(derekbaker): Doing the Michigan Rag

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Doing the Michigan Rag

And the Letter Bag

And here we are at the Michigan primary. Hillary and Mac won New Hampshire. Bill Richardson (everyone's best candidate for running mate) dropped out. So it's a fight for delegate counts (not unlike November's fight for electoral votes) as much or more than a fight for each state. I find it telling that Barack won more independent votes than Hillary did, and that independents turned out four to one for the Democratic primary than three to one, for the Republican. (If I've misstated that, sorry, but the point is that 40% of voters in the Democratic primary were independents, whereas about a third of voters in the Republican primary were independents.)

I have to stay, though, that I'm extremely exasperated with the National Democratic Party for deciding to "sanction" Michigan and Florida for holding their primaries before Super-Duper Tuesday. I'm sure it made some kind of sense at the time, but the end result is that it gives Democratic candidates (including the eventual nominee) far less chance to appear in person in front of two key states of the general election. And for some voters, it fits exactly into their suspicion of an autocratic party that can't wait to tell local communities how to live their lives. I overstate what this means, of course, but trust me: that's the interpretation that's going to get played during the general election in both those states.

But enough about how the Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Let's go to the mailbag, shall we?

A friend in Oklahoma writes:

"Consider this food for thought for your blog: I think Hillary’s negatives are one major factor that don’t get parsed and probed enough (not by the press or by Obama or Edwards). Hillary could seriously cost the Dems the election. I’d personally hate to see that happen, but the level of animosity toward her can’t be underestimated. The major East Coast press really misses the boat on that with respect to the South, and Southwest."

He's right, and I've said that to anyone who'd listen to me for nearly a year, but I haven't posted a lot here about it. It's true, however: Hillary Clinton's negatives in the South and Southwest are as big, or bigger, than her positives, to use polling jargon. (Or a layperson's understanding of polling jargon?) You thought an elitist senator from the northeast was a good idea for 2004? Then nominate Hillary Clinton -- among the most polarizing figures of the last two decades -- this time around.

Me, I think she'd actually make a great president: smart, decisive, politically savvy but with America's best interests at heart, regardless of any personal failings. Not unlike...well, let's not bring him up. But I do think there hasn't been enough attention to the negative opinion so many Americans have of Hillary Clinton, deserved or not. Maybe, as another friend says, she only needs a bare minority of the electoral college to win and can win it, but I doubt it. And I think the South Carolina and February 5 primaries will show that, but we'll see.

For now, I think Hillary is too hated -- and no, not by people who normally vote in the Democratic primaries, but by people who don't, yet who vote in November -- to win the general election. Maybe she could win against Romney. Definitely against Giuliani (having faced at least the first days of an election between those two, I can say that), but against anyone else: I doubt it.

Notice I haven't said "why" -- and I don't think there is any coherent rationale behind it. The real reason is probably two decades of talk radio, Fox News, and unimaginative editorial cartoons. Which, at the end, is probably enough to keep her from being president.

Or, from my friend in Oklahoma again: "I also support many of her views, and I'd love to see a woman in office, but I simply think she’s the wrong one. She'll further divide the country. She's not our panacea. What's more, I don't get the blind trust so many Dems give her."

He may not be aware just how hated Hillary (and even Bill) are by so many people on the left for their largely centrist, "corporatist" Democratic Leadership Council history and positions, so she's certainly not universally loved among Democrats -- far from it. But my own ideas on why she garners so much support is threefold:

People who shake their head in disbelief at how we went from a competent, intelligent administration to an incompetent, anti-intellectual band of snake-oil handlers, and who look back at the Clinton practice of political triangulation as a form of realpolitik that can get stuff done.

People who support her precisely because she's so hated by Rush Limbaugh et al.; who are closely related to...

People who discern in her a mirror of what some Republicans liked about George W. Bush, which is that -- unlike with most other politicians who have confidence in their positions and candidacy -- in Clinton, some people infer an arrogance in her positions and attitudes, and they like that lack of self-doubt. (And these would be the sworn enemies of the people who ate up W's characterization of "swagger" as just what they call "walking" in Texas.)

Again, I think the February 5 primaries will tell us a lot about what people in those states feel about Hillary Clinton, albeit it will be Democratic primary voters, who may or may not be an accurate reflection of the wider general election voters in that same state.

Another friend, this time from Texas, writes to say:

"Personally I think you are selling the 'red states' short and I think what happened in Iowa (and New Hampshire, I hope) [DAB note: he wrote this before the NH primary] demonstrate that. Look what he did for turnout and young voters, To me that speaks VOLUMES to what this guy is about."

He's talking Obama, obviously, and I don't discount it, because this is someone who voted for Bush in the last two elections, but is now rooting for Obama. And is someone who won't vote Hillary, in all likelihood, no matter who is running against her. He, like a lot of Americans, is eager to get off the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton train and (if you'll forgive the term) "move on." Which, I think, is a powerful subtext for many voters in both parties. They don't want their nose rubbed in the fact that the last two elections were a disaster for the country, but they don't want to repeat the mistake again.

This is why I find it interesting that Obama got more support from independents in New Hampshire than Clinton. There are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents who don't feel Obama has already enlisted himself as their sworn enemy, whereas more Republicans (and especially Republican men) think Clinton is too far gone in Marxist feminist circles (despite the fact that she consistently drives the political left nuts and many feminists are notably lukewarm about Hillary being the first serious woman candidate for president) for them to ever support her.

This is going to sound overly simplistic, but there's a good chance we've reached a point in America where a white, male Republican can happily support Barack Obama as president because of other things going on in the culture, particularly where Republican identification is strongest. Nationwide, an older generation of entrenched racial prejudice has died, and a younger, browner picture of America has become more mainstream. But I also think there has been a slow evolution in the part of the country that is on record for being the least likely to believe in that other kind of evolution.

Over 40 years ago, Dick Gregory said: "In the South, they don't care how close I get as long as I don't get too big. In the North, they don't care how big I get as long as I don't get too close." Which surprised and discomfited a lot of northerners at the time. (White northerners saw segregation as a hateful attempt to reify the kind of de facto separation of races they experienced in most of the North, whereas southern racists saw it as a defensive posture against the intermingling of two races who were already closer in number and proximity than they liked.) While familiarity may have bred contempt among the races in the South during the first 200 years of the country's history, the past 30 years have changed a lot.

Blacks and whites attend the same megachurches in greater numbers than ever before in the Sunbelt. In the other prominent religion of the region, there are more black quarterbacks and black football coaches than in decades past, and each has a lot of white male fans rooting for him. And in 2006, Bill Lester, a Berkley-educated, former Hewlett-Packard engineer, became the first black NASCAR driver in 20 years. (There are apparently none qualifying in the current rankings, however, making the southern-focused nascar.com as white or whiter a Web site than the northern-dominated nhl.com.)

This may not be enough for red-state America to elect a black president -- but I would say we're closer to that point than at any other point in our history, so I'm willing to entertain at least a modicum of the audacity of hope.

And, finally, speaking of Obama, another friend, here in New York, wrote to clarify what he'd said about Barack Obama as a Muslim. He knew he attended a Christian church in Chicago (and even that some people call it an overtly "afro-centric" church), but he was referring to the larger implications of a man with a Kenyan Muslim father, who grew up for a time in Indonesia, has the middle name of Hussein, etc., running for president in America today. Which was the point I was making, too, but as I reflect on it, I shouldn't have blithely used his same discussion of that issue as the evidence that people may find Obama problematic. And, for the record, in addition to Fox News, he's actually also a consumer of information from MSNBC, CNN, NY1 (a local cable news channel), and Air America -- and the New York Post's Page Six and the New York Times crossword. I offered to post a correction here, which he graciously said wasn't warranted since he was just goofing on me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that using a caricature of what he was saying to make a point about why people might not vote for Obama wasn't a whole lot better than someone making a caricature of Obama's background as a reason to vote against him, so I wanted to clear that up.

And, like the other two friends I mentioned above, he's not real thrilled with the idea of Hillary as president, either.