The Clintons knew how to hammer a consistent message - i.e., it's the economy, Stupid.  Poll after poll shows the voters are more worried about that than they are about Iraq (though a nexus can be made).  Can you give me, in one sentance, what Obama's economic plan is?  They also knew that after 20 years of GOP control of the white house, putting a young dem in office required "the courage to change."  Obama is allaying those fears...how?  (Hopefully in-part with his veep pick).  

The Clintons also wouldn't have to do these things because THEY HAD A RECORD!  (I use the term "Clintons" advisedly).  They would hammer "WE GAVE YOU WEALTH, PEACE AND OPTIMISM FOR 8 YEARS, LET US DO IT AGAIN" over and over.  ANd this is/was the only legit reason Obama should have considered her for veep (not "win over the bitter folks" or that she's the most qualified).  

She would have tracked to the right of McCain on Georgia from the first nano-second. Therefore, I think she would still be ahead by a few points.

You haven't heard "I told you so"? really?

In any case, the notion that CLinton would be doing better is kind of laughable. She'd be polling at 30% in West Virginia, instead of 20%. But so what?

What has truly surprised me this summer was how many moderate male Republicans (there are an abundance of these in the extended family) who have asserted, late in the night after a few cocktails, that they were intrigued with the possibility of voting for Hillary.  They liked the former McCain (who was younger and did not pander to the right wing of his party), but will give him only lukewarm support now. They are sick of all the Bush crap, but Obama is just too inexperienced and liberal.  But Hillary is tough, they tell me, and she knows her stuff.  Yeah, she has all that Bill baggage and can be a little shrill, but boy, they really couldn't rule out voting for her.  

There is an excellent article in this upcoming weekend's NYTimes Magazine about Obama's economic plan.  The reason it has been so muddled, you fill find out, is because it is a very complex plan, not something that can be relayed in quips.  This makes him an easy target of the press, who want progress the notion that he is plan-less, but the fact of the matter is that they are too lazy to find one solid, explainable-in-ten-seconds ideology in his plans, so they get impatient and purport that he must have no plan at all.  

Cal,

Just like the conservative pundits who were singing Obama's praises in 2007, and then turned to Hillary when Obama and McCain became frontrunners, and who now have revelaed their true Rovian intentions toward Obama, those moderate male Republicans would have trekked back right.  No doubt in my mind.

Hillary never looked so good as she does now that her campaign is dead.  This reflects not so much on Hillary but on pundits and other "what-if" fans -- had Hillary won the nomination, we would all be moaning about Bill's latest intemperate gaffe and worrying about the chaos within her campaign's leadership team (and wishing that Obama had won instead).

Just plain silly.

woulda coulda shoulda

...Barack would have been her VP in June...Bill would have been caught doing 'something', She'd have dropped out and Obama would be back as #1.  

Destiny Michael, Destiny.

If Hillary had one with style and grace, almost inconceivable at this point, Obama would be the VP right now, and we be looking at a landslide again.

Fact is, even the Democrats couldn't screw this one up, well wait a minute, maybe if John Edwards was on somebody's ticket, or was heading his own ticket, then the Democrats would have a real chance of losing, but I still think it would be highly unlikely, especially if Obama were his VP. That's the only close scenario I can muster.  Okay wait a minute, Edwards/Clinton, or Clinton/Edwards, either of those I think would be losing tickets against a McCain who appears competent, but against the McCain were seeing now, I think maybe even Hillary could beat John, certainly with anyone other than Edwards on the ticket.

Oh, and by the by, the American people would be getting screwed again. :-)

The latest polling doesn't really support an "I told you so" argument given: a) in the hypothetical match-up, she's only doing 3 points better than Obama vs. McCain, and she hasn't had a slew of negative campaigning thrown at her throughout the summer (I realize her fav/unfav probably was far more set than Obama's, but it's hard to imagine no impact from the other side spending millions [more] to tar her); b) just as Obama's problem right now appears to be disgruntled Hillary supporters, there would have been plenty of disgruntled Obama supporters to deal with if she had won; and c) if this election is analogous to 1980, the Dems best shot to win big is still with Obama (the only states she could win that he cannot win are AR and WV, while she'd have no hope in NC, CO, VA, MT, ND, AK, or GA).  

If HC had won she would be 10 points ahead right now and on her way to a wipe out....

and we would be in for a hellish four years of more suicidal partisan polarization and tawdry media obsessions about the Clintons....

Patience.

Obama's many naysayers were spitting fire at him last summer and fall, suggesting that his opportunity had passed, etc. And they were wrong, all of them.

Maybe it's Obama the master of poker, maybe it's Axelrod the master of media ADD--who knows? But someone in that campaign has insisted on the virtue of timing, and thus far it has worked. They hold their cards until last 400 meters of the campaign. Then they sprint. Everything shifted gears for Obama at the JJ speech in Iowa. I remember Crowley's post that night: "I am now reconsidering my assessment of Obama's chances. He sucked the air out of the room with his speech."

Let's just wait and see what happens next week.

Jaunty -- but I think this is the disconnect between the "politically informed" and the general voter: they don't care about suicidal partisan polarization.  If they did, Bob Dole would have been elected president.  WHat was the big criticism of Al Gore (in hindsight mostly)?  That he distanced himself from the Clintons for just that reason.  People like economic growth.  They like budget surpluses.  They liked it when workers were in demand, even low skill workers.  They saw a bright future for their children.  

Don't get me wrong, HRC would have had a train car full of baggage had she won the nomination.  But argument points against John McCain wouldn't have been a problem.  

P.S.  What's with this late veep anouncement?  I thought conventional wisdom is that you try to bury bad news on Friday afternoons, not good news.

The "If" of Hillary winning the primaries is like the "if" of counting Michigan delegates and the "if" of ignoring the caucuses becuse they are just so elitist and the "if" of not being misunderstood when you invoked "hard-working white Americans" and all the other "ifs" that formed the chorus to her badly-planned and narcissistic campaign.

cal80:

This moderate male Republican would be considering a vote for McCain (or simply not voting) if Hillary won the nomination. I'm quite enthusiastic about Obama and would have thought much less of the Democratic party if they'd passed up this unique opportunity to nominate someone who was inspiring, intelligent, ready to put away the old playbooks and has shown demonstrably better judgment.

I agree with you dylanposer, they most likely would chickened out in the end.  But it is intriguing that they discuss her almost wistfully now, instead of with the intense hatred I would have expected.  Perhaps this is just because she is out of the picture, but perhaps also something more fundamental has occurred.  The upshot: regardless of what you think of the old gal, she broke down a lot of barriers and has changed the way the electorate views female candidates.  Obviously Obama has done the same for African Americans.  No matter who wins the actual election (and I am nobody's cheerleader), this election year will be viewed in the long-term (for historical purposes) more for how it altered the political landscape than for who was elected.

We'd be knee deep in detailed stories of Bill's post Presidency, the good the bad and the ugly - especially the questionable financial stuff.

I do agree with CA on that dynamic he mentions - which I still find amusing.  Within 18 months, Hillary morphed from Jane Fonda in the grassy knoll to Eisenhower.

Some day I'd love to see a good book written on that whole transformation.  When I suggested Hillary for Sec Def a couple of weeks ago, a few of our smartest TNR Republicans jumoed all over it.  I cracked up.

Two years ago, it would have been like suggesting Ayers for Sec Def.

"That said, it does occur to me that Hillary would be utterly incapable of mounting an attack on McCain's wealth and lifestyle."

She wouldn't need to.

Extremist left winger Obama with connections to left wing terrorists and left wing anti-American pastors

is trying to win elections by mounting an attack on McCain's wealth and lifestyle.

Good luck, idiots.

"tepid" is an understatement.

What possible reason do the Clintons have to want Obama to win?

Yes, they will go through the motions of campaigning for him.  But only do the minimum necessary to keep from being accused of sabotaging him.

If Obama wins, their dreams of Restoration go down the toilet.  Only his totally screwing up could give them a shot in 2008.  And his being discredited would help the GOP, not the Dems.

The chances of the Clinton's helping Obama are nil.  He sure didn't help them pay down their campaign debt.

Can we please, for the love of God, stop pretending that Obama is ever going to be the transformative President his campaign claims? Bill Maher put it best on Larry King the other night--"I'm still for him, but he's getting on my last nerve...At this point, he needs Hillary. She's a bold choice, she'd excite the base and frankly, the Clintons seem to be the only ones left in the Democratic Party who know how to make the counterargument to the American people."

Why is Maher down on Obama? Because he "see(s) the same look in the eyes that John Kerry and Al Gore had--this march towards a Republican way of thinking...I no longer have an ideological champion in this race."

He's a politician with a good schtik, and he pulls it off considerably better than anyone else who's ever tried it (cough, Howard Dean, cough) but at the end of the day, "hope" and "change" mean very different things on a university campus than they do on the Wal-Mart sales floor. Ethereal messaging hardly ever works in America, least of all with the world and ecomomy collapsing around us. Hillary would destroy McCain--remember, the day she exited the race, she was leading Johnny Mac by 9 whereas Obama was only up by two. Guess where those extra votes would have came from had she been the Nominee--Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Michigan. Wouldn't it be ironic if we won all the states that Obama is doing better in (i.e. Colorado and North Carolina) but we still lost because we went with the candidate who had the least appeal to the blue collar workers that form the base of the Democratic Party--and who are concentrated in those five states that decide every damned election in America?

Things are starting to shape up in a way John Greanleaf Whitter would appreciate; "of all the words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: what might have been." Will that be what every Democrat in America wakes up to on the first Wednesday after the first Tuesday in November? We shall see.

BHLnyc  said:

"who was inspiring, intelligent, ready to put away the old playbooks"

by of mounting an attack on McCain's wealth and lifestyle.

You can't argue with people tastes. If this inspire you, what can I say?

the problem with Obama is not Obama, it's that his democratic supporters are fickle.

We have no idea how Hillary would be doing now, so to speculate is ridiculous. I remain glad that she is not.

THe fact is that Obama is the nominee, and the democrats better rally r'ound him and forget this baloney buyer's remorse. Ya think the Republicans are strongly supportive of McCain? No, they're not, but they rally 'round their nominee 'cause they wanna win.

Jacob said

"Extremist left winger Obama with connections to left wing terrorists and left wing anti-American pastors

is trying to win elections by mounting an attack on McCain's wealth and lifestyle.

Good luck, idiots."

I'm glad you are now writing in poetry form, jacob.  Very pretty.  

jacobt..

oh please, grow up. McCain has been relentlessly negative in his attacks on Obama for about 3 weeks now and as soon as Obama responds effectively, you cry, piss, and moan...

The McCain creep [no double entendre intended] in the polls, coinciding with the barrage of negative attacks proves that despite all the noble calls for issues, negative campaigning works.

Obama must go for the old man's throat, citing his age, his flip flps and his pathetic fear to say out loud that he has more houses than Larry Craig has bathroom stalls...I don't for a moment believe that he "forgot"...as Elvis said, he forgot to remember to forget...

Governorjohn:

I like Bill Maher, but he also is combative and pugnacious and likes a good fight, which is why he's jonesing for Hillary. (And I'm sure the spectacle of a Clinton restoration appeals to his sense of entertainment.) The problem is that he completely misreads the mood of the country right now -- as did Hillary, which is why she's not the nominee. "A fighter" is not what most people want to send to Washington. They've had enough of the political cage matches masked as policy debates and were not prepared to relive another 8 years of a lightning rod presidency.

This BitterEnder notion that somehow Hillary would have "destroyed" John McCain is, to borrow from Bill, the biggest fairytale every told. By the end of her campaign, Hillary's negatives had reached record levels, her own allies were annoyed at her ungracious exit, she'd gone deep into debt and oversaw a political machine that had completely broken down and was mired in fingerpointing, chaos and bitterness.

You're living in a fool's paradise if you think voters would have trusted the architect of this disaster to be ready on Day One.

thejauntyboulevardier  said

"and as soon as Obama responds effectively, you cry, piss, and moan..."

I don't, I enjoy every moment.

My point is that Obama is a silly left wing extremist Democrat without  any record of achievements.

He  would betry friends such as Columbia, Georgia, Poland, Taiwan and Israel and he would kiss asses of dictators all over the world who would start act the moment he gets to White House.

The only reason to vote for him is because you share his agenda. There is nothing inspiring left in him.

"This BitterEnder notion that somehow Hillary would have "destroyed" John McCain is, to borrow from Bill, the biggest fairytale every told."

Bill Clinton didn't  try  destroy Bush or Dole. I don't remember him ever go so silly like  mounting an attack on his opponent's wealth and lifestyle.

The genius of Bill Clinton is his ability to talk about issues without sounding silly or boring.  Obama has to talk about McCain houses because is is very boring and silly when he talks about "issues"

Clinton, Is the real thing, Obama is fake, he is a pretender.

Jaunty - wasn't it you who said that Jacob is probably 18?  I think you called it.

While we're fighting among ourselves, I suggest a sidetrack: At what time will the VP be revealed?

Be as precise (or loose) as you dare. My take, if the announcement is to be today it will come betw. 6p.m. and 7 p.m. ET. If later today betw. 9:00 and 10:00.

If the announcement is to be tomorrow, which I doubt, it could be as early as 6 a.m. ET (your wake-up call),  latest 7:30 a.m. ET.

Don't ask me why, but it feels right for today. If it is indeed tomorrow, prepare for a bombshell, and an unexpected choice.

Governorjohn:

"Hillary would destroy McCain--remember, the day she exited the race, she was leading Johnny Mac by 9 whereas Obama was only up by two."

I have no idea where you pull these numbers from. They dont look like anything listed in the comprehensive listing of all match-up polls on pollster.com:

-> Obama vs McCain: www.pollster.com/.../08-us-pres-ge-mvo.php

-> Hillary vs McCain: www.pollster.com/.../08-us-pres-ge-mvc.php

There was one CBS poll right when Hillary dropped out that did indeed have her up by 9%; but it had Obama up by 6%, a statistically insignificant difference; not by 2.

And even that would still be cherry-picking just one opinion poll to make your point, selecting it from amongst others that wouldn't. The pollster.com trendline, based on all contemporary polling, ended up with Hillary leading McCain by just 3%. Which was pretty much the same they had Obama at.

Paul Krugman likes the Obama campaign’s new, stupid-but-effective line of attack on John McCain. "The

"Paul Krugman likes the Obama campaign’s new, stupid-but-effective line of attack on"

How does he know that it would be effective?

I doubt that Obama had a time to test his new stupid ad. You know it's silly, I know it's silly, Krugman knows it's silly.

How can you be so confident that undecided voters will not be annoyed by Obama's silliness?

In the silliness stakes, McCain's campaign has been leading the field for a while -- but silliness is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, and the whole "celebrity" deal, for example, has no doubt had Republicans rolling in the aisles and Democrats rolling their eyes in disbelief.  If something's effective, its silliness quotient becomes pretty unimportant.

I think scire has this issue pegged: fickle dems.

The whole "celebrity" deal was tested first,  the new add "including clip of Cindy McCain praising private air travel" was not tested. We wouldn't not know the results for a few days.   This COULD potentially backfire.  This is socialism propaganda against rich. Undecided voters might decide  afrer watching this propaganda but not the way Obama hope.

If Obama's problem is "who is he", Hillary's would have been we know who she is and we either love her or we hate her.  We would have had the kind of campaign Karl Rove is reputed to love; a battle of the bases.  

Voters are more concerned about their economic circumstances than the candidates'. Both Clinton's seem to understand that elementary fact -- and have shown themselves to be better at communicating that understanding than Obama.

It warms the heart of affluent liberals that Obama is now demonstrating how much he cares about McCain's wealth. They love seeing a candidate they hate getting "hit."

But it would be much better for Obama's prospects if he was doing a better job of communicating his understanding of how badly ordinary Americans are getting "hit" economically. Rather than trying so hard to encourage voters to resent McCain's wealth, he needs to communicate how hard and effectively he will work to help increase the wealth and security of those voters.

esmense  said:

"Rather than trying so hard to encourage voters to resent McCain's wealth, he needs to communicate how hard and effectively he will work to help increase the wealth and security of those voters."

He would if he only could but he can't.

If Hillary had won the nomination, the Dems would probably be screwed.  Obama might yet find a way to lose, but the idea that Hillary Clinton could run a winning general election campaign after that astonishingly incompetent primary campaign is really wishful thinking.

And who cares if she's "tough"?  She can't attack political opponents without making herself look even worse and in politics that's poison.  Plus the GOP would be able to frame her inevitable defeat as a referendum on the Clinton years, which is really bad for Dems.

After all the time and money spent defusing the monomaniacal nature of the Clintons, it would be a shame if Obama picked her as veep.

" Plus the GOP would be able to frame her inevitable defeat as a referendum on the Clinton years, which is really bad for Dems."

I see, really, really bad.  People were so glad when  Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity  was Finally Over.

jacobt...

I hate to remind you but McCain, or rather his questionnaire, brought up the issue of houses, and in the brutal world of politics, where sighs, slips of the tongue, memory lapses, and use of the word bitter can instantly over take a campaign, this was and is fair game.

jacobt, if you're a Republican, there is a case to be made against any Democrat, including Obama. My problem with your tnr based opposition to Obama is that it reflects an jejune approach to politics in general. You talk about issues yet almost every one of your posts brilliantly spotlights the politics of personality, a wafer thin understanding of real issues, and a rather creepy and juvenile style of political discourse appropriate for someone raised on FOX and talk radio.

And to think that we here at tnr will have to endure for the rest of the fall, your blighted assault upon the concept free political speech is truly depressing.