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By Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Why her victory over Bernie Sanders is inevitable.
For the second time in eight years,Hillary Clinton sees the Democratic nomination being pawed by a charming interloper, like a priceless vase grabbed by a panda. She’d prefer to shoot the panda, but that could mean breaking the vase, and onlookers would object. To make matters worse, Bernie Sanders, who leads Clinton in both New Hampshire and Iowa, has produced a new video ad, “America,” a wordless feel-hope montage that is awfully good, good enough that I can’t help feeling both moved by it and resentful that it works on me. Maybe shoot the panda.
How does Hillary come back? Back in 2008, many of us thought she was a solid candidate who just happened to be meeting her match in an exceptional one. As Hendrik Hertzberg, who’d called Clinton’s talents “immense,” summarized inThe New Yorker, “Barack Obama is a phenomenon that comes along once in a lifetime. Unfortunately for Hillary, it’s her lifetime.” But maybe Hillary is really a not-so-solid candidate who happens to meet her match in anyone answering to “Other.”
Let’s assume the poll numbers hold and she loses Iowa and New Hampshire. In the worst-case scenario, a few weeks of Sanders victories will change the momentum of the race irrevocably, inspiring voters in blue states to follow their hearts. And the heart doesn’t lead to Hillary Clinton, unless you’re Lanny Davis. Maybe best to regain control soon.
She can try campaigning harder on “judgment,” but Iraq will always undercut that message. She can say that competence and experience count for more than soaring rhetoric and grand visions—and she believes it—but that would mean insulting a sitting president whom Democratic voters still deeply admire. She can hope to keep her opponents out of the spotlight with debates scheduled at inconvenient times, except that the Democratic National Committee did just that for her and it backfired. That’s why we’re seeing a “town hall” on Monday. She could try deploying charm, but that’s like Bernie Sanders deploying a thick head of hair.
Let’s take a closer look at kneecapping, a solid standby. In 2008, the Clinton campaign fanned outrage over Obama’s church pastor, hammered Obama on ties to former terrorist Bill Ayers, and even circulated a picture of Obama being dressed as a Somali elder during a trip to Kenya. But these things soured many Democrats on Clinton. This cycle, her campaign has been more restrained, using proxies to remind people that Sanders is a socialist, allege that Bernie would take away our healthcare (leave it to Chelsea to make Hillary look like a political natural), and suggest his “America” adis racist because of excessive whiteness. But even these low-key attacks have been busts. They’re bound to be. When you’re caught up in a beautiful dream, you don’t want to be woken up and told it’s nonsense, least of all by Hillary Clinton.
What does that leave? More than one might think. Despite the challenges, Hillary wins by not panicking. Certainly, after an inevitable New Hampshire triumph, Sanders will shoot up in the polls, and Hillary’s lead in most states will shrink a lot. (It’s already fallen by half in South Carolina.) But after a couple of grueling weeks, the air will quietly start to leak from the Sanders tire. Bernie is unlikely to inspire anything close to the support that Obama got among Southern black voters in 2008, and most non-New-England states that preferred Hillary in 2008 will still prefer her now. So my guess is she’ll take a narrow but persistent lead across most of the country, winning steadily, if slowly. She’ll take the South, including South Carolina, Florida, and Texas. She’ll take New York, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and California. And she won’t neglect the caucus states, where she was so embarrassingly outplayed in 2008. She’ll come out fine, if she plays it cool. (And if the continuing investigation into her use of a private e-mail server as secretary of state doesn’t land her in more serious trouble.)
As for her campaign narrative, she can appeal to heart by appealing to the head. Sanders may do better against Republicans in many polls, but Hillary can remind people that her negatives have been exhaustively aired, while Bernie’s will still be news. (That’s one reason Hillary’s people try to wedge “socialist” into every conversation about the Vermont senator.) She can stress, again, that she’s one of the most qualified and prepared candidates ever to run for office, at least since George H.W. Bush, and maybe since Nixon. (Okay, that’s not the ideal lineage to summon, but she doesn’t have to name names.) Finally, she can tell voters not to risk blowing up everything they’ve achieved with Obama. Unless Sanders dissolves the legislative branch, he’ll be powerless to push through most of his domestic agenda, while Republicans can do much to roll back recent gains. In short, stick with me and don’t try anything funny. As pitches go, it’s uptight and guarded—but so is Hillary.
And, in many ways, this is Hillary’s pitch. She has emphasized her experience. She has conveyed her international toughness. She has tied herself closely to Barack Obama, stressing the need to preserve what he has built. (This is in contrast to the approach of Al Gore, who unwisely distanced himself from Bill Clintonduring the 2000 election.) She has signaled leftward moves on policy, for instance on trade, and spoken favorably of Sanders, as is wisest. So Hillary will regain control of the narrative, and, as her victories pile up, Bernie lovers will emerge from their reverie to the real world: a Clinton will be president; a Clinton will always be president.
One final thing Hillary cannot say, but which many Democrats intuitively grasp, is that her nomination lets her party postpone a reckoning. The Republican coalition has broken apart, blown up by leadership duplicity. Democrats are in better shape, but they still have considerable fissures of their own. Their party elite favors globalism and free trade; their non-elite prefers more nationalism and protectionism. In papering over these splits, the Obama coalition has focused increasingly on civil rights injustices related to gender or race. But this is an unsustainable approach, further alienating white working-class voters and fostering internal squabbles over who deserves what. Only the fear of a common foe, the GOP, keeps the peace. Bernie Sanders, by shifting the focus away from identity and over to economic justice, is inviting Democrats to have it out. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, is inviting Democrats to keep it in. Even if she’s not a natural unifier, she embodies the idea of “Democrat,” and that spares people from having to examine it more closely. Political parties don’t like to think, and with Hillary Clinton they don’t have to. Maybe there’s a Clinton campaign t-shirt in that: Don’t overthink it. Just vote Hillary. Or maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. Either way, the outcome is the same: she wins.
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