Abandon All Hope

In Dante's epic poem Inferno, he and the poet Virgil begin a journey through the underworld.  In the opening lines of Canto Three, Dante relates the words engraved (according to the poet) on the gate of hell: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, or "Abandon all hope, you who enter here."

That phrase comes to mind when one hears Mrs. Clinton speak of late: Abandon all hope.  In one of the strangest twists in a very strange year, the theme of the Clinton campaign over the last few weeks has been exactly that: Abandon Hope.  The irony of it all is almost funny.  In 1992, Bill Clinton ran on a campaign theme of Hope.  He even pointed out he was born in a town called Hope.  He ended his acceptance speech with the phrase, "I still believe in a place called Hope."

Fast forward sixteen years. The former first lady is now running for President, and she is dangerously close to being denied the nomination by a relative political newcomer, Barack Obama.

Like Bill circa 1992, Obama's theme is Hope.  It has worked well for him.  He has won 11 out of the last 11 primary contests.  With Obama successfully employing the "hope" and "change" themes, Hillary Clinton was left to tout her "experience."  The problem is she really doesn't have that much real experience. A recent column by Frank Rich in the New York Times noted that her experience is, to say the least, sketchy:

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

Given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama offer marginally different policy prescriptions — laid out in voluminous detail by both, by the way, on their Web sites — it’s not clear what her added-value message is. The “experience” mantra has been compromised not only by her failure on the signal issue of Iraq but also by the deadening lingua franca of her particular experience, Washingtonese. No matter what the problem, she keeps rolling out another commission to solve it: a commission for infrastructure, a Financial Product Safety Commission, a Corporate Subsidy Commission, a Katrina/Rita Commission and, to deal with drought, a water summit.

When the experience message failed to gain traction with voters, Clinton had a bizarre dilemma: She had to counter the "hope" message. In other words, she had to throw cold water on the hope that Obama was inspiring among voters, many of them young, and many of them involved in the process for the first time.  Frank Rich observes, "This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself. No sooner does Mrs. Clinton lose a state than her campaign belittles its voters as unrepresentative of the country."

Obama, for his part, has shown a remarkable amount of political acumen, deftly turning each attack into his advantage.  When Hillary feigned indignation - right on cue - about campaign flyers (flyers that Clinton was aware of days earlier when she said how HONORED she was to be on the stage with Obama), Obama challenged her to prove the facts were not true; When Clinton mocked him last week (watch here) bluntly asserting he was naive in his hope-filled rhetoric, Obama stood on the same spot and mocked her mocking him (watch here), saying he talked about hope out of necessity, because the odds of him ever being where he is today were very slim; When her TV spot came out playing on fears that a President Obama would be a disaster when the White House phone rang at 3 am, the Obama campaign had a matching ad out within hours pointing out that the phone already rang, figuratively speaking, on the subject of Iraq, and Hillary gave the wrong answer. Whatever your personal opinion about the issues or the candidates, you gotta hand it to Obama. The guy's good.

This coming Tuesday could very well be the end of the road for the Clinton campaign.  But, no matter what happens, it probably won't be.  I can't imagine a scenario where Hillary (and/or Bill) would actually relinquish power.  I may be wrong.  I hope so.

Oops, there's that word again.

Read the Frank Rich NYT column here.

Comments

[New Reader]

Well said. Very well said.

[Hoping for CHANGE]

Excellently said.

[inhinoenvize]

well done, man