2008 Woodie Awards
Let's sabotage the Democrats!
Alex Nelson
Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: Opinion
If you were to try to sabotage the Democratic Party in the general election cycle from within the party, how do you suppose you would do it? Perhaps the first thing you could do is alienate the black community by inserting a race debate in the middle of the primary process. Then, go ahead and make false statements about the other candidates, which creates fodder for the general election and escalates everybody's unfavorable ratings. Beyond that, you could make efforts to exclude candidates from debates, betray the party by campaigning in the forbidden states, and generally do anything to get the nomination despite any consequences.
Some of you may be beginning to figure that I'm talking about Hillary Clinton. Now, I know she has a lot of supporters. As of now, according to the Real Clear Politics average, 42.5% of democratic voters think she's the greatest thing since George McGovern (kudos to students who know who that is!). That being said, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, 29% of people view her as "strongly unfavorable". The only other person currently running with "strongly unfavorable" ratings that come close is Giuliani. Let me repeat, more people find Hillary Clinton "strongly unfavorable" than Giuliani, the fascist overlord. In the spirit of fairness, she doesn't have the highest overall unfavorable ratings, that title belongs to the illustrious fascist himself. To make a long story short, if Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee and Lord Voldemort was the Republican nominee, about 30% of people would be considering he-who-shall-not-be-named.
Now, all this being said, let's take another look at the race. Hillary's campaign is riddled with nonsensical tactics which seem either foolish or dangerous to Democrats in the general election. Why would Clinton attack Obama on his anti-war credentials? As far as I can tell, she compares Obama's voting record with her own and says, "See! He's just as bad as I am because he voted the same way!" This kind of attack is only going to annoy a substantial portion of the base. And besides that, even if you don't like Obama, you have to recognize that attacking him is like talking smack about Jesus. He's got the look, feel, and support of the Kennedys. In addition, this race injection has been talked to death in the media, and has fallen into the favor of Obama.
If I were to guess, I'd say that no matter what happens on Super Tuesday, Clinton is going to drag this out until the convention, and she's going to go kicking and screaming. This is going to be the nastiest Convention in years; it's going to be a delegate-hunt, and there is going to be wheeling and dealing down to the last second. Who's going to be left standing after all the bullets are fired? Who can say, but the tactics pursued by Hillary will be damaging to the Democratic Party no matter who the nominee is.
Some of you may be beginning to figure that I'm talking about Hillary Clinton. Now, I know she has a lot of supporters. As of now, according to the Real Clear Politics average, 42.5% of democratic voters think she's the greatest thing since George McGovern (kudos to students who know who that is!). That being said, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC poll, 29% of people view her as "strongly unfavorable". The only other person currently running with "strongly unfavorable" ratings that come close is Giuliani. Let me repeat, more people find Hillary Clinton "strongly unfavorable" than Giuliani, the fascist overlord. In the spirit of fairness, she doesn't have the highest overall unfavorable ratings, that title belongs to the illustrious fascist himself. To make a long story short, if Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee and Lord Voldemort was the Republican nominee, about 30% of people would be considering he-who-shall-not-be-named.
Now, all this being said, let's take another look at the race. Hillary's campaign is riddled with nonsensical tactics which seem either foolish or dangerous to Democrats in the general election. Why would Clinton attack Obama on his anti-war credentials? As far as I can tell, she compares Obama's voting record with her own and says, "See! He's just as bad as I am because he voted the same way!" This kind of attack is only going to annoy a substantial portion of the base. And besides that, even if you don't like Obama, you have to recognize that attacking him is like talking smack about Jesus. He's got the look, feel, and support of the Kennedys. In addition, this race injection has been talked to death in the media, and has fallen into the favor of Obama.
If I were to guess, I'd say that no matter what happens on Super Tuesday, Clinton is going to drag this out until the convention, and she's going to go kicking and screaming. This is going to be the nastiest Convention in years; it's going to be a delegate-hunt, and there is going to be wheeling and dealing down to the last second. Who's going to be left standing after all the bullets are fired? Who can say, but the tactics pursued by Hillary will be damaging to the Democratic Party no matter who the nominee is.
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