From Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi analyzes
(I never noticed before that the word, “analyze”, has the word, “anal” in it. Just an aside.)
Hillary-Barack, Barack-Hillary…What are the issues here? There really are none, unless you count their stands on the suspension of the “gas tax” as a major issue, because, other than that, their stances are very similar, which would explain why a culture war between the two is driving these supporters (especially in the Hillary camp) to become fanatical in the defense of their candidates.
Matt Taibbi addresses this in “Hillary’s Bitter Victory” from this week’s Rolling Stone.
Hillary made herself the champion of everything stylistically ordinary, superficially unimpressive and ignored. And while her opponent won all the attention and admiration, all the teen-idol gushings of the beautiful people, she went for something deeper — resentment at the lack of those same things. She took an opponent who was relentless in his attempts to remain genial, positive and unifying, and managed to turn him into a divisive villain, a symbol representing every oversexed winner who ever had it too easy at the pimply kid’s expense. It’s brilliant strategy, and it’s working so well that Hillary now has her crowds hurling catcalls at the mere mention of anything Obama. Moreover, she’s inspired such profound loyalty that her supporters no longer give a shit at all how they win, as long as they do. Like O.J. apologists who became overnight skeptics of DNA evidence, Clinton backers don’t see anything wrong with winning the nomination through a brokered convention, despite being behind in the popular vote and the delegate count.
Hillary has become the champion of every young girl, middle aged woman and grandmotherly type who has ever been wronged by a man (or the man). While Obama, on the other hand has made this mistake:
the Obama camp was so busy stewing over Bill Clinton’s comparison of Obama’s South Carolina win to Jesse Jackson’s and worrying about being painted as a “black candidate” that they forgot to worry about being painted as something even worse, in American political terms: the candidate of liberal intellectuals.
Taibbi ends with this sad summary which, contrary to what Exile wrote this morning, makes me fear for the reality that might greet us in November.
The result has been an epic clash, a war of cultural types that has nothing whatsoever to do with issues and everything to do with self-image. It’s become a pitched fight between the f***ed-over suburban little guy and the vilified intellectual, two groups that for years have felt put upon and dispossessed, for different reasons. The fact that their respective champions are identical superstar U.S. senators/multimillionaires makes the bitter hatred this schism is inspiring absurd, but it doesn’t make it any less real. Or likely to end anytime soon.
Now, I have a preference for who wins the nomination, but I will work my ass off for whoever gets the nod. I know, personally, several people who will stay home if their candidate is not nominated. I fear this headline on November 5th, Hillary (Obama) supporters stay home, McSame Wins Presidency.
This is sad. Really sad. Certainly they are entitled to do whatever they want - heck write themselves in. But sad - because President McSame will appoint Supreme Court Judges.
Personally - I suspect that at the conclusion of the primary season when the focus is on McSame - these people will come around. They will grow tired of McSame.
I have to say that I doubt very much if Hillary supporters stay home if Barack wins. They’ll pout and make everybody bend over backwards to feel bad for them, but they’ll vote eventually. Besides which, if the Democrats’ registration numbers are to be believed, it may not much matter if they vote or not.
Sadly, the ones who I know will stay home. And I know that the registration #s are up, but how much of that is Rush Limbaugh’s project “Chaos”? I would take nothing for granted.
Project Chaos is a farce. People can joke and people can say all kinds of things on the radio, but when push comes to shove, most regular Americans think too highly of the democratic process to mess with it in that way. Besides which, anger is generally a very easily-exhausted emotion which will not suffer so much effort as to actually register as a Dem and then vote in the primary. Most people will just stay home.
There’s also the demo she’s strongest in, the older white vote. I’ve heard first-hand, plenty of these folks will not vote for a “darkie” (that’s the actual phrase I’ve heard the most) as President. They will either stay home, or vote for McCain.
Wow, write this down, today, May 7th, 2008- dood and I agree.
The sad thing is, these people are either Independent, or “Democrats”.
A shared ticket would solve this issue. I also think that the states that Obama has won may not swing Democrat in November, which concerns me. I haven’t had time to go in and look at each state he has won but Hillary’s supporters are, I believe, more likely to choose McCain over Obama in certain parts of the country, not so much a race-based issue as a working class/blue collar one.
Forget the shared ticket. There’s no way that’s going to happen, and besides, if Obama wants to appeal to working class whitey, he can just tap John Edwards.
I mean, seriously: can you picture Hillary Clinton as second banana to anyone? She’ll try to steam-roller over her running mate, if her ego would even permit her accepting Vice President, which I don’t think it will.
From CNN: “Clinton eked out one of the narrowest wins of this primary season in Indiana based on her continued solid support among older voters. Obama won voters age 17-64 by 6 percentage points, a margin that paled in comparison with Clinton’s 38-point spread among voters 65 and older.”
That’s an awful lot of the 60’s generation that apparently as open-minded as we were led to believe. What would Jimi, Janis, and Jerry say?
I’m afraid that I know a few people who say that they won’t vote for Obama b/c of his race. They are all over the age of 80, however. It would be interesting to see the numbers of the 65+ voters broken down more specifically since that includes a couple of different generations.
Makes you kind of wonder if JFK, MLK, and RFK all died in vain, doesn’t it?
No, just makes me think that the change will come with today’s youth instead.
Oops, it should read; “aren’t as open-minded….”