Seems like Douglas beat me to the punch over the primary thing. Haven gotten out of bed at half seven and planning to find time to post I anticipated victory on this front, but what do you expect given our relative routines?

Ah well, that does not diminish the joy of yet another set of wins. Hillary has literally won nothing since Super Tuesday. 76% to 24% in Hawaii was about the margin which was to be expected but the Wisconsin was a worry. We need not have feared. This was not his most crushing of victories but with a 17% margin of victory this still constitutes a thorough crushing. In a pair of fine posts concerning the days voting Matthew Yglesias {no, I don’t know how to pronounce that either, and I’ve heard it said before} that first demonstrates the extent of Obama’s success, in that he one almost every district there is, and the second displaying the idiocy of Clinton’s approach.

His postmortems are certainly of a higher standard than his, self-confessedly, terrible record of political predictions, with Clinton having been anticipated by him to score a narrow Wisconsin win here. Consider his work today apt compensation. As far as I can tell his analysis boils down to Hillary not having focused upon actually getting people to want to vote for her but instead has just played off of her institutional connections to try and sew the nomination up. I would go further.

Throughout the campaign her approach never seems to have touched upon making herself actually appealing to the voters. She started off presenting herself as the de facto candidate, as Hillary the Inevitable. This combined a touting of her massive national lead and a lack of name-known candidates in opposition to her {besides John Edwards, who never had the big business money backing him that he needed} to basically say that the nomination was in her handbag already and everyone else was simply wasting time, money and effort in order to cause unnecessary and pointless division. She treated all opponents as the establishment Republicans did Ron Paul, in other words.

The difficulty in this tactic was that it was simply not suited to actually convincing people that she was admirable. There was the standard fluff that you get littering all contemporary political campaigns, of course, but no overwhelming “Narrative” of the sort Daniel Finkelstein fetishises and which I would dearly love to deny the existence of and thus ignore completely but by both entertainment and empirical instances I am forced to accept and come to terms with the importance of, nor was there any real effort to latch onto some feature in which she truly excelled other than the fact that she was winning.

The argument made was not that she was superior through virtue but through reality. Ignore who should win, she was and if you so much as glanced at any other option you were wasting time and keeping your eyes off of victory in November and the crushing that the Republicans truly deserved.

Which worked. Until Obama started to win.

Then it shifted to experience. Clinton had plenty of experience, voters were informed. She was a competent, safe set of hands who had plenty of knowledge and prior interaction with this sort of thing and knew what she was up to and how she would implement things. However, once again, she did not really make an immense effort to sell herself. Exactly what this amazing prior experience that was to prove so decisive was not truly touched upon. Was it her time spent watching her husband at work? Her botched efforts to implement healthcare reforms, where she declared that any who dared opposed her schemes would be “Demonized” before the entire Right Establishment {quite predictably} did precisely that and ruined the prospect of any further alteration until Bush’s Medicare reforms?

Presumably something to do with that stuff, but we weren’t sure. It wasn’t explained. Because that was not what she meant. Her meaning was that Obama was new, that he was green and untested and unreliable and could not be depended upon. “Some of us are ready on day one”, as she explained carefully to us all, “and some of us are not“. This was effectively the most central covert negative campaign tactic of the primary season, for either party, and it looks like it hasn’t worked out.

Why? Because she never deigned to tell us mortals what specifically her superiority was here. If her time spent observing her spouse was sufficient to leave her well versed in all matters of importance to an extend greater than that of Obama then why did she vote in favour of the War while he refrained?

That wasn’t the point, though. It never was. Her efforts were never to ensure that she was seen as the best but instead wanted herself to be the only one available. She was caught entirely unawares since she had assumed she would be capable of a triumph via default and had not prepared herself for a fight. Then even once one presented itself ineluctably she attempted to adapt the former approach instead of abandoning it, as she obviously should have done.

This seems the problem with this campaign from first to last: her early speeches in it were best described as “Programmed”, effectively every line was clearly based upon a focus group and designed to be as moderate and devoid of sources of offence as could be possibly achieved. This resulted in an orative version of the dire Bland FM radio stations that cloud our airwaves with persistently inoffensive and unchallenging murk that fails either to excite or enthrall at any stage. Suffocatingly tedious, all.

She has eased this up of late but what was bizarre was that something evidently so pre-prepared could be so absent of anything striking, or bold. It now seems likely to me, however, that this was  simply her machine ensuring that she did not slip. It was assumed that all that was needed was for her path towards the nomination was not obscured by her own words and thus untripped she could claim it without any true dispute or hassle or mess. No fuss, no detours, nothing shocking, no alarms, no surprises, a quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide.

To be fair to the Clint campaign, and odious not-so-secret rightist Mark Penn, at this her machine was very, very good.

The failing of it was that it was neither prepared nor expecting to deal with an actual movement that went not directly against it but simply off in another direction entirely. There was no way that Clinton’s more recently adapted mantle of “Change” was one which she had anticipated wearing, there is no way that it fits her firmly established skull and no explanation for her donning it save mimickry.

So in this way once stripped of its illusionary invulnerability her aimless, pointless campaign was crippled utterly by the fact that once knocked from her pedestal her seemingly intractable legs had not been designed so as to allow her to regain her feet.

From the floor she was able to clutch a few states within the grasp established while the march had been firm and resolute and nip nastily at Obama’s shins {note that her infamous tears at New Hampshire accompanied her claims that “Some of us are ready and some of us are not, some of us know what we want to do and some of us haven’t really thought that through enough.”} and perform a poor impersonation as if one of those pathetics who yank personalities from others and present them as their own via copy & paste to conceal their own absence of any true content or depth, but has been incapable of.

Even her attempts at this were failures, though, as even her rhetoric based around change and clean-up relied upon implicit negativity: what can “Change you can believe in” be understand as except an allegation that Obama is a fantasy? What can “It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush”, besides being an bald but disarmingly amusing argument for dynasticism, mean but that an Obama will not suffice? Her approach remained not to fight the case purely but to obey her reflexive reaction to dismiss all else. You can not believe Obama, he could not survive the Republican Attack Machine, he has not the experience, he is not an option.

Only she is. 

There is a thin line between spin to those outside yourself and denial that aims inwards and it seems as if she failed to pick it out. She cribbed her campaigns’ efforts to ignite hope with these messages, discreet and otherwise, and in her efforts to display her superiority demonstrated beyond any doubt that she had noticed but not understood.

So now witness the scrabbling.

This, at least, she is the right position to perform. The floor is the optimum, in fact.  Perfect source of mud, too, and that has been slung lately and more should follow shortly. She is perfectly prepared to damage the strongest chance that the Democratic Party has of defeating John McCain if it advances her own position and is entirely willing to tear apart the party entirely through a messy internecine with only a narrow gnat’s worth of a margin as a substitute for a proper margin, leaving a party harrowed after a sprawling bout of fratricidal combat. She not only wants Superdelates {or “Automatic Delegates” as she misleadingly euphamises} but seems willing to attempt to court those pledged for Obama as well.

Why? Because it’s all she has left. And it has become obvious beyond a shard of doubt that the only force driving this affair is her longing to win.

Why has her campaign been empty of true meaning from the start? Why has she proven so willing to readily steal wholesale the message of Obama? Because she never had one, her only interest here was her own self-aggrandizement, perhaps thus completed some arcane pact made decades ago with her and her husband for sixteen years of shared rule.

And yes, speaking of Bill, I must thank him for blowing the lid on this wretched affair, albeit inadvertently. He showed us that the sole element of his character that impressed us all, his political nous and its tightly bound charismatic flair, has now faded entirely, as if bleached. He attacked Obama’s strength in a fashion that would make Rove, that approach’s architect, proud before declaring after the triumph of South Carolina that “Jesse Jackson”, a candidate dissimilar to Obama in every way conceivable save in being black as well and also a member of the Democratic Party, “won South Carolina too”.

When I first heard this quote I was simply stunned at the sheer crassness of the comparison, of the utter inability of the analogue to stand up to the lightest of breezes and his seeming ignorance at the fact that Obama had also carried the state of Iowa, easily one of the whitest regions in America mere weeks before. But the more I consider it the more likely it seems that he was actually being entirely earnest. They cast around for a reference and that was what was dredged up from the murk. This was not what they were expecting, they had not truly considered that a serious challenger could threaten their seamless stroll. They really had no idea what was about to hit them.

The reason for this was that the Clinton campaign was never really interested in attracting votes from actual people, only in rigging up the establishment to the degree that the people were left with effectively no choice. And they almost managed it, they almost pulled off this grand heist. Obama was, for at least a few days at the 2006/2007 border, teetering inbetween committing to and retreating from the leviathan struggle that confronted him. It seemed for a few fearful, terrible moments that “Obama for President” would never be a battle waged, or at very least not “Obama ‘08″. Even after he plunged into the fray it seemed for the majority of the last year that there was simply far too much ground for him to bridge, far too much for any lone man to close.

But Obama never operated alone, he always depended upon “The American People”, a figure that in his campaign have taken and then inverted position normally reserved for the candidate’s wife: providing faith, support and confidence is their normal role; but instead he has invested it into them and like some mystical worker of will into reality he has received what he anticipated from them.

This marvelous achievement managed only to draw unflattering attention to Clinton’s greatest anomaly: for someone running to represent what is named the Democratic Party she is the very worst example of an outright technocrat.

Oft-mentioned is the most brazen act of plagiarism performed, if not by Clinton or Penn then by her supporters, the outright theft of Obama’s theme-chant of “Yes we can!” to “Yes she can!” for Clinton. Andrew Sullivan suggested that  this demonstrates above all else the core conflict between the two candidates: Obama trusting in the populace of the nation he intends to run to work with him and as him, Clinton considering herself aloof from the plebs and connected only insofar as she needed

Is it any wonder that this form of attitude seems to have extended to the stage of disregard the actual importance of getting the people to vote for her?

It certainly has made her distinct from the most favourable elements of her party, the late and in my view objectively unquestionably great Texan Molly Ivins took the right to task {as always} when they were in the clutched of denialism not so much deluded as deranged over their sound thrashing in the 2006 mid-terms by staging a brief but entirely effective apologetic of the term “Populism”.

In my view the best way to understand the fate of the Democratic Party is to consider it as the losing party in a brutal war of language. They have lost so thoroughly that it has now reached the extent where they are not even able to openly call themselves what they are, which is “Liberals”, or more precisely “Social Liberals”. This word has been dragged through the faeces by every “Conservative” {a term that has, in term, remained unscathed but instead of being devalued by defamation has been devalued by inflation through perversion as any wishing to justify their psychosis have crowded towards it like cameras towards a royal} commentator worth their bullshit and is now so tattered and torn that only an outright denialist would make use of it and anticipate positive repercussions in thanks for their honesty. Instead there has been the wide-spread abandonment of the term, both by those who it most likely never suited anyway, such as Molly, and those who it always fit perfectly save for mild autocratic tendencies, as with Hillary.

This video is by far the most informative that you can view in terms of Hillary Clinton and this topic. She describes liberalism’s backstory reasonably well, certainly to a degree that satisfies this amateur political theorist, but then suddenly lurches away from describing the Victorian origins of the Social Liberalism that has characterised the Democratic Party policy and instead says that the word Liberal has been “Turned up its head” without mentioning who exactly it is who has performed this act. That would be, of course, the rightists, thus rendering her linguistic capitulation something of an act of submission. She also, curiously, argues that it has been “Made to look as if its a word that describes big government”, especially strange since expansion of government is precisely what she advocates. Entirely reasonably. She also suggests that she will offer “The tools they need to lead a more productive life”. Productive. As if the “Pursuit of happiness” was somehow obsolete. As if pleasure was not worth consideration, merely mindless creation. As if she was about to begin to push the robot machine hard and start telling us of her plans to make Americans “Fitter, happier…” As if she had never once listened to OK Computer.

But that grumbling Benthamite detour aside the point is this: whereas Molly was a populist and interested in the people Hillary is a progressive and interested in progress. This is not merely a matter of tautology, but one of perspective. It could easily, very easily, be argued that Obama is simply an inspirational populist. He addresses the people, he refers to the people, he will stand no denigration of the people, he trusts the people not to spurn him on account of his race. He relies upon them and every success thus far has been with their assistance. His money originates in places from a select few donors of large sums but largely through broad and copious offerings from the many. Where he has received the approval of the establishment, as with the Culinary Union in Nevada and Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts he has not enjoyed enough of a boost to triumph.

{Let us leave out John Kerry entirely, for reasons aforementioned.}

Clinton, meanwhile, intended to exert a strangle-hold upon her dissenters, claiming an absurdly great number of super-delegate pledges in a tiny length of time and gathering funds from Hollywood and all the other less sparkling sources and rapidly gathering an anti-momentum of sheer density that seemed unassailable. It seems that their entire  early approach was engineered towards rendering her impossible to touch, to the extent that the voters were as isolated from her as potential critics.

This did shift to an extent as it became clear that Obama was going to prove resilient to even a shock New Hampshire victory for Clinton but the proclamations of Mark Penn are perhaps more telling of the campaign’s outlook than revealing about his mindset: despite his unhinged ramblings concerning “Impressionable elites” “Expanding” it is clear that he simply deems those states that vote for Hillary to be used as propaganda tools to further her efforts and those that do not as irrelevances that are to have their importance impugned by any means necessary.

When a man is regarding only those votes that suit his interests to be of any consequence only a single conclusion can be reached: to this man the votes themselves are of no significance and what matters is the victory of the candidate. They are operating upon partisan terms rather than being of the view that the democratic process itself is inherently worth fealty to.

Which may not be an entirely poor attitude for a campaign manager to have, says my less naive side, but there is certainly a risk if the people are considered entirely worthless, if from nothing else a strategic viewpoint. Clinton is currently dedicating copious resources to the worrisome prospect of a broken convention, intending to win over the superdelegates {a fool’s errand in that those which have not yet committed could only have stayed their minds in order to pursue those that the party’s voters opt for} and seating the delegates of Florida and Michigan {a pair of states where there was no campaign, indeed one where Obama’s name was not so much as on the ballot!}.

Both of these would cause immense disruption to the working of the party and considerable damage to its interests. Both constitute a major threat of leaving the party so disordered that it manages to acheive a sheer feat of political ineptitude and falter against the Republicans in November. But that she is willing to maim the Party in order to dominate it is not of importance here: what is to be noted is that she has simply assumed that she will not be able to conquer Barack by winning over the people, and is not in the slightest concerned.

What we can find from this is the true worth that the standard voter holds for Clinton.  They could back Barack by a margin of dozens and she would be perfectly pleased if her connections could be utilised to overwhelm what was desired by the people. She is perfectly willing to push and push hard to have delegates re-seated although aware that this is expressly opposed by its official edifices and in the knowledge that this purely partisan strike would result in internal carnage, merely in order to overwhelm those given an opportunity to weigh each of the candidates against each other with those who were not. That does not matter to her, this does not concern her. Thus neither do actual people.

What is striking about this method above else is that it is still not to late: should she plough all of her funds and aim all of her rhetoric towards rendering appealing the prospect of her as president, touting her achievements not in comparison to those of Obama’s but instead in a fashion that makes her seem absolutely appropriate rather than relatively and deals with copious specifics. Having tried and failed to negative Obama from the race Clinton should remain positive and not attempt to conjure doubt and fear but instead proclaim her greatness from the rooftops, using every penny that she can muster.

These are states which seem to favour Hillary, these are states which are promising for her and in which a strong campaign would claim her a hefty proportion and thus, perhaps, the nomination upon good, popular terms.

And yet she shows few signs. Indeed she seems to be establishing herself for the aforementioned brokered, which almost all parties agree were amongst the poorer invention of that century. She has no concern for this defying the people. She has no concern for the people. She is under the impression that, at least insofar as concerning her campaign, they do not matter.

She has no idea.