Problem with the knife fighter analogy: does Hillary really want Democrats to conjure the mental image of her holding a knife anywhere near one's one own back?

Josh Pastashnik-

What a strange coincidence: I was having lunch today with a friend who's convinced that Nursultan Nazarbayev--the brual dictator of Khazakstan (and notorious Friend of Bill Clinton)--is going to be the Dem nominee. My friend believes the superdelegates (as well as the elected delegates) will decide that at the end of the day, they'd rather have a candidate willing to hit John McCain below the belt. And after all, isn't a brutal dictator the kind of guy you want on your side in a knife fight?

rubarbs is right, she first has to stab to death the candidate with more delegates.

So lets see, Hillary will be viewed as effectively stealing the nomination by millions of Obama supporters because she engaged in gutter politics, thereby turning off millions of Democratic voters, she will then engage in gutter politics against McCain (who will happily remind Democrats how she won the nomination as he eviscerates her in response), and will then lose millions of independents. From such brilliant strategy comes 45% of the popular vote and possible loss of the house.

I suppose the question then becomes will she lose by a bigger margin than Mondale?

Thank goodness Democrats have come to their senses. Super Delegates voting for who they "think" can win instead of voting their convictions based on any principle. Since this is the same logic that nominated John Kerry I can find nary a fault with it.

I mean, the fact that Hillary will have lost more states and fewer delegates than Obama. Will have had to change the rules mid-primary. Then will have to count on party elders to make the decision even with ENORMOUS built-in advantages. Yep, she certainly seems more electable. Afterall, nothing quite like reinforcing a prominent Republican meme like "Democrats have no principle, they only care about power."

I'm sure none of this will be an albatross at all in the General Election.

Assuming that Clinton and Obama look like rough equals in terms of the general election, I can't see the super-delegates (or any others she tries to steal) siding with Clinton over Obama. There are a whole frickin' host of young people and black voters who are more engaged in this election than any in recent memory because of Obama. Go with Hillary and you lose them. If not completely, largely. You gotta sell them that first Honda folks and then you know they'll keep coming back. If you pull the rug out from under them by picking Clinton, say goodbye, probably for good. If, OTOH, they pick Obama in a close and bitter race, they piss off a bunch of older blue collar women. Nothing against older blue collar women, but who is going to mean more to the future of the party and bring more down-ticket Dems along for the ride?

To me, this is such a no-brainer. Yeah, if Obama really falls apart under Clinton's pressure or if she otherwise starts winning primaries and caucuses that he should win, and legitimately wins the nomination on her own, she should get it. But if she can't catch him on pledged delegates or come VERY close, I just can't see the party giving it to her. Makes no sense.

blacton -- thing is, Mondale wasn't running against Reagan during a war (hot war at least) that could easily turn south again or during an economic downswing (we were coming out of the recession at that point, much like the upswing during the summer/fall of 2004).  But I totally agree - if Hillary doesn't win either the elected delagates OR total vote, giving her the nomination would be a disaster -- I wouldn't be surprised if Al Sharpton ran as a third party candidate just to give African-Americans a place to vent their protest vote.  

I think blackton's post over at the Weekend Spin Control thread is worthy of being reposting here (below), especially as HRC makes her case for both Super Delegates AND Elected Delegates to flip and vote for her.

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blackton said:

Read this damning take on Clinton lies:

www.telegraph.co.uk/.../main.jhtml

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.

Lord Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, in 1998. Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks, said: "There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president."

Seems like Obama supporters everywhere are drinking the Kool-Aid of idealism and are so distraught as the political drama of the Democratic primary plays out. Folks this is politics in the real world. All the talk of change and civility and non-partisanship is just that talk. It is also nothing more than a political strategy which plays well to the talents of a figure like Obama. I'm firmly in the realist camp who thinks that rhetoric is just a political tool. Stump speeches, no matter how inspiring tell you little about how politicians will govern once elected. After seven years of Bush I understand the desire for change but change really isn't going to happen unless you cleaned house in both the House and Senate and that isn't going to take place. Washington is not going to change nor bend easily to the will of a charismatic figure like Obama. If Obama does win he will either get tough and fight the partition battles in the trenches of Washington or he will get eaten alive and we will all suffer. They say it bakes brass ball to be in politics a sentiment that I believe is accurate. If Obama can't take what Hillary throws at him he certainly won't be ready for McCain and the Republicans in the general. May the toughest character prevail. We conducted a popularity contest and put Bush in office and look where that got us. The mess that the next President is going to inherit is going to require amazing skills and toughness to manage so let them duke it out and then then let's support the winner in November.

r-brown207-

You write: "We conducted a popularity contest and put Bush in office and look where that got us."

Actually, George W. lost the popular vote in 2000. He won by winning more votes in the electoral college, and by playing dirty in Florida.

And, as you say, look what that got us.

So, yes, doesn't it makes sense to award the Dem nomination to the candidate who loses the popular vote in the primaries and caucuses, but plays dirty, just as dirty as Bush and Rove and Cheney?

You are all truly insane if you think that Obama won't be going after every delegate he can cenceivably go after if the race is deadlocked at the convention.  And I mean even if he has a slight lead.  

"(Or, I suppose, we could just be reading too much into one line in the middle of a Newsweek interview...)"

Thank you for that small concession to common sense.  This whole train of thought is just speculation based on speculation.  Obama hasn't won yet.  We don't know what things will look like at the convention and HIllary would be crazy not to fight to the very end.  Could everyone please not damn her for "stealing" the election untill she actually does something to warrant it?  

I want to add that the gleefull hatred on some of these threads is really starting to go past annoying to downright distasteful.  

seems like Senator Clinton might want to realize that the concept of pledged delegates changing their allegiance cuts both ways.

I think this Northern Ireland business has (or should have) the potential of blowing up in Hillary's face.

Just to recap.

Hillary tells CNN on Wednesday: "I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland."

But: "I don’t know there was much she [HRC] did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," said Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of Northern Ireland.

And: Negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that Hillary Clinton's role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.

And Hillary's claim that she had any role in the peace process is just a "wee bit silly."

Wow, what a wealth of experience Mrs. Clinton brings to the table!

Obama used to argue that, smart and capable as she is, Michelle isn't in a position to do his job _simply because she's his husband_. It's time to return to this parody. I'd chose a CEO friend and make an argument by analogy: Laurene Powell can't run Apple just because she's married to Steve Jobs.

Obama's best bet is to use sarcasm and above-the-fray dismissal to bring out the absurdity in Hillary's experience argument. I hope he gets busy with this after Tuesday.

this is off topic, but it turns out that little girl in Hillary's 3am ad is actually 18 now and is campaigning for Obama: www6.comcast.net/.../Ad.Girl.Obama I hope they go ahead and make a counter ad with her.

Ya, ehem, that should be "wife," not husband, i.e., unless they have us all fooled.

maxblum,

Thanks for posting. It could be pretty extremely effective for Obama to use that girl in a well-written counter-ad. I hope they do it.

I'm a conservative, so I don't really have a dog in this particular hunt, but I can see a way for Hillary to pull out a win, even without legerdemain in Florida and Michigan.  Presuming that Hillary keeps it reasonably close -- so that she's no more than, say, 100 delegates behind Obama by the time of the convention -- superdelegates (at least those who are both [1] not black, and [2] elected officials) will be considering, not so much "what's best for the party," but rather, "who can I least afford to alienate?"  

In other words, the calculating superdelegate will think, "if I back Hillary, and Obama wins, I can mend fences with Obama in time for the general election.  I may have to crawl a bit, but I can make nice with him and his forces.  But if I back Obama, and Hillary finds a way to win, and then somehow wins the general election, then I've publicly backed the political opponent of both the current and most recent Democratic president.  Being challenged in my next Democratic primary for reelection is only the start of it.  Suddenly my longtime financial backers all take a powder, and start donating to my primary opponent.  And, even worse: late night calls from Sid Blumenthal.  It's enough to make a superdelegate switch parties..."  Again, this scenario depends on Hillary keeping it close.  If Obama is ahead in both pledged delegates (by more than 100 or so) and popular vote, superdelegates will be extremely reluctant to take the nomination away from the first legitimate black candidate with broad (i.e., non-black) support.  They'll need compelling incentives to do so.  We'll see what the Clintons -- both of them -- are really made of.

ralphnelle: the "just a wife" thing is very misleading -- Hillary Clinton was a high level advisor.  Again, read Woodward's book "The Agenda" about the first 2 years of the Clinton administration.  Only David Gergen appears more important in righting the ship and getting the budget deal passed. The question is why she didn't apply the same skills to her own task force, but that's a question of performance, not experience.  

And again, if any single one of us were told we were going to become President in eight years, we'd pick Hillary's experience in a heartbeat over Obama's.  Hillary got to observe, up-close and knowledgably, practically every aspect of being the President (she didn't have high security clearance).  Obama was a junior state senator.  

And again, I'm not saying 1) experience is dispositive, 2) Hillary isn' t exagerating her experience or 3) Obama's experience counts for nothing.  But this "just a wife" thing is like saying Bobby Kennedy was "just a brother" or even "just an attorney general."  

Thanks for the link Maxblum!  Best of all, her 18 years of experience allow her to do the simple analysis that the mainstream press seems incapable of reporting.

"What I don't like about the ad is its fear-mongering," Knowles told ABC's "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" on Sunday. "I think it's a cheap hit to take. I really prefer Obama's message of looking forward to a bright future."

Here is the problem with the logic of Josh's interlocutor:  Those who think she will win a knife fight with John McCain have to account for the fact that she's ceded a big chunk of ground to McCain already, with her endless of praise of his commander-in-chief credentials.

The Clinton campaign keeps repeating the line that pledged delegates can switch, and then go nuclear on Obama, making delegates of all types nervous, they may be able to make the pledges believe it and have them switch.  It may be hard to imagine, but I don't see the idea being that far fetched.

A question:  Just how much advice could Hillary give regarding foreign affairs, if she did not have the necessary security clearances to have the necessary information to give such advice?  

Yes, I understand that she could offer unofficial advice, but can you take credit for such advice?  Credit enough to make the arguments that she has been making in this race?

I am an Obama supporter who agrees with lymon1 that the "just a wife" argument does not cut it, and would backfire if made into an ad.

Instead, I prefer the old-fashioned way to fight back at someone like Hillary who asks "who would you hire?" as if the answer were obviously her.  

Answer the question on its own terms:  Obama should say, "If you were running a business and were in charge of hiring, would you hire the candidate with two significant former jobs on her resume and who comes off as book smart, but who screwed up the single most important project in each of those two jobs by making poor judgments?  Or would you hire someone with equal book smarts and a shorter (but still adequate) resume and who repeatedly exercised good judgment in the jobs he or she did hold?"

In other words, don't just bring up her Iraq war judgment, pound her with her health care screw-up as well.  Use Bill Bradley's terrific quote.  He told Bernstein that Hillary literally told Bradley back in 1993 that she would "demonize" any Democrat who pushed for a different plan from hers.  For good measure, use Hillary's recent "kitchen sink" approach to attacking Obama to show that she still has not learned that demonization of opponents is a shortsighted strategy.

lymon1 is correct.  Hillary does not exaggerate her experience.  She invents it out of whole cloth.  The only thing worse than not having the experience is not having it and pretending you do.  If I thought I would be president of the United States some day, the very last thing I would want as preparation would have been a life like Hillary Clinton's.  I would have wanted to accomplish something for which I could at least claim substantial credit.  Whether it is her tenure in the White House or her election to public office, Hillary is a wannabe who has always ridden in on someone else's coattails.  

Oh, wait, being a partner in "intellectual property law" in a meaningless Arkansas law firm that I never heard of once in my 25 plus years on Wall Street, that's   a terrific accomplishment.  Understandable though after she flunked the DC bar.  Does anyone know of any graduate of the Yale Law School other than Hillary Clinton who has ever applied for a job at The Rose Law Firm?  I just read the profiles of all 32 (count 'em, 32) lawyers at The Rose Law Firm.  Not one of them got a law degree at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Chicago, or Berkeley.  To my eternal shame, there is some guy who went to Yale as an undergrad and then to Michigan Law School.  He must have been substituted at birth.  The Rose Law Firm?  It isn't Cravath, Swaine & Moore.  It isn't even Arnold & Porter, or O'Melveny & Myers, or Fischbach, Fischbach & Fishbach.  Why go on? The list of all the prestigious firms with a high-powered practice that Rose is not is so long it would blow out the TNR server.

This is all nonsense.  Hilliary has no options.  None.  There is no circumstance in which the superdelegates will cede her the nomination.  All this crap about how Clinton is doing this or that to persuade the superD's that she and only she can defeat McCain is simply her lame attempt to provide a justification for her continued presence in the campaign.  

Her electability case has no legs.  As has been discussed previously at TNR, electability arguments are always dodgy, based on too many unknowables.  And really the best evidence we have as to her relative electability is the quality of the campaign she's run to date, which, for those of you who haven't been paying attention, has been a stinking piece of shit.

I'm tired of Clinton, but I'm not worried.  She's finished, and she isn't in a position to do any lasting damage to Obama either.

Can Clinton flip FL and OH to the Democrats in 2008? Maybe. But if she wins using any & all means, could she keep ME, MN, NH and WI from switching to Republican? And if her nomination campaign gets really foul, what about IL?

Best case for the Democrats would be winning 309 electoral votes. Remove FL, it drops to 282. Remove the smaller states Kerry won in 2004 by less than a 5% margin but keep FL, it drops to 285. Remove FL and these smaller states, McCain becomes the 44th president.

Democrats can't afford to lose more than TX of the 8 largest states or any of the smaller states Kerry won by narrow margins in 2004 which might not appreciate Clinton's sharp elbows.

Since SNL is in the tank for Hillary, we get good parody from the internet:

www.youtube.com/watch GQ

Slightly amusing

lymon, again with the trope that Karl Rove would make a great President since he has observed the intimate workings of the White House for years and is a skilled political operator. The reason you don't see such people make serious runs is because they are generally not perceived to be their own man. Even Hillary is running as the Clintons. Winning over the Democrats is the easy part (but not for her) winning the country is a whole other matter.

So you are also saying that the war Hillary supported is going to be to her benefit in November? McCain will kill her on the issue, portraying her as following the path of political expediency, either voting for the war when she didn't believe in it, or against it now for the same reason, or hey, maybe both, maybe even she doesn't know what she believes and is relying on polling to tell her what to think.

newdex, imagine 4 years ago Edwards and Kerry had gone to this point, can you possibly imagine anyone generating as much antipathy for either as so many democrats feel for Hillary? I liked Edwards but voted for Kerry in November (I would have voted for a potted plant over Bush). If you think the Hillary hatred is bad now, wait until after she steals the nomination (barring an Obama collapse).

Hillary seems to believe that swing voters, or young people, or blacks don't matter, or red and purple states don't matter unless they are big. Bill Bradley nailed it, they are tacticians but not strategists, win now and believe you can switch tactics against McCain, and pretend every argument about experience to win the Democratic nod now doesn't count in the general where her line will be about change.

lymon, again with the trope that Karl Rove would make a great President since he has observed the intimate workings of the White House for years and is a skilled political operator. The reason you don't see such people make serious runs is because they are generally not perceived to be their own man. Even Hillary is running as the Clintons. Winning over the Democrats is the easy part (but not for her) winning the country is a whole other matter.

So you are also saying that the war Hillary supported is going to be to her benefit in November? McCain will kill her on the issue, portraying her as following the path of political expediency, either voting for the war when she didn't believe in it, or against it now for the same reason, or hey, maybe both, maybe even she doesn't know what she believes and is relying on polling to tell her what to think.

newdex, imagine 4 years ago Edwards and Kerry had gone to this point, can you possibly imagine anyone generating as much antipathy for either as so many democrats feel for Hillary? I liked Edwards but voted for Kerry in November (I would have voted for a potted plant over Bush). If you think the Hillary hatred is bad now, wait until after she steals the nomination (barring an Obama collapse).

Hillary seems to believe that swing voters, or young people, or blacks don't matter, or red and purple states don't matter unless they are big. Bill Bradley nailed it, they are tacticians but not strategists, win now and believe you can switch tactics against McCain, and pretend every argument about experience to win the Democratic nod now doesn't count in the general where her line will be about change.

FWIW, HRC has NO chance to win FL.  Spend your $$ somewhere else.

Again, I rarely agree with roi, but his critique of the Rose Law Firm is spot on.  I was in a big DC firm for awhile, so I'm familiar with the type firm.  The biggest firm in AR can't cut it in NY or DC, and it's the same with most small states.

Glad to see the sentiments hereabouts - she has no experience.  Period.  Beyond 8 years in the Senate.  Both Dem candidates are deeply unqualified to be President.  I don't expect people here to agree with me, but either will have a hard time against McCain for that reason, among others, even with an unpopular war, and unpopular President, and a slumping economy.

butchie, deeply unqualified is harsh. Who really is qualified to be President anyhow? Some of our most qualified people have made terrible Presidents (Buchanan, Nixon) and least qualified our greatest, (Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt)

Part of me hopes that McCain crushes Hillary in November setting up Obama for 2012. Hillary's loss will destroy that old line boomer wing of the party once and for all.

lymon, again with the trope that Karl Rove would make a great President since he has observed the intimate workings of the White House for years and is a skilled political operator. The reason you don't see such people make serious runs is because they are generally not perceived to be their own man. Even Hillary is running as the Clintons. Winning over the Democrats is the easy part (but not for her) winning the country is a whole other matter.

So you are also saying that the war Hillary supported is going to be to her benefit in November? McCain will kill her on the issue, portraying her as following the path of political expediency, either voting for the war when she didn't believe in it, or against it now for the same reason, or hey, maybe both, maybe even she doesn't know what she believes and is relying on polling to tell her what to think.

newdex, imagine 4 years ago Edwards and Kerry had gone to this point, can you possibly imagine anyone generating as much antipathy for either as so many democrats feel for Hillary? I liked Edwards but voted for Kerry in November (I would have voted for a potted plant over Bush). If you think the Hillary hatred is bad now, wait until after she steals the nomination (barring an Obama collapse).

Hillary seems to believe that swing voters, or young people, or blacks don't matter, or red and purple states don't matter unless they are big. Bill Bradley nailed it, they are tacticians but not strategists, win now and believe you can switch tactics against McCain, and pretend every argument about experience to win the Democratic nod now doesn't count in the general where her line will be about change.

lymon, again with the trope that Karl Rove would make a great President since he has observed the intimate workings of the White House for years and is a skilled political operator. The reason you don't see such people make serious runs is because they are generally not perceived to be their own man. Even Hillary is running as the Clintons. Winning over the Democrats is the easy part (but not for her) winning the country is a whole other matter.

So you are also saying that the war Hillary supported is going to be to her benefit in November? McCain will kill her on the issue, portraying her as following the path of political expediency, either voting for the war when she didn't believe in it, or against it now for the same reason, or hey, maybe both, maybe even she doesn't know what she believes and is relying on polling to tell her what to think.

newdex, imagine 4 years ago Edwards and Kerry had gone to this point, can you possibly imagine anyone generating as much antipathy for either as so many democrats feel for Hillary? I liked Edwards but voted for Kerry in November (I would have voted for a potted plant over Bush). If you think the Hillary hatred is bad now, wait until after she steals the nomination (barring an Obama collapse).

Hillary seems to believe that swing voters, or young people, or blacks don't matter, or red and purple states don't matter unless they are big. Bill Bradley nailed it, they are tacticians but not strategists, win now and believe you can switch tactics against McCain, and pretend every argument about experience to win the Democratic nod now doesn't count in the general where her line will be about change.