A Pilgrim’s Digression

Hillary Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania, last night, has all but assured that John McCain will be the next President. I see no other way to interpret the results. Maybe that has been her intention all along.

Assume, for a moment, that conventional wisdom is correct and she cannot win the nomination. Then what does Clinton gain, not just by continuing to pursue the nomination, but continuing to raise questions about Obama’s “electability?”

She made a potent argument yesterday, in a speech at a Pennsylvania polling place. She asked in that speech, “Why can’t he close the deal?” Obama outspent her; Obama has the lead in the popular vote, and the lead in the delegate count. Why can’t he knock her out?

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times called those remarks “unapologetically emasculating” in her opinion column, this morning. If voters did not already doubt Obama’s electability, this woman–supposedly from his own party, embracing many of the same ideals as him–has ensured that they will doubt him, now.

Winning a primary election in this way, by casting doubt on the electability of the likely nominee of your party, seems hardly like a victory at all. And it doesn’t even consider all the other charges she has thrown at him, over the course of the last couple weeks.

The negativity goes both ways, of course. Obama’s primary charge against Clinton is that she is a liar, but everyone already knew that. In the case of Clinton versus Obama, she is roughing up someone who had a pretty good sheen about him, prior to engaging in mortal kombat with her.

Over the course of the campaign, Clinton’s negatives have been driven deeper by her conduct, particularly in terms of voters’ evaluation of her honesty. She has lost the support of a huge segment of the liberal Democrat constituency that used to form a solid basis of Clinton support. It has been, frankly, breathtaking to read about people who supported the Clinton’s in the nineties who now consider them, using Michael Moore’s word, “disgusting.”

You can read almost any story on the Huffington Post to find an example of the scales falling from the eyes of another former “do or die” Clinton supporter, but here’s just one such story: Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream, by former Senator Tom Hayden.

It’s hard to imagine how this turns out good for the Democrat party. Limbaugh and his minions are sitting back, gloating at the division within the party. Meanwhile, Democrat power brokers like Al Gore remain silent and do nothing to resolve the crisis. I’m not sure they could do anything to force Clinton out–she clearly won’t go until Obama is thoroughly destroyed–but endorsements by the likes of Gore, Edwards, and Carter could at least solidify Obama’s standing as the nominee and give him the leverage he needs to ignore Clinton and begin the assault on McCain.

I suppose the real question is whether disgruntled Obama supporters would support Hillary, if she became the nominee–and conversely whether Clinton supporters will come around to supporting Obama. Right now, I have my doubts. Another story I read today concerned a lonely Scranton, Pennsylvania Democrat who threw his support to Obama, in violation of some rule that everyone must vote for the “hometown girl.” Funny, I didn’t even know Clinton was from Scranton until she said so, in this campaign.

Anyway, check this article out if you think this primary battle is good for the Democrat party: Life Gets Ugly for Turncoat in Coal, er…Clinton Country. An interesting thing the article does not dwell on much is that the Obama supporter in question is young (34). I am really flummoxed as to why the media cannot write one story about an elderly supporter of Obama. Such supporters must exist…the continuing hammering of this bit of conventional wisdom suggesting that only young people support him contributes directly to the electability argument Clinton tries to make.

Somewhere, somehow, things went wrong for Obama, and I really have my doubts that he is going to be able to straighten things out by November. Clinton will fight him all the way to the nomination in August, and then what? He has two months to fix all the damage she has done.

I’m glad the Pennsylvania vote is over, though. It was too long a campaign between Obama’s victory in Mississippi and his loss last night. Clinton will have her day of “victory,” if she wants to call it that, but it will only be a day. The next primaries come fast and furious, and she really only stands a chance at winning maybe two of them.

In the meantime, I will try to look on the bright side. My wife says I am too negative, which I fully admit to. I am pessimistic, which is what endeared me to Obama from the beginning. He’s the opposite of me: he’s optimistic and hopeful.

So, I’ll end this on a positive note. Look at it this way, we don’t have to hear another damned story about how Clinton’s grandfather worked in a Scranton lace mill. Anyone taking odds she won’t even refer to her Pennsylvania “heritage” ever again?