Playing dirty

Ugh. I had a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn't get to enjoy for long my schadenfreude at how badly the media got bludgeoned after New Hampshire because, Clintons being Clintons, they would turn a hard-earned victory into an opportunity to showcase the worst fault lines in the Democratic party. From making inexplicably stupid remarks about MLK and the civil rights movement (yes, as a practical matter both men were necessary but not sufficient in bringing formal equality to African-Americans, but why on earth diminish MLK in order to make a cheap point?) to using proxies at every turn to bring up the drug use issue to making it clear that they plan to exploit tensions between the Hispanic and African-American communities, the Clinton campaign appears to be channeling the spirit of Karl Rove. "Change" at all costs, eh?

If my feelings on this are any kind of weathervane, then I suspect that these tactics will repel the women voters who turned New Hampshire around for her. Or at least they should. Obama has played a remarkably clean game so far, and it redounds a great deal to his credit that he has stayed more or less above the fray and seems committed to not engaging in destructive racial politics in order to beat her back. One good thing--if he survives and wins the nomination, no one can say he isn't ready to face the Republicans.

Last word on Hillary

Rebecca Traister has an awesome op-ed in Salon on how infuriated women flipped the bird at the media (in particular, the creepily obsessed, clearly-not-getting-any Chris Matthews) and gave New Hampshire to Hillary. I've had a surprisingly impossible time convincing (liberal) men that it was perfectly reasonable for women to feel the way they did about the media's coverage of Hillary, but I suppose "girls are idiots" is a comfortable enough meme. (Seriously, the theme of the male-pundit-dominated commentary appears to be, "Everyone in New Hampshire was on their period!")

Anyway, as long as the media ignores the fact that the way Clinton is portrayed elicits a powerful--and rational!!--reaction in the women who are watching, they're going to keep being shocked and dismayed each time she beats expectations. Traister makes this point with the best line in the piece (which is titled "The witch ain't dead, and Chris Matthews is a ding-dong"):

But here's a message from the women of New Hampshire, and me, to Hillary Clinton's exuberant media antagonists: You have no power here. Now be gone, before somebody drops a house on you!

Paradoxes in Political Science

Kevin Drum wonders at the perplexing results of the exit polls from New Hampshire that show that Democrats who want quick withdrawal from in Iraq supported Hillary by substantial margins, while Democrats who want a more gradual withdrawal or to keep troops in Iraq voted for Obama by substantial margins. The same trend occurred on the Republican side--voters who disapproved for the war supported McCain, and voters who approved supported Romney. He asks, "huh?"

I think this might be explained by a phenomenon in political science called "Nixon-in-China" syndrome: the public trusts the leader to take action that he is least ideologically predisposed to. It took Nixon to go to to China because the right could trust him not to betray American interests; similarly, it takes left-leaning governments to undertake reforms in areas like labor and welfare because it is easier for them to sell such programs to liberal interest groups (since left-leaning governments ostensibly have those groups' interests as a priority). That's why it also took uber-hawk Ariel Sharon to withdraw from Gaza, and why it will probably take someone who opposed the war to make the decision to tough it out if that's what the situation calls for; and vice versa.

The Two Obamas

The Obama who takes this approach in beating back Clinton's charges that he was raising "false hopes" (""Did JFK look up at the moon and say, 'Ah, false hope. Too far. Reality check. Can't do it.'?") is a stark contrast to the Obama profiled in the New Yorker several months ago. That Obama learned several lessons from his tragically idealistic parents, and adopted an incremental-change view of governance:

In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative. There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It’s not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good.

That was the Obama that appealed to me, the one who adopted his process-oriented, democracy-enhancing political philosophy from Alexander Bickel and John Hart Ely (guys that con law nerds such as myself get excited about). But it sounds nothing like the Obama we hear on the trail now, the one who seems to be promising the Second Coming (of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Jesus Christ, or some combo of all three.) Maybe this is an example of the whole "campaigning in poetry and governing in prose" idea, but I sort of miss the other Obama, which might explain why I sound grumpy whenever I read idiotic posts like this one.

Dream Team

It's too bad Clinton and Obama have developed, from all accounts, such personal animosity towards each other; a Clinton-Obama ticket could be unstoppable and combine all the things that the voters are looking for--a sense of history-making (double dose!), and the style plus substance to achieve the policy goals they both share (which, as far as I can tell, is all of them.)

In addition, it makes the Obama the presumptive incumbent in 2016. This interesting Atlantic piece points out that that was something Hillary may have thought all along, until Obama "jumped the queue" and decided to take her on. Unfortunately, they probably won't be able to get over the nastiness this race has engendered. Not to mention the possibility that Americans can maaaaybe make one leap, but not two...

Hillary wins NH; media makes omelet from egg on its face

Hillary defies expectations and pulls off what no one in the media predicted, and they still aren't gracious enough to print a picture of her that doesn't make her look she's been in the kiln too long.

The narrative is that her tearful moment on the trail helped win over women. The subtext appears to be: Trust chicks to act irrationally. No one seems to think it's a good thing that women turned out so overwhelmingly for her, despite the fact that five days earlier they were heralding the unprecedented numbers of young voters who had supported Obama. Yes, it's nice when college kids put down the bong long enough to do their civic duty, but it's not clear to me why their collective judgment is so much better than that of soccer moms (especially since the latter group is the one that's supposed to hate her so much.)

An optimistic view is that the voters of New Hampshire didn't want the debate to be over, and wanted a candidate to emerge from the campaign thoroughly vetted. A pessimistic view is that they were so sick of the media's self-righteous anointing of Obama (and the thoroughly egregious pile-on of Hillary) after Iowa that they voted for her just to be contrarian. Can't say that I blame them.

Loose definitions of "change"

Mitt Romney on how he is a "change agent"

He went on to highlight how, as a venture capitalist, he helped finance the start of Staples, which shifted how consumers buy their office supplies.

"I was part of that, I saw that firsthand, experienced it. I see how change can change an industry," Romney said.

Further evidence that he is the candidate for change: he changes his socks, and can also make change for a twenty.

Cynical thoughts

The best comment I've heard so far on the prospect of electing either the first woman president or the first black president was from one of my law school friends (who is black and female). I asked her who she was supporting and she responded darkly, "It depends on whether I can stomach eight years of racism or eight years of sexism."

Inevitable Harry Potter analogy

This depressing account of how much the juvenile political press hates Hillary (even when she brings them bagels and coffee!) makes me think that she is the Hermione Granger of the 2008 campaign--the know-it-all, hardworking student that everyone despises. I guess that makes Barack Obama Harry Potter: the "Chosen One".

[Yes, it is sad that of all the thoughts I've had about the candidates in the past few days, this was the one I wrote down.]