Probably overthinking it

[mmcirvin]

I voted for Barack Obama in the presidential primary today, for reasons others have been more eloquent in stating than I could.

I should say that I don't have the feelings others have had that, finally, this is someone they feel good about voting for; I have had serious reservations about every single candidate in the race. With Obama, it's his sometimes questionable environmental record as a representative of Illinois coal and corn-ethanol interests. The thing about Senators (and there sure have been a lot of them in this race) is that they all have voting records and you're always going to find something you hate. Hillary Clinton's continued pandering to foreign-policy hawks strikes me as worse. Obama seems to be a smart, reality-based kind of guy and I hope that on environmental policy he would ultimately let this guide him. But ultimately we're all making decisions somewhat in the dark about what people might do in unknown future situations.

At any rate, I've been reticent to come out too forthrightly for Obama in part because of a calculation based on polls that, regardless of what I say, Hillary Clinton is the likely nominee, and if Democrats bash her too much it could hurt her in a knife-edge-balanced general election contest with John McCain, who I really do not want to win. But Obama's doing a lot better than I thought he would (though he's probably still going to be behind in delegates after tonight), so maybe that was overthinking it.

The race is very strange. Going by Senate voting records and stated policy positions, Obama is the most liberal of the remaining major candidates; Clinton's closer to the national center (though still fairly liberal) and McCain is really quite an extreme right-wing Republican. Yet Obama and McCain, the (relative) party extremists, are the ones that the independent-minded post-partisans like--often the same people favor the two of them, on grounds that seem more based on personality than ideology. I also know liberals who see Obama as a wimpy centrist and are worried that he would just appoint a bunch of Republicans. Meanwhile, Republicans, when polled, insist that Hillary Clinton is far to the left of Obama, and speak of her as if she were some sort of Communist; and a lot of them also regard McCain as not conservative enough, though by voting record he's really one of the most conservative Senators. It's kind of baffling.

It does kind of suggest that the 1990s Democratic strategy of moving to the policy center for bipartisan appeal is bankrupt--it sounds like it should work on paper, but what your ideology is, based on policy statements and votes, and what people will think it is are totally different things. It's all about emotional tone.

The electoral-vote.com guy recently described the prolonged primary campaign as a worst case and disaster in the making for Democrats: McCain can now sit back and collect money for the general election campaign while Clinton and Obama duke it out and spend money against each other. Past experience would suggest that's true, but on the other hand I have a hard time believing that the extraordinary level of interest in the Democrats is bad. Even when both races were wide open, the Democratic primaries were the ones getting mobbed. I just hope that most of the loser's fans can see their way clear to supporting the nominee, because, my reservations aside, I think either of them is superior to the other alternatives on offer.

Comments

NOTICE TO POTENTIAL COMMENTERS OF OTHER NATIONS

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yes I know that our system is messed up and our politics are all more right-wing than yours. We can take that as assumed.

Re: NOTICE TO POTENTIAL COMMENTERS OF OTHER NATIONS

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it gets pretty tiresome to hear the same complaints from the same non-USAians over and over again. We know you think the U.S. political system sucks and we're all a bunch of right-wing douchebags. Got it. Thanks.

I don't have happy feel-good thoughts about Obama, either, but I support him for a myriad of reasons. Basically I think Clinton is going to be a tough sell. Like Stefan said, she's machine-like and calculating, and all of Bill Clinton's baggage is going to be attached to her campaign. I'm not convinced she can win.

[stacebass.livejournal.com]

McCain as a presidential candidate has a lot of flaws and a lot of obstacles to overcome, and I don't by any means think he's a shoo-in.

I'm speaking as an Arizonan who's watched him since I was a child. There are a lot of things the world doesn't know about John McCain yet, but they will.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

He's not by any means, but money is a wonderful thing, as McCain has recently had ample occasion to realize. I think either Obama or Clinton could probably beat him other things being equal, but they may not get that opportunity.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...The scenario I really don't look forward to is the one where it comes down to a fight on the Dem convention floor over whether to seat the Florida delegates. That is pretty much the party getting mired in the Slough of Despond right there.

[bottlroktt.livejournal.com]

yeah, i'm not on board with that either. both dem campaigns are working their butts off to register new voters and get people mobilized, and it really shows in the record turnouts. i believe the more the two campaigns organize and fundraise, the easier it will be to put the heads together for the general. mccain has the very real task of uniting a party that has plenty of leaders who dislike him, and he's attached himself to many unpopular positions. in the end, mccain looks like the irrelevant past compared to either of the two dems. go team. :)

[ex-askesis860.livejournal.com]

I'm hearing a lot of "I'd take Obama over McCain, and McCain over Clinton."

That's clearly insane, right?

[piehead.livejournal.com]

Insane, with a side order of sexist.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Would you be saying "racist" Obama and Clinton were swapped?

I ask because I know of many Right Wingers who hate McCain for reasons I can't fathom (and a few I can) and would willingly lose to Obama, but they'd rather lose a limb than see another Clinton in office. What askesis says makes sense to me, though I don't hold that view.

[piehead.livejournal.com]

I really think there is more sexism vis-a-vis Clinton than racism w/ Obama; but then, there's also a lot of real, visceral HATRED of Clinton.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I like to think those factors are well outweighed by the sexism for Clinton and the racism for Obama. I mean, women and black voting groups are vastly more complex than their mere gender and skin color/Afr-Am culture, and yet they're often treated as two single voting groups. It could be true that the old white guys who have been elected since the dawn of time are well out of touch with these groups, but does it mean they're incapable of serving these groups nonetheless? (If it does, then why *shouldn't* I be racist?)

In retrospect, I took your comment to be stronger than it was meant-- it's only a side-order, after all-- not everybody eats their sides.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

There absolutely is sexist opposition to Clinton and racist opposition to Obama. There is also non-sexist, non-racist opposition to both of them.

In Clinton's case, even when the opposition has some other origin (ideology, substantive disagreement, general Clinton-family-hate) sexism frequently manifests in the attacks themselves. And they both suffer from the double bind of people under stereotype threat; if you act according to the stereotype you've reduced yourself to the type, and if you don't, to some people you come across as inauthentic or unnatural. Clinton is either too soft or a ballbusting virago; Obama avoids being the scary black man at risk of ending up Not Black Enough.

Sexist attacks are not an exclusively right-wing phenomenon; I despise Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, but vilification of them in blog comments almost always degenerates into fratboy misogyny and I can't stand that either (especially since Coulter seems to be something of a misogynist herself; attacking in that vein makes her stronger).

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

We're all political junkies here and we think a lot about ideology and parties and policies. Personally, I tend to see the general election as basically a party vote, since you're really electing a whole executive branch. Most voters, especially most self-described independent voters, are not like that; they're trying to judge these candidates primarily as people, on the basis of what they can see in the media. They don't want to be led by a phony or an idiot, and how the person voted is secondary at best.

And who's to say they're completely wrong? I find listening to political speeches actively unpleasant and I mostly read the transcripts afterward. I'm also not that great at picking up nonverbal social cues. What that means is that I mostly miss things like "this guy is a phony/sociopath/obsessive" vibes coming from the person's face, and that stuff might actually be important. What they're picking up in this case may or may not be right, but the channel is worth considering. Bush and Cheney's personal shortcomings were probably as crucial as their ideology in screwing things up.

[skapusniak.livejournal.com]

Wacky theory:

A lot of those independent post-partisans are independent because their main political issue is a great distaste for the actual grubby politicking bits of politics, with you know, lots of lying and making nasty deals with nasty people and all, and wanting it all to go away. A lot of partisans may also dislike those bits, but they have other political issues which have caused them to back party X over party Y. Policy issues even!

I'm theorising independents do have other policy issues than 'the policial bit of politics needs to go away' but they're on the whole a lot less important to them than 'get the politicans out of politics', 'At least you know what the guy stands for, even if I hate it!', and there is no unity amongst them about what those other issues are, otherwise they'd have formed actual third party. There's not even a viable coalition among them because forming one would require down and dirty grubby politicking and with the necessary lubricating corruption, and talking out of both sides of the mouth, such that anyone who tried it would be instantly ignored for acting like a 'darn politician'.

So McCain->Hillary because Hillary's image is the most machine-politician-like of the candidates, whilst McCain tends to continually piss off the *Republican* machine-politicians and partisans for whatever reason. So he might be a stone cold Conservative extremist who votes mostly party line, but that's not what they care about most (and some of them will like the conservative extremist policy stances of course) he annoys partisan political people therefore he's better.

I'm not sure how you fit Obama into that, but maybe because he's new and goes on about hope, and change, and s new kind of politics, and memories are short enough that whoever the last politician you had who ran with that standard and hoary old political schtick has been erased from the collectively consciousness, or if whichever politician that was hasn't been forgotten the fact that that was what they ran on has. Also he's running against Hillary, which makes him look anti-machine by default.

Again him being actually liberal is the same non-issue as McCain being actually conservative, for some independents that's a bonus because that matches their less important issues, whilst others rate him because he satisfies their main issue of coming across as above grubby politicky things.

I think I just said what you said, only longer and with worse spelling :)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I think there are at least three things going on. First, Clinton does come across as the scheming machine creature, probably because she is (though, you know, Obama's from Chicago—I think the high-road, post-partisan act is mostly an act). Second, there's a certain amount of purely sexist revulsion for a female candidate, as piehead mentioned. Third, there's a burning hatred for the Clintons among certain sections of the population (right-wingers, libertarian-leaning types and also parts of the progressive/activist left), both for specific things they did, and for Bill Clinton's status as the most popular and successful Democratic president since the 1960s and his consequent role as a symbol of the Democratic Party establishment, for better or for worse.

Oh, and, fourth, Bill's been playing campaign hardball like a crazed badger lately, to the point that it's repelled some people.

Obama's from Chicago

[notr.livejournal.com]

and Hillary's from where, originally? Oh, that crucial 15 miles of suburbia.

She may try to spin her accent and attitude as Upstater, but to us natives they talk alike.

Re: Obama's from Chicago

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a Chicagoland primary all around.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...As for McCain, I think that nationally he's still coasting on some leftover post-partisan image from around 2000. He was involved in a few reform measures that annoyed the party and interested Democrats, and then in the 2000 election, liberals who hated George W. Bush crossed party lines to vote for him in early primaries. Somehow he became known as Post-Partisan Guy as a result of all this, regardless of his actual position on anything.

The people in that Crooked Timber thread also point out that, when it comes to perceptions based on votes, not all votes are the same. Joe Lieberman is, on the whole, somewhat more liberal than he's perceived as being, but on anything related to war, counterterrorism or the Middle East he votes with the Republicans, and that's what gets noticed, in part because it's kind of important.

[astrange.livejournal.com]

Obama is actually ahead by four delegates now. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21660914)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The expectations game is playing out weirdly on political blogs. It seems a lot of election-watchers who should have known better expected Obama to score unrealistically huge wins, maybe because they didn't pay attention to tongodeon's well-timed warnings about Zogby polls, and they're calling the night a loss for Obama on those grounds.

The Clinton campaign is actually trying to spin Massachusetts as a surprise win, which is silly if you've followed the polls at all. Obama got the high-profile endorsements, but Hillary was never in any danger of losing the old labor-Democratic base here. Everything came out pretty much the way it was shaping up to over the past week.