|
Can Hillary beat back Obama tidal wave? |
|
|
Sunday, 02 March 2008 |
It looks like RIGOP Chairman Giovanni Cicione was right and his Democratic counterpart Bill Lynch was wrong.
Back when Governor Carcieri vetoed the bill to move Rhode Island’s presidential primary up to Feb. 5, Lynch swore (as did most other supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton and the candidate herself) that the nomination would be sewn up by that time and Rhode Island would once again be irrelevant to the process of picking a presidential nominee. Cicione suggested that if the races stayed tight after the much-ballyhooed Feb. 5 Super Duper Tuesday, Rhode Island’s contest could become pivotal and the Ocean State could become the focus of attention from the candidates still in the running.
Well, every candidate from the two major parties who is still in the running, with the lone exception of Republican Ron Paul, have made stops in Rhode Island in the past two weeks, along with their family members and other high-profile surrogates.
Rhode Island is relevant indeed. To the extent, at least, that anything really matters this year, and I am beginning to subscribe to the theory that nothing really does.
For good or ill, Obamamania is just sweeping the country and it doesn’t look like anything or (more significantly to the primary race and perhaps even the general election campaign) anyone is going to be able to stop it. You can either join in, or stand back in slack-jawed awe, witnessing a force that is too sudden and powerful to completely understand as it is happening.
Count Hillary Clinton in the second group.
Just from the fact that she changes strategies and tactics more frequently than she changes her pantsuits, it is clear that the former first lady has no clue of how to defeat, or even effectively engage, her rock-star-like opponent.
Hillary has to be really exasperated.
Hillary’s situation right now is one no politician can ever afford to be in: she is in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is standing on the beach at the exact moment the Obama tidal wave is whooshing ashore.
There is nothing you can do about a tidal wave. You just have to let it come, do what you have to in order not to go under, and hope something of value is left when it recedes.
The only thing you know for sure is that everything will be different afterward. Even in Rhode Island, which is not immune from national trends. Obama could sweep all of the common perceptions and conventional wisdom aside and inundate Rhode Island as he has so many other primary and caucus states. The standards of measurement would be changed afterward.
A minor example is a dust-up I had with the Clinton campaign folks after her appearance at RIC a week ago. I wrote in the next day’s story that several hundred people had attended. I had estimated 750-800 people but must have had a bad vantage point because I asked several people afterward and virtually all said the crowd was between 2,000 and 3,000. Well that little dispute didn’t matter much after Obama’s visit to the same gym a week later. He drew throngs. There were more people (an estimated 5,000) standing outside in the cold and rain listening to his speech than had been inside for the Hillary event a week earlier. That’s not to mention that nearly twice as many people were inside the hall for Obama’s visit than for Clinton’s as well.
Perhaps the closest comparison in political history to Clinton’s current situation would be (and Hillary would really hate this) Richard Nixon in 1960, when he lost a close election to John F. Kennedy.
Nixon had spent eight years in the White House as Ike’s vice president. He was a senator with foreign policy experience, an incredibly intelligent, hard-working guy. He was unquestionably, as she often claims to be, ready on Day 1 to be president.
Then all of a sudden here comes this good-looking, well-spoken guy with charisma to burn who just springs out of nowhere and sweeps the country off its feet like he was politics’ answer to Rhett Butler. Even if some naysayers whispered behind his back about Kennedy being young, callow, inexperienced or about his lack of gravitas or even a lot of substance, he was likeable as the day is long and many, young people in particular, found him inspirational.
It was those last two things took JFK from the relative obscurity of being considered a lightweight, playboy senator from Massachusetts and landed him in the White House.
If only Hillary had a five o’clock shadow, the analogy would be complete.
Almost all of it comes down to that word likeability, which has to be one of the lamest qualifications to be leader of the free world I can think of. But given that we choose our leaders by popular election, it is unquestionably one of the key ones.
Obama has it to spare. But Hillary, with her icy, know-it-all demeanor and her fingernails-on-a-blackboard voice, has little to none. Obama reminds everyone of a cross between Jack Kennedy and Martin Luther King; Hillary reminds people of that 8th grade teacher they hated so much.
She must have at least a bit of likeability, because some people, notably middle-aged and older women, are absolutely crazy about her and are fiercely loyal. But those who aren’t among her faithful following seem to almost actively dislike her.
The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, when asked about his band’s small, but intensely loyal following, likened it to a taste for licorice candy. “Not everybody likes licorice,” he explained, “but people who like licorice really like licorice.” That seems to be how it is with Hillary as well.
The thing is, licorice would never get elected the president of candies.
By avoiding being nailed down to specifics, Obama offers himself to the electorate as a blank slate on which each of us can draw whatever our concept of a brighter future is. By restricting himself to platitudes about inspiration and hope, we see in him whatever it is that inspires us and everything we hope for.
He is the Rorschach test candidate.
Tomorrow’s primary will decide whether the Obama tidal wave is going to wash away everything in its path, or if it has already broken and started to recede. The delegate-rich states of Texas and Ohio will mean more in determining the nominee, but if Hillary Clinton can’t beat Barack Obama in Rhode Island, where can she hope to beat him.
The campaign math says delegates won’t decide it tomorrow, which is why the pundits are going to be looking to Rhode Island to measure the effect of the tidal wave. |
|
Last Updated ( Monday, 03 March 2008 )
|
|
|
|
|
|
Horoscope