The Economist had a very good editorial on the Indiana contest yesterday:
Indiana, though, is another matter. It ought to be solid ground for Mrs Clinton. It resembles states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where she has done well, being somewhat conservative, mostly white and above all relatively poor. Average incomes in Indiana are $36,500, versus $40,000 for Pennsylvania, where Mrs Clinton won by 9.2 percentage points. Her appeal has consistently been strongest to voters earning between $15,000 and $100,000 a year.But for more of a youthy, Obamist perspective, see Rolling Stone's piece, "Hillary's Bitter Victory," which makes an interesting argument that the Democratic race represents the most important round in the "culture wars" in recent times:
This expectation carries great danger, though. Should Mrs Clinton stumble in Indiana, her campaign will almost certainly be doomed. Her recent comeback critically depends on maintaining the momentum generated since her breakthrough in Ohio on March 4th, which has allowed her continually to close the gap in the popular vote between her and Mr Obama. If that process goes into reverse, she will lose the most convincing argument that she is able to deploy to the wavering superdelegates who will determine the final outcome because the tally of elected delegates is so finely balanced.
Seldom in American politics has the same side of a single party split into such distinct and acrimonious factions. As virtually identical as the two candidates are in their political positions, there is no longer any common cause left between Hillary lovers and Obama supporters. There is only a culture war of epic proportions, featuring some of the most unlikely and absurd combatants in the history of impassioned conflict. Ordinary suburban Americans, people who consider Tina Fey biting satire and whose only "fighting" experience has usually been against trans fats or hair loss, can now be seen running through the streets, screaming war calls like Maoist guerrillas in the jungles of Nepal.Here's the killer conclusion, which is penetrating:
As Hillary finishes her speech in the ballroom, plumes of confetti shoot into the air out of a pair of paper-cannons. The loudspeaker — which for hours now has been playing an agonizing loop of patriotic classic rock, with heavy emphasis on Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" — is now blasting John Cougar Mellencamp's "Our Country."
I raise an eyebrow. The song is (1) the soundtrack to a hideously overplayed truck commercial and (2) possibly, just possibly, a weird and weirdly gratuitous dig at Obama, who at that very moment was making his gloomy "I'm fucked" concession speech in Evansville, Indiana, flanked by Indiana native Mellencamp and his wife, Elaine. Is the Clinton camp trying to make a joke about the fact that Obama is grasping for the endorsement of some gnomish Eighties B-lister while Hillary is grabbing America by the balls? Yeah, this is our country, motherfucker! Suck on this!
Has it come to this? The political equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?" On both sides, this Obama-Clinton race has turned into something very like the vicious rivalry of a pair of blood-lusting high school student bodies — Odessa Permian versus Midland Lee, only with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance.
This race has already seen such juvenilia as one would previously have considered inconceivable in a contest between two ostensibly cerebral Democratic presidential candidates, including a surprisingly serious argument over which camp had the right to invoke Rocky references in their Pennsylvania campaign rhetoric — an argument settled, amazingly, when Gov. Ed Rendell declared "by executive order" that the right was Hillary's alone. The problem has been exacerbated by the relatively minor policy differences between the two candidates, although one suspects that even if those differences were major, they would take a back seat to the emerging tribal schism now cleaving the Democratic Party — a wholesale regression to clashing teenage emotions that turns these supposedly profound electoral battles into feverish squalls of car-honking and sarcastic sloganeering.
How long before one side kidnaps the other side's mascot? Will we wake up some morning in the near future and find Obama's campaign bus taken apart and reassembled on the roof of the Indiana Statehouse? Will Obama hooligans steal Hillary's Botox kit and gleefully paint the word "suck!" at the end of every yes she can sign in Guam?
Seldom in American politics has the same side of a single party split into such distinct and acrimonious factions. As virtually identical as the two candidates are in their political positions, there is no longer any common cause left between Hillary lovers and Obama supporters. There is only a culture war of epic proportions, featuring some of the most unlikely and absurd combatants in the history of impassioned conflict. Ordinary suburban Americans, people who consider Tina Fey biting satire and whose only "fighting" experience has usually been against trans fats or hair loss, can now be seen running through the streets, screaming war calls like Maoist guerrillas in the jungles of Nepal.
As Hillary finishes her speech in the ballroom, plumes of confetti shoot into the air out of a pair of paper-cannons. The loudspeaker — which for hours now has been playing an agonizing loop of patriotic classic rock, with heavy emphasis on Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" — is now blasting John Cougar Mellencamp's "Our Country."
I raise an eyebrow. The song is (1) the soundtrack to a hideously overplayed truck commercial and (2) possibly, just possibly, a weird and weirdly gratuitous dig at Obama, who at that very moment was making his gloomy "I'm fucked" concession speech in Evansville, Indiana, flanked by Indiana native Mellencamp and his wife, Elaine. Is the Clinton camp trying to make a joke about the fact that Obama is grasping for the endorsement of some gnomish Eighties B-lister while Hillary is grabbing America by the balls? Yeah, this is our country, motherfucker! Suck on this!
Has it come to this? The political equivalent of "I know you are, but what am I?" On both sides, this Obama-Clinton race has turned into something very like the vicious rivalry of a pair of blood-lusting high school student bodies — Odessa Permian versus Midland Lee, only with the fate of the free world hanging in the balance.
This race has already seen such juvenilia as one would previously have considered inconceivable in a contest between two ostensibly cerebral Democratic presidential candidates, including a surprisingly serious argument over which camp had the right to invoke Rocky references in their Pennsylvania campaign rhetoric — an argument settled, amazingly, when Gov. Ed Rendell declared "by executive order" that the right was Hillary's alone. The problem has been exacerbated by the relatively minor policy differences between the two candidates, although one suspects that even if those differences were major, they would take a back seat to the emerging tribal schism now cleaving the Democratic Party — a wholesale regression to clashing teenage emotions that turns these supposedly profound electoral battles into feverish squalls of car-honking and sarcastic sloganeering.
How long before one side kidnaps the other side's mascot? Will we wake up some morning in the near future and find Obama's campaign bus taken apart and reassembled on the roof of the Indiana Statehouse? Will Obama hooligans steal Hillary's Botox kit and gleefully paint the word "suck!" at the end of every yes she can sign in Guam?
More important, when will this thing end? Is there any relief in sight?
The short answer to this question is no, there isn't. This contest no longer has anything to do with the electoral math. After the Pennsylvania contest, Obama holds some 1,724 delegates, which include 1,488 pledged delegates and 236 superdelegates. Hillary, by contrast, has 1,593 total delegates, broken down into 1,334 pledged and 259 superdelegates.
The popular vote is a more confusing story, but even there the margin is substantial: 14,417,619 votes for Obama to 13,917,393 for Hillary. Those numbers can be skewed in several different directions, depending on one's inclinations (Obama's number is artificially low because it fails to reflect caucus-state populations; Hillary's number is artificially low because she doesn't get credit for Michigan and Florida). But either way, the final count will almost certainly favor Obama.
The fact that the race seems so closely fought now makes it hard to remember Obama's crushing streak of victories in the middle of this campaign. But the truth is that he built up so big a lead back then that even a major victory in a major state like Pennsylvania has little influence on the outcome: Hillary picked up only nine delegates on Obama in the process.
By the time the primary season officially ends on June 3rd with Montana and South Dakota, Obama will almost certainly be leading in delegates and the popular vote — but there almost certainly will be no nominee, either. The remainder of this race has therefore become a matter of each candidate making a case for his/her electability to the 300-odd superdelegates still uncommitted — people like Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, who ultimately will decide this contest at the convention.
In the meantime, one thing about this contest can be said with absolute surety: Everyone involved has lost their minds. For Clinton supporters, the race has taken on a meaning that transcends politics. One gets the sense that Hillary's campaign has become an idée fixe for any Democrat of a certain type who has ever been fucked around or disrespected or abused or disappointed. Far more than any policy position, it is Hillary's "fight to the finish" mantra that is reaching her supporters on some elemental level that is hard for outsiders to comprehend.
With all his verbose deflections of Hillary's attacks and unconcealed annoyance over silly nonissues like his failure to wear a flag lapel pin, Obama inadvertently painted himself into a corner as a know-it-all, a pointy-head who would rather yammer in polysyllables and talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than wear the fucking American flag on his chest — as Hillary, meanwhile, was promising to "obliterate" Iran and in the process roping in hordes of nondescript suburbanites who'll crawl through the mud for "Madam President" while marching to classic rock tunes like the "Horst Wessel Song." Clinton's genius was in seeing that it was possible to play the liberal/intellectual-baiting game not only with Republicans but with Democrats — and that by forcing her opponent to take the high road, she could scour the fish-rich waters of the low road.I'll have more later.
The result has been an epic clash, a war of cultural types that has nothing whatsoever to do with issues and everything to do with self-image. It's become a pitched fight between the fucked-over suburban little guy and the vilified intellectual, two groups that for years have felt put upon and dispossessed, for different reasons. The fact that their respective champions are identical superstar U.S. senators/multimillionaires makes the bitter hatred this schism is inspiring absurd, but it doesn't make it any less real. Or likely to end anytime soon.
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