Boy, I wish I could care about the Atlantic's revelation that Hillary Clinton is a particularly ruthless political animal. Maybe the real news is not so much that she's ruthless, but that she was not especially competent.
The best post I've seen on the matter is from Ta-Nehisi Coates, who just joined the Atlantic stable and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite bloggers. Coates zeroes in on the way Team Clinton poisoned itself by believing in the myth of its own victimhood, instead of the more complex truth. The truth would have required the Clintonistas to take responsibility for themselves and their failings, which is not something they were prepared to do. What's fascinating is how Coates links this mindset to the black nationalism he imbibed like a drug when he was a younger man. Coates finds the tragic humanity in people -- white, black, right, left, all people -- who let a therapeutic ideology get in the way of stone-cold reality:
The concern isn't, How do we make sure that next time we pick a better female candidate, it's How do we use the pain we've endured to our ends.I know this story so well that it hurts. The need to be noble, when in fact, you're really just beaten, is heartbreaking. This is about Kwame Kilpatrick and Detroit, Marion Barry in Washington, Sharpe James in Newark. It's about Karl Rove and country clubs, 9/11, Iraq and Bush's second term. It's about the South and the Lost Cause, about fighting for the confederate flag while your whole state teeters on the brink of the third world. This is about blindness and humanity, about a life defined by score-settling and what someone did to you, as opposed to what you're going to do for yourself.
Damn that's good.
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He sure got you good, Rod-
but a certain tribe of white men have always evinced a visceral hatred of her which I can't fathom. There's a sexism there, but something more than that, something about the men themselves and their own failings. For someone who's never been a flaming lefty, Clinton draws an incredible amount of venom. I may not completely understand why, but I suspect somewhere out in our fair country there are millions of white women who know exactly what that sort of hatred is all about.
I disagree with the rest- Obama ran on being the Leftist/moderate/centrist candidate, i.e. superficial Change, and on championing a one term agenda. He prevailed on getting the massive help of the conservatives and Southern establishments inside the Party.
The "flawed campaign" stuff is mostly a selfserving rationalization that is going around in Obama groupthink. The central fact of the primary was the Edwards support bloc deciding between Clinton and Obama based on the past, on resentments and fears. In effect, making a decision to allow the Bush agenda to dictate the terms of the next four years as well- not to go beyond it. Coates is just being a facile Obama apologist.
Coates' piece is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree with all of it, especially the passage Jillian pulls out above.
I don't think "visceral hatred" of Hillary is the sole province of any one gender. I know plenty of women, myself included, who have to forcibly restrain our impulses to uncharitable words toward Mrs. Clinton and to remember that the duty to pray as if we mean it for her soul and the soul of her husband hasn't in any way been abrogated, so to speak.
I think from the beginning one of the "trial balloons" floated by the Hillary campaign was the "a victory for Hillary is a victory for women, a failure for Hillary is a victory for sexism" balloon. And from some of the media coverage of the Obama campaign, it's easy to see that the template for an Obama defeat is already going to be "The country couldn't overcome its knee-jerk racism long enough to vote for Obama," not "The country's voters decided Obama wasn't the man for the job."
Thanks, Rod, for the link to Ta-Nehisi Coates' commentary.
I think that the pursuit of illusory utopias is being displaced as the greatest danger of our time -- now that communism has been discredited, it is increasingly difficult if not impossible for people to justify harming others to achieve a better world. Rather, our society is now threatened most by explosions of resentment, of which no group has a monopoly.
The question is no longer whether one and others should suffer to bring about a more just and equal world, but rather whether one is willing to hurt oneself in order to hurt others. Getting at your enemies matters more than upholding what you hold to be good. I think that Rush Limbaugh would go vegan the minute that Omaha steaks announces an exclusive advertising contract with Moveon.org.
Great comment, Political Atheist. Do you mind if I call you PA?
Of course, Alicia.
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