work in the big house for the Clintons:

"George and I actually were against NAFTA," she said. "I'm talking about him in his previous life, before he was an objective journalist."

Do we hear a "hooah!"?

In other incarnations throughout the campaign, Clinton has been whatever and whoever she needed to be. She's shown that she can speak in gerunds with or without g's. She can summon an African-American pastor's cadence in church or produce tears in a coffee shop surrounded by working gals who are tired, too.

She's just Regular People and feels their pain in ways husband Bill could only whimper about. She touches her targets and becomes them.

Trying to appeal to the Second Amendment crowd, she remembers learning to shoot with her daddy and criticizes Obama with a mailing that features a type of gun that experts say does not exist. Trying to establish her regular-guy bona fides in Crown Point, Ind., she drinks with two fists, sipping a beer followed by a shot of Crown Royal.

You can hardly get her out of a pickup truck these days. Widely circulated photos show Clinton commuting to work with a sheet-metal worker in his white pickup, and giving a speech from the back of a red pickup.

No gun racks or Confederate flag stickers — risky territory for faux bubbas like the Clintons — but religious symbolism is fair game. In Pennsylvania, where Clinton successfully courted the Catholic vote, she wore a saints bracelet easily recognizable to Catholics.

Impressive, if appalling. But most impressive of all has been Clinton's metamorphosis into a man. She isn't only the alpha dog. She's Cujo.

Should Clinton continue her run, Americans have a feast before them as primaries remain in such manly states as Montana and South Dakota.

Think of the possibilities: Clinton recalling her family heritage as big-game hunters. Her great, great, great uncle Buffalo Bill? Or perhaps she might discover DNA linked to Crazy Horse. In Montana, Hillary astride a horse smoking a Marlboro is an irresistible, if improbable, image. But some dust-kickers and a little chaw might be in the cards.

Symbolism, gesture and style aren't everything in politics, but they're plenty, especially after more than a year of rhetoric and meaningless stats. The conscious mind can only absorb so much information, and public speakers know that what matters most is the impression they make, not the words they say.

Clinton has successfully established herself as the man in charge while the lithe and willowy Obama seems too elegant for the trenches. But even cyborgs are imperfect.

The T-1000 could duplicate appearances and voices, but he couldn't capture the soul of the human being. Eventually, people realized something wasn't quite right.

Often, alas, too late.

[Kathleen Parker is a conservative U.S. columnist whose columns frequently focus on family, sex roles, and race. Her column is syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group. Parker is also a consulting faculty member at the Buckley School of Public Speaking, and makes selective appearances on talking head shows like "The O'Reilly Factor" and "The Chris Matthews Show."]

Copyright © 2008 Orlando Sentinel

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The Irony Of It All

The Slickster was acclaimed as "this country's first black president" because of the African American political support he received and reciprocated. The Hillster was never accorded such recognition. No one ever called The Hillster the white equivalent of Coretta Scott King although both women may have shared the tribulation of spousal infidelity. Instead, a Democrat polemicist, Joe Conason, suggests another equivalency for The Hillster: George C. Wallace of Alabama. Perhaps The Hillster can revive the American Independent Party and prevent The Hopester's drive to the White House. If this is (fair & balanced) racial politics, so be it.

[x Salon]
Was Hillary channeling George Wallace?
Hillary's reckless exploitation of racial division could split the Democratic Party over race — a tragic legacy for the Clintons.
By Joe Conason

As long as Hillary Clinton is willing to spend the money and energy needed to continue her campaign, she certainly can ignore the pundits who insist that the Democratic nominating contest is over. What she should not ignore, however, is the damage that her increasingly reckless behavior is inflicting on her reputation and that of her husband — especially when she starts to sound like a reincarnation of the late George Wallace.

When Clinton blathered on about "totally obliterating" Iran in the event it made a nuclear strike against Israel, and then reiterated that same statement last weekend, she made what was, until then, the single most ill-considered comment of the campaign. But now USA Today has published an interview in which she explained again why she regards herself as a more viable general-election candidate than Barack Obama — except that this time, she crossed a bright white line.

Citing an Associated Press analysis "that found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me," she went on to say: "There's a pattern emerging here."

There is indeed a pattern emerging — and it is a pattern that must dismay everyone who admires the Clintons and has defended them against the charge that they are exploiting racial divisions.

As Sean Wilentz and others have argued, there was no ugly subtext to her innocuous remark about the different roles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Baines Johnson in the civil rights crusade, although several prominent Obama supporters promoted that smear. And if Bill Clinton's comparison of Obama and Jesse Jackson was badly timed and clumsy, that too fell within the bounds of acceptable commentary. Indeed, the discussion of ethnic and racial voting preferences is not only fair but unavoidable and utterly mundane in American politics.

But this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans" that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?

While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious meaning, she seemed to be equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans." Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying such things in public.

Of course, Nixon enjoyed a more commanding position politically than Clinton must now endure. She has been reduced to extolling her support from hardworking white folks — especially those who have "not completed college" — in an effort to prove that she can build a "broader coalition" in November than Obama.

On the merits of that argument, she could be correct. Despite Obama's appeal to a substantial number of independents and a dwindling number of Republicans, her chances to build an Electoral College majority may well be better than his are, owing to his difficulty in attracting white working-class voters. Yet the chance to make that case where it counts, in the ballot box and the caucus room, expired many weeks ago, when Obama's skillful operatives were organizing circles around the incompetent Clinton team.

It would be awful to see the Clintons depart this campaign with the stain of racial division among Democrats as their legacy. Over the past several months they have found themselves standing against the ambitions and talents of the first black American who could become president. In a situation that demanded sensitivity and caution, both they and their associates have too often spoken and acted carelessly. That the same charge can plausibly be made against the Obama camp does not absolve them.

The tragedy is that neither Clinton carries even the slightest racial animus, as their many African-American friends and colleagues would testify, no doubt. Bill Clinton's first and most dedicated political adversary in Arkansas was "Justice Jim" Johnson, a Klan-backed Democrat turned Republican who was that state's version of Wallace. The Clintons spent years working to defeat Johnson and everything he represented, and he repaid them with years of plotting, scheming and smearing as a cog in the Arkansas Project. He hated them, first and foremost, because they represented the Democratic Party's rejection of white supremacy in the South. As governor, it was Bill Clinton who erased the last vestiges of Jim Crow from the Arkansas Constitution.

So the Clintons probably understand the essential evil of racism better than most white politicians. They have certainly done more than most of today's white politicians to combat that evil. That is why, as they contemplate the conclusion of this campaign, they deserve better from themselves than to encourage doubt about their decency and character.

[Joe Conason is a journalist, author and political commentator, who usually holds liberal views. He writes a column for the weekly New York Observer newspaper, for Salon and has written a number of books, including Big Lies (2003), which addresses what Conason says are myths spread about liberals by conservatives.]

Copyright © 2008 Salon Media Group, Inc.

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