One of the recurring themes in my guest posts (and comments) is that bloggers and commenters should always keep in mind that they are like “high information” voters and that others simply do not pay as much attention as we do to politics and policy. This is not elitism speaking. Rather, it is a recognition that other people have other pressing priorities in their lives.
Accordingly, I recommend Josh Marshall’s piece on the current dynamic of the Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama after the March 4th contests and the Samantha Power flap:
(S)ince then she’s just been slapping this guy around like crazy. She’s on the offense every day, dictating the terms of the discussion and getting results.
This “monster” thing is a good case in point. That’s a pretty over-the-top thing for a key campaign advisor to say. But what it tells me more than that is that the Clinton campaign has these guys rattled really bad. Some of this is no doubt due to the fact that Power is a bit out of her element. She’s more from the academic/policy world than the political/policy world. But, again, rattled. The Clinton folks have been bashing Obama like crazy. Now they follow up by explicitly demanding that Obama fire one of his key foreign policy advisors and … how, long did it take? An hour? And she’s gone.
***
As I’ve written before in different contexts, you can’t get distracted by the literalism of the moment. To understand how politicking works you need to look not at the often terribly silly discussion points of the unfolding debates. You need to look at the larger picture the engagement is telling people. And right now this one’s saying that Obama won’t fight back, that he’s easy to fluster, that he’s weak. And that’s precisely why Team Hillary is taking this tack.
This is particularly true in primaries, where the policy differences (with the exception of Iraq in this case) can be subtle to the point of meaninglessness to the casual viewer. Moreover, in this example, the perception that Clinton is fighting and Obama is not feeds the perception Clinton wants to create on the underlying issues of national security and such, i.e., that Obama is weak. It is a bonus situation for Clinton, as her campaign continues more on the basis of perception than the near-impossible math of trying to catch Obama in the delegate count.
But the general principle Marshall sets forth remains true in general elections, quite aside from this particular example. Political junkies in the thick of an argument sometimes need to step back to see the forest, because that is what many – perhaps most — voters see.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
Karl:
I agree with your opinion that for most people this primary season just doesn’t matter that much. During my one hour commute, I switch from stations talking about the presidential campaign to stations talking about spring training. I realize that only baseball and political fanatics probably care about this stuff as much as I do–or have two hours of interstate commute each day to kill!
The morale of this story: can’t play nice with Clintons, the treacherous family will always be ready to stab you in the back.
I just lift it up from the comments thread at Balloon Juice, when people were discussing her claim that she crossed the threshold to be an experienced CIC:
“Maybe you cross the commander-in-chief threshold when you taste another woman’s lipstick on your husband’s dick.”.
nasty comment, but Hillariously true.
I guess by going on offense, JMM means pointing out the patently obvious flaws with Barry O’s candidacy.
Karl – I am repeating myself, but your primary work here is really unparallelled.
Karl, I ditto JD on your almost daily comprehensive compilations and discussions of the primaries.
[…] the dead have seen the end of primary politicking. Karl at Protein Wisdom with some deep thots on […]
I don’t fully buy into Marshall’s theory, or at least not his implied solution for Obama. It seems to me that Obama has painted himself into a corner on this issue; he and his campaign have argued for months that they are not like all the other “nasty politicians.” They are better than that…they stand aside from Washington’s historic culture, and are for everything feelgood that has ever existed, blah, blah, blah. All that baloney now makes it more than a little hard to strike back and start appearing no different than any other pol that wanders down the road.
It’s messed up cause I think it gets all conflated. Baracky says when he’s president he will talk to monsters and listen to their views.
Clinton Has Exposed Obama’s Inexperience
…
@2 I seriously doubt that item has ever been on Hillary’s menu. When the child was conceived they threw away the turkey baster, would be my bet.
Karl – I am repeating myself, but your primary work here is really unparallelled.
Double ditto.
Thanks again, all. I figure the best way for me to help Jeff keep the doors open is to go with one of my (alleged) strengths.
Karl – I am repeating myself, but your primary work here is really unparallelled.
Double ditto.
Heavens, Karl (and many others here) allow me to be much more informed than I might otherwise be. Thanks.
Obama wants politics to be a celebration of hisself, and when Clinton says she’s not having it, he really doesn’t know what to do. It’s like he’s driven all the way to Wally World and sorry folks the moose says the park’s closed. Hilarity ensues is my guess.
ring
I’ll get it.
No, I’ll get it.
No way, you suck. Don’t answer that.
I’m answering it.
Jesus. Remember what happened last time you got it?
I’ve never gotten it before. It’s just my turn is all.
You should let me answer it first cause I used to watch Bill do this all the time and you can learn.
Racist.
Dick.
I was just listening to an except from Obama’s speak and was struck by this thought: How boring.
I as much as anybody else has been taken in by the happy, shiney changytude delivered with preacher fervency, complete with squealing and fainting. Now, after a long primary season, he’s not only empty of substance, he’s pretty much saying exactly the same things over and over. One is left to wonder whether others who are at least tangentially informed on politics may start to realise the emptiness of the message and, as a result, the vapidity of the messenger.
Delivery is an important part of politics and can carry a candidate a long way but when the rubber meets the general election road chewing on a dry bone with no meat tends to lose its allure.
HF – again, you are killing me. I am sitting here in the peanut gallery at gymnastics class laughing, and the MILF’s are looking at me like “why is that stallion laughing”?
BJ – Barry O is the actual embodiment of form over substance.
It seems to me in this day and age that it’s alot more difficult to hide your true colors. There is plenty of evidence, both audio and video, of Obama’s far left positions on a variety of issues, especially foreign policy and defense. One wonders if his hopeeness on the economy and social policies can continue to mask his innate socialism.
Delivery is an important part of politics and can carry a candidate a long way but when the rubber meets the general election road chewing on a dry bone with no meat tends to lose its allure.
Great. Now I have to get the image of a rubber meeting a road while chewing on a meatless, dry bone out of my head.
But seriously, folks…I want Obama to last until Denver. I want to watch lefty crazies make it ’68 again. I want to see certified malicious liar Al Sharpton interviewed on MSNBC and punching hissy Chrissy in the face. I want superdelegates to do what they were designed to do, protect the Democrat Party from its base. I want to see the excitement, the pain, the hypocrisy, the triumph of one guilt over the other as the superdelegates reject the popular-vote-winning but unsubstantial changeytudinous gas bag in favor of the sameytudinous, pseudo-experienced monster hag.
Is it too much to ask?
I’m guessing the hopey-changey flocks won’t mind seeing their Messiah do what it takes to vanguish the Monster – which He has to do regardless. Those tax returns might be fertile, though “not quite soon enough yet”. – Yogi Berra
[I’m a “dittohead”, too, Karl.]
But seriously, folks…I want Obama to last until Denver. I want to watch lefty crazies make it ‘68 again….
Now that’s my kind of Happy Meal. Watching the Progs bear their own fruits…ummm ummm, good.
Well said, you old Geezer.
Geezer: Sorry about that. Play some Zappa and it will wash that image right out of your head.
I’m with you. the best way to break the veil of changytudinous hopeliscious is to have the Clinton cartel do all of the heavy lifting. It remains the only chance she has to wrest the nomination and she’s already seen some progress in that regard.
It appears that neither of them will have sufficient delegates to close out the nomination by convention time, which leaves plenty of room for intrigue, chaos and activism.
That’s good advice that Marshall imparts, but the insight regarding the Obama campaign isn’t that penetrating, considering that Power stated specifically that they’d “fucked up” in TX and OH, right before dropping her H-Bomb.
Where, oh where,
Are you tonight?
Why did you leave me
Here all alone?
I looked around Cambridge
And thought I’d found counsel:
You dropped an H-Bomb
And Plouffe, you were gone!
That’s a pretty over-the-top thing for a key campaign advisor to say.
But see, it really isn’t. It was just a good excuse to fire her so it looked like they were taking the high road and they could take the emphasis off teh real stoopid what she actually got fired for, and Josh know that too.
*knows*
Geezer: Sorry about that. Play some Zappa and it will wash that image right out of your head.
Will The Fugs suffice?
“I want to watch lefty crazies make it ‘68 again….”
Humphrey was the hack knighted by the ‘moderate’ factions that counsel
mediation now, as in ’68. The crazies wanted a Dem who would take them home from an unpopular war and they got a Republican who promised to end it. Ironic, isn’t it.
It culminated in a burglary of worldwide infamy. Be careful what you wish for…………….
The war tried to sit with us at lunch today and we were all like NO WAY. I mean, can you believe?
Ironic, isn’t it.
What, that you never learn? Ironic in a sad way, I guess.
I are in ur thread Karl, puttin huge chunk frums Nation.
Jesus but you just can’t get more Hugo than that.
Meanwhile Jeff is rolling around on the ground with snarly tattoo people. We really need his help I think.
Alinsky would advise Obama to skip the balls. That in and of itself would be a new-page statement
Uh, no new there. Just Jhimmah Carter revisited (who had an inaugural picnic instead)
People reaching, people touching
A real celebration
Waiting for us all
If we want it, really want it
Can you dig it (yes, I can)
And I’ve been waiting such a long time
– Well whatever anyone wants to think about Obama being “on the ropes”, Qyoming returns at 76% of the vote in, hes leading by 19 points. With on two precincts left to be counted, it looks like he’ll maintain pretty close his present leas. Mississippi will go to Obama as well, so Clintons “momentum” could be gone as fast as it appeared. Those Florida and Mich. delegates are looming larher and larger in importance, and even there the best she can hope for is an even split.
– I am absolutely delighted with the traing wreck that is the Dem primaries, similar to the “Quagmire” in Iraq, except in the Dem primaries case its actually true.
Wyoming is a caucus, no? Obama has swept those so far, why should this one be any different?
He could have just said cadre. Everyone would have gotten the picture.
The Hopey Changey Happy Squad!!! Yay!
the MILF’s are looking at me like “why is that stallion laughing�
JD – If the guys at the meeting gave you a lapel pin award to recognize your outstanding humility, would you wear it?
Comment by Semanticleo on 3/8 @ 12:24 pm #
semen, do you speak English?
Carter had no balls? What else is new?
Besides the fact, that was the most tone deaf way of stating a real insight
into the Clinton campaign; in addtion, to evincing the most imcomplete understanding of how word wide media works, since Sen. Steven’s colloquey on the internet,” being a series of tubes” This is what a Harvardprofessor says for attribution in the midst of a presidential campaign. Besides the obvious, could did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln.
In addition, if Valenti’s Cheyenne is for you; You’re doing something wrong if you are the Democratic candidate
( a shout out to paranoid Jericho truther trolls, everywhere)
Re Mississippi and Wyoming – whatever. HRC can, and will, say that those two states aren’t going to deliver their Electoral College votes to any Democrat in November. Obama’s victories there, and for that matter in Idaho and Utah and South Carolina, are entirely irrelevant.
Mind you, if HRC makes that argument and wins over the supers with it, then she’ll have effectively declared the Democrats to be a regional party.
Look, you’re all brilliant (and I read alot of blogs – so I know whereof I speak), but seriously, I want to be on a listserve so every time HF writes a comment somewhere I can read it – (laughing on a very snowy day, way too early in the morning…)
In terms of the November election, quite correct.
At this stage, though, what matters are Dem convention delegates — and all of those states have them.
“narciso” wrote:
What?
WHAT?
Do you even understand what’s intended to be communicated by the series of characters you’ve inserted into this thread?
Christ, how do people who write like that even find their way to blogs?
– The Big tent is about to become the Big *M*A*S*H* field unit, as the Clintonesta’s assert raw power to game the nominations, and the hard Lefters go berserk. The smell of identity politics in the morning. Problem is, the Dems do not have a Lieberman to stem the bleeding, and Blood is proving to be thicker than gender.
– As for the true political power in the whole mess, the media, as much as it might seem that they are schitzoid in first backing Oramabama, and switching over to the Hildebeast last week, its all about keeping the parade going for sales. OTOH, that bolsters the idea that the MSM is more about sensationalism, and less about ideology. Proving they have bo allegence to the party or the Left, the Clinton camp did another double cross by switching to moderate outlets like FOX, ect., the ultinate insult to the moonbat brigade. Apparently someone finally noticed they’d get 8 times the viewership. Conneticut should have proven to the tinhats that they are a limp noodle on the national stage, but as Feets would say: “This bunch doesn’t seem to be very smart type people”. The only thing left to put this whole cycle in the dipsy dumpster. woould be for sKerry to endorse McCain. At least it would be an open admission that there are in fact, three Liberals running for President.
– Me, I’m loving it.