Thursday - May 08, 2008

Irrational ambition is Hillary Clinton’s flaw

Of interest from the comments section in this morning’s paper.
You might also be interested in the many comments by readers.

By Anne Applebaum
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 08/05/2008

Read comments

Are you tired of the US election campaign? Not really sure what they’re arguing about any more? If you’re feeling as if you’ve lost the plot, don’t worry. It’s not because you’re British, or because you haven’t been paying close enough attention: we Americans feel exactly the same.

The malaise which the endless Democratic primary campaign has inspired across the political spectrum was summed up by the writer Nora Ephron, who described the ongoing contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as an “unending last episode of Survivor. They’re eating rats and they’re frying bugs and they’re frying rats and they’re eating bugs; no one is ever going to get off the island and I can’t take it any more!”

Hillary Clinton wants so badly to win that she will try anything

But Ephron wrote that a month ago, and nothing has changed since. On Tuesday night, primary votes in North Carolina and Indiana once again confirmed everything we knew already.

Obama is still safely in the lead, both in the popular vote and in the delegate count. Clinton is still behind. And even if they keep going until the Democratic convention in August, Obama will still be safely in the lead, and Clinton will still be behind. For Clinton to win now, she has to get her party to change the rules of its primary, post hoc (apparently she is planning to try) or bring more states into the union.

Which is ridiculous - but so is this campaign. If you’ve found the election hard to follow of late, that’s because the only real issue at stake is Hillary Clinton’s extraordinary, irrational, overwhelming ambition.

As I write this, rumours that Clinton intends to drop out are in circulation. Allegedly, she cancelled her talk show appearances yesterday. Allegedly, her campaign is utterly broke. And yet no one can be certain that she won’t fight to the last delegate, using up every cent of her own money (she lent her campaign a further $6.4 million last week) and every last ounce of the Democratic Party’s credibility, because everything we have learnt about her in the past few months indicates this is possible.

Clearly, she wants so badly to win that she will try anything - and we know that “anything” includes adopting positions and methods of a kind she once claimed to abhor.

She is not above smear tactics, among them attempts to link Obama to Sixties radicals, people with whom he had only the slightest contact, if at all.

She is not above hints, verging on racist, that a black man can’t win the general election. She is not above exaggerating her achievements, claiming to have helped “bring peace” to Northern Ireland and to have dodged sniper fire in Bosnia.

Bizarre though this will sound to British ears, she has also spent much of the past two months trying to remake herself as a whiskey-drinking, gun-toting, blue-collar politician, the candidate of the working class.

Although she is a multi-millionaire whose best friends are multi-millionaires, although she spent most of her life among what can only be described at the elitest of the liberal elite, and although her opponent was raised by a single mother and went to university on scholarships, she has run around in circles trying to convince people that he is the elitist, and she is the populist.

The Chicago Tribune analysed her speeches and determined that she was using grammar and vocabulary several grade levels below that deployed by Obama, “the language of the least-educated, lowest-earning voters”.

At one point, this long-time supporter of gun control described how her father taught her to shoot. It would take a psychologist, not a political analyst, to explain why she does this. To prove some feminist point? To show that she’s the equal of Bill? To take revenge for Monica?

Still, barring a deus ex machina or an Obama implosion of some unpredictable kind, sooner or later she’ll have to step down. When she does so, she’ll leave a divided party in her wake, as well as a candidate who has been seriously weakened by her prolonged campaign.

You may be bored by the election campaign, but the Democratic Party, when it wakes from this nightmare, will be very angry. And if John McCain beats Obama in November, it is not the Republican Party but Hillary Clinton who will be blamed.

http://tinyurl.com/4bp3dg

Posted by Drew458     on 05/08/2008 at 08:14 AM   
Filed Under: • Politics •  
• Comments (4) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner