Brendan Nyhan

Hillary Clinton, who has apparently unprecedented negative ratings for a first time presidential candidate, is now claiming that only she can win in November:

Central to the new Clinton push will be the argument that only she can beat the eventual Republican nominee, a claim Obama is also seeking to make to voters here.

Advisers said her message will be: “You can’t have change if you don’t win.” Her rivals, meanwhile, are moving aggressively to capitalize on Clinton’s weaknesses in Iowa — and, they hope, block her path to the nomination.

Up is down! Maybe she should be campaigning for a job in the Bush administration…

The family and I are headed to the mountains of western North Carolina for Thanksgiving so blogging will probably be nonexistent until next week…

Writing on TPM, Reed Hundt notes how Barack Obama’s campaign lacks actual issues:

Obama’s campaign has a good offensive position on the all-important “change” issue. But the campaign has apparently been reluctant to articulate in detail how Clinton does not stand for “change” in policy terms… Obama’s campaign this fall has plainly been willing to go on the offense. But to my eyes, they have not yet selected the battleground of policy difference where they will fight their last and perhaps winning fight.

Of course, policy debates in and of themselves are not definitive in campaigns. However, policy distinctions are the language of good offensive campaigns

Josh Marshall agrees:

What’s the premise of Obama’s campaign? I hear less triangulating, more principle (which basically means the same thing), change, etc. But those are slogans. To make these work politically I think Obama would have to say, Clinton is the cautious Democratic politics of the past. It was good in its day. And I respect all that Sen. Clinton has accomplished for our party. But I’m about something different and that’s why X, Y and Z. Perhaps it’s something dramatic on climate change. But that’s not the point. I’m not running his campaign. But I think you need policy specifics that demonstrate the point.

So Obama says we Democrats know X, Y and Z is necessary. And I’m going to propose and commit to passing legislation in my first two years in office. And you can see I’m different because watch, Hillary won’t follow me.

As it is, at the beginning of the last debate when they both made their basic pitch for their candidacy, it was Hillary’s poll-tested platitudes and then Obama criticizing Hillary’s establishmentarian platitudes with platitudes about change and other platitudes about avoiding platitudes.

Marshall then elaborated:

Many have made the argument about what I think Marc Schmit has called the Dems policy literalism. And it’s a point I agree with. Strongly. But saying shared values doesn’t make it so. And it’s very easy to get led astray by a lot of jargon and nonsense. I probably should have been more clear. The point is not to beat Hillary on the issues. But if Obama’s angle is to show he’s more principled, less likely to sway in the political winds and so forth, he needs to ILLUSTRATE IT and not just assert it.

In other words, Democrats need to be convinced why they should cast aside their default choice, and Obama has failed to provide substantive issue-based reasons for doing so. Unlike Hundt, I’m also much less sanguine about new policy differences magically appearing that Obama could use. I don’t know that they exist.

Update 11/19 12:57 PM: One more elaboration from Marshall gets to the heart of the matter (my bold):

My disappointment with Obama’s campaign to date is that it’s really, ironically, been pretty old politics to me. And I mean that in this sense. Going back several cycles, you’ve often had some version of the Gore v. Bradley campaign in 2000. One candidate who’s the establishment party figure and another who talks about new stuff and change and principle and generally whets the appetites of the party’s cerebral types but then never quite delivers with anything specific and gets crushed by the well-oiled campaign of the establishment candidate. I’ve seen different versions of this in Mondale/Hart, Clinton/Tsongas, Gore/Bradley. And the same result every time.

The reason it seemed like it might be different this time is that Obama was raising the kind of money that would allow him to match Hillary dollar for dollar in ads, foot soldiers and infrastructure. But so far I haven’t seen a case made for Obama over Hillary behind the fact that it’d be cooler to have him as president than her — a point I concede, but one I doubt is sufficient to get him the nomination.

And the truth is that however we got to this point, he needs to take the initiative and change the dynamic of the race. Or else the conclusion we’re headed toward looks pretty clear.

In a Newsweek column, Karl Rove tries to advance the Al Gore-esque narrative that everything Hillary does is calculated:

And against a Democrat who calculates almost everything, including her accent and laugh, being seen as someone who says what he believes in a direct way will help.

Of course, Rove has no idea why Hillary laughed the way she did or used a Southern accent — he’s just pretending he can read her mind. As a result, I’m breaking out my swami graphic, which may become a regular feature in the next year.

Also, contra Sean Wilentz, Rove doesn’t sound scared of Hillary:

The conventional wisdom now is that Hillary Clinton will be the next president. In reality, she’s eminently beatable. Her contentious history evokes unpleasant memories. She lacks her husband’s political gifts and rejects much of the centrism he championed. The health-care fiasco showed her style and ideology. All of which helps explain why, for a front runner in an open race for the presidency, she has the highest negatives in history.

Rove’s last claim is a little strange, however. We haven’t had a truly open race for the presidency (no incumbents or VPs) since 1952, so the claim is true almost by definition. A more relevant question is whether a non-incumbent/non-VP has ever had negatives this high so early in the race. My suspicion is that the answer is no.

In an interview with Newsweek.com, Sean Wilentz makes the case for Hillary Clinton. I’m sympathetic to his criticism of Barack Obama’s anti-political tendencies, but his response to a question about Hillary’s electability is weak:

You know who makes that argument more than anybody else? Republicans. This is a favorite Republican argument. They say, “We want to run against Hillary. She’s the polarizing candidate and we’re going to take advantage of that. She’s going to rile up our base, et cetera, et cetera.” Whenever Republicans tell us who they want us to nominate, we should nominate her. They’re scared of her. Who else is going to build a coalition?

Saying Republicans are “scared of her” is such a silly claim. Every campaign says it is being attacked because the other side is scared — John McCain’s campaign manager just claimed “CNN is scared that John McCain will beat Hillary Clinton” — and there’s usually no way to resolve the question. More importantly, the evidence suggests that the GOP shouldn’t be scared of Hillary. So why would we think otherwise?

Writing on National Review, Mark Hemingway attempts to dismiss criticism of Ronald Reagan’s speech in Philadelphia, MS by saying “Reagan isn’t a racist”:

Krugman’s mentioned the Reagan/Nashoba incident four previous times over the last two years; Bob Herbert has mentioned it eight previous times going back to 1997. Enough already. Nobody believes Reagan is a bigot.

UPDATE: I’m getting a lot of emails pointing out that of course people believe Reagan was a bigot. Let me clarify what I meant — nobody who has seriously examined the man and his political career believes that Reagan is a bigot.

But as Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesias point out, that isn’t actually what critics are alleging. Here’s Krugman:

That is, of course, not the question. Reagan’s personal attitude is of no consequence. The question is whether he deliberately appealed to bigots, as a political tactic. And he did.

I would add that we can’t know Reagan’s true personal attitudes. But we can evaluate his record on the issue of race. And as I wrote (see here and here), Reagan did exploit the issue of race during his political career, though the speech in Mississippi has been exaggerated.

The issue recurs in today’s New York Times op-ed by Lou Cannon defending Reagan, which focuses entirely on his personal views except for this parenthetical:

(Mr. Reagan was understandably anathema in the black community not because of his personal views but because of his consistent opposition to federal civil rights legislation, most notably the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.)

Yglesias correctly objects, though his post includes an unfortunate Hitler analogy (see here and here for our debate about them):

Reagan was a politician. His political views are what matters. And during the crucial civil rights fights of the mid-1960s, Reagan stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the forces of white supremacy. How important Reagan’s background as an anti-civil rights activist was to his 1980 election win seems debatable — I’ve previously noted that it wasn’t a close election and the objective facts about the late 1970s would have made it extremely difficult for Carter to win re-election under any circumstances — but Reagan’s record is his record, and his views about political issues are personal views, whether or not some of his best friends were black.

I’ve been struck by the use of this tactic since one of my first columns for Spinsanity on John Ashcroft’s Attorney General nomination. Ashcroft’s defenders won it by shifting the focus of the debate from his inflammatory public statements about race to his (unprovable) feelings about race by claiming his critics were calling him a racist:

This rhetorical trick left Ashcroft’s opponents reeling. By most accounts, Ashcroft is a decent person who does not personally hate people on the basis of race – and no one can definitively prove otherwise (hence President Bush: “This is a good man; he’s got a good heart”). But this does not mean that Ashcroft should be exempt from criticism for capitalizing on racial animus and being indifferent to civil rights in his political career…

In the end, Ashcroft’s supporters created a standard that is effectively insurmountable, precluding race-related criticism of the more ambiguous political appeals, statements and positions that constitute the vast majority of American politics…

Sound familiar? In the end, the motive dodge is deeply undemocratic; it prevents us from judging public figures on their public actions. Debates about candidate’s personal motives and beliefs are inherently futile.

Update 11/19 9:05 AM: Krugman addresses this point in his column today:

Reagan’s defenders protest furiously that he wasn’t personally bigoted. So what? We’re talking about his political strategy. His personal beliefs are irrelevant.

One more point: what, exactly, is the reasoning behind the Hemingway defense? Does he actually think that one must be a racist to exploit the issue of race? The logic of the response makes no sense to me.

Update 11/19 12:40 PM: Time’s Jay Carney agrees that Reagan’s personal views are irrelevant.

Despite his obvious discomfort with going negative, Barack Obama has been slowly edging toward the “Hillary is too polarizing” pitch that Andrew Sullivan and I have advocated. The problem, however, is that his core message is still about process rather than issues — and process candidates do not usually win primaries.

During last night’s debate, for instance, Obama went after Hillary early on this point and she struck back with an issue critique that was much more effective (transcript,
video):

SEN. OBAMA: Well, first of all, I’m really happy to be here in Nevada and I appreciate this opportunity.

Senator Clinton, I think, is a capable politician, and I think that she has run a terrific campaign. But what the American people are looking for right now is straight answers to tough questions. And that is not what we’ve seen out of Senator Clinton on a host of issues, on the issue of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

We saw in the last debate that it took not just that debate but two more weeks before we could get a clear answer in terms of where her position was. The same is true on Social Security. We have serious disagreements about how we’re going to make sure that Social Security is there for the people who need it.

And what I’m absolutely convinced of is that right now, we need a different kind of politics. Everywhere I go, all throughout Nevada, people are struggling with health care. People are working harder for less. They are having a tougher time saving, tougher time retiring. And part of the reason is because they don’t feel that Washington is listening to them.

And what I want to do in this campaign is make certain that we are breaking out of the gridlock and partisanship and the standard practices of Washington and actually start listening to the American people to get things done.

MR. BLITZER: All right. Senator Clinton, do you want to respond?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, I hear what Senator Obama is saying, and he talks a lot about stepping up and taking responsibility and taking strong positions. But when it came time to step up and decide whether or not he would support universal health care coverage, he chose not to do that. His plan would leave 15 million Americans out. That’s about the population of Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

I have a universal health care plan that covers everyone. I’ve been fighting this battle against the special interest for more than 15 years, and I am proud to fight this battle. You know, we can have a different politic, but let’s not forget here that the people who we’re against are not going to be giving up without a fight. The Republicans are not going to vacate the White House voluntarily. We have some big issues ahead of us, and we need someone who is tested and ready to lead. I think that’s what my candidacy offers. (Cheers, applause.)

While Obama mentions a few issues in passing, his message is “I will create a different kind of politics,” while Hillary’s is “I am a leader who will fight for issues you care about like universal health care.” Obama is going to lose that fight every time, particularly among downscale voters who aren’t interested in process.

(Image from the New York Times)

Obscure historical justifications notwithstanding, the the table of adjectives about the candidates that David Brooks put together is utterly pointless. Couldn’t they just run a slug that says “David Brooks didn’t have a good column idea” and publish an actual article instead?

One thing I learned while working on Spinsanity is never to trust the Media Research Center, which continually puts out work based on quote-doctoring, taking things out of context, etc. (see here and here).

As a result, I wasn’t surprised when Greg Sargent of TPM caught the supposed watchdogs of liberal media bias in the act:

Brent Bozell and Tim Graham are both top officials with a conservative media watchdog group called the “Media Research Center,” an outfit that’s devoted to ferreting out the fifth column liberal bias that has infected our media and is busily working to destroy our country from within.

Bozell and Graham have now co-authored an article for National Review calling on the media to stop lauding Hillary. One thing they hold up as proof of the media’s liberal conspiracy to promote Hillary is this:

When it comes to Hillary Clinton, the national media have flagrantly abandoned their duty as a supposedly independent, dispassionate press. They have shamelessly served as cheerleaders for Mrs. Clinton from the moment she emerged on the national scene in 1992, with Time’s Margaret Carlson describing her as “an amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

Wow — did Margaret Carlson really describe Hillary in such gushing and cringe-worthy terms?

Well, no, as it turns out. No, she didn’t.

The original article Carlson wrote is still online. Here’s what she actually said:

Friends of Hillary Clinton would have you believe she is an amalgam of Betty Crocker, Mother Teresa and Oliver Wendell Holmes. She gets up before dawn, even on weekends, and before her first cup of coffee discusses educational reform. She then hops into her fuel-efficient car with her perfectly behaved daughter for a day of good works.

Fortunately, Hillary Clinton, the latest wife to be challenged to fit perfectly into the ill-defined role of political spouse, is more interesting than that.

As you can see, Carlson was actually mocking Hillary supporters for presenting her in such glowing terms. But Bozell and Graham cheerfully told National Review‘s readers that Carlson herself had presented her in these terms. Even more amusingly, they held this up as proof of the media’s liberal bias.

Sargent then discovered that the chopped-up quote is a centerpiece of a book written by the duo, one of whom (Graham) actually defends the quote by saying the rest of the article is nice to Hillary. Unbelievable.

There’s a strange fight going on in the progressive blogosphere over the behavior of Tim Russert.

Matthew Yglesias offered an essentially non-partisan critique of Russert’s “gotcha” style that was endorsed by Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein.

The Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby, who previously suggested that Russert had a partisan animus, then declared “It’s time to give up on Kevin and Matt and all the Good Boys of the Village suburbs.” The reason? They failed to detect what Somerby considered to be Russert’s disproportionately harsh treatment of Democrats, which he suggested was the result of partisan bias. (He made this suggestion again today.)

I actually agree with Somerby that Russert tends to be more aggressive in his questioning of Democrats. (Anyone remember his interview of Howard Dean during the last presidential campaign?) The problem, however, is that we can’t know Russert’s motives. More importantly, it is strange to assume that the ex-Democratic operative is wants to embarrass Democrats for partisan reasons.

There’s a simpler explanation that seems more persuasive. Like most journalists, Russert is far more sensitive to the approval of his peers than to the opinion of the general public (they’re a lot like academics). So how do you win acclaim for being a tough journalist? First, you grill your subjects on alleged inconsistencies and constantly try to throw them off message (his signature style). But you must also fend off any suggestion of liberal bias, a charge that could be especially potent for Russert given his history as a Democratic operative. As a result, it makes perfect sense for him to go overboard in grilling Democrats and to treat Republicans less harshly. There’s no reason to think it has anything to do with partisan animus.

Update 11/15 10:20 AM: Yglesias wrote a new post last night clarifying his views:

[T]hough I don’t really want to speculate as to Russert’s motives, I think the impact of his methods is pretty unambiguously bad for Democrats. It’s not a “partisan issue” in the sense that one could, in principle, be both a member of the Republican Party and also be a politician whose career would benefit from participating in a serious discussion of important issues, but in practice the whole ludicrous enterprise is a boon to the Party of Flim-Flam.