But it's not fair . . .
Over the last few weeks, as it's become increasingly clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee, I've noticed a real sense of grievance take hold among many of Hillary Clinton's most ardent supporters, particularly her female supporters. There's a real sense, I think, that this outcome is somehow deeply unfair, that Clinton--the more experienced and accomplished female applicant--is being passed over for the job in lieu of the younger, less experienced, and more charismatic male.
Given how often that particular scenario has played itself out in American offices and workplaces over the years, I understand why people might come to view this race that way, especially women who have experienced that kind of sexism first hand. That said, the analogy itself is totally absurd.
First, and most obviously, the nomination fight is not supposed to be a meritocracy. If it was, Clinton would have long ago lost the race to candidates like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson, all of whom have way more experience than she does and many more political accomplishments to their name. Clinton may be older than Obama, but her governmental resume isn't all that much longer than his, and both have far less experience than most of the other candidates in the race (and in past presidential races for that matter).
To put it another way, unlike promotions at work, elections are supposed to be popularity contests. That's the whole idea. There's nothing unfair about voters choosing the more charismatic, inspirational candidate. That's how things work in politics. It's the reason her husband--who was younger than Obama and had less national experience--came to be elected President.
Those Clinton supporters who think the outcome of this race is unfair also seem oblivious to the larger picture. Going into this race Clinton had every advantage. She was the establishment candidate. Among other things, she had the backing of hundreds of super delegates, a vast network of donors, and all of the top campaign staff. And it's not as if she ended up losing to some good old boy who used his connections to screw her out of the job. She lost to an insurgent outsider, a man who wasn't given much of a shot to win, a man who--by the way--is now poised to become the first black candidate to win the nomination of a major party.
So the notion that Clinton somehow got cheated out of something she deserved strikes me as an indefensible proposition. She going to lose and she will have lost fair and square.
It's funny. If Clinton supporters are filled with bitterness over the current outcome, imagine how they would react if she held an insurmountable lead in elected delegates and her opponent was trying to snatch victory away from her by 1) counting votes and delegates earned in unofficial contests which no one campaigned in and which weren't supposed to count, 2) awarding her zero votes and zero delegates in one of those states because her name was not on the ballot, and 3) trying to convince the party establishment (super delegates) to overturn her victory among elected delegates and award the nomination to her opponent. My guess is that everyone would be screaming bloody murder.
Given how often that particular scenario has played itself out in American offices and workplaces over the years, I understand why people might come to view this race that way, especially women who have experienced that kind of sexism first hand. That said, the analogy itself is totally absurd.
First, and most obviously, the nomination fight is not supposed to be a meritocracy. If it was, Clinton would have long ago lost the race to candidates like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Bill Richardson, all of whom have way more experience than she does and many more political accomplishments to their name. Clinton may be older than Obama, but her governmental resume isn't all that much longer than his, and both have far less experience than most of the other candidates in the race (and in past presidential races for that matter).
To put it another way, unlike promotions at work, elections are supposed to be popularity contests. That's the whole idea. There's nothing unfair about voters choosing the more charismatic, inspirational candidate. That's how things work in politics. It's the reason her husband--who was younger than Obama and had less national experience--came to be elected President.
Those Clinton supporters who think the outcome of this race is unfair also seem oblivious to the larger picture. Going into this race Clinton had every advantage. She was the establishment candidate. Among other things, she had the backing of hundreds of super delegates, a vast network of donors, and all of the top campaign staff. And it's not as if she ended up losing to some good old boy who used his connections to screw her out of the job. She lost to an insurgent outsider, a man who wasn't given much of a shot to win, a man who--by the way--is now poised to become the first black candidate to win the nomination of a major party.
So the notion that Clinton somehow got cheated out of something she deserved strikes me as an indefensible proposition. She going to lose and she will have lost fair and square.
It's funny. If Clinton supporters are filled with bitterness over the current outcome, imagine how they would react if she held an insurmountable lead in elected delegates and her opponent was trying to snatch victory away from her by 1) counting votes and delegates earned in unofficial contests which no one campaigned in and which weren't supposed to count, 2) awarding her zero votes and zero delegates in one of those states because her name was not on the ballot, and 3) trying to convince the party establishment (super delegates) to overturn her victory among elected delegates and award the nomination to her opponent. My guess is that everyone would be screaming bloody murder.
posted by A.L. at 10:05 PM
7 Comments:
Very, very well stated. I sat down to watch CSPAN for a few moments, and Hillary was talking to people in Florida. She was likening the current debate on how to seat Florida and Michigan to the 2000 election results. That's a really dishonest comparison. While the voters aren't to blame, sure, Hillary is taking the accountability away from the state chairs that decided to step outside of policies. What Hillary WON'T say is that the people in charge were aware of the consequences but did it anyway.
And, like you said, Hillary's clinging to this last point because she doesn't have much else: a mathematical chance to take the lead in delegate votes currently in field, a chance to reconnect with superdelegates already endorsing Obama, and gradual slipping of her "core" supports. One report revealed that almost all the advantage groups Hillary once claimed are breaking even with or leaning toward Obama now.
She should bow out gracefully to prove that she WILL rally around the eventual nominee -- which won't be her.
Clinton has begun actively fostering a sense of grievance among her female supporters by suggesting that sexism is the reason she has not prevailed in the primaries. It is not the first time that she has exploited her gender to promote or defend herself.
As early as November, the Clinton campaign suggested that the male candidates in the field were "piling on" her because she was a woman; and she sought more than once to distinguish herself by referring to the others collectively as the "boys club."
Meanwhile, as you point out, it is impossible to imagine a presidential contender whose candidacy ever began with more inherent advantages than Hillary Clinton. That she failed to capitalize on them to win the nomination isn't sexism. It's politics.
On Tuesday, 20 percent of the people who voted for Clinton in the Kentucky primary admitted that they were voting against Barack Obama primarily because of the color of his skin. I have yet to hear him utter one word about how unfair it is to him that there is racism in America. He has not invoked racial prejudice to explain a single one of his primary defeats. Never once did he complain about the obvious media bias that caused news outlets to howl about Jeremiah Wright, but barely make a peep about John Hagee and Rod Parsely. The Wright flap was a singularly outrageous example of manufactured controversy, but Obama never whined about it. He faced it head on and came out the other side with a majority of pledged delegates and superdelegates, the very people who were supposed to have been scared away by the scary black man's scary black pastor. And let us not forget Sen. Clinton's own efforts to exploit the fears of White Americans with her own comments about Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan.
The "sexism" charge is just another rationale to explain the Inevitable Hillary Clinton's failure to win the nomination that she seemed to think she was entitled to. The shame of it is that there are thousands of women every day who have their lives and work assaulted and degraded by genuine sexual discrimination and harrassment. Clinton is exploiting the justifiable anger over that sad status quo to gain leverage in this political contest. The women she claims to speak for deserve better than that.
She was the establishment candidate.
***
Exactly the problem!
Nance
The New Republic has great commentary on this as well that you might enjoy.
This really got to me (I’m a bit of a Clinton apolgista myself, so I find myself in unbelievably disappointed in her conduct):
“This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It's obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don't want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton's character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton's gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.
If she's consciously lying, it's a shockingly cynical move. I don't think she's lying. I think she's so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It's not just that she's convinced herself it's okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.”
AL- I don’t particularly disagree with you about Clinton’s claims that she is being treated unfairly because of her sex. To me, though, her claims are indistinguishable from the vast majority of grievance claims, whether based on race, sex, religion, whatever. Usually these claims are merely thinly disguised efforts to rally the complainer’s tribal group against the alleged persecutors. They are no more justifiable from an objective standpoint than what Clinton is doing.
More interesting is the argument that Clinton has lost “fair and square.” It is not clear to me exactly what this means. It is certainly true that the allocation of elected delegates has occurred according to the rules, and there is nothing unfair (as far as I can see) about the fact that Clinton is trailing Obama with regard to those delegates. Clinton may not like some of the rules (eg, caucuses instead of primaries), but that doesn’t change the fact that they are the rules with respect to this election.
The situation is less clear with regard to counting Michigan and Florida. The DNC made a decision that the delegates from these states would not be seated, but this decision was always (as I understand it) subject to review and appeal according to an established process. Is Clinton “changing the rules” by seeking to use that process? I am not sure why.
The Obama argument is that it is unfair to count these states when the candidates expected, at the time of the election, that they would not count. If we were just talking about the candidate’s personal interests, I would say that this was a weak argument. Presumably the Obama campaign knew or should have known that the DNC’s decision was not final. It was at no disadvantage vis a vis the Clinton campaign in this respect. For example, the Obama campaign took a calculated risk in removing Obama’s name from the ballot in Michigan. Why is this any different than the calculated risk the Clinton campaign took in ignoring caucus states or states that voted after Super Tuesday? If these decisions turn out badly, that’s life.
Of course, we are not talking just about the candidate’s personal interests. There is also the matter of the voters to consider. This is dangerous territory because there is a tendency among the Democrats to use terms like “disenfranchisement” when a vote is not counted. That is silly. When a voter knows or suspects that his or her vote was not counted in a particular election, whether because of an error on the voter’s part or some technical or other failure in the system, it is undoubtedly irritating, but it is hardly the same thing as being categorically deprived of one’s right to vote. Nonetheless, this was the reasoning behind Democratic outrage over Florida in 2000, and the Clintons are cleverly pointing out that the DNC’s decision not to count the votes in Florida and Michigan is, by this standard, at least as outrageous.
Putting aside this rhetorical excess, however, it seems to me that there is a legitimate issue about the refusal to count the votes in Florida, not because of injustice to a particular voter or group of voters, but because it needlessly skews the results of the overall election. Both candidates were on the ballot, and neither campaigned in the state. Given everything we know about the demographics of this election, it seems highly likely that the results would have been similar under any circumstances. Therefore, it is “fair” to count Florida or, put another way, it is less unfair to count it than not to count it.
The balance of equities is different in Michigan, where Obama was not on the ballot. It seems unfair, not to Obama personally but to Obama voters and the overall validity of the process, to count Michigan under these circumstances. To the extent that it is unfair to Clinton voters that Michigan not count at all, this (roughly) balances out any unfairness to Obama voters in counting Florida.
So that problem is solved. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come close to resolving the election because of this quaint and so undemocratic phenomenon of the superdelegate. Regardless of whether or how Michigan and Florida are counted, neither Clinton nor Obama can win the nomination without winning the support of a significant number of superdelegates.
The Obama camp has been astonishingly successful in convincing elite opinion that the superdelegates must vote the same way as the elected delegates. I find this astonishing not so much because of the obvious point that if this were true, there would be no need for superdelegates. I can accept, at least for arguments sake, that the superdelegates should follow the will of the voters, except in extraordinary circumstances not present here.
What I find bizarre is the willingness to equate, without much apparent thought, the elected delegates and the will of the voters. Assuming that the superdelegates should follow the overall will of the voters (not the voters in their particular state or district), it would seem more logical, or at least more consistent with general democratic sensibilities, to look at the overall popular vote to determine the will of the voters.
Maybe the Obama campaign would argue that the overall popular vote is unfair to caucus states, in which the turnout is lower and Obama performed relatively better. The Clinton counter-argument would be that Obama’s superior relative performance reflects the fact that her working class voters find it more difficult to participate in caucuses, and thus it is the elected delegates, not the popular vote, that is more unfair.
Frankly, I think at this point we have reached the limits of our ability to determine who won “fair and square.” As an objective observer, it looks to me that when all is said and done, the candidates will be just about dead even in the popular vote, assuming one counts the results in Florida but not Michigan. Given uncertainties about the popular vote totals in some of the caucus states, it may not even be possible to say which of the candidates is ahead.
Under these circumstances, I find it difficult to understand why the superdelegates are obligated to choose Obama. It seems perfectly reasonable that the superdelegates would make their choice based on who would be more electable, as the Clinton campaign urges. Some of the superdelegates might even vote based on who would make the best president, although I haven’t heard anyone advance that radical suggestion.
In short, as we come to the end of this long process, neither candidate, IMO, has won or lost “fair and square.” It would be perfectly fair for the superdelegates to select either as the nominee, though it will undoubtedly seem unfair to the supporters of the loser.
Life can be so unfair that way.
mls said:
Under these circumstances, I find it difficult to understand why the superdelegates are obligated to choose Obama. It seems perfectly reasonable that the superdelegates would make their choice based on who would be more electable, as the Clinton campaign urges.
How do we know that they are not doing that?
Perhaps they are breaking towards Obama because they believe that he would in fact make the better president. Several prominent superdelegates (and John Edwards) have made the point during their endorsements that they believe that Obama will be an exceptional president.
The fact that the Obama campaign has encouraged the superdelegates to follow the pledged delegate tally does not mean that they are doing that.
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