CAMPAIGN OUTSIDER Death watching Clinton in her backyard
By Muhammad Cohen
NEW
YORK - Here in Hillary Clinton's political base, few are paying much
attention to New York State's favorite daughter's incredible shrinking
presidential campaign. New York loves a winner and despite her big victory in
the Democratic presidential race in West Virginia on Tuesday, that's not
Clinton's look. But win or lose, Hillary Clinton ain't New York.
I ought to know. I was born here, and I lived here for more than 30 years,
beginning my professional career at the Department of City Planning (several
decades later, some of our plans seem to be coming to fruition) and cutting my
journalistic teeth at local newspapers in three of the city's five boroughs.
Since I moved
away nearly 20 years ago, the city has changed in many ways - more expensive,
more gentrified, more crowded - but it's still New York.
New York State has twice voted for Clinton as its senator, and a Sunday
Mother's Day fundraiser in New York netted her more than US$200,000 amid some
ardent support. "No one can tell me by the math that [Senator Barack Obama] can
possibly win in November," one backer said, echoing the Clinton camp line. Her
campaign's strategy is to keep pounding on Obama, claiming that Clinton will be
the stronger candidate to take on presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.
Poor white trash talk
Clinton's victory in West
Virginia simply gives her more venom to poison the
well against Obama. West Virginia is one of the
whitest, oldest, poorest, least
educated states in the Union, and Clinton will keep playing those demographics
against the Illinois senator, while Obama focuses on McCain. While Clinton has,
at least temporarily, toned down her rhetoric, she paints herself as the
candidate of "hard working Americans, white working class Americans". In a race
against a black candidate, that's hardly conciliatory. As half of a $110
million income in recent years, facing a guy who grew up on his (white)
mother's food stamps, that's downright disingenuous.
The US media, happy to keep the story alive, are almost comical in their
credulity. They are giving these upcoming primaries far more attention that
they deserve. No matter what the outcome of these votes, Clinton cannot
overtake Obama in popular votes or pledged delegates.
Tuesday's storyline is that no Democrat has won the presidency without carrying
West Virginia in the general election in nearly 100 years. Clinton's
overwhelming victory suggests that Clinton can win the state in November and
Obama can't. "This election will be won in the swing states, and I am winning
the swing states," Clinton said in her victory speech in West Virginia.
One West Virginia exit poll showed that only 36% of Clinton supporters would
vote for Obama in the general election. Any polling today about the election is
November suspect, but this number really screams cuckoo. It's extraordinarily
difficult believe that nearly two-thirds of Democratic primary voters will not
vote for the Democratic nominee in the general election.
No Bush III
It's equally difficult to believe that either candidate will beat McCain in
those swing states without better answers to his charges that Democrats favor
higher taxes and defeat in Iraq. Democrats' line that McCain represents a third
term for George W Bush has the right cadence and falls within the American
voter's average attention span.
But it's too easy for McCain to bat away that charge, particularly since he
does truly dislike Bush. Telling the story of the 2000 South Carolina
Republican primary, where the Bush campaign accused McCain of fathering a child
with a black woman, should be enough to demonstrate a real rift between McCain
and Bush. The election will turn on the war and the economy, and Democrats need
effective, simple positions on those complicated issues.
Pundits keep looking for a path for Clinton to the nomination. It's obvious
that Clinton can win, if she convinces enough superdelegates that the party is
taking too big a chance by nominating Obama. Or if she can scare them into
thinking that her lawyers will fight into the fall over counting the Florida
and Michigan primary votes the Democratic National Committee refuses to
recognize. Clinton mentioned those two states, which the candidates all agreed
would not count, near the top of her speech on Tuesday night.
While Clinton and the pundits are gabbing, back in New York Clinton's flagging
candidacy is hardly the talk of the town. New York has twice elected Clinton
but it hasn't taken her to heart. As much as New York prides itself on being a
down-and-dirty, realer-than-real place, it still has a huge tolerance for
phonies and loves celebrities. New York is the home of the fashion industry and Sex
in the City, not to mention Wall Street where smoke and mirrors have
always promised better returns than the real numbers in the ledgers. She may
have been campaigning for senator, but everyone knew Clinton was running for
president from the moment she and Bill bought the house in Chappaqua.
Until her campaign began its kamikaze mission into a dead end, Clinton had won
their respect. Some knowledgeable observers, such as Leonard Levitt, a
hard-boiled veteran police reporter, think that Clinton will accept reality and
give up the fight. "She's got to realize at some point that she's doing damage
to herself," Levitt, now writing an in-depth book about leadership of the New
York City Police Department, said. "She's got to be thinking about her future."
Winning second place
On the eve of the West Virginia vote, New York's other senator and strong
Clinton support Charles Schumer seemed to be looking to the future. "[Voters
are] worried, and they want somebody to come in and say I can help you a little
bit with healthcare, and paying for college, and all these things, and a
Democratic candidate is more likely to do it. Hillary and Barack have both run
very strong and great races, and I think they'd be a strong ticket together."
Assessing the possibility of an Obama-Clinton ticket, Schumer said, "At first I
thought it wasn't but I do think it could be."
This latest run of speculation of a Clinton taking the vice presidential slot
is part of the search of an exit strategy for Clinton. While the Democratic
party leadership, if such a thing exists, desperately wants to find a path for
Clinton to leave the race with dignity, the search is a waste of time. One key
Democrat not looking for an exit strategy is Hillary Clinton.
"Surprisingly, she's been a good senator," said Jolin Hiff, psychologist at a
school in the Bronx near where his beloved New York Yankees are playing their
final baseball season in Yankee Stadium before moving next door to a boutique
version of the legendary House that Ruth Built. (Across the river in Queens,
the second-fiddle New York Mets move to even more prissy digs for next year.)
"She's stuck up for the state, she's stuck up for New York.
"But now," Hiff continued, describing Clinton with a string of expletives that
only a New Yorker could spew. A ride on the subway reveals the rainbow that is
New York, so Clinton's label as the candidate of hard-working white people
isn't likely to play well in the Big Apple. That ride on the subway is a
reminder that many of America's working class voters aren't white.
The real black and white of the campaign remains that Clinton has no reasonable
path to the nomination, except by savaging her rival Barack Obama and staging a
coup to count Michigan and Florida. New Yorkers admire grit and toughness. But
in order to survive in New York, you've got to know when enough is enough.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America’s story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of Hong Kong On Air (www.hongkongonair.com),
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
high finance and cheap lingerie.
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whitest, oldest, poorest, least
educated states in the Union, and Clinton will keep playing those demographics
against the Illinois senator, while Obama focuses on McCain. While Clinton has,
at least temporarily, toned down her rhetoric, she paints herself as the
candidate of "hard working Americans, white working class Americans". In a race
against a black candidate, that's hardly conciliatory. As half of a $110
million income in recent years, facing a guy who grew up on his (white)
mother's food stamps, that's downright disingenuous.
