Democratic Activists Should Chill
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, DemocratsSlate’s John Dickerson writes about Democratic divisions and how much pain the party can take. He touches on a lot of points but this, I think, is the most important:
Because the loyalties [of Barack Obama supporters and Hilary Clinton supporters] map along gender and racial lines, the potential for volatility increases, as supporters interpret an attack on the candidate as an attack on themselves. […]
Advisers on a seemingly constant round of conference calls raise questions about the rival candidate’s honesty, judgment, and temperament. Even if the candidates don’t take it personally, their supporters do. The question that now attends each new feint and jab is this: What is the pain threshold for the two constituencies? How much bickering and fighting can each withstand before hard feelings lock in and supporters decide that no matter how many calls for unity they may hear, they will stay home on Election Day if their guy or gal loses—or perhaps even support John McCain.
Obama and Clinton are adults and will come out of this ok. But their supporters are showing an increasing oversensitivity and an ever more confrontational attitude. This has not been an inordinately dirty campaign but a lot of people are treating it as if it were. They are reacting at volumes far above the decibel level of the actual slights. Samantha Powers? Geraldine Ferraro? Were these events really worthy of major uproars or were they relatively minor diversions taken to the extreme?
For the last eight years (and even more so for the last four), politically active Democrats have raged at the Bush administration, never missing an opportunity for terms of opprobrium, even going so far as to take their anger out on members of their own party who refused to adequately repudiate Bush and his policies (see: Joe Lieberman). This attack, attack, attack attitude, represented at online communities like Daily Kos, has carried over to the Democratic primary. Many of these politically active Democrats now seem unable to handle conflict without resorting to anger. Every legitimate disagreement on policy is seen as “Rovian tactics†every heavy handed ad is seen as a swift boat-style attack.
These angry activists are the Democrats who are most likely to rip apart their party, not the two candidates running and not their campaign operatives. Getting to and through the convention without a blowup will require the two groups of supporters to show more restraint and greater civility in the coming months. I still think the long race is the best public relations campaign the Democrats could have developed. But now they need not to screw it up.
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March 18th, 2008 at 9:41 am
To this point -
Yesterday, Markos Moulitsas (Kos of Daily Kos) – lead dog of the Democratic Party activist wing – published a post entitled “Clnton’s Civil War”
Beside some real gems like this …“She is willing — nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.” or this “Clinton’s campaign is counting on low-information Democratic voters selecting Clinton based on little more than name ID.” Got that – Clinton supporters are “low information” voters (stupid) unlike the “high information” (smart) Obama supporters. This is so over the top, it is laughable.
Then – how about this for some some truly twisted logic. – Kos embraces and amplifies Al Giordano’s assertion:
Note that the things that Kos accepts as the defining characteristic of dKos – are attacks on other Democrats. Thats what Kos says dKos is all about.
Yet somehow – This is “Clinton’s civil war”. How does that work?
I got no problem with the whole Kos “change from within” “gate-crashing” “agents of party change” stuff. But if that’s really how he sees himself and his blog, he just doesn’t get to blame Clinton for a “civil war”.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
MW makes a good point, but I think there’s a qualitative difference between the things Kos opposes and the divisions Clinton is plying and maybe broadening (no pun intended).
The Democratic Party is the country’s lone surviving big-tent party. Radical right wingers took over the GOP 30 some years ago and have been running moderates out ever since, even as they continually push the party farther to the right.
What this means is, you’re inevtiably going to have policy differences of the kind Kos is pursuing. It’s not an unhealthy or ruinous thing, although it has some potential to be counterproductive in presidential election years.
What Clinton is doing risks two longterm, even permanent, splits in the party. One cuts along racial lines. If Clinton and/or her surrogates keep up things like the Ferraro incident, she could really alienate African Americans. The other cuts along organizational lines. If Clinton loses the race for pledged delegates but seeks to win anyway by arm-twisting super delegates to overturn the party rank and file’s decisions as rendered in primaries and caucuses over several months, she could split the party for years and make it impossible for a Democrat to win the White House this year. A whole lot of younger, first-time voters and some independents would be alienated.
The bottom line is, Clinton has gotten every chance to build momentum, pull ahead and win big. She’s even had help from Republicans cynically voting in Democratic primaries because they would rather mcCain run against her. Yet, Clintin is still trailing and hanging on by the skin of her teeth.
Yes, some of the so-called Netroots get hot headed and go after Clinton out of proportion to what she herself has said and done. That’s the nature of the Net and its younger and more passionate inhabitants. If Clinton is elected, she’s sure to hear plenty more from them, so she better get used to it.
The bottom line is, the Pennsylvania primary should absolutely be the end of the line for Clinton unless she wins a commanding victory, one that actually puts her ahead in pledged delegates, which I don’t think is even possible.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
She absolutely does not need a lead in pledged delegates. Pledged delegates have been shown to have – at best – tenuous connection to the “will of the voter” after she won the Texas popular vote and Obama took more delegates. Pledged delegates are bullshit. I mean that in the nicest possible way. If she takes a big popular vote victory in Pa, takes a big popular vote victory in Puerto Rico, and Obama forces succeed in disenfranchising the voters of Mi and Fl, she should legitimately count those states popular votes in her total. That gives her the popular vote plurality overall when we get to Denver. Tht is much more indicative of the will of the voters than pledged delegates.
The more I think about this – It’s all over. Obama should pull out for the good of the party now and accept the VP role on a unity ticket.