So the grand political theater that is the Democratic nominating process has finished its sweep through Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont without moving the contest any closer to a firm conclusion. Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) campaign can claim her emphatic win in Ohio, coupled with a narrow victory in Texas gave her candidacy new life and considerable momentum heading into the next important primary to be held in Pennsylvania April 22.
This paradigm shift in rhetoric is fascinating considering Clinton spent the last month trying to convince voters that momentum is meaningless. The new narrative says that Clinton is the resurgent candidate, that she finally found her voice in Ohio and successfully poked holes in Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) campaign that is light on substance. She successfully manipulated the media into believing that Obama had not received enough criticism (and not even enough first questions during the Cleveland debate) and coupled this with the tried-and-true strategy of throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at Obama.
Alas it worked, but only if you accept the narrow definition of victory that the Clinton campaign is serving up. Her "firewall" barely held-a meager accomplishment considering she had been campaigning on the myth that she was the inevitable candidate, but nonetheless celebrated Super Bowl-style with confetti, balloons and a party atmosphere at her campaign headquarters in Columbus. Yet her claims to momentum are ultimately going to be rendered moot by cold, hard math. No matter how much momentum Clinton gains, momentum will always lose in a battle against math, and the numbers say that Clinton is fighting a battle that should be declared over. According to an analysis by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, even if the senator from New York wins the remaining 16 primaries (throw in Michigan and Florida for good measure) by much larger than expected margins, she will still be trailing in the delegate count come the August convention.
Barring some unforeseen disaster in the Obama campaign, there is simply no way for Clinton to make up the delegate deficit and no amount of complaining can change that. At the end of the day though, Clinton really has no one to blame but herself and she must face up to the reality that she deserves to lose this nomination. She has badly mismanaged her campaign, spending too much money on lavish hotel rooms and Dunkin Donuts purchases, while being utterly outmaneuvered at the grassroots level by a candidate with a fraction of the political capital available to the first lady of the Democratic Party. Add to this one of the worst myths of this Democratic campaign is that Clinton is the master of issues while Obama is a lightweight with little more than eloquent words.
On the three biggest issues of the campaign-healthcare reform, foreign policy and the economy-she is perceived to have much better policy proposals than Obama, but this is simply not true and many commentators are beginning to point this out. Her healthcare plan has been winning plaudits from Democrats because of its mandate requiring people to have health insurance, but The Economist this week pointed out that the experience in Massachusetts has shown that even with a mandate, almost one-fifth of the population remains uncovered, not to mention the fact that the federal government may not have enough money to afford it.
As for foreign policy, while Clinton is clearly vulnerable because of her vote to fund the Iraq war, her claims to international experience via her role as first lady is ludicrous. Not only did she have no foreign policy role as first lady, any leaders she may have had contact with have long since left office. On the key economic issue of the campaign, free trade agreements, Clinton apparently convinced Ohio voters that she was the candidate to save them from their evils. Although both candidates' stances on the issue are lamentable, Clinton is clearly more tied to her ill-fated protectionist stance than is Obama. Jagdish Bhagwati opines in the Financial Times Tuesday because of her strong ties to the protectionist AFL-CIO, while Obama's labor support comes from the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters-neither of which are protectionist. Clinton has also failed to surround herself with credible economic advisors like Austan Goolsbee, "a brilliant MIT PhD at Chicago Business School and a valuable source of free-trade advice over almost a decade."
Beyond the issues, however, Clinton has a bigger problem. As Clive Crook of the Financial Times pointed out Monday, because the differences on the issues between Clinton and Obama could be argued to a stalemate, character will be the deciding factor and Clinton has proven herself to be the most insincere of politicians. While her best moments have come when she actually betrayed her human side, it is simply not in her nature to let people know the real Hillary. Her plastic smile and cold manner are only made more obvious by her campaign's attempts to lighten up her image with appearances on the The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live. As Crook correctly observes, her less than affable character did not necessarily have to be an impediment, saying that Margaret Thatcher had a similar demeanor and won elections.
The key difference of course is that Clinton continues to try to be the likable candidate when it is simply not her style. Had she focused the campaign on her strengths instead of continually trying to emulate Obama's, perhaps she would have never found herself in this position. Instead the Democratic Party is faced with the prospect of Clinton fighting on to the bitter end no matter what the math says, playing right into Rush Limbaugh's hands by continuing to use her attack to "bloody up" Obama. Her hopes rest on the fact that she will be able to keep it close enough that her edge in super delegates will deliver her the nomination at the convention. How tragic would it be for the party that suffered such a brutal body blow in the 2000 election to ignore the will of the people and leave the nomination in the hands of people that in many cases were elected by exactly no one? Go figure.
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