Posted on 01/02/2008 10:31:10 AM PST by COUNTrecount
Was I witnessing the last throes of the 15-year-long Clinton political psychodrama in Ames, Iowa yesterday? Here’s my newspaper piece on Hillary’s final plea for support in tomorrow’s caucuses. The case she made was far from compelling – that she’s human (honest) and that she has unrivalled experience. Both propositions are debatable and she was much less compelling than Barack Obama and John Edwards have been in recent days. She seems to have had some kind of speech therapy to create a softy-soft voice that made me long for the grating shrillness of yore.
Hillary Clinton tried to present herself as softer and more human
The Obama campaign is supremely confident that victory is within its grasp. “So what?” I hear you ask. Iowa is a sparsely populated, unrepresentative state in which on the Democratic side only 124,000 people caucused in 2004. Surely it can’t matter that much? Don’t bet on it. If Hillary loses tomorrow, her presidential bid is likely to collapse like a house of cards.
For all the arguments against Iowa having such disproportionate influence – and Christopher Hitchens airs some good ones with characteristic aplomb here – it does mean that pre-packaged, calculating politicians like Hillary are scutinised and exposed (we’ll see if Mitt Romney is too).
All the money and establishment backing she had behind her couldn’t prevent her getting caught out by voters asking her about Iran and Iran, discovered planting softball questions and rumbled for having advisers forwarding smear emails about Obama. She tried to remain aloof and away from the voters but it didn’t work – if anything, the seeds of her demise (if that’s what it turns out to be) lay in that strategy.
When an incumbent-style campaign is built on a sense of inevitability, it comes under huge strain when hit by an early defeat. The bubble is burst – which is what will happen if Hillary loses Iowa to Obama in Iowa (if she loses to Edwards, the picture will be less clear).
Of course, if Hillary pulls through then it’s difficult to see how Obama and Edwards can beat her – this is absolutely their best shot. Adam Nagourney of the “New York Times” argues here that Iowa might mean nothing. That’s possible. But my hunch is that it will end up meaning everything.
"Now, do it my way see?"
I thought "Primary Colors" was also one of the best crime dramas ever.
"You know what this is?"
"It's like a penis, only smaller."
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