The Delicate Flowers

by publius

As expected, Kentucky was called for Clinton. I’m sure we’ll have more later, but I have a few quick thoughts:

First, I would enjoy watching MSNBC a lot more if I could get a lot less Terry McAuliffe.

Second, I’m frankly a little sick of the Clinton campaign’s whole delicate flower routine. Obama will hit a pretty significant milestone tonight — a majority of pledged delegates. A candidate should be allowed to celebrate that — Lord knows the Clintons would. But apparently no one is allowed to say anything tonight because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of our eggshell-skinned Clintonistas — you know, the gritty seasoned fighters.

The whole thing reminds me of the scene from John Adams when he’s being instructed on the all the ridiculous, awkward bows and motions that you must do when approaching the king. It doesn’t matter that there is no mathematical route to the nomination under any plausible scenario. What matters are the delicate flowers. Mustn’t offend them. Mustn’t make any quick motions.

Sorry for the snark, but this is just exasperating.

Comments

[aimai]

oh please let this come to an end. I can't stand it anymore.

aimai

[rob!]

and yet she's tough enough to be president?

[felix culpa]

Oh hey, not to worry.
Though yes, rob! Exactly.
But hey, losing the love of a nation, as ’twas imagined, is no small thing; especially as it was her best and only shot.

Tomorrow is another day, and there will be any number of them, some tedious, some exciting. We are still focused on the excitement beyond and there will be some swell parties when we get there.

Tonight, well yeah; but ain’t no big thing.

[ligedog]

I just hope all the Clinton supporters writing all the crazy rants everywhere can suck it up and do the right thing in the Fall. I mean aren't we all Democrats the least we should know how to do is concede defeat gracefully! I know I would have been upset if Obama had lost but I like to think I would have kept it together a little better.

[trilobite]

Who's not allowing whom to say that where?

'cause I just got email from the Obama campaign sayin' they won, and all. So somebody is allowed to say it, at least in my inbox.

[calling all toasters]

Her supporters may be thin-skinned, but they love their resentment as much as life itself. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Hillary is our Nixon.

[publius]

i've actually been making a conscious effort to tone down the snark, but i do like the clintons (she's not our nixon -- let's keep things in perspective).

but i honestly think that if the tables were reversed, i'd be writing a lot of "hey, barack, get the hell off the stage" posts. it's just infuriating how they've pre-emptively denied obama to take credit for essentially winning the nomination by threatening him with their supporters.

yes, if HRC tells her supporters, she's been slapped in the face, many will mad. similarly, if she'd leave and join the general, they would too. a lot of their reaction will be dictated by the manner of her exit.

[Fisses]

Who called the UN over the Dem vote?

[wonkie]

My take on the angreiest HRC supportrs is tht they see themselvees as victims because they had a sense of entitlement. An Hrc supporter on a Kos diary mde the aregument that it was sexism n the party of the Deomcratic partry to fil to nomiate HRC because women make up half tha party and hve been loyal supporters.

When I pointed out that AA's have ben loyal supporters she accused me of accusing her of racism.

We will see in the next couple of days if Hillary is more loyal tothe party or to herself.

[Incertus]

Exasperating is indeed the word for it. I've done a lot of defending of Clinton, but if they're going to keep up this "we've won more primary votes" garbage, I'm going to have to give it up. And while Clinton was doing the "if I don't win, vote for Obama" a week or two ago, I haven't heard much of it lately.

[marc in asia]

I have a question for Chelsea Clinton. Does she really want the Clinton campaign to continue to accept contributions from kids who sell their bicycles and video games to fund the repayment of the loan from the Clinton family. Would she accept that loan being repaid before those contributions are returned? Do her kids really need to be able to afford 1,000,000 used bicycles and not 999,999?

[Incertus]

marc,
Why Chelsea?

[marc in asia]

Because it's effectively her and her kids' inheritance; Bill and Hillary already have more money (especially given their future speaking fees and pensions) than they will spend in their lifetimes.

[Warren Terra]

This whole "popular vote" canard really gets to me. The thing is, it is only marginally a pro-Clinton argument. It's primarily an avenue to defame Obama. The argument is, in its essence, that Obama's delegate lead, though insurmountable, is illegitimate. That he's somehow stolen the election. This, coupled with the invocation of sexism and glass ceilings, works to create enormous resentment, even hatred, of Obama among Clinton's most fervent backers. And these narratives are coming straight from the top of the campaign.

The thing is, that really is the main effect of pushing these narratives. They won't convince the critical remaining unpledged superdelegates - the popular vote argument in particular is risible and insupportable, and the superdelegates are well-enough educated to know this, if only through the efforts of supporters of both candidates to inform and to sway them. They won't sway many voters, because there aren't many voters left and because this sort of precedural argument seems to have little effect on voters, especially this year.

But the core supporters eat this stuff up and kindle a core of rage around it. The popular vote argument, with the full encouragement of Clinton staffers rught up to the Senator herself in her Kentucky victory speech, gets analogized to the 2000 General Election and Florida situations. That sort of comparison is tremendously incendiary; not many partisan Democrats have forgotten or forgiven those events. Two of the half-dozen people closest to Clinton behind her as she gave her Kentucky speech held handmade signs saying "Count Every Vote". That sort of visual, including the Democratic slogan of Florida 2000, does not occur by happenstance in a modern major campaign event.

At this point in the campaign, with so little chance of her securing the nomination, the Clinton campaign is choosing to press its case in ways that amplify the divisions within the party and that could create enduring bitterness and sow sabotage for November. Deliberately. The situation should be called for what it is.

[cleek]

what Warren Terra said.

and...

We will see in the next couple of days if Hillary is more loyal tothe party or to herself.

we've known that answer for months now. and her supporters are pledging to drink the poisoned kool-aid, when their deity fails to slay the evil usurper. it's a personality cult.

[marc in asia]

Warren,

I agree completely.

I think its time for an Obama representative to (behind the scenes) put it bluntly to Clinton. If you end the primary and join the general election team now you will be accpted as a key Senate ally by President Obama. That might include a fundraising drive by President elect Obama to retire your debt, a say in the VP and cabinet positions, and -- most importantly -- the change to be a sponsor, maybe even the name sponsor of the universal health care bill which will likely pass in Obama's first term. Think about that, it will erase the biggest negative in Hillary's legacy; she can go down in history as the person who brought universal health care to the US, rather than the person who set it back 16 years.

However, this requires conceeding before the convention, ending all talk about 'the popular vote' and doing all she can to help Obama win the GE. She needs to spend between now and November speaking before women's groups saying Roe v. Wade / Universal Health Care / Roe v. Wade -- and nothing else. Bill needs to spend the same time in Appalachia (especially Ohio and Pennsylvania) saying Democrat / health care / middle class tax cut. They both need to come out with an endorsement saying that having met with Barack and spoken to his foreign policy and military advisors they have not the slightest doubts about his capacity as CinC.

The stick is that if they don't do this, they will be locked out of the transition team (no ability to get jobs for their supporters) and the healthcare bill will be named for someone else.

[jwo]

I read a comment on the WaPo page yesterday in which a Clinton supporter stated that they were "going for chaos." Apparently, this means that they will vote for McCain, claiming that a weak Republican President could never get his Supreme Court nominees approved. Then, they would "get the strong President that they deserved in 2012."

[gwangung]

I read a comment on the WaPo page yesterday in which a Clinton supporter stated that they were "going for chaos." Apparently, this means that they will vote for McCain, claiming that a weak Republican President could never get his Supreme Court nominees approved. Then, they would "get the strong President that they deserved in 2012."

If they were THAT savvy to pull that off, they never would have lost the nomination in the first place.

Law of Unintended Consequences, guys....they apply to you, too....

[Keir]

Wow, um, people, isn't jasmine's 12.41 a mile over the posting guidelines?

(I mean, I'm pretty sure she just called Hillary worse than Osama, which is a bit uhhh..., but equating Hillary voters with al-qaida is surely Not On.)

[KCinDC]

I was glad to see that when Bush and McCain made the "appeasement" attack on Obama, Clinton defended Obama and criticized McCain. A few weeks ago, she would have been siding with McCain and reinforcing his message -- she did exactly that with very similar criticisms of Obama's foreign policy.

Unfortunately, she's still keeping up this narrative about the illegitimacy of Obama's victory, with the bogus popular vote calculations, comparisons to Florida in 2000, and the smearing of caucuses as undemocratic (a criticism she never voiced before the caucuses started, back when everyone assumed that caucuses were an advantage for the establishment candidate). All that does is reinforce delusions among her supporters and stoke resentment that makes it harder for Democrats to come together against McCain.

I really don't understand what she's trying to accomplish at this point.

[farmgirl]

Hmm. "jasmine's" comment exists in identical form over at Yglesias' blog.

Under the handle "T. Rustfund-Scumbag III Jr.", FWIW.

[brewmn]

Warren, marc, great comments.

And publius:

"no one is allowed to say anything tonight because it might offend the delicate sensibilities of our eggshell-skinned Clintonistas — you know, the gritty seasoned fighters."

No shit, Sherlock. For such tough fighters, they sure do howl when they're given a solid body blow.

[publius]

it shoudl be deleted now - the jasmine comment

[liberal japonicus]

Hmm. "jasmine's" comment exists in identical form over at Yglesias' blog.

Under the handle "T. Rustfund-Scumbag III Jr.", FWIW.

Now that's offensive. Yglesias gets the homage to Groucho handle and we get the Disney one?

[Jim Parish]

Yglesias gets the homage to Groucho handle and we get the Disney one?

Well, "Jasmine" could be a reference to Angel, season four. I'm not sure that'd be an improvement.

[Ugh]

Paging AlGore, Wes Clark and other senior democratic statesmen/women, please try and make her stop.

[Ugh]

Him too.

[Jeff]

I wish someone (Edwards?) would point out to her that trying to change the rules after the game is over (she never mentioned the "popular vote" before about a month ago, did she?) is stupid, arrogant, and, in short, all the things we're trying to change in Washington.

I've resigned myself to her staying in the race until July (although she really should refuse small donations at this point), but she really should STFU about what constitutes "winning".

[wonkie]

I think that HRC is trying to blackmail Obama intogiving her the VP/ If that fails she'll sabotage (with covef and plausible deniablility) his campaign. thinking that she can then be the candidate in 2012.

She really isn't smart at politics and she thinks the rest of us are stupid.

If she was smart at politics she wouldn't let a loser l.ike Mark Penn sell her over and over on bad tactics.

If she didn't think that we are stupid she wouldn't run her camapign on a never ending, frequently contradictory series of haevy handed and obvious spins.

But I am worried by herr efforts to entrenchg the myth of her victimization in the minds of as many supporters as she can by promoting the lie that she is ahead in popular vote and the lie that she is the champ of the disenfranchised states.

She really is dumb enought about politics to think that she can sabotage obama and still get the nom in 2012.

It is so sad that the first viable female candidate would be someone so unworthy.