The Clinton campaign has run a gambit since Pennsylvania.
They've found a strategy and they've doubled down.
After Pennsylvania, the press, the pollsters and the pundits started talking about "white working class voters" and the Clinton campaign ran with it. After Pennsylvania, the press, the pollsters and the pundits ran another cycle of Rev. Wright's rants and the Clinton campaign ran with it.
So, in anticipation of Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton doubled down.
Clinton pandered on a gas tax and on guns. She reaffirmed her talk about "obliterating Iran." She expressed "outrage" about Rev. Wright on Bill O'Reilly's show. She lambasted economists as elitist. She vilified Wall Street as if she and Bill had never met or taken a dollar from anyone who worked for Bear Stearns or Morgan Stanley.
The Clinton campaign has triangulated to such an extent that, at this point, she is running to the right of Joe Lieberman.
That's saying something.
If Clinton wins North Carolina and Indiana this way, if she uses this rightward gambit as the lever that wins her the nomination of the Democratic Party in Denver, then she has so thoroughly painted herself and our party into a corner that it's not clear what it means to be a liberal Democrat much less a progressive grassroots or netroots activist intent on reforming our party.
Can any of us expect that we will get a real Cap and Trade on Carbon if the gas tax pander is what won Hillary Clinton the nomination?
We won't.
It doesn't matter what she says now. It won't happen.
Nor will any progressive reform we have in mind come to pass. If one thing is true in politics, you don't turn your back on the voters and the politics that brought you to the dance.
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However, there's a problem. Clinton is weak in Wisconsin and Iowa and Minnesota and Colorado and Virginia and Washington and Oregon and Nevada and New Mexico. She will have to scramble to beat John McCain in any of those states.
To win in the general election Hillary Clinton will have to go right back to Ohio and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Florida and Michigan and repeat the exact same rhetoric that she's used in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana and North Carolina.
Only this time she will be running against John McCain, and all those voters who seemed to eat up her "to the right of Joe Lieberman" rhetoric in the Democratic primary will have a much different choice to make.
Given Republican or Republican Lite, voters will be tempted to choose the Republican line.
So Clinton, having painted herself into this right-wing ideological corner in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana, will find herself looking for votes and volunteers from the other part of the Democratic Party. The liberals. The progressives. The big cities. The folks who read Dailykos. The folks who joined MoveOn years ago. Some, but, critically, not all of, the folks who worked our asses off to help the Democrats of all political persuasions win back a majority in the House and the Senate in 2006.
And at that point, Clinton will talk to us about health care and cap and trade and George Bush and the "rainbow of voters" in the Democratic Party.
And the only problem will be that she'll be standing in a corner. Painted in.
She'll be waving from the tiny little ideological space that she carved out for herself with Evan Bayh.
You know that space. That corner.
It's the space in Democratic politics where it's okay to belittle economists and academics as elitists. It's the space in Democratic politics where it's fine to run against MoveOn.org and misrepresent the views of millions of activists who do things like donate and get our the vote and remind people about the war in Iraq. It's the space where you can rake in $109 million after leaving office but call your political opponent an "out of touch elitist." It's the space we reserve in our party where incredibly wealthy people who take millions in donations from lobbyists and industry can pander to "regular people" by lambasting Wall Street as if they'd never heard of the place...and get away with it.
And that corner has a new aspect for Bill and Hillary Clinton, it's also now the corner of Democratic politics where it is apparently alright to label your opponent's African-American Church as associated with Hamas and Louis Farrakhan. I don't think Joe Lieberman would have done that.
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Barack Obama is not perfect.
I happen to like him a great deal and, despite what some might tell you in the blogosphere, I don't agree with him on everything. I don't think he's the "progressive savior" and I never did.
He's honest. I happen to like that. He has the support of a broad cross section of our party's elected officials. I like and respect that, too. His wife is an amazing woman. He has innovative policy positions and includes cutting edge advisers with Democratic warhorses on his policy team. He's run a truly excellent, textbook-rewriting campaign. And, more than anything, Barack Obama goes out there and does his best whatever the demographic challenges he faces.
Remember Obama in Pennsylvania? With Senator Casey? They visited small towns where they knew they would go on to lose by big margins. (And, yes, there were also some they won and some they kept close.) That says something about the guy.
Remember Obama in Indiana at the nursing home and the VFW Hall and in that surprise visit to that small town? He was out there talking to people whom he knew weren't all going to vote for him this primary. He was reaching out, not taking our party to the right.
Why?
Because that's the way Barack Obama is.
He hasn't painted himself into a corner. He's extended his hand and greeted folks who disagree with him with a smile. And when he's talked to us, he's done his best to tell all of us the truth.
That might not win him North Carolina and Indiana outright. That might not change the demographic breakdown of this race for the nomination of our party.
But it sure makes me feel one hell of a lot better calling myself a Democrat.
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VOLUNTEER. TAKE ACTION. DONATE.
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