Wussy Like a Fox?
(posted by Jim Henley)
In comments downblog, Comrade Kevin suggests that not hitting back at Hillary Clinton in certain ways marks Obama as "a wuss." I am inclined to the view, rather, that:
- Dude’s winning! And it’s mathematically unlikely that he could lose the nomination now. Therefore we should presume he’s doing something right.
- Obama, who is going to win the nomination anyway, needs Clinton’s voters in the fall, and needs a certain amount of effort from the Clinton camp. Since he is going to win anyway, it costs him nothing to soak up her attacks and may help. It does himself no damage and continues to provide Clinton room to either give up or start to turn off even her die-hards with her conduct.
- Black man / White woman. This is still a tricky social dynamic in a hundred ways, even in 2008. Obama has to err on the side of "safeness."
- Obama’s branding is still "new kind of politician, new kind of politics." Most of us chickens here at Art of the Possible are probably sure that only goes so far, but Obama needs to preserve the brand for the general election. (See Hertzberg.)
I would like to associate myself with Steven Taylor’s Debate-Metric argument.
Summing up: Obama risks looking marginally "weak" by "not hitting back" against Clinton’s attacks. But hitting back risks making him look like a) an asshole; b) a sexist; c) a scary negro man! The second course just looks riskier to me, particularly in the general election. The potential gain from hitting back is wrapping up a nomination that’s already all but his a little faster. That doesn’t seem like enough of a benefit.
I would go so far as to argue that the fact that Republicans and their junior auxiliary in the Clinton campaign have begun attacking him as an effete San Francisco-style elitist is a measure of Obama’s success at neutering the "scary black man" attack path. Not completely. As long as there are racists in America, which is to say, as long as white people are human, it will be possible to get some measure of suggesting that inside every almost alarmingly slim buppie there is Huey Newton trying to get out. But more than any African-American candidate for national office has managed heretofore.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:53 am
Makes sense. I hope you’re right. My fear, though, is that in his mind the kind of war room strategy Bill Clinton perfected equates to the “politics of the past,” and his idea of the “new politics” will amount in practice to the Massachusetts Syndrome of Dukakis and Kerry.
Then, too, I’m just really starting to hate Hillary, and part of me would enjoy seeing her veins between his teeth even if it cost him the election.