Rhymes With Cars & Girls

One of the striking things about the (D) primary race is how vicious the rivalry has become in some circles - in particular from Obama supporters. A cursory glance at many lefty blogs, or online communities like digg where the naive, young, orthodox leftyism of the college campus is the assumed norm, will find (D) partisans levelling some of the most fascinating charges against Hillary Clinton and her campaign:

She’s a born liar. She’s corrupt. She’s power-mad. She will do anything to win. She’s the candidate of Karl Rove and Rovian tactics. Karl Rove wants her to win. Rush Limbaugh wants her to win. She’s pro-war (!). She’s a psychopath.

Many of the (Obama-supporting) people who now hold these views about Hillary Clinton were presumably among her and her husband’s biggest supporters from 1992-2000. And many of those, I imagine, at the time considered any criticism of either Clinton to be beyond the pale, the mark of an evil fascist right-winger. Indeed, to a certain faction of people, criticism of Bill and Hillary Clinton or even investigation of them (think Kenneth Starr) from 1992-2000 made them angry for some reason, and invariably caused them to viciously attack the critic. (Seriously: this is just politics, it’s not personal, right?)

Yet now the 2008 (D) primary race finds many of the same people, standard (D) partisans, saying almost the exact same things about Hillary Clinton that her most fervent, right-wing critics said throughout the Clinton years.

That by itself is interesting enough in its ramifications. But here’s a further thought:

Suppose Hillary Clinton does somehow find a way to garner the (D) Presidential nomination, so that the 2008 Presidential race ends up being Clinton v. McCain. Question: How, if that happens, will all these Clinton-hatred-spewing Obama fans react? Will they (a) vote for….John McCain, a (gasp) Republican? Will they (b) sit out the Presidential race out on principle (and risk letting a (gasp) Republican win the Presidency?)

Or will they (c) turn on a dime, develop ’sudden-onset political amnesia’, instantly drop all their prior, vicious, deep-seated January-May criticisms of and hatred for Hillary Clinton, do a 180 and suddenly decide it’s ‘time for a Woman President’ and ‘we must stop McCain’, and pull the (D) lever for the woman they (just a few months earlier) earnestly professed to believe to be a power-mad lying psychopath who will stop at nothing in her self-serving drive for power? and declare any Republican who says anything bad about Hillary Clinton - i.e. the same things they themselves were saying repeatedly a few months earlier - to be an evil fascst?

I suspect the answer is (c), but I hope we never find out whether my hunch is correct. The spectacle would be too nauseating to observe.

Matthew Yglesias objects to a Hillary Clinton line that goes like this:

Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill up your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night. My opponent gives speeches. I offer solutions.

But tellingly, his criticism of Hillary’s statement has nothing to do with her ridiculous implication that she does put food on our table, fill up our tank, fill “up” our prescription, and pays our bills. Apparently, that part makes perfect sense to him and his readers. To ‘liberals’, you see, all of that stuff is just what government does.

It was a multi-step parallel process. It happened this evening, talking with a friend on the subway.

1. He asked “So do you think Clinton will win?” and I thought of Bill & didn’t understand the question. Took a moment to realize he was speaking of Hillary.

2. I answered him “No, I don’t”, somewhat to my surprise.

3. When I asked what he thought, he said “Well, I’m not optimistic” - and I didn’t get his point. He thinks Obama will lose? I was assuming he was for Obama you see (like everyone?). In other words, I’m mentally treating Obama as the front-runner already, and if someone demonstrates (D) tendencies (as this guy did by asking about the (D) primary in the first place) I assume they’re for Obama. So it took my brain forever to parse his statement and realize that he was, in fact, in favor of Clinton.

The fact that I apparently think Obama will win means, of course, absolutely nothing. But it is a change from the previous year+, because I have thought all that time that the next President would be Hillary Clinton. Evidently, now I don’t.

I agree with Bill Clinton. Do you?