A common line of thought among political commentators on the internet these days is that the Clinton campaign is building a narrative now to explain a potential Obama loss in November. The narrative basically sums up to Obama’s inexperience, perceived arrogance and elitism, fluffy New Age style, and leftish stances will kill his chances amongst blue collar Democrats, allowing McCain to win the big battleground states and thus the election. The Clinton camp will then argue that they would have won those states because they were stronger in the above catergories than Obama, as proven by voting and polling, and use this complaint to springboard to the nomination in 2012. John Heilemann has a nice summary of this supposed strategy in the New York magazine.
This narrative just doesn’t seem incredibly plausible to me. Hillary Clinton could certainly argue that she would have been a stronger candidate in November. Looking at the electoral maps from Fivethirtyeight.com, her road to victory basically requires riding the pro-Democratic wave to victory in one or both of Florida or Ohio (where she is favored to win), while holding the Kerry states and using Arkansas and West Virginia. Its a familiar strategy for Democrats and has a high chance for eked out victory. Obama cannot win Florida and looks weak in Ohio, possibly due to the above enumerated factors, so he has to go hunting in less familiar grounds, like Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada, which may not prove fertile. However, where this supposition appears weak to me is the assumption by being the stronger candidate in 2008 makes you the strongestcandidate in 2012. Times change, and who knows where we will be four years out. Moreover, Hillary Clinton is hardly the strongest Democrat in the above categories; she only happens to be stronger than Obama in them. If those issues where so salient still, I am sure the Democrats could find someone better than the former First Lady to fufill them. More pragmatically, the Clinton campaign very early on lashed the presidential ambitions of a number of politicians (Evan Bayh, Wesley Clark, Tom Vilsack, Ted Strickland, etc.) to their own, and it seems doubtful to me at least that they will be able to convince their various surrogates and supporters to lay low and work for them again in another four years. I honestly see 2008 as the beginning and the end of Hillary’s presidential ambitions.
However, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t planning on employing an Obama loss to her gain (I suspect all Clinton fantasies at this point involve an Obama loss). Michelle Cottle’s piecein the New Republic about Nancy Pelosi touches briefly on her behind the scenes boosterism of Obama and animosity towards Clinton. What if Hillary intends to frame an Obama loss as specifically the fault of the current Pelosi/Reid/Dean Democratic leadership, who pushed Obama past the finish line due to personal preferences or political affiliations, and consequentially cost the party the presidency? There have been rumors of discontentment over the current leadership’s inability to push through its agenda, especially on Iraq, against a deeply unpopular lame duck president, and the Clinton camp could use this issue, if they could spin it right, as a catalyst for challenging the Speaker and/or Senate Majority leader, and for (re)filling the DNC with Clinton loyalists.
For this to work, they have to establish now that the key to Obama’s nomination was his support from within the upper echelons of the party. This might explain the Clinton campaign’s refusal to seek compromise over the Florida and Michigan issue and their busing of angry supporters to the DNC meeting on Saturday, as it frames anything less than the basically untenable Clinton position was interference by the powers that be. It also explains her continued insistence on the importance of popular vote, which principally denies the Pelosi gang the capacity to passively endorse Obama as “the people’s candidate” and forces them, either implicitly or explicitly, to legitimize their support for Obama as a normative decision based on who would make a more effective candidate in the fall and a stronger standard-bearer for the party. Both of these moves would be pretty big mistakes if her goal was reconciliation and winning in 2012, but are necessary steps towards a leadership challenge in the fall. She must force the party to step in for Obama now without seeming to cost him the election herself (thus I agree with Heilemann that an attempted convention fight will either not occur or will be tepid at best), and she seems to be taking that approach now. If she becomes VP, however, the scenario goes out the window, as she will become inevitably tied to whether the ticket sinks or swims, and thus will lose any leverage on the party if McCain wins.
