What Hilzoy Said

In catching up on some blog reading today, I noticed that Hilzoy had written a post last week making essentially the same point I tried to make last night (and much more eloquently). The whole post is worth a read, but I'll quote some of the highlights:

[W]hile my main reasons for opposing Clinton involve policy (see above), I also think that to nominate her would be to throw away a political opportunity that comes along once in a generation. . . .

I think, not particularly originally, that many voters have become disenchanted with the Republican Party. For this reason, if I had to bet now on the outcome of the election, I would bet on the Democrat. What I'm not at all clear on is how the Democrat will win. And how we win matters immensely. On the one hand, I think this election could genuinely change people's views about the two parties in ways that could reshape the political landscape. On the other, it could not. And a lot depends on how the Democrats play their hand.

When people talk about what would happen if Hillary Clinton were nominated, some of us, myself included, note that a sizable number of voters dislike Hillary Clinton, and will continue to dislike her whatever she does. We could argue about whether this is fair or unfair, but it seems to be a fact, and as such, it should be taken into account, at least if we're serious about winning. . . .

In this context, I think that nominating Hillary Clinton would be a disastrous mistake. Of all the people whom we are at all likely to nominate, she is the one whom people would be most inclined to believe the worst of. Some of those people -- the ones who thought the Clintons had Vince Foster killed and hung crack pipes on their Christmas trees -- are presumably unreachable by Democrats. But others -- the ones who don't pay close attention to these things, and came away from the 1990s with a vague sense that the Clintons were just plain sleazy -- are people we can reach.

If we nominate Hillary Clinton, then I assume that the Republicans will go after her, and that they will not restrict themselves to attacking her policies and her record. When they do, then all those people who are already inclined to think the worst of Hillary Clinton will, for that reason, be prepared to find those attacks believable. Stories about her sleaziness, her underhandedness, her cold and calculating nature, etc., will be a lot less likely to strike them as implausible, overreaching, mean-spirited, malicious, or vile. And that means that the chances that people will see standard Republican attacks for what they are are dramatically reduced.

By contrast, if we nominate someone whom people like that are not antecedently disposed to think the worst of, that will have two good effects. First, those attacks will be less likely to be believed, since the Republican establishment will not have spent the better part of two decades preparing the ground for them. Second, in order to get people to the same point of loathing, they will have to attack harder.

Both of these things -- the fact that any given attack will be less likely to be believed by ordinary, reachable people, and the fact that the Republicans will therefore have to attack harder to produce the same effects -- make it much, much more likely that people will see those attacks for what they are. They therefore make it much more likely that this election will genuinely change the political landscape.

I agree with all of that. I also agree with virtually everything Hilzoy says in this follow up post.