Another Brilliantly Evil Clinton Speech
by
EarlyBird
08/27/2008, 1:45 PM #
Hillary's speech was absolutely brilliant politics. The woman is truly an evil genius.
By all accounts, Hillary's speech last night would convince anyone listening that she held no grudges, and that she truly, truly wants Obama to win the presidency and have four more years of it afterwards. She was Ms. Magnanimous, or so it seemed.
She provided everything needed for her feminist, hardcore supporters in that convention center and in living rooms throughout every blue state, to cry and hug and have their catharsis and to be able to vote for Obama.
As if there was ever any doubt they would.
These Hillary supporters are politically active, politically minded. Politics are at the center of their lives. These Democrats would just as soon as jump off a cliff than either vote for McCain or not vote. The reality is, no matter what Hillary said last night, Obama had their votes. These are women with NOW stickers on their hybrids.
But what about those Hillary supporters with NRA stickers on their pickups, the guys in the Rust Belt and Appalachia, for whom the deer hunting season, not politics, is at the center of their lives?
Hillary appealed to them because she represented the Old Democratic Machine. She promised these blue collar, military-respecting Democrats a bygone fantasy wherein government could turn back the economic clock and ensure that if you simply graduated high school and paid your union dues, you could go to work in the same factory as your father did and make a good living which allowed you to raise a family and retire comfortably.
She didn't give the Rust Belters a shred of a reason to vote for Obama last night. She didn't suggest he understood and cared about them like she did. She didn't talk about how he would be a good commander in chief, something which is important to these voters. She did nothing for these former Hillary supporters, the ones Obama definitely needs and might not get, to convince them to vote for Obama, rather than McCain, a supposedly straight talking, white, military hero who at least culturally is far closer to them than Obama.
She talked about women's struggle, women's voting rights. She might as well have just burnt her bra on the convention floor.
This was Classic Clinton. She assuages the passions of the public Hillary supporters, talks about how much she is for Obama and how much she wants these supporters at the convention to vote for Obama. But she does nothing to help him with the demographic Obama needs and she carried.
It's absolutely brilliant. She gets to come off as Ms. Maganimous, a Democratic team player who did everything should could in the end for Barack to win, keep her "legacy," while at the same time being able to say, "I told you so," after Obama loses the Appalachian states to McCain, and thereby help herself to a run for her annointed destiny in '12.
This was not Ms. Magnanimous; it was Ms. Machievelli.
