Hillary Hatred

Sullivan reprints this email to him, which calls him out on his irrationality toward Clinton.  I don't want her nominated, but I simply do not get the Clinton hatred displayed by the Andrew Sullivans and Chris Matthew types in the media establishment. To Sullivan's credit, he hears the criticism and promises to amend his ways.  Here's the emailer:

I see you quote with approval Maureen Dowd's column on Clinton's tears. Every day you tell us how much we need Obama's reasonable, fresh, high-minded vision of unity, and every day you pour gas on the fire by elaborating, just like Dowd, all of your personal resentments about Clinton and her husband. You know all about how selfish and arrogant they are, you know they pressure people, pull levers, and operate a merciless machine, you know their motives, their hidden motives, their secret motives, and even the ultimate motives behind all their other motives. Is such intimate knowledge standard ethical equipment for a journalist? Do you see no contradiction between the qualities you praise in Obama and the very different qualities you display yourself?

How do you help him when you charge, over and over, that any Democrat who prefers Clinton must be addicted to political poison or just plain dim?

I'd like to see Obama president myself. I want to vote for him. But I know that if you take all the bad the Clintons have ever done and piled it up in a heap, it just doesn't equal one month of the horror of the current administration. Are you a deeply self-deceiving man, or just a deeply cynical one? Do you people in the media take no responsibility for the poison of the last fifteen years? How do you expect to change the air in Washington when you sit down on Sunday morning with Chris Matthews and smile at his pathological hostility? And Dowd --- who in politics appears more troubled and sick than this sad woman? Don't you notice these things? Do you think we don't notice? How is this journalism? And how in God's name does it help?

It's one thing to say that she should be given the same rough treatment that every candidate has to deal with, but here's the difference between Hillary and other candidates.  She's the first woman ever who has a realistic shot at being elected.  Women are more than half of the electorate.  Women in general for good reason feel as though they have been unfairly treated by bullying men and catty mean girls like MoDo.

It doesn't seem to have been a force to date, but the gender identity politics angle to this election could very well play a much larger role in the dynamics of this election than I, at least, have considered. It wasn't an issue before Iowa because Clinton was the front runner. If she becomes the embattled underdog, women will understandably start to identify with her more deeply. Women understandably feel themselves to be underdogs by definition.  Underdoggedness could very well be a solidarity builder with a constituency that embraces half the electorate. Am I off base in thinking this is an important aspect that has not bee discussed? 

I didn't mention it in the earlier post, but that "Iron my shirts" jeer almost certainly stirred latent resentments and a helped to create a bond between women voters and this historic female presidential candidate. The kind of nutty commentary coming from the likes of Sullivan, MoDo, Matthews, Paglia, and others isn't much different in terms of its effect in stimulating widespread resentment among women. It's not about whether Clinton handles unfair treatment well or poorly; it's about the resentment that unfair treatment will provoke in a unprecedentedly vast constituency in the electorate.  There are those women who would never vote for her under any circumstances and there are those who will vote for her no matter what.  It's a question of that middle female voter who likes Obama, but doesn't see that much difference between him and Clinton.  Trigger her resentment and she has a reason to vote for Clinton.

 

Comments

[anon]

Read this great article on the New Hampshire primary, and Obama's weaknesses as a candidate:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119992615845679531.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

[Matt Zemek]

Anon -

Rove has been a brilliant architect of presidential election victories, but as a pundit, can you put any stock in his analysis beyond the clearly obvious Hillary moments from the debate and then the tears?

The New Hampshire vote had precious little, if anything, to do with anything about Obama.

However, let's play along and say that it did: if New Hampshire was decided by things Obama did poorly, it surely wasn't about conflicting statements on Iraq or the thin portfolio from the Senate.

Look, there are significant flaws to all of the major candidates, Obama very much included. But if we're going to rip a candidate, let's do so for intellectually honest and credible reasons.

Iraq is and has been an issue on which Obama (not Clinton) has been consistent.

I know what Obama's weakness is, and it's a lack of both experience and substantial policy achievements. Let's not shift the goalposts and/or give Karl Rove an ounce of legitimacy as a pundit/news analyst. Accordingly, let's not give the WSJ and its certifiably disturbing Paul Gigot (a quick Google search will tell you all you need to know about him) any credibility.

The WSJ does news well; not politics and op-eds, where the paper lurches into Bill Kristol-style territory.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

As a sportswriter, I find that readers often become sympathetic to the very coaches they so constantly tear apart when I or another columnist registers a forceful complaint or criticism.

The reputation of journalism today, combined with the acidically polarized climate and the round-the-clock availability of opinion and analysis, makes a lot of people defend powerful figures. The media, in a weird but real way, are viewed much more fearfully than people in the public eye who possess the real leverage and clout in society.

I, a columnist who makes $10,000 a year, am the object of vitriol from readers, not the coach who unethically and immorally violates a contract to snag $3.8 million plus perks at a new school.

Pundits like Scott Spradling and Chris Matthews--odious though they may be--should not be reason enough for women to view Hillary as a sympathetic figure. Hillary is all about entrenched power, and that plain reality has nothing to do with her gender.

Sadly, though, I fear you're right, Jack. As someone who has personally experienced this dynamic for years, I'm all too aware of how very powerful people become sympathetic figures just because enough columnists and pundits criticize them long enough.

I'll step in and clarify that my criticisms of college football coaches are issue-based and detail-oriented, while Hillary is and has been the victim of ample misogynistic hatred. Still, it's a shame when so much triviality (namely, a discussion of likeability or an Ed Muskie-like tear drop) carries so much weight and consequence. Let's allow this (and any other) election to be decided for legit reasons.

And to be fair, I'll say that as an Obama supporter, it was almost (not quite, but close) as absurd for only 12 percent of Iowans to lift Barack to front-runner status. Still, at least Iowa wasn't decided quite so cheaply or absurdly. (But this whole primary process still needs to be blown up and completely reworked: one election day, all 50 states, in late May, after a maximum 90 days of campaigning).

[Jack Whelan]

Matt--

Let's be generous and say that 25 to 35% of the American electorate is paying attention, knows the issues, and cares. Mix in with that group lots of well-informed, intelligent people like Andrew Sullivan, Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Kristol, etc., who are clearly irrational when it comes to certain issues, for instance the real but relatively minor threat posed by Iran or Muslim extremism or their over-the-top hatred of the Clintons. They use their considerable intelligence to persuade others of the validity of their fundamentally irrational positions. I have written here frequently how rationality almost always serves irrational--subrational and superrational--agendas.

Then ask yourself what percentage of Americans do you think evaluate the candidates consciously, fairly, and in relationship to their own well-thought out value system and political philosophy. I'm sure there are a lot of Americans who think they are being rational and fairminded, but how many people--men or women, liberals or conservatives--are really doing it? I'd argue hardly anybody--maybe 1-5%, which would be 3-15 million people, which sound a lot when you put a number on it.

So the most important factor in achieving anything in politics is knowing how to work with people's biases, prejudices, hope, fears, and resentment--with all the irrational factors that undergird their thinking. My argument in this blog has been that the primitive, red-meat appeals made by GOP have been far more effective in generating acceptance for their narrative than the more wonkish proposals of the Democrats, even though the Democrats' agenda is more in tune with the real interests of most of the American electorate.

The only effective antidote to the fear and greed narrative promoted by the GOP braintrust is a hope and courage narrative that calls on Americans to live up to their best sense of who they are. That's what I mean by a needed change in the weather. Hillary isn't going to deliver that change of weather; at best she'll be fairly competent and middle of the road--we'll have the nineties again, and compared to the current decade, that wouldn't be so bad, but not so good either. It was a pretty fatuous, purposeless decade in our political history during which mostly we just marked time.

Most Americans aren't cynical. They will respond to the real thing when it presents itself, and I agree with people like you and Sullivan that Obama might be that guy. That's why he's the change candidate and Clinton is not. Clinton is a woman, and that's different, but she is the same old visionless policy wonk type that offers nothing new. It might be good enough for folks like Guest, but we need more than that, and anybody who shows some promise of offering more should be given a chance.

The difference that Obama makes is that unlike most politicians who indulge in the rhetoric of change or hope and optimism, there is something about Obama that actually makes people feel it. I'm pretty immune to standard political rhetoric, and I'm not sure I understand why Obama's rhetoric affects me differently, but it does, and I take that seriously, if with some caution. I would argue that he is making a superrational appeal. It could be that's wishful thinking. I'm sure Obama the man is a mix of a lot of things, but that superrational element is part of the mix, and it's what sets him apart. To those who are tonedeaf to the superrational it just seems like the same old empty political b.s., but it sounds different to me, and I'm very interested to see if he can actually do something with it.

So, even if it was proved to me that there is hardly any difference between Hillary's complicity with the corporate democrat agenda and Obama's, I'd still be an Obama supporter, because there is a much greater upside with Obama than with Clinton. As I wrote in earlier posts, he may not realize that upside, but it's an upside I don't see as even a possibility for Hillary. That's why I would be disappointed if she were to win the Dem nomination.

But here's the point I'm trying to make. My preference for Obama over Hillary, while it has some rational or issues-based content to it, is really based more in irrational factors. And the Democratic nominee will win on his or her appeal to irrational factors. The issues are for most of the electorate secondary. My point in the post above is that an irrational factor I hadn't considered until the Iowa/New Hampshire surprises is the understandable solidarity women will feel with Hillary if she becomes for them the embattled underdog fighting for her place in a male-dominated establishment.

I'm not a woman, and so I don't feel it. But if I were, I could see how that emotional identification with another embattled woman would trump whatever vague positive or inspired feelings Obama stimulates. For me at this point, it's not a question of what's right or wrong, it's just a question of how things work in social psychological terms. And it's important to keep in mind that the negative reaction that you describe to your criticism is likely to be magnified ten-fold with regard to Hillary because of her unprecedented position as the first woman to ever be a viable presidential candidate. That means a lot to women, and it should mean a lot to them. There's nothing wrong with that.

But it's up to Obama to mean even more by appealing to women on another transgender, superrational level. He's not going to win a majority of anybody on the issues. There isn't enough differentiation between them that most people will be aware enough of to make a difference. He will win them on the way he makes them feel about being proud to be an American again, and when it comes to women, my hope is that restoring American ideals has more emotional appeal than the legitimate historical longing to feel proud to have finally put a woman in the white house. We'll see.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

Wow. I hadn't thought of it that way. It's so true.

Thanks for clarifying this issue for me and, I'm sure, the other ATF readers here who are part of the (I don't like the term "reality-based community") "ATTENTION-PAYING COMMUNITY."

(That sounds a lot better to me...)

[anon]

"The difference that Obama makes is that unlike most politicians who indulge in the rhetoric of change or hope and optimism, there is something about Obama that actually makes people feel it."

Perhaps it's just that Obama is new to the scene and thus is like an empty bottle in which you can fill any flavor of liquid. There's a reason he only stayed for three years in the Senate. He knew that if he stayed longer, he quite likely would have accomplished nothing, accrued a typical liberal voting record, and lost his appeal. Obama strikes me as someone who likes 'running' for president, but probably wouldn't be very good at 'being' president. He says he wants to 'change' the face of America, but why hasn't he shown any record of any significant change in his career thus far. Rhetoric is great but secondary to governing and getting down and dirty in fighting for your cause. This is why comparisons to MLK Jr. are ridiculous. Obama has been given a free pass by the MSM thus far, and it'll only be time before they get bored with him and start to fudge the gold. Don't buy the media-hype! (Chris Mathews's show is like watching a one-hour Obama infomercial.)