Superdelegatious
Feb. 20th, 2008 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluThere are so many reasons to love Michael Bérubé, and certainly coining a term like "superdelegatious" is one of them.
But beyond that, Bérubé points out something that needs saying: yes, Sen. Clinton has indeed already been subjected to the howling fury of the Republican Noise Machine in a way that Sen. Obama has not; but having survived it doesn't mean she survived it with her image unscathed. It doesn't mean she spun it well.
The fact is, she didn't spin it well. A lot of that slime stuck. And the most memorable come-back she managed in all that time was the plaintive cry about being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Now, she was right about that, the Clintons really were the victims of a right-wing conspiracy. But she didn't have enough nous to realize that it isn't just about being right, it's also about sounding strong, and being plausible. Because if you don't already know about Richard Mellon Scaife's Arkansas Project, then the talk about conspiracies just makes you sound nutty and hysterical. And there are lots of voters for whom that nutty and hysterical image is what lingered, not Mrs. Clinton's grace under fire.
There are whole swathes of the country where Mrs. Clinton's image is in the toilet. This is why her negatives are so much higher than Mr. Obama's. And undoubtedly, his negatives would go up once the noise machine gets cranking. But so would hers. And she hasn't given us much reason to believe that she could effectively combat that.
But beyond that, Bérubé points out something that needs saying: yes, Sen. Clinton has indeed already been subjected to the howling fury of the Republican Noise Machine in a way that Sen. Obama has not; but having survived it doesn't mean she survived it with her image unscathed. It doesn't mean she spun it well.
The fact is, she didn't spin it well. A lot of that slime stuck. And the most memorable come-back she managed in all that time was the plaintive cry about being the victim of a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Now, she was right about that, the Clintons really were the victims of a right-wing conspiracy. But she didn't have enough nous to realize that it isn't just about being right, it's also about sounding strong, and being plausible. Because if you don't already know about Richard Mellon Scaife's Arkansas Project, then the talk about conspiracies just makes you sound nutty and hysterical. And there are lots of voters for whom that nutty and hysterical image is what lingered, not Mrs. Clinton's grace under fire.
There are whole swathes of the country where Mrs. Clinton's image is in the toilet. This is why her negatives are so much higher than Mr. Obama's. And undoubtedly, his negatives would go up once the noise machine gets cranking. But so would hers. And she hasn't given us much reason to believe that she could effectively combat that.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-21 12:44 am (UTC)Mrissa is right about Ellison being the source, and even those who get the attribution correct often totally muck up the critical details. Suffice to say that congressmen aren't officially sworn in on the Bible either.