The Suicide Compact in the Democratic Party

The Clash of Suicidal Beliefs – Obama vs. Clinton:

As you know, I believe in watching and evaluating what people actually “do” in politics, and not what they say when they are attempting to manipulate the rest of us. With that as guidance, I am beginning to perceive the emergence a truly suicidal set of beliefs on the part of each of the camps of the protagonists in this endless drama in the Democratic Primary. These beliefs will, if followed to the end, rob other Democrats of the very thing they want the most, which is to replace the Bush Administration with a Democratic President.

The Belief System of the Clinton Camp:

The Hillary Clinton camp really believes that they still can win the Democratic nomination, despite the increasing data to the contrary, most of which they seem to deny, at least publicly. Given some moments of stumbling and weakness by Barak Obama, and a poor performance in his last debate, they are articulating a strategy that leads to a contentious and bitter struggle all the way to the convention, if necessary. They are hoping for miracles, perhaps of their own making or perhaps with a little help from their powerful friends – and they have them. They continue to talk about the “unfairness” to the voters of Michigan and Florida, and their attempts to claim the moral high ground on this issue are embarrassingly and obviously self serving.

They continue to perform elaborate “calculations” to promote the view that only she can defeat John McCain because she won in the larger states, and they dismiss as irrelevant the polls that show that Obama runs better against McCain in more of those States that she does. They are continuing every chance they can to deliver a thousand cuts to Obama, delivered by Hillary Clinton with a smile of superiority that she “knows best” because she is older, wiser and more experienced than Obama. She is an expert at the “sound bite” sized jab and slash, and her biting comments get her on the evening news virtually every night.

The Clinton camp knows at this point that only Obama can knock Obama out, but they still will inflict the cuts in the hope that he will bleed so much that the Super delegates will have second thoughts about supporting him. They will continue to hammer him for more debates, largely because it is the only way that she can gain media exposure to offset her weaker position with the paid media.

I would like to say that there is no credibility to any of this, but they do have an “opening” that Obama may still walk though to his own destruction. They are faced next with the tiny Guam, Indiana, and North Carolina. Let’s play out a scenario that is possible. Given the ten point victory in Pennsylvania, the Clinton camp has the hope for a spill over into Indiana where Obama seems to enjoy a very slight lead at the moment.

In North Carolina, the pattern is clearer. Obama has been leading by double digits for a long time, but one recent (and probably unreliable) poll shows a margin that has declined to just nine points. If Obama’s lead does shrink in the world of a thousand unanswered cuts, particularly about race and elitism, the news will be received joyfully in the Clinton camp, particularly if they take Indiana by any margin at all.

If this scenario plays out, which involves a narrow win for Clinton in Indiana alongside a weaker than expected victory for Obama in North Carolina, Obama will face a veritable barrage of questions about his “lost momentum”, his decreasing ability to move the voters, and his electability in November; and those doubts are likely to reduce his national polling numbers both against Clinton in the primary and McCain in the general election. The wounds will keep piling up and he cannot control them at all with his current strategy, which is outlined next. Hillary Clinton is an expert at the biting “one liner,” just long enough to get on the news and just nasty enough to be news worthy and every attack by Hillary Clinton is ammunition that will be thrown back at Obama after the fall campaign begins by the Republican “attack machine,” which McCain may disavow but cannot stop.

Central to their assumption is the belief that if they can keep Obama under the number of delegates required for an outright victory, the entire matter will go to the stage of the national convention where their resources are considerable. At this point, they are behaving as if nothing is of consequence other the winning the nomination, no matter what the costs to themselves or to the Democratic Party. After all, if they lose, it is basically all over for the Clintons and their entire entourage of consultants and supporters. They will lose the “center stage” of the Democratic Party forever, and that is a very large loss indeed!

The Belief System of the Obama Camp:

Judging by their behaviors, the Obama Camp appears to believe that they have the nomination won if they only hold on to the advantages they currently enjoy. They can count the numbers of delegates with more information than I have available. No matter what happens in Indiana and North Carolina, or how it is interpreted by the media, they rightfully expect to regain or exceed the margin in delegates that they lost in the Pennsylvania Primary, which was only ten at latest count.

They expect to split the remaining contests, with neither camp gaining a significant advantage in delegates, but with Clinton unable to cut into their lead by any significant amount until Puerto Rico, which she is likely to win rather decisively. Also, they are aware that Clinton’s margin in declared Super delegates continues to diminish. According to the site, Real Clear Politics, which I follow, her lead among the Super delegates has now shrunk to just 22, and it seems to inch lower all the time. If they simply split the remaining undeclared delegates with her, they will get home free without a convention battle, unless, of course, the Clintons simply refuse to accept defeat untill the last vote is counted publicly and on national television.

Given the advantages the Obama camp enjoys of delegates and money, they will ignore Clinton’s attempts to lure them into other debates, which would provide her with free media exposure and which would make up somewhat for her lack of finances. They will avoid as well “coming back in kind” to the attacks of the Clinton camp because that would just alienate Clinton supporters that they will need in the fall. Basically, they have adopted a “preserve our lead” and “avoid major mistakes” strategy, and they will let this campaign play out to the end, taking whatever nasty things that she says or does without equal reprisals in kind.

The downside of this conservative strategy is that they are likely to win, but it will be by a relatively narrow technical knockout in the end, with the Clinton camp claiming “foul” over Florida and Michigan all the way to the convention and even beyond. The Clinton camp will paint Obama as “weak” and “afraid” to fight or debate and they will assert those charges in every free media forum they are given, which will be many. Given the desperation, cleverness and lack of restraint of the Clinton camp, Obama is likely to encounter more attack ads aimed at his character, his experience, his courage, and his toughness, and those will reach the national audience through the public media’s rebroadcasting of them in prime time. Every unanswered attack will be the fuel for the McCain partisans in the fall, and the polls indicate quite clearly that Clinton has succeeded in bloodying Obama rather sharply in the past five or six weeks, tarnishing his image and making him much more vulnerable to the Republican “attack” machine.
Conservative strategies have their place, but this is an instance where the price to Obama is very high and likely to mount higher still if he cannot gain enough declared votes to put her out. Even if he goes “narrowly” over the top in June, she can still take the continuing fight to the National Convention with a harsh floor fight over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations, creating uncertainly in the hopes of dislodging some of the committed delegates, but polarizing the Party in the process.

Obama’s unwillingness to debate, his “weakened” image after weeks of battering, his placidity in the face of the attacks in the last debate, and the constant problem with his minister and others, all will leave him in a weakened condition where some delegates might begin to rethink their support. Rather than the bold and forceful “visionary” he projected earlier, she will make him into the defensive and reactive candidate of June. He seemingly has failed to grasp the fact that the Clinton’s are so afraid of losing the nomination, that they no longer care very much whether Obama is capable of winning in November. That is a harsh charge, but the behavior in the Clinton Camp supports that conclusion.

Clinton and Obama are locked in the proverbial struggle of the scorpion and the frog in the Middle East, where the scorpion persuades the frog to carry him across the River Jordan on the grounds that he would not sting him because they would both drown. When the scorpion does sting the frog and they are both drowning, the frog asks the scorpion plaintively why he did such a suicidal thing. The scorpion replies: “Well, this is the Middle East!” “Well, this is Democratic Politics in the Age of the Clintons!”

Just my opinion,

Gordon Black