Two Against One
If I were Hillary Clinton, I would be very worried about the post-Iowa strategy that John Edwards seems to have adopted.
On Countdown tonight, Keith Olberman interviewed John Edwards (click here for the video; the relevant part starts at about 4:30), and in that interview, as he did in his post-caucus speech, Edwards went out of his way to align himself ideologically with Obama and contrast himself with Clinton. Here are some of the key quotes:
Needless to say, that's a really bad sign for Clinton. It creates a two-against-one dynamic. Both Edwards and Obama will be telling voters--voters who overwhelming want change--that Clinton represents the status quo. Moreover, even if Clinton can manage to survive New Hampshire and force Edwards to drop out, it seems highly likely--based on his comments here--that Edwards would eventually throw his support toward Obama, not Clinton.
And if Edwards supporters coalesce around Obama, Hillary is toast.
On Countdown tonight, Keith Olberman interviewed John Edwards (click here for the video; the relevant part starts at about 4:30), and in that interview, as he did in his post-caucus speech, Edwards went out of his way to align himself ideologically with Obama and contrast himself with Clinton. Here are some of the key quotes:
I think the headline is the two change candidates won and the status quo was rejected.That last quote is particularly significant. The Clinton campaign was no doubt hoping that Edwards would focus his fire on Obama now that he has emerged as the front-runner. But it looks like the Edwards campaign has different plans. Edwards is focusing his fire on Clinton, trying to liken himself to Obama and contrast himself with Clinton.
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This is a change primary.
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Senator Obama is a change candidate--by any measure--and so am I . . . .
...
I think Senator Clinton is different; I think she is the status quo.
...
Between the three of us, I think the most important thing is that we nominate a candidate--and I think it's either myself or Senator Obama--who will actually fight for the changes we need.
Needless to say, that's a really bad sign for Clinton. It creates a two-against-one dynamic. Both Edwards and Obama will be telling voters--voters who overwhelming want change--that Clinton represents the status quo. Moreover, even if Clinton can manage to survive New Hampshire and force Edwards to drop out, it seems highly likely--based on his comments here--that Edwards would eventually throw his support toward Obama, not Clinton.
And if Edwards supporters coalesce around Obama, Hillary is toast.
posted by A.L. at 11:11 PM
26 Comments:
I predict that the media have time to promote two more flavors of the month before super-duper Tuesday. Those two will be Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. Wait for the New Hampshire feeding frenzy to die down and we'll start getting stories about both campaigns valiantly re-tooling their messages and making steady progress. Mind you, they won't quite have made up lost ground by February 5--it will be very dramatic! Don't miss a minute of the coverage!
Meanwhile, we're not quite through dumping on Hillary or ignoring Rudy.
Hillary absolutely needs Edwards out of the race, or at least knee capped to such a degree that he draws in single digits on Super Tuesday. And as you say, this particular tactic of Edwards' is double damaging to her.
It would appear that Edwards is thinking it would be easier cutting into Hillary's establishment and older demographic groups than Obama's youth and independent demo groups.
I believe Hillary is already toast, regardless of anything the dwarf Edwards decides to do.
I have vivid memories of the national swooning over JFK, and until now I have not seen anything remotely like it. JFK, of course, was facing an incumbent vice president; Obama will face nothing so formidable. My humble opinion is that Obama has not only sealed the nomination, but the election as well. And I'm entirely sober, cross my heart.
This evening I watched the NH Dem Party's "100 Club Dinner" fundraiser on C-Span. They had the biggest turnout ever. All of the major candidates gave speeches except those who have already dropped out and Edwards. John Edwards did not even attend, but sent his wife.
Throughout the event, whenever any mention of "change" ot "Obama" or any mention of the additional youth vote in Iowa came up the crown went WILD.
When Hillary's turn to speak, her reception was a little more than lukewarm. When Obama spoke (and closed out the evening,) the crowd couldn't stop cheering and screaming. It was insane. Among the Democratic insiders at this event, it appears the winner has already been chosen. It's Obama. By the way, he had a new speech for them and it was very good.
Most interesting was the absence of Edwards though. Makes me wonder if Edwards and Obama have plans to do Hillary in - quickly. Don't be too surprised if Edwards joins the Obama camp and drops from the race. Perhaps he would be happy running as Veep again. It would be a great ticket.
Addendum to my above comment...
Time's Swampland wrote it up as "Hillary Booed at NH Democratic Party Dinner." Read it. I just re-watched it on C-Span and she definitely was. When it came time to announce Obama, the crowd got so wild with excitement that the Secret Service delayed his entry and made the announcer insist that everyone be seated for security concerns. This was a big $$ fund raising dinner for the state party. It seemed like (almost) everyone there was there to support Obama.
You can find video of the dinner at c-span.org. Sorry, no link.
I think you analysis is a bit off. Anyone with half a brain will see Iowa's caucus voters as having placed Edwards WITH Clinton, not with Obama. Second, I don't think anyone likely to vote for a Democrat agreeing with the talking point "status quo" bunk. The status quo has been a near dictatorial executive branch focused on trampling it's 'subjects' and warmongering all others. Clinton will not do the same and everybody knows this. Clinton's experience and moderate positions are her strong points...and they are being used against her. I think we have seen this tired method in the past.
Folks..we are in good shape. Clinton, Obama or Edwards..we are in good shape. The only way we lose this thing is to drag our candidates thru the mud so much thay are DOA for November. Can we all just knock off the "analysis"?
Anonymous Coward-
"Anyone with half a brain will see"
... that you are an idiot.
Edwards' campaign this time is itself being intentionally used as an implement of change. For example, his campaign swing thorugh poor neighborhoods was meant to illustrate the plight of the poor as much as it was to identify the candidate.
I take Edwards at his word. The Change is his priority, not who brings it. Yes, he wants to be president. Yes, he wants it to be his change. But I believe he has his priorities straight.
And for what it's worth, I believe he is absolutely correct. Obama and Edwards do represent some degree of true change. Clinton does not.
So there was Hillary on the stage after getting thumped in Iowa. To her left stood Bubba. To her right stood the alarmingly strange, rotund homunculus Madeleine Albright. And Hillary droned on, with an actual straight face, about "change." Only a man with a heart of stone could fail to laugh out loud.
Edwards is running like the unctuous plaintiffs' tort lawyer that he is. His world view is one of villains, of "corporate greed" (whatever that means) and its effect on Americans (whatever effect that is). He is a loser, rightly ticketed to oblivion.
Obama is running on a theme of optimism, of national unity and reconciliation. He is on to something, and he is going to win.
The Era of Big Clintonism is over.
Hillary was making the point that she has been working for change for 30 years (or something like that). Of course, this begs the question of whether what she has been doing for 30 years is what Americans want change from.
Change is a popular word these days but what does it mean? I have not heard any of the candidates using it really offer anything but a superficial explanation as to what they mean. Change simply for change sake isn't always the wisest course. They need to fill in the blanks. Obama in particular tends to use a lot of grand sounding generalities with little substance at this point. As for trial lawyer being a dirty word, I would refer you to the text of Elizabeth Edwards taking Chris Mathews down on that topic. The best Mathews could come up with is the trial lawyers ran all the bartenders out of Pennsylvania. Mabye the best thing that can happen is for Obama to be nominated and we get to see at last whether racism is really dead in this country. Sadly, I doubt it.
I think this analysis is completely backward. It's true that Edwards and Obama both "represent" change, but this dynamic certainly does NOT work against Hillary. If Edwards was out of the race, Obama would be the runaway winner.
I've felt for a long time that Edwards has been working under the table as an instrument of the Clinton campaign as a way to divide the anti-Clinton vote.
"...for a long time that Edwards has been working under the table as an instrument of the Clinton campaign as a way to divide the anti-Clinton vote."
what an odd thing to say.
seriously, folks. edwards will be out of the race in a few weeks, as it's very likely he won't win a single primary. our next president (since a republican almost certainly cannot win in 08) will be decided by where edwards' support goes after his withdrawal.
my guess would be that obama will roll to victory. the media spent a year framing hillary as a shoe-in. as a result, we were guaranteed to be talking about obama's "momentum," because anything less than a blowout in iowa had to be a "disappointment" for hillary.
the rest of the primary will be a contrast between obama's crowd-pleasing rhetoric and hillary's crowd-numbing pragmatism.
seems to me that hillary is toast already.
seriously, folks. edwards will be out of the race in a few weeks, as it's very likely he won't win a single primary. our next president (since a republican almost certainly cannot win in 08) will be decided by where edwards' support goes after his withdrawal.
This is an odd prediction to make, as well. He loses in the first primary so the conclusion is that he won't win any. Have you a sense of the history of the relationship of primaries to nominations? In both 1988 and 1992, the Democrat who won the Iowa caucus did not win the nomination. Pat Buchanan won NH in 96 as did McCain in 2000. Don't read so much truth into media predictions!
I don't have anything beyond a gut feeling, but I think Obama has more to fear from Edwards than he does from Clinton. Obama has been playing the vague middle for the past six months and (I think) is truly vulnerable to a pincer maneuver.
The candidate will be who the media chooses. Already, they have eliminated both Kucinich and Paul from the race because of their anti-corporate stance and Kucinich's single payer health plan. They are marginalizing Edwards because of his anti-corporate talk. Neither Obama or Clinton have taken a true populist stand against a plutocracy in this country. No talk about the continuing shift of wealth to the very richest, no talk of the continuing loss of jobs to other countries, no talk of major media getting more control of the air waves. These are the rich man's candidates. It only remains to see which they decide will get the nod.
The candidate will be who the media chooses.
I'm not nearly so pessimistic. Do you not recall the headlines from just one week ago? Hillary was going to trounce everybody so badly that her opponents were publicizing images of her that showed lots of wrinkles.
Maybe you take this to mean that the media had turned against her already, but the stories do not bear this out. She was the favorite, with a "maybe" for Obama.
I don't know where you get this "anti-corporate" appraisal of Ron Paul or any of your other "reasons" for candidates getting marginalized. They sound like personal causes and confirmation bias. Furthermore, there is no "true" populist stand, there is only more or less.
All candidates are rich man's candidates. The real task is to find the one(s) that go beyond that. Just because someone is privileged doesn't mean you have to shut your brain off.
what an odd thing to say.
What exactly is odd about it. It's a straightforward look at who actually benefits from Edwards' campaign.
If Obama loses to Hillary in New Hampshire, Edwards will have played the Nader role.
Neutral, Edwards' world is also inhabited by victims--not just by corporate villians. It's part of his stump speech. Surely you've heard it. Not all victims are wealthy middle-aged conservative (and mysteriously powerless and oppressed) white men, Neutral. Some actually have a basis for complaint.
"If Obama loses to Hillary in New Hampshire, Edwards will have played the Nader role."
Just because Republican's are ruining the economy doesn't mean it's time to foreclose on the future.
Eh says
"I don't know where you get this "anti-corporate" appraisal of Ron Paul or any of your other "reasons" for candidates getting marginalized. They sound like personal causes and confirmation bias. Furthermore, there is no "true" populist stand, there is only more or less."
Could the fact that Paul raised a record amount of money in a short amount of time and the fact that he did as well as he did in Iowa give a hint that when he was denied participation in the N.H. debates it could be because the corporate media don't like him? Could his stance on changing the tax laws in a way that would disadvantage the corporate wealthy also be a clue as to why he was denied a place at the table?f Of course Kucinich's proposal for single payer health care would not influence the health insurance corporate giants to do everything they can to stifle him would it. No, those are just pipe dreams.
Casual Observer, I've seen enough plaintiffs' lawyers to know what kinds of "victims" attract their attention. And I just heard Edwards identify some of the victims as the 200,000 veterans who sleep under bridges every night. Funny, but I haven't seen a single one of them. In any event, most adults now recognize that if you hurt "big corporations," in addition to hurting the officers and directors, you also hurt the employees and the shareholders (who now comprise about half the population). If you honestly believe that, say, oil companies or pharmaceuticals attract and employ a singularly evil sort of person--more evil than motion picture studios, or windmill-makers--you're entitled to that belief, but I think you're in a distinct minority.
I detect a pattern in all three Democrat candidates: If a threat is very real and very deadly, they want to talk. If the threat is illlusory, they want to "fight" it. How very courageous of them.
"Neutral" is a very interesting moniker given the positions you express. I don't know what climate you live in, but here in a temperate zone we have a number of people sleeping under bridges and anyplace else they are not rousted from. The police just made a sweep through a cardboard city last week as they were afraid the number of campers was getting to high. Now I have no idea if any of these people are veterans but I think it would be a safe bet that a certain percentage are. I think it says something about a society that can spend billions on agression but will not do what it takes to get its own citizens off the street. I am old enough to remember that before Reagan, a grocery cart had only one purpose, to carry your groceries to you car. Then Governor Reagan closed all of the state run mental institutions claiming it was better for the inmates to be back in their communities. That sounded reasonable, unfortunately, he was not willing to spend any money on facilities in those communities to treat these people and they wound up out on the streets,sedated walking zombies. So much for compassionate conservatism. Grocery carts had a new use.
shorter neutral:
homelessness doesn't exist and we shouldn't hurt billionaire CEO's because then their underlings would get EVEN TINIER shares of the wealth they generate. also something about threats and courage.
I see Edwards as the most interesting ploy.
It's seems obvious to me that he's relying on Hilary to put chinks into Obama's armor while she's on her way out the door.
Once she's gone, people will begin to realize that Obama loses in most polls in head to head match-ups with John McCain. At that point, the intoxication buzz now circling Obama might wain and along comes Edward...
Neutral, I imagine plaintiff's lawyers like the kind of victims whose cases they can win in court. By that, I mean in front of a judge, and maybe a jury.
Don't you believe in that system? And if you do, how can that system possibly hurt corporations?
Should John Edwards leave the race, I will not be one of his supporters who will flock to Obama's campaign - or Hillary's for that matter.
Both Hillary and Obama suffer from the same thing: Denial. And in doing so, both look less than honest (in her case), and less than ready to be president (in his case).
Obama is smart and intelligent. There's no doubt. But he is not ready to be President and he is naive and he is inexperienced. Why can't he just say so? We all know it, but it seems like he doesn't know it and that's why he's not ready. We're just getting over the last on-the-job-trainee with no real resume and no real experience - George W. Bush. Besides, is Obama really about change or is that what his Clintonesque strategists thought would work best against his lack of experience? Well, change for the sake of change is not change, it's just...change, damn it.
And Hillary. Well, the problem with Hillary is that it takes a disaster in her village to raise her from the just-another-limousine-elitist-liberal-dead. Case in point: Iowa, and then the come-to-Jesus-turn-around in New Hampshire. The woman is so experienced and confident that she just won't listen to anybody!
We have some serious ass issues here, people, and fancy slogans about change just aren't enough - and shouldn't be enough. I don't care how many under 30-years olds need a hero. Buy a comic book. We need competence and we need results, not feel-good pablum left over from a Ronald Reagan stump speech.
Edwards? Yeah, I supported him 4 years ago and haven't heard or seen anything from anyone this time around to make me change my mind. The guy will get up every day and challenge the "way-it's-been." He won't bolt for the nearest compromise room either when the going gets tough to ensure his re-electability either. He'll stand and fight. Besides, we all know that compromise today is the just the slow,inevitable bad policy coming to fruition somewhere, sometime, that ends up screwing the average person without even kissing him or her first.
The phone corporations have been protected from invading our privacy; the insurance companies have tort reform now to protect them from bad medical decisions; the banks and financial institutions have the Fed to help bail them out of the sub-prime mess; the Fed protects the corporations by lowering the interest rates again so they can borrow their way out off their greedy missteps and pass the cost-of-doing-business on to the rest of us; the lopsided trade policies are protected while consumers' children are poisoned with toys, our food chain contaminated with often fatal substances, and plastic bottles and other utensils are now being questioned to contain harmful chemicals; Wall Street is protected with federally backed (taxpayers!) monies.
The question is: Who's protecting US from THEM?
It's a myth that to challenge a corporation is to hurt your own job, income, etc. What's a myth is that we actually make anything in this country anymore, and that the majority of the next generation, and the one after that, will NOT HAVE A POT TO PISS IN WITHOUT THEIR PARENTS' HELP!
Two years ago when the Fed spigot was turned on and left running to the tune of billions for Katrina victims in the South (and, indeed, it initally needed to be), I could not help but wonder when corporate hurricanes blew away 500,000 good paying jobs between Michigan and Ohio, why it was not considered a disaster? And I don't recall anyone outside those states taking up a collection or sending people to help rebuild those two states. Hell, if Michigan had not ignored the DNC, and Michigan's Governor had not been on CNN this week telling us how her state was hurting for the last 8 years, would anyone outside the area have known? Or cared?
For all the information outlets floating around out here these days, we sure remain a politically naive and indifferent bunch here in America. I'm tired of the same bunch of elitists who have gone to all the right schools, or have been born into certain families, male or female, black or white, practicing their own brand of patronizing bullshit on the rest of us.
Like John Edwards says, When this is over, all of us up here will be just fine. But will you? Will the American people?"
And the answer is, "No, no, we won't be just fine, John," And isn't that a shame?
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