Stipulating that true change must come from true grass roots rather than national politics, I propose a thought experiment related to the upcoming Presidential election.

The way I read the campaign right now, Sen. McCain is chortling on the sidelines watching Sen. Clinton, whom one of his supporters famously called a bitch, ripping into Sen. Obama, the purveyer of hope to many young and otherwise formerly excluded voters. What can one project from such a scenario?

First, it appears that we can confidently look forward to a Senator moving to the Oval Office for the first since JFK.

Second, the Clinton machine seems to be willing to exercise the Sampson option, bringing down the house to avoid losing. They’ve already run through a good portion of the book of tricks. They’ve tried to change the rules when it looked like it would help them; they’ve played the race card every time there’s a chance; recently they’ve switched to the victim card; and they excuse the lot by explaining that the Republicans will do worse in the general. Even some people who consider themselves friends and supporters are dismayed by the tone taken by the Clinton machine in the primary. It’s almost as if the Clinton/DLC faction has adapted to Republican attacks by mirroring the style.

This leaves Obama’s campaign in a quandary. To strike back is to abandon his most saleable feature, the ability to rise above the hurly burly and remain focused on hope, and, we can hope, solutions as well. Can he be provoked into losing his above-it-all-ness? (After all, Putin will be worse…)

Which provides the backdrop for my experiment. It looks like there four possible scenarios:

1. Going negative works, in that, whether Obama doesn’t strike back and looks weak or he does strike back and loses some of his aura, Clinton gets enough of a bounce to win the nomination. That, in my opinion, would leave us staring down the barrel of President McCain of the Hundred Years War.
2. Going negative works, and despite my prediction Clinton survives the Republican assault to enter the White House.
3. Going negative fails and Obama wins the nomination, but the Clinton attacks soften him up for the Republican attack dogs, and he’s so damaged that he loses to McCain.
4. Going negative fails, and Obama survives the Republican attack machine to win the whole shebang.

Options 1 and 3, either Clinton or Obama is nominated but loses to McCain, seem to me to leave the Clinton machine in the cold. If the Democrats lose in November in this political and economic climate, as Nader says, they should close up shop and go home. Or at least the DLC should. Maybe then we could begin to tilt the Democratic party back toward its democratic roots. Either way, the US and the world will be a weird and dangerous place with a temperamental lobbyist-loving militarist like McCain roaming the White House at night.

Option 4 avoids the worst dangers of McCain, but makes the Clintons the previous generation, no longer exciting or relevant.

Option 2, Clinton becomes President anyway, seems to me the least likely of the four, but it’s the only one in which the formerly all-pervading influence of the Clinton Clique on the Democratic party heirarchy is not greatly diminished.

The current direction of the campaign process, fodder for the VRWC’s echo chamber, is alienating many Obama supporters and some potential ones as well. Clintonian campaigning, like Rovian, is nearly the political equivalent of total war, i.e., there are no civilians and nothing is banned. Presumably it’s the lack of alternatives to the loss of power that has brought the Clinton machine to this expedient.

The question that intrigues me is, will true-blue Democrats blame the Clintons if the Democrat loses in November? Should they? Or will they blame the left wing for not signing onto four more years of Iraq and Wall Street-friendly financial policies?

Posted by Chuck Dupree at March 16, 2008 08:10 PM

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