For years, the Democratic Party has nominated good, experienced candidates - who failed to inspire.
Mondale: Strong on substance, wooden in inspiration
Dukakis: Strong on substance, wooden
Clinton: Yes! Inspiration!
Gore: Incredibly strong on substance, inspirational in real life, put in a lock-box by his consultants and mocked mercilessly by the media
Kerry: You get the picture.
Reagan got people to cross over and vote for him despite their disagreeing with him on policy. He inspired.
We know that on issue after issue, from abortion to economics to Iraq to torture, the majority of Americans actually agree with us.
Wouldn't it be nice for a change to nominate someone who inspires people to vote for the candidate they actually agree with?
(There's more...)
I've been pretty much an Edwards supporter since 2004. I still think the wrong guy was at the head of the ticket that year.
With Edwards out, I've had to take a good look at the remaining choices. And it seems to come down to a choice: Experience vs Inspiration. "Ready on Day 1" vs "Yes We Can".
Now we have a choice between Clinton II, who we already know will not inspire the opposition to cross the line and vote for her.
And we have Obama.
Substance? The man is a sitting US Senator who, before being elected to public office was involved in grassroots community organizing. He's not the cypher some would like to make him out to be.
Governors have an executive advantage, of course. Bill Clinton was a governor who had put through policy initiatives in a small state. But it was not his policies and initiatives that made him Presidential timber, but his inspirational ability
Bill Richardson is out of the race, despite having a great resume, because he is not a great communicator.
You select a plumber based on "substance" because you know he's the guy with his hands on the pipes. You can choose a guy for CEO based as much on inspiration as on resume, because the CEO sets direction. For everything else, you have managers and bookkeepers.
It's the same with a President. We've seen time and again Democrats put forward proposals that are just and fair and far-reaching, only to have them shot down because we couldn't build a coalition of support behind it.
After years of nominating guys with good resumes who went down in flames in the general election, I'd like to see someone inspirational get the nomination.
2 comments:
Sorry, Jer. I am no big fan of Clinton's. But why should I trust Obama? We
are not yet even into the general election and he's already parroting
longstanding Republican talking points on health care, unions, and a host
of other issues that are quite important to me. I don't have any empirical
evidence to be able to determine which Obama I'd be electing. I don't find
DLC triangulation to be inspiring. It's tired, and it takes the party in
the wrong direction. The guy gives a nice speech, I will admit, but what I
have seen thus far has been an awful lot of rhetoric and very little
concrete policy. But of course, take this with a large grain of salt,
because I may be the one person in the country who actually liked Gore's
speeches.
But back to Obama, further, there's the fact that the guy has never faced
a serious campaign. If he is the nominee, he had better find himself a VP
who has and who can do the kind of down and dirty rapid response that
enabled Bill Clinton to win. When the Republican squads come after him
with whatever version of Swift Boating they can manufacture, he and the
people around him cannot ignore it as beneath his dignity and try to take
the high road. He can't float ethereally as a uniter above the fray. He
has to fight. I am not yet convinced that he will be willing and able to
do it.
I really feel like I have nowhere to go now that Edwards is out. I will
support the nominee, whoever that turns out to be. But I'm not going to go
out Tuesday with a big agenda to vote for -- or against -- either Clinton
or Obama.
Actually, what scares me most about Hillary is what that does to down
ticket races in red states. But I am not at all convinced that Obama's
presence as the nominee isn't going to gin up some pretty ugly turnout as
well. There are already plenty of people who think he is a Muslim! And of
course, his nomination will bring out some of the worst racial elements of
the Republican Party, though I am assuming that they will attempt the
impossible racial geometry of being very harsh on immigration while
simultaneously trying to detach the Latinos/Latinas from African Americans
in the Democratic coalition. And the success of this maneuver depends upon
who the Republican nominee is as much as whom the Dems choose.
Joel's looked at more numbers than I have, so he may differ on this. But I
do not think that the youth vote is going to turn this election. It's only
one demographic, and as a key demographic I personally don't think it's as
important as Latinos y Latinas for building the future of the party. And
there was one really interesting set of numbers I saw that showed that,
while Obama certainly grabs the lion's share of the very photogenic
college kids, Clinton actually did significantly better with working class
and community college young voters -- not just in getting their votes, but
in turning them out.
I think I know pretty well what we get with Clinton in the White House.
Policies that are fairly similar to Bill Clinton's, but that do better on
health care, children's issues, MAYBE poverty, and MAYBE trade. Too much,
in my humble opinion, saber-rattling and surgical striking, and probably a
slower disengagement from the war than most of us would like to see. No
substantial change in our China policy. Some movement on climate change
issues, but nothing sweeping or radical. Lots of fighting with the
Washington press corps and with Congress, especially if the Dems lose
seats in the midterms. I'm not thrilled about it, but it's better than
what the Republicans would do.
I am just not sure what we get with Obama. I don't feel like I have good
ways of judging whether he'd govern to the left or right of where Hillary
Clinton would govern. I do think he would also be far better than the
Republican alternative, but I am not at all convinced that he would not,
for instance, hammer unions to get ahead. Both would certainly endorse and
promote more neoliberal crap in the international economic structure.
Which one is more electable? I still think that's hard to say before
Obama's truly been tested in a hard fought competitive race. If, at the
end of the day, he wins the nomination, that may be enough to get him
ready for the big guns. But I'd hate to be wrong about this and have to
watch several months of TV commercials of him visiting a mosque or
whatever else they'll dream up. Inspiration alone is not going to win this
election for the Democrats. And I don't think that either Obama or Clinton
really understands the kind of anger that's out there now about what the
Bush administration has done.
But right now, I am probably going to vote for Edwards on Tuesday, simply
to say that the issues he was raising in the campaign are the ones that we
need to be addressing.
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