Children Of The West

I was fascinated by this post by Digby about how America has been dominated for much of its history by two political tribes that have switched allegiance to the parties over time but which, within themselves, have remained remarkably consistent in their ideological leanings. I won't try to summarize it (go read it yourself) but the two tribes she identifies are The North and The South.

What I couldn't help noticing, however, was that there was no mention of another section of the nation that seems to be often left out of these discussions: The West.

I agree with Digby's thesis that much of American history has been dictated by the conflict between North and South. But the last 50 years has seen the rise of The West as a third political tribe in this nation. This tribe is not as influenced by colonial history as are The North and The South because it simply didn't exist at that time. We in The West are not the sons & daughters of revolutionaries but of cowboys, settlers, gold-rushers and merchant seaman (not to mention Mexico and the Far East). How does this third tribe fit into Digby's scheme?

All of this started as a discussion of McCain's apparent attempt to appeal to the military tradition of The South. But McCain is himself a son of The West (as were Reagan and Nixon before him). It appears to me that the presidential candidates who have come out of The West have felt the need to re-brand themselves as being of one of the two older tribes (typically The South). But what if we were to get a western candidate who ran as a son/daughter of The West?.

Now that would be a fun race to watch!

The enemy of your enemy is still your enemy

The truly sad development in this election is the degree to which Democrats have taken to citing as sources against Hillary the very same people who were decried by Democrats as smear-merchants in the 90s.

Hell, dKos diarists post approving links to Drudge items!

I'm an Obama supporter. I don't like some of things Clinton has done in this race. But I don't let that dislike cloud my judgment about what was and continues to be the biggest set of bullshit scandals this country has ever seen.

The Clinton Dillema

I think Josh may be on to something here.

The conventional wisdom on why Clinton is running so hard against Obama is that she has to damage him so much that superdelegates will quail at nominating him and will throw their weight behind her. And if she can't get it that way then she will destroy Obama out of spite. Thus the image of Hillary "I'll-do-anything-to-win" Clinton candidacy is born.

But what if, as Josh's analysis suggests, Clinton is running this hard because it is simply a requirement of keeping a viable (albeit it on life-support) candidacy going through the next couple of months. After all, if she backs off, her candidacy will truly spiral into irrelevancy (money will dry up, media attention will move on, etc.) She has to run hard, not to destroy Obama, but simply to keep herself in the game.

But then the question becomes: why even bother? If her position is so tenuous, why not simply call it quits before you really embarrass yourself? Could it simply be blind-naked ambition that keeps Clinton going?

Or could it be that she actually believes that she is the better candidate. Could she honestly believe that it's to dangerous to put forward an untested candidate as the nominee? If you were in her position and believed that Obama was really the weaker choice between the two of you then wouldn't you stick it out when nearly 50% of the voters continue to support you?

No one who runs for President does so from a position of humility (if it looks like they are then they are just really good at faking it). None of them would be in the race if they didn't honestly believe they were the best choice. You don't persuade a politician to cut their future short simply by throwing numbers at them. You have to approach them with the understanding that dropping out of a race is one of the hardest things for a politician to do (ask Al Gore or Howard Dean).

I think democrats who want this race to be over are taking exactly the wrong approach by simply calling on Clinton to take the high road. If you are going to get her to drop out you have to convince her that Obama would be a good choice for nominee. If you can pierce her perception that he is simply not a viable alternative than you can get her to start doubting her own position. And once that happens then she is that much more likely to withdraw gracefully.

Or you could just accuse her of being some Machiavallian shrew who would prefer to destroy the party if she doesn't get to make the rules. It's clear that that strategy has worked wonders so far.

(I'd like to note that it is once again surrogates who are aggravating this situation. Obama himself has said that Clinton should leave only when she wants to leave. It's his fan base that is shoring up her backbone to keep the race going.)

Leave politics to the politicians

Chris Bowers:

2. Don't encourage rank and file Democrats to vote a certain way for the sake of winning elections.

[...]

#2 is a somewhat less obvious point, though still an important one none the less. Sure, Democrats want to win the general election, and finding a candidate who can defeat McCain is on the minds of many Democratic primary voters. However, when Democratic politicians encourage voters to choose a candidate based on electability, then they begin to drag Democratic primary voters down to the same spineless, soul-less, valueless level. Suddenly, not only do we have politicans who only believe in things in order to get elected, but not those politicians were nominated by voters who don't believe in anything, either. At that point, the party is really in a world of hurt. Both the leaders and the followers don't believe in anything except getting elected. That is not the image the Democratic Party needs, especially considering that only now is it recovering from twenty years of death by meta talk from the DLC.

"Electability" arguments piss me off. No one REALLY knows what makes a particular candidate more electable than others. Certainly not amateurs like voters. Chris states it very well here. "Electability" is the kind of judgment politicians make. So when you spend a lot of time focusing on it, you are acting like a politician.

Please, don't do this. We have more than enough politicians in this world thank you very much. We don't need even more mucking things up.

Voters are like jurors in that they provide a reality-check to all the erudite arguments that are the norm in political circles. Jurors take the facts and the stories the attorneys tell them, walk into a sealed back room and decide among themselves which one spoke the least bullshit. The same holds true in politics. Politicians and political theorists can argue all they want about what strategy does or does not work. But it is the voters who ultimately decide the validity of these arguments and they only do it in the voting booth.

Voters who spend a lot of time worrying about electability are just destroying their own unique ability to judge the candidates.