Updated: Madam Secretary?

It’s been reported (first by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News) that Barack Obama is considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.  Since Senator Max Baucus seems to be taking the lead on health care — something I’d have thought Hillary would want — Hillary needs something to do.

It would be quite an interesting choice, very shrewd politically.  The Clinton name is known all over the world.  It would help keep Bill out of trouble, too.  It gives Hillary something real to do (as opposed to being vice president).  It’s a senior position with real, constitutionally enumerated duties.  Since Obama seems to be inviting opposing points of view — a “Team of Rivals, (unlike his immediate predecessor), this would be an inspired choice.

Let’s hope it’s not just another trial balloon and is something real.  Let’s hope Obama makes an offer and Hillary accepts.  It really is an inspired choice.

UPDATE: According to HuffPost, Obama has offered Hillary the position of Secretary of State.  Clinton has asked for some time to consider the offer.

Democrats: Stop It!

EJ Dionne has it exactly right in his op-ed in this morning’s Washington Post.  (So did Richard Cohen, as well.)

From Dionne’s piece:

The more Obama’s victories were cast as less than real, the more passionate Clinton’s own supporters became about the injustice of her defeat. A minority of her supporters threatens trouble at the Denver convention unless Obama gives her a roll-call vote in which never-say-die Clintonites could express their loyalty one last time.

Obama has already given the Clinton forces a night for Hillary and part of a night for Bill. In truth, he has little choice in a nearly 50-50 party, but Obama’s people have to be frustrated with the Clintonites for not recognizing how far he is going to give them their due.

Yet some of the Clinton folks still think that Obama has not been respectful enough of the Clintons and their historical contributions. Bill Clinton is clearly put out. This perceptive politician has to be more aware than anyone of the mistakes he and his wife’s campaign made. That makes the whole thing harder, for him and for Obama.

All this leads you to wonder who will write the new memo that would begin with the words: “STOP IT!” Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a lot to lose if the spirit of the rest of the memos affects her thinking now.

People have been saying this for a while.  (I was late to the party, but I’m saying it now.)  It’s past time for the Clintons and their supporters to STOP IT!!  Just stop it.  To quote Robert Barnett in his Clinton campaign email: “STOP IT!!!! … This makes me sick. This circular firing squad that is occurring is unattractive, unprofessional, unconscionable, and unacceptable … It must stop.”

Barack Obama has been bending over backwards to reach out to the Clinton supporters.  It’s time for the Clintons and their supporters to put up or shut up.  Either get behind your party’s nominee or go overtly declare for McCain.  There is too much at stake in this election for this childish nonsense.

Obama’s supporters will be livid if he loses the presidency because of the Clintons and their supporters.  Livid.  Are the Clintons so power hungry as to shoot the party in the foot this fall?  Do you really think that those people will forget that and vote for Hillary in 2012, giving her the nomination then?  I don’t think so.  Democrats are still angry at the Supreme Court for giving the election to Bush in 2000.  Four years is nothing when it comes to remember elections that people feel were stolen.  I’d keep that in mind, if I were the Clintons.

More on Clinton at the Convention

Today’s Maureen Dowd op-ed is about the Clintons and Obama’s convention later this month.  As I read it, I got more and more outraged at both Hillary’s and Bill’s drama.  They are — quite successfully — making the convention all about them.

While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention.

You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama.

Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism and barely disguised desire to see him fail. Whatever insincere words of support the Clintons muster, their primal scream gets louder: He can’t win! He can’t close the deal! We told you so!

[...]

She said she thought it would be good for party unity if her gals felt ‘that their voices are heard.” But that’s disingenuous. Hillary was the one who raised the roll-call idea at the end of May with Democrats, who were urging her to face the math. She said she wanted it for Chelsea, oblivious to how such a vote would dim Obama’s star turn. Ever since she stepped aside in June, she’s been telling people privately that there might have to be “a catharsis” at the convention, signaling she wants a Clinton crescendo.

[...]

The Clintons know that a lot of Democrats are muttering that their solipsistic behavior is “disgusting.” But they’re too filled with delicious schadenfreude at the wave of buyer’s remorse that has swept the Democratic Party; many Democrats are questioning whether Obama is fighting back hard enough against McCain, and many are wondering, given his inability to open up a lead in a country fed up with Republicans, if race will be an insurmountable factor.

Some Democrats wish that Obama had told the Clintons to “get in the box” or get lost if they can’t show more loyalty, rather than giving them back-to-back, prime-time speaking gigs at the convention on Tuesday and Wednesday. Al Gore clipped their wings in 2000, triggering their wrath by squeezing both the president and New York Senate candidate into speaking slots the first night and then ushering them out of L.A.

 

Well, I say to the Clintons: Get Lost.  You’ve shown that you can’t show any loyalty to the party’s nominee.  If you can’t support him fully, just go away and lick your wounds in private.  It is not all about you, Bill and Hillary.  Also, for the record, there isn’t any buyer’s remorse here.

It’s enough to make you want to scream.  Their behavior is tantamount to planning a coup.  Previously I had been conciliatory toward Hillary Clinton and her supporters — the PUMAs.  No longer.  Obama has made all the right noises about party unity and trying to reach out to disaffected Hillary supporters.  I submit that he doesn’t need them.  He can create a new coalition.  Let the PUMAs vote for McCain (against their interests, I want to point out).  Obama will win without them.  And when they clamor for positions in his Cabinet and other political appointments, they should be told, “Sorry.  No vacancies.  Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

An aside: Everyone is talking about how Obama is stuck in the high 40 percent range in the polls and trying to use that as an example of how he can’t close the deal.  No one is talking about how McCain is stuck in the low 40 percent range.  Which numbers would you rather have?  Obama’s?  I thought so.

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Clinton at the Convention

Disappointed and bitter Clinton backers want her name placed in nomination at the Democratic Convention later this month.  Some of the things they’re saying, though, are interesting.  (All quotes taken from the linked article, above.)

“It’s a simple thing to do, and it’s the biggest sign of party unity,” said Laura Spanjian, a San Francisco Clinton delegate who also supports the move. “If we do that one thing, the Hillary people can get past it – and move on.”

I wonder how, exactly, this is a sign of party unity?  Catharsis, maybe.  Unity?  No.  It strikes me more as trying to scratch an unscratchable itch.

Clay Dougherty, another San Francisco delegate for Clinton, said that “if the situation were reversed, the Obama people would feel the same.”

“For the first time in a generation, it’s been a close election … and this was such a unique situation,” he said, in which the first major African American presidential candidate competed with the first major female presidential candidate. “We need to honor both candidates,” he said.

I’m not so sure that Obama backers would be clamoring to have his name placed in nomination had he lost the nomination.  I agree with the need to honor both candidates.  Clinton’s support was impressive.  She deserves some respect, which she is being shown with a prime time speech at the convention.

Clinton still hasn’t released her delegates.  If her supporters are so concerned about party unity, why not ask her to release them?

I’ve said before that I didn’t see the harm in Clinton’s name being placed into nomination at the convention.  I felt that if it helps her supporters to move on and makes them feel honored, great.  I’m starting to re-think that, however, and am starting to think that it’s more like Ted Kennedy in 1980, which hurt Carter in the general election.  I’ve had enough of the PUMAs and I think that the bitterness they’re showing is not much more than sour grapes.  I think that if they’re truly Democrats, they need to get over it and move on. 

I understand the disappointment.  If Obama had lost, I would be disappointed too.  But I would have taken a moment, then come out strongly for Hillary.  It’s time for the PUMAs and other Clinton backers to do the same.  Enough already.

Clinton Campaign Strategy

The Atlantic has quite an interesting piece on Hillary Clinton’s campaign strategy, as well as some of her memos.  These are fascinating looks behind the scenes at quite a dysfunctional campaign, and are well worth the time to read them.  Mark Penn’s strategy seems to have been correct — Clinton’s coalition toward the end was exactly what Penn laid out — but he didn’t see the threat from Obama soon enough.  He thought the real threat would have been John Edwards.

Penn did lay out a way to attack Obama — to paint him as not American enough.  He wanted to raise voters’ doubts in Obama due to his “lack of American roots” — the time spent in Indonesia and Hawaii — “his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited.”  Penn went on to say:

I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values. He told the people of NH yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell—but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up. 

How we could give some life to this contrast without turning negative: 

Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back. 

Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds.

That’s quite a striking strategy.  Penn wanted to paint Obama as un-American.  It’s astonishing, really, that a serious candidate and campaign for the presidency would think about trying to paint a rival this way.  Clinton didn’t do this, though, to her credit.

The Atlantic piece (linked above) chronicles well how Clinton’s campaign burned through money, suffered from infighting, and suffered because many people simply didn’t like the candidate.  For all that, though, this was Clinton’s election to win.  She didn’t count on a once-in-a-lifetime candidate like Obama, either; but even allowing for that, if she’d spent her money wisely we would be talking about Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech in Denver later this month.

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Democrats Fully United

Hillary Clinton said today — in an online chat — that Democrats will be fully united this fall.

Question #9

Are you truly supporting Senator Obama and encouraging your supporters to do the same or are you just saying what you have to?

by JR4Hill at 8/7/2008 12:46:53 PM

Answer: Let me first say, I am so grateful for all the support that I have received. To answer your question, I am completely committed to helping Senator Obama become the next President of the United States and urging all of you to do the same. We share a commitment to universal healthcare, bringing an end to the war in Iraq, and getting back to an economy that works for working families again. I believe so strongly that if we want to see real progress in our country and finally break away from the failed policies of the past eight years, we need a Democrat in the White House. I am going to continue to do whatever I can to help Senator Obama and Democrats across the country win in the November.

It’s good to hear that from Hillary.  I hope her angriest supporters hear her.  It’s time for them to move on and get behind Obama.  Hillary is right, of course: It’s much more important to get a Democrat — Obama — into the White House.  The differences that she and Obama had during the primary are minuscule when compared to the differences than Democrats have with McCain. 

I’ve said before and I say again: A vote for John McCain (if you’re a Democrat and especially if you’re a Democratic woman) is a vote against your own interest.

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“I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

Many Hillary voters (read: women) are still not coming around to Obama.  What, they think McCain will look out for women’s rights?

From Maureen Dowd’s column yesterday:

In The Wall Street Journal, Amy Chozick wrote that Hillary supporters — who loved their heroine’s admission that she was on Weight Watchers — were put off by Obama’s svelte, zero-body-fat figure.

“He needs to put some meat on his bones,” said Diana Koenig, a 42-year-old Texas housewife. Another Clinton voter sniffed on a Yahoo message board: “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

This is amazing to me, especially from Democratic women (this is not a veiled insult to men).  Have we learned nothing from the “He’d be great to have a beer with” disaster in the White House now?  How about competence?  How about being prepared?  How about gleaning the facts before deciding on a course of action?   John McCain certainly will not help safeguard the right to an abortion.  He’s promised to appoint Supreme Court justices in the vein of Roberts and Alito. 

It just doesn’t make much sense to me.  I can understand the anger.  I can understand the charges of sexism from the media.  But that should be blamed on Obama?  What about taking a look at the candidates and making a choice based on who those people are, and then voting for the one that fits your philosophy best?  If you think McCain is genuinely the better choice for president, vote for him, by all means.  But a Democratic woman voting for McCain against Obama because of anger that Hillary lost is a vote against personal interest.

We’re In It Together

That’s the message, anyway.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigned together today in Unity, New Hampshire.  I think it’s a good start but it will take some more time. There are still quite a few hard feelings on the part of Hillary’s supporters, especially women.  More campaign trips together are needed, and the tone of Hillary’s campaigning for Obama will matter, as will the way Obama reaches out to her supporters.

Clinton and Obama to Campaign in Unity

Apparently no symbolism is too blunt for a presidential campaign.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will campaign together in Unity, New Hampshire on Friday.  I’m happy to see them out there together.  I hope this begins some of the healing from this long, brutal primary campaign.  I said during the primary that I thought that Hillary would need to campaign strenuously for him this fall.  I hope she does, and that she and Obama can help heal the party.

Clinton’s Valedictory

Say what you want about Hillary Clinton.  You can like her, or not.  (I fall into the “not” category, for a myriad of reasons — read my posts below if you want to know why.)  But there’s something to be said for the first serious female candidate for president that the United States has produced.

I’ve posted before that Hillary deserves our respect for being the accomplished person she is.  She’s an excellent senator, by most accounts.  She’s a good mother, having raised – from all appearances — a well-adjusted daughter.  And she’s run a serious campaign for president.  (Quite a lot went wrong with her campaign, but she very nearly won the nomination.)  She has opened doors for another female candidate following behind her.  The next woman who runs for president won’t have to break some of the barriers Hillary had to break. 

Now Hillary has thrown her support to Barack Obama.  She has fully endorsed him.  I fully believe that Barack Obama will be a better president than she would have been.  But she did break barriers and cleared a path for the women who will come behind her.  Perhaps the next woman will win.