{"id":611,"date":"2008-03-04T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=611"},"modified":"2008-03-04T10:15:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-04T14:15:00","slug":"post-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=611","title":{"rendered":"Post Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe you’re not like me, but I open the op-ed page for directives from the liberal media.  Most of the time, however, the liberal media disappoints.  I get instead a kind of post game breakdown of the sort you’d find in the most technical of sports sections.  There’s an election going on, as some of you may know, and the candidates (in particular the Democrats) are out there making their case–"vote for me because of I am a better fit for the job–my judgment, record, etc., make me so."  So, liberal media, who is better<\/strong>?  Let’s ask E.J.Dionne<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\nTo be sure, just about everyone anticipated that when the field
\nnarrowed, Clinton would be one of the contenders left standing. She had
\nwon allies from her work for her husband and in the Senate, was helped
\nby the residual affection for Bill Clinton<\/a> in many parts of the party, and created a support base among women.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut the scenario-builders pondering this contest two years ago imagined
\na showdown between Clinton and — let’s be honest — a white guy. It
\nwas thought that a moderate Democrat (popular choices included Mark Warner<\/a> of Virginia<\/a> and Evan Bayh<\/a> of Indiana<\/a>) would cast himself as the "electable" alternative to the "divisive" Clinton.\n<\/p>\n

\nAlternatively, John Edwards<\/a>
\nhad the chance to go at Clinton from her left (he’d run against
\n"Clintonomics" as the pro-labor, mill-town-born populist) and from her
\nright (he was, after all, a Southern white man).\n<\/p>\n

Obama upended all these calculations. Warner and Bayh understood how
\nmuch the race had changed and decided not to run. Obama bested Edwards
\nin Iowa<\/a>, effectively blocking Edwards’s only path to contention.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He doesn’t care.  While his conservative colleagues stake out clear positions<\/a> and defend them–urging others to believe as they do–Dionne can’t bother do anything other than, er, color commentary:<\/p>\n

\n

Against anyone but Obama, Clinton could have counted on strong support from African Americans<\/strong>. Against an Adlai Stevenson<\/a>–Gary Hart<\/a>–Paul Tsongas<\/a>–Bill Bradley<\/a>
\nsort of reformer, she would have assembled the "regular" Democratic
\ncoalition: blue-collar whites<\/strong> allied with black voters<\/strong>. This is, more
\nor less, how Walter Mondale<\/a>, Bill Clinton and Al Gore<\/a>
\nprevailed in the primaries. Against a centrist, Clinton would have won
\nthe liberals. Her strength among women <\/strong>would have provided her with
\nadditional ballast.\n<\/p>\n

Obama not only created an alliance between African Americans<\/strong> and
\nupscale reform voters, but he also changed the composition of the
\nDemocratic electorate by drawing in hundreds of thousands of voters
\nunder age 30.<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To me this is just baffling.  I can see how this would be interesting from the perspective of political operatives or political scientists.  But most of us are rather interested in who is a better fit for the job.  Dionne assumes however we are like him.  We’re interested in who runs the better campaign organization rather than who, for Pete’s sake, is better for the job.  It’s a little early, in other words, for an explanation. <\/p>\n

\n

Because the Clinton campaign failed to anticipate the imperatives of a
\nrace against Obama, it was only in the past two weeks that she managed
\nto move to offense. Her campaign has gone back to its basic argument
\nthat, love her or not, Clinton is the experienced fighter who can be
\ntrusted to deal with a nasty world and a decaying economy. She’s trying
\nto turn Obama’s newness into inexperience, his eloquence into slickness
\nand his conciliatory nature into a form of softness. It is no accident
\nthat her "red phone" ad about her readiness to be president was created
\nby a veteran of Mondale’s campaign who made a similar ad against Gary
\nHart in 1984.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And to conclude:<\/p>\n

\n

This is not the campaign Clinton had hoped to run, but it’s the one
\napproach she has left, and it’s had the effect of forcing Obama to
\nrespond to her. You wonder<\/strong> what would have happened if she had adjusted
\nearlier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s not really what I’m wondering.  I wonder if anyone can explain what this article was about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe you’re not like me, but I open the op-ed page for directives from the liberal media.  Most of the time, however, the liberal media disappoints.  I get instead a kind of post game breakdown of the sort you’d find in the most technical of sports sections.  There’s an election going on, as some of … Continue reading Post Game<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ejdionne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}