CSotD: The inevitable walk-backs
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I'm back home, but nothing seems funny on four hours sleep, so I'm taking a dispensation to catch up on contemporary politics:
For all the sturm und drang over the rise of Trump, the dynamic story is over on the Democratic side, and Steve Sack didn't need the dialogue to make his point: We'll learn more tonight, but the "inevitability" thing does not appear to be proving out.
I make no bones about my support for Sanders, in part because, when the chatter first started, I opposed his candidacy, thinking he planned to run on a third party ticket. For him to run straight up for the candidacy of the party he has caucused with for his three-decades of politics made him legitimate in my eyes, and, apparently, of many others who have lived next door to him through those years.
Whether or not he is the best candidate is a separate question, but, while the Republicans had an oft-cited "clown car" of ambitious candidates, nobody (!) rose from Democratic ranks to oppose Hillary, and I don't think either scenario is healthy.
The Republicans certainly have a mess on their hands, and it could be that two or three credible candidates would have reduced the fascination in Trump, at least in the sense that a smaller field might have focused the debates on more specific issues rather than vague, grandiose pipedreams.
But I think that ship has sailed, and, while Trump's march towards Kristallnacht remains fascinating, it's the other party whose actual race, despite the insistence of the Democratic establishment that it is settled, remains competitive.
Matt Wuerker lays it out well, because we're not talking about whose menu and decor is likely to be praised by the food writers. The issue is which menu and pricing appeals to the most people.
We'll learn a great deal tonight, but it's already clear that those to the left of center have not fallen at her feet, and Wuerker catches the sense of "how dare they!" emerging from Clinton quarters.
And it's less anger than surprise, like an honor student who genuinely can't understand why her classmates are not enthusiastic about her suggestion of "Jane Austen" as the theme for Prom.
Peasants!
John Cole points out one of the early issues with Clinton's campaign, which is that the Republican party — and the right in general — has a long history of despising her and mounting dubious but heartfelt attacks on her.
None of these "scandals" have stood up to serious study, but, then, serious study doesn't have a very solid track record: Look how the transparent lies of the Swift Boat Veterans held traction against John Kerry, and how gleefully the media ran with bogus "Al Gore says he invented the Internet" attacks.
As Cole notes, the email drum has not yet broken, and, in fact, has been featured in many cartoons this past week, and not all from the right.
But even if that attack, too, proves empty, the hostility built up against Clinton will remain a factor.
It may well be that this hostility will be offset by the frightening insanity of the Trump campaign, the clear and present danger to the body politic his lunatic brand poses, but it also may well be that the right-wing may not be Hillary's greatest enemy.
Darrin Bell notes her jaw-droppingly inaccurate comment about Nancy Reagan and AIDS, a public-relations disaster which would be enough of a problem in itself, but which is compounded by the fact that it is simply one in a series of inept gaffes and misstatements.
When people were speculating about Joe Biden stepping into the race, there were a lot of chuckles over a politician long branded a fumble-mouth. I'm not going back to do a search, but I wonder how many of the people who joked about ol' gaffe-prone Joe are the ones now shrugging off this "misstatement" along with the other whoopsies of the Clinton campaign.
I'm not counting Gloria Steinem's "boy-crazy Bernie girls" wisecrack, because it came in the course of a book-tour interview and had no connection to the Clinton campaign, unlike Madeline Albright's campaign-appearance joke about how women would go to hell for not supporting Hillary on accounta she's a woman.
But both were walked back as "Hey, can't you take a joke?" which, as a person with a Y-chromosome, I promise you is a response that does not work for everyone.
And John Lewis's stupefying endorsement of Clinton, in which he declared that, since he didn't know Bernie personally back in the early 60s, Sanders was not really active in the civil rights movement, a Page One statement that he later walked back with a Page 23 "oh, perhaps I erred …" (No mention, btw, that while Bernie was being arrested for protesting school segregation, Hillary was a Goldwater Girl.)
On and on it goes, with the latest being Clinton saying, "I don't know where he was when I was trying to get healthcare in '93 and '94," upon which the Internet was flooded with the photo of the First Lady on a health-care appearance with then-Congressman Bernard Sanders (I-VT) standing right behind her and the quotes in which she praised his efforts in support of the goal, and also with a copy of the picture and note she wrote to thank him for his work.
At this stage, the issue stops being whether Bernie has the experience to be president, though he's logged more hours in Congress than any president since Gerald Ford, but, rather, whether Clinton has the judgment to hold an office in which you aren't always able to walk back factual misstatements or dismiss insults as jokes.
If Clinton gets the nomination – and she does have a clear lead as of this morning – she may be lucky to be facing Trump.
Young enthusiastic voters, however many times their intelligence has been insulted, are probably less likely to stay home if the opponent is frightening enough.
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