As a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s throughout the primary, I was told that my candidate, and her supporters (myself included) were somehow destroying the party. That we were going to cost the Democrats the election and divide the party irreparably. That somehow forcing an extended primary through Pennsylvania, and Indiana, and North Carolina would hurt us in those states. Remember Kennedy in 1980 – as if the problem wasn’t Carter in 1980 – I was told. You’re not a real Democrat.
While I did make an electoral argument for Hillary, I never believed that Obama couldn’t win, or couldn’t win Jewish voters, or white women, or working folks, or whatever the most important demographic evar might have been at that particular moment. I think you have to vote issues in the primary, or you never get the chance. So, yeah, I supported the candidate who supported universal health care, had the better plans for the environment, and who I thought would be better for the middle class. I’m still glad I supported someone who was in favor of those things, although as I said during the primary, those are differences in degree and not differences in kind that we had with McCain.
I always promised to work like hell for whoever the nominee was, and I’m glad to say I delivered. I don’t know how many complete strangers I proudly told on the phone or at their door, “I’m a volunteer with the Obama campaign for change.” I’m also proud to say how well Hillary delivered: raising money for Obama, and many speeches (most notably her concession speech, the speech in Unity NH, and the convention speech) as well as local events all across the country.
The truth is that a tough primary is often good for the party engaged in it. It gets supporters riled up, and it forces candidates to articulate their positions. It means that the media can’t just ignore them. As Melissa says:
Despite the frenetic din of pleading, scolding, haranguing, begging, admonishing and outright mockery that was aimed at Clinton during the primary as she stubbornly refused to concede a primary that she hadn’t actually lost, and despite the grim hand-wringing that a long primary would irreparably damage presumed nominee Obama, none of the grave warnings of the take-your-boobs-and-go-homers came to fruition. In fact, by engaging late-primary states like Indiana which haven’t helped choose a nominee in decades, the extended primary actually helped wake up Obama voters sooner than usual. It forced them to pay attention to the minutiae of Democratic policies early in the election, and gave the Obama campaign the opportunity to test and perfect its ground operation. The result? Indiana is blue for the first time in 40 years.
I was never worried about a primary against Maria Cantwell 2 years ago. And I was kind of disappointed that there wasn’t much of one in the 8th. The truth is, they’re almost always good.
Well, one good thing to come out of the Obama victory is that Hillary will never be president. For all of us Hillary haters, that doesn’t sound so bad.
differences in kind that we had with McCain.
I think you meant Obama.
What is your take on the PUMAs?
Perhaps the most importnat part of your post is your fervor for democracy. Hats off to ya!
My one reservation is with the issue of how people campaign. I am immensely proud that BHO ran a straight campaign without using mud that was, after all, readily available.
Ther trouble with mud is illustrated by the 8th. I worked for Darcy and hope she pull sit off, but I am not esp anti Reichert. Until … the idisocy about her degree. I find this sort of thing deep;y offensive.
Other egregious examples, some promulkgated on this bhlog:
the I-1000 effort to make the vote about the Catholic church.
Rossi’s implication of the deficit and his imaginary bridge plan.
Brad Owen’s candidacy.
The whole WASL debate.
The demonization of Brian Baird
So kudos to Gregoire and Darcy for straight campaigns too.
I just want to be clear that I never mocked Carl’s support for Clinton. I mostly just mocked his facial hair and his bizarre laugh.
The entire Republican~Rovian~Swiftboatian strategy from the get-go was predicated on facing Clinton in the general election. When Oba took the nomination, they were left with the pathetic Ayers, Muslim, socialist, Marxist bufoonery. And Hillary’s failure lead directly to McCain’s biggest blunder; the selection of Palin, putting his decision-making skills into serious doubt.
Maybe Chelsea will be ready in 2016.
While I agree that your commitment to the democratic process is laudable, you have constructed a straw-man argument here Carl.
I will second Proud’s argument and say the real problem with Clinton’s quixotic campaign at the end was not that she was still there, it was in the way that she was campaigning.
Her strategy of trying to disqualify Obama by saying he was not ready to be commander in chief, could not win the votes of Jews, Hispanics, big states (lol) or the upper/middle/lower classes was simply tearing down what was our nominee.
I agree that a contested primary is generally a good thing, but their tactics were not.
@2, No, the differences I had with McCain were in kind. I supported expanded health care coverage, he didn’t. I supported the kind of green jobs necessary to turn this country around, he didn’t. The differences in degree were between Obama and Hillary, the differences in kind were between either of them and McCain. My take on the PUMA’s was I supported Jackson, Tsongas, Bradley, Clark and Clinton in primaries, and every time been happy to support our nominees. So losing a primary sucks, but not near enough to not get back to work.
With the appointment of Emanuel and the listing of the folks Obama’s meeting with on the economy it looks to me like Clinton won.
On Burner…it was negative for Reichert to bring up the fact that Burner claimed to have an economics degree? It wasn’t negative to go on about his degree? It sure was stupid to get caught up in the minutia of Burner’s degree instead of saying ‘I meant to say I have the equivalent of a minor in economics and that will help me understand the best plan forward for rebuilding the economy’.
As mad (red hot mad) as I was at Clinton for the way she ran the last few weeks of her campaign, I have to say,
Hillary Clinton busted her ass on the campaign trail for Obama as very few (if not none) former primary opponents have ever done before!
I’m sending her a thank you card. How silly is that?
Kudos, Carl, for pinpointing the fallacy of the “Clintonistas for McCain” aberration. Our difficult and contentious primary season was always a matter of degree and emphasis in our urgent wish to defeat whichever Republican happened to make it to the end. There was no Holy Joe this time around, just a slew of liberals (and Mike Gravel). The contest was always between/among respected leaders, a choice of which fine Democrat was even better than the other fine Democrats.
McCain, of course, completely misread the primary battles. In that, he was aided and abetted by the trad-med “pundits”.
Sarah Palin was an astonishingly unprepared candidate whose only similarity to Hillary Clinton is chromosomal and gynecological. For the vast majority of Clintonistas, however, it wasn’t entirely about that second X chromosome. Those delusional PUMAs made a lot of noise and got a lot of press (anything to make it seem like a horserace), and some proportion of their small coterie ended up in the McCain camp. If your only criterion for a presidential choice is the presence of a vagina-American on the ticket irrespective of political philosophy, policy positions, and competence, good riddance to you.
What was really hilarious was how many fringie right wingers thought the PUMAs would put McSame over the top.
It was a lot! I mean the wingers were actually counting on them.
Very bizarre and too funny.
Early Hillary supporters did a great job of rallying behind Obama after Hillary conceded. We are all better off today because of that.
re: women
The funny thing is I think that the Republicans may have had a shot at some of the Clinton supporters if they actually understood identity politics in the slightest.
They actually seemed to believe that identity politics functioned simply as a matter of superficial characteristics. (Woman=women’s votes / Black man = black votes) Hell, they thought Clarence Thomas would draw in black votes.
By nominating Palin they insulted women much more than they appealed to anyone beyond the evangelical Christians. If they had not been so ham-handed about it they might actually of had some success.
darcy should have just said “i studied economics at harvard”, but unlike many others here i don’t think she would have won anyways.
carl is right that a contested primary would have been a good thing. and i think we’d probably be saying congressman-elect rodney tom today if it had been.
Tuesday’s festivities pretty well demonstrated that Karl Rove’s wet dream about hordes of disenchanted Hillary supporters defecting to the Republican ticket was just that.
Well said, Carl. Plus, the battle kept the McCain campaign off the front pages for months.
The GOP is so bad, and McCain ran such a bad campaign, that any Democratic candidate would have won this election. Even Hillary (whom I supported until late May).
I didn’t have a problem with people supporting Hillary or even the “extended primary” so much as some of the talking points Hillary’s campaign came up with about Obama. McCain recycled some of them and was careful to remind voters that Hillary said them first. If you don’t remember them, let me know.
Carl, obviously you did not read any of the insider accounts of Hillary’s campaign.
Hillary would have lost to McCain. End of story.
Speaking of destroying the party – thi sSalon article by Kate Harding pretty much says it all:
And Hillary’s campaign?
Penn and the 6 other dwarfs couldn’t run a campaign if they were all on stilts.
Clinton started with name recognition, money, Bill and a host of other advantages. she managed to lose almost all of them. some of it was her, some Bill but most of the problems were due to the horrible campaign managers (like Penn).
With that team, Washington would have lost at Trenton – even with the opposition drunk and asleep (or old and ignorant).
Carl: Eloquent and intelligent. As someone who supported Hillary for her policies and but campaigned as hard as possible for Barack, I appreciate your voice and agree completely.
I’m sorry, but how can you write an article condeming Obama supporters after what you and your people did during the primaries? You swore up and down that Obama could not win in Florida or Ohio, that we needed a candidate who could win working class voters. You know who won working class voters? Barack Obama. Hillary and Bill Clinton and their surrogates were totally over the top in the primaries, and should be ashamed of themselves. The era of the Clintons is over. The Obama era has begun!
If McCain had picked Huckabee and came out against the bail-out you would be singing a different tune today.
McCain campaigned on Hillary’s themes, that Obama was inexperienced and had questionable associations.
The extended primaries were great for our party and for American democracy, However I say good riddance to the political machine that Hillary took control of. IMHO its the same machine that beat down the grass roots in 68.