Explaining what happened between Iowa and New Hampshire, or rather,\u00c2\u00a0explaining what happened from this weekend — I think the polls were\u00c2\u00a0basically right which reported a ten point Obama lead– is something which\u00c2\u00a0shall be dissected for years to come.\u00c2\u00a0 And no one will ever get a\u00c2\u00a0complete answer.<\/p>\n
The campaign was flailing for a time.\u00c2\u00a0 Segments of the electorate\u00c2\u00a0laughed it up as Bill Clinton’s attack dog routine served up the goofy\u00c2\u00a0sounding comment “I can’t make her any younger.”<\/p>\n
Hillary Clinton teared up, and this is supposed to be what turned it\u00c2\u00a0around for her.\u00c2\u00a0 From this we get the contradictory positions of it being\u00c2\u00a0staged, and it showing some sort of over-emotion.\u00c2\u00a0 (The gender issue\u00c2\u00a0puts the no-win situation for her.)\u00c2\u00a0 For some background on the first\u00c2\u00a0idea, Pat Buchanan brings up the case of Richard Nixon staging a tear\u00c2\u00a0during his 1968 Acceptance Speech.\u00c2\u00a0 The good news for Hillary Clinton in\u00c2\u00a0being compared to Richard Nixon is that Nixon cannot be accused of\u00c2\u00a0lacking in human emotion, so that gets us somewhere.<\/p>\n
More interesting, the hecklers shouting “Iron My Shirt”.\u00c2\u00a0 Staged?\u00c2\u00a0 No,\u00c2\u00a0this is a real current in our society, and attached to Hillary Clinton.\u00c2\u00a0 But the viscarel response on the female voter must be massive.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell,\u00c2\u00a0if I were there I would have wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton to\u00c2\u00a0spite that attitude.<\/p>\n
Subtle cues apparently worked their way through the other campaigns to benefit the female turn-out.\u00c2\u00a0 I did not see the\u00c2\u00a0debates,\u00c2\u00a0and I\u00c2\u00a0can’t say I would have noticed if I had seen it, but apparently\u00c2\u00a0there were some irksome moments.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I did\u00c2\u00a0see that the John Edwards campaign disgrace themselves by offering up\u00c2\u00a0blustering machismo with Clinton’s tears.\u00c2\u00a0 And I do not ever need to hear\u00c2\u00a0from Mudcat Saunders again.<\/p>\n
Thinking about this campaign, and this idea that a muddled result in\u00c2\u00a0the tediously named “Super – Duper Tuesday” will stalemat the campaign to\u00c2\u00a0the conventions, I realize that the balance is tipped toward Hillary\u00c2\u00a0Clinton — the tie goes to whoever has the most Establishment Clout.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the undemocratic “Super-Delegates” factor, the votes coming from\u00c2\u00a0Democratic insiders — the balance of power that put Walter Mondale\u00c2\u00a0over the top over Gary Hart in 1984.\u00c2\u00a0 After the debacle of 1968, the\u00c2\u00a0Democrats had a commission which reformed the nominating rules, headed by\u00c2\u00a0George McGovern.\u00c2\u00a0 Curiously enough, the candidate who best understood the\u00c2\u00a0nominating rules to take advantage of them in 1972 was George\u00c2\u00a0McGovern.\u00c2\u00a0 So, after the debacle of 1972 and perhaps the even greater debacle\u00c2\u00a0of 1976 — the nomination of an outsider — the party changed the rules\u00c2\u00a0and added the great smokey-room esque “Super-delegates”, which helped\u00c2\u00a0set up the debacle of 1984.\u00c2\u00a0 To clean up that mess, the DLC formed, and\u00c2\u00a0forced Southern Primaries to the forefront, setting the stage for the\u00c2\u00a0debacle of 1988, where the Democrats had to fight off Jesse Jackson, to\u00c2\u00a0get us to election of 1992.<\/p>\n
The debacle of 2004 was setting the system up so that the Democrats\u00c2\u00a0would hae a candidate as quickly as possible, to better take on Bush.\u00c2\u00a0 This impetus doesn’t exist in 2008, or maybe it does — I need to talk\u00c2\u00a0with Democratic insiders to see what the heck they are thinking — so, you\u00c2\u00a0know, we can have as prolonged and theoretically a “Delegate Count”\u00c2\u00a0fight to the eventual nomination of Hillary Clinton, because the\u00c2\u00a0Republicans are having a similar muddle with a greater chance of this supposed\u00c2\u00a0“brokered convention” conclusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Explaining what happened between Iowa and New Hampshire, or rather,\u00c2\u00a0explaining what happened from this weekend — I think the polls were\u00c2\u00a0basically right which reported a ten point Obama lead– is something which\u00c2\u00a0shall be dissected for years to come.\u00c2\u00a0 And no one will ever get a\u00c2\u00a0complete answer. The campaign was flailing for a time.\u00c2\u00a0 Segments of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}