Perhaps on domestic issues. On foreign policy she is, as far as I'm concerned, higher risk as well as lower reward.

Obama is also more willing than Bill Clinton to bank on the basic decency of the American people, & to make moral arguments. Not quite as willing as I'd like him to be, but enough that it's a major difference.

I think you're also discounting a couple of important things here:

1) Obama does not appear to have WJC's zipper problem
2) The right has so much invested in being against HRC as to make it very difficult for her to work with them

I'm going to beg to differ with you on this. Bill Clinton was always a pretty bruised commodity from prior to the primary season even beginning. He won a minority of votes in the 1992 election and the Republicans were gunning for him with a vengance from day one. They viewed him as illegitimate and phony and someone who was only elected because of Perot's third party bid.

The media establishment here in DC also gave him no love right out of the box. Basically, the guy was the subject of relentless attacks for his entire administration. It is one of the reasons that many of us on the left are so ambivalent about him -- we did not much appreciate his middle of the road agenda, but we despised his enemies and the brutal way that they treated him.

Hopefully Obama would get a little bit more of a break than him. Although right wing pricks are right wing pricks and likely to remain so.

I know I am not a big time blogger or Washington Post opinion writer, but I do find it funny that many of you are coming to conclusions I made months ago. Where the hell are you people? I mean these candidates telegraphs their moves so clearly.

This is a really smart post, and many ways it captures one of the main reasons Obama inspires such fervor in folks like me who believe that (at least when it comes to policy goals) there's not much separating the three leading Democrats. This election offers a rare chance to re-align American politics - a slim chance, to be sure, but a chance all the same.

Obama has a frightening ability to capture the hearts and minds of sections of the electorate that are predisposed to look at progressive causes with disdain - moreover he seems to be able to do it without making major compromises. This apparent ability may well be an illusion, but it seems a worthy gamble.

>The chances for disappointment are less, but so are the chances for transformation.

That sounds about right. My problem with Obama is that he hasn't convinced me the chances of disappointment are low enough to risk, so though I wanted Edwards, I'll take Hillary.

Well, despite my oft stated opinions on the subject I'm leaning towards Obama at this point. But I think that the eventual strategy of the republican party against Obama is going to be perfectly clear--it will be to argue with quite a bit of rage that Obama is "playing the race card" to get "sympathy" and to prevent "legitimate criticism" of his lousy "affirmative action like" policies. In that sense a critique of Obama is a twofer since it will also be a critique of all liberal/progressive policies as inherently illiberal and regressive. The Ads and attacks literally write themselves since they were already written against returning war veterans running as democrats and against sick people commenting on health care (Michael J. Fox, Michael Schiavo, Graeme whatever his name is) and, indeed, on all interested and sympathetic spokespeople for any topic.

Really, let no one think that Obama is going to have an easier time of it than Clinton will. In fact just as whatever flaws clinton has will be assigned to her sex all Obama's real and imagined flaws will be assigned to his race and his progressivism and, simultaneously, the viciousness of the attacks will be written off as legitimate anger at that old right wing canard the "silencing" of legitimate debate with reference to the identity of the debaters. You know the argument: a white guy doesn't have a chance what with the women crying all the time and the black people and indians being so touchy about their past.

aimai

I don't think Obama is ever likely to achieve Bill Clinton's negatives. It seems silly to me to make that comparison without considering the impact of the sex scandals. No one knows for sure of course, but it doesn't seem that Obama is a horndog on Bill's level.

Sir Charles:
What you mentioned(the zipper problem) hamstrung him in his last two years. If he could have just admitted what happened, it would have taken the steam out of the Rethugs. Basically the Democratic Party was hostage to his ego.

What's interesting along this thread is even when you point out that Obama is Clinton 1992, his supporters some how twist that into a good thing. One would expect that if you had written Clinton is clinton 1992, they would exclaim "the horror, the horror." but since its Obama- well now Clinton 1992 is a great thing. The partisan brain at work.

If Senator Clinton is elected, we can forget about universal health care. It's not gonna happen. She knows "how to get things done in Washington": bring in the Aetnas and United Healthcares to the table, close the door, and make a deal. In a New York minute.

We'll be keeping the troops in Iraq, too. And saber rattling with Iran.

But we will get nice school uniforms and more cops on the street. And yes, we will restore competency to the Executive branch. And perhaps better court nominees. It's sad that the bar is being held out so low, though.

Greg

Tell me Obama's policies on those issues you mention in your comment. Thanks.

"The media establishment here in DC also gave him no love right out of the box. Basically, the guy was the subject of relentless attacks for his entire administration...
Hopefully Obama would get a little bit more of a break than him."

Carter lost because of the Iranian hostage crisis, which Reagan fixed by bribing the Iranians

Gore WON but was, rather, "not selected" because of Nader, intimidation of Democratic voters in a state governed by GW's brother, the crooked Supreme Court stacked by GW's dad and cronies, and, sadly Gore's own giving in too soon

Kerrey lost because he came across as weak; he was viewed as a flip-flopper and that he couldn't successfully refute the swift boat crap, with the truth on his side, said alot about his effectiveness or lackthereof

I am not at all hopeful for the break you mention. The repub attack machine didn't fixate on Clinton for anything he did, OTHER THAN WINNING

Joe K's Conscience,

(Boy there's a vestigial organ if there ever was one.) I think Jake invoked the zipper problem. I was noting that Clinton was afforded no honeymoon at all and really struggled against vicious attacks from day one in office. I think Obama might acutally get a little bit of a honeymoon from the press -- the wingers, never. But they are substantially weaker now after their reign of error.

Hillary is now up to her neck with Revko and "Individual H".

The news media has begun to notice that Hillary Clinton has no standards when it comes to raising campaign money. She’ll take it from those accused of serial sexual harassment and defrauding small business owners across the nation and individuals implicated in the indictment of Tony Rezko.

Chris Fusco from the Chicago Sun-Times points out she not only takes money from Democratic lawyer/fundraiser Myron “Mike” Cherry, “Individual H” in the Rezko indictment, she put him on the host committee of a big fundraiser here. And she takes it from a suburban Chicago company Cherry represents that is being sued by the federal government in a massive sexual harassment case, is under fraud investigation by the Illinois Attorney General’s office, and whose founder is a convicted criminal.

Stop pointing fingers Hillary....

This is a decent enough explanation, maybe, of why the Clinton administration went the way it did, and why 2008 presents a different ideological and political terrain. What I don't see is any reason to suppose that this means Obama would be more likely to go for the touchdown instead of the field goal than would Hillary.

Hillary supposedly has a "distinct template" for a presidency, which is another way of saying that she intends to be the same kind of president that Clinton was. This is just an assumption, though, that effectively begs the question. Plus, Ezra himself argues that the Clinton presidency was largely shaped by factors beyond his control; thus in the absence of those external factors, why should we expect a Hillary presidency to look the same?

I see no evidence that Obama is any more of a risk-taker than Hillary. Everything we've seen so far indicates that his instincts are fundamentally cautious and moderate.

For all those who are convinced that Hillary only cares about herself, you have to take the bitter with the sweet: sometimes, her selfishness works in our favor. If she fails again on health care, her legacy will be forever tarnished. If she succeeds, she is redeemed. So she has a strong personal incentive to do what we want her to do.

People claim the Clintons care only for their own political fortunes, and in the same breath promise us that President Hillary would immediately adopt a neoconservative approach to foreign policy even though that would clearly be politically catastrophic for her to do.

Obama wants conservatives to like him. Hillary knows they will hate her forever. This creates incentives of its own.

Heyyy, akaison,

Since you asked, my view of Obama is that he is all fluff and wonderful soaring rhetoric that won't survive the first contact with the Republican Slime machine. I'm too old to have that youthful optimism that Ezra is flirting with in his "transformative" comments.

What we need is a knife fighter like Clinton, but someone who isn't afraid to fight the status quo, unlike Clinton. Edwards probably comes closest to my liking, though he is not going to get the nomination.

The real power in America is aligned with money, and sadly there is no more noblesse oblige ethic left anymore. And I believe we're headed for societal instability if we keep destroying the remnants of the middle class to feed the maw of the haves and have-mores.

The postings by some Obama supporters has the feel of political Tourette Syndrome.

I like your objectivity Greg, and I happen to agree. The closest shot we had this cycle to getting someone in who may have (or not because I am a cynic) changed the way things are done was Edwards. Unfortunately, identity politics masks triangulation.

Heyyy Jason C.,

Your argument is well taken. I have never heard this kind of viewpoint before. You taught me something.

I wish I am wrong about Senator Clinton, because I do care about the future (I'm a dad), and clearly she is the most likely to win the combination of both nomination and general election. But she is reflexively cautious, and (of equal importance) so are the people she hires. I don't see her legacy concerns driving her actions either in the Senate or as a presidential candidate, and once the opportunity passes, you can't get it back.

greg in fl,

You know, I'm not so sure that we can predict what HRC would do given power from what Clinton the male did with power when he got it. And I'm sure we can't predict what she will do compared to Obama. The reason is that HRC is in a fundamentally different position from either first term clinton or a first term obama. She's more like a VP who gets his shot at being top dog. If she gets into the presidency she has a backlog of unfinished business to address--like healthcare--and *nothing to lose* in the way of maintaining political viability for next time around. Obama is so young, he's planning his second act already and even if he gets in for an eight year term he's got to be thinking about his future after that. I just don't think HRC has the same concerns *other than legacy*. She is almost old enough to retire after a first term, certainly after a second term. Perhaps such a person won't feel the need to be cautious or to triangulate. I think we don't really know what strength and determination she has. She reminds me of a stamp I used on a birthday invitation for my 70 year old mother:

"time and circumstance will tame a young woman--but nothing can tame an old woman." or something like that.

aimai

Greg in FL

You say we need a knife fighter without the "downside" of Clinton and you acknowledge its not Obama but I hardly think Edwards meets the bill either.

When your strategy for getting, far far left, policies passed is "we'll galvinize the people" you have no hope of passing your agenda.

two things about the last comment

a) far left is a dead give away

b) yeah, in a democracy, galvanizing the people is the last thing you should think of as a strategy.

bonus- its precisely comments like this why i suspect edwards would have worked. as my friend who worked on hill said- politicans respond to two things- money and the voters. edwards was smart in going after the later rather than trying to convince them toward their better nature using the former.

I always laugh when I see these comparisions because its a false analogy.

Just because someone supported Bill Clinton in 1992 doesn't mean they would have supported him right now.

The country is facing different challenges and is at a different place in time.

More importantly, the field of candidates is different today than it was in 1992. Maybe Obama is the Bill Clinton of 1992 but that doesn't mean that he's better than the Hillary Clinton of 2008.

This type of argument by analogy is kind of shallow intellectualism people do when they want to sound deep but they really aren't

I came back to say that everything I said in my post way upthread about the attacks to come on Obama was said better and shorter by "the editors" over at "the poorman" in their post entitled "the white man is the jew of america" or something.
But I want to agree with Akaison on something. All three of the top candidates are lawyers but only one of them seems to draw on his experience as a lawyer to imagine getting things done in an *adversarial system* that depends on recognizing that each party has, well, entrenched interests and that each party is going to pursue those interests as hard as it can until one side or the other makes it *too costly* or demonstrates that the fight is not going to go all one way. We hear a lot about Obama as an organizer, and as a person who wants to be organized I think that's cool. But the fact of the matter is that getting people excited about shit isn't the same as making stuff happen in a legislature. People can call and write their legislators but most of what their legislators care about happens between elections and involves a different kind of arm twisting and negotiation. I thought edwards offered us the clearest sense that he was going to go into this *as a battle* and that he meant to win it. I think LBJ was a very effective political figure because he had the same recognition. I don't see the same rhetoric and I don't see the same intention in either HRC or Obama. Though one must make lots of room for the fact that speeches and campaign rallies aren't really the same as political strategies.

aimai

The repub attack machine didn't fixate on Clinton for anything he did, OTHER THAN WINNING - jj

That may be true, but the reason why the machine was able to get traction with both the politically ascendent Joe Southron Conservative and the neo-aristocratic media (and remember the South was a rather feudal place until FDR and LBJ finished what the scalawags and carpetbaggers tried to do in reconstruction) was due to Clinton being a scalawag. There is a cultural element to Clinton hatred (they didn't call him the first black president for nothin') that cannot be discounted. Even though Obama is of partial African origins, he just doesn't have the cultural baggage that Clinton had.

If I am understanding you , I agree aimai that we are all just trying to read tea leaves. I just wish the Obama supporters were a little bit more honest with themselves about not denying the tea leaves obama keeps showing them. No one has blinders on with either Clinton or Edwards- it's Obama where people seem to choose, and then shut down seeing who he is.

All three of the top candidates are lawyers but only one of them seems to draw on his experience as a lawyer to imagine getting things done in an *adversarial system* - aimai

I came into this primary season supporting Edwards -- if not for President which requires managerial skills at least for VP which is technically the interface between the executive and legislative branches -- for this very reason. However, given some of the positions Edwards has taken (forget about the merits of health care mandates, it's politically stupid to raise that spectre at this juncture when the sausage making cannot start until Congress comes into session in 2009) and how he has argued them, I wonder how he ever won cases in that adversarial system.

Obama wants conservatives to like him. Hillary knows they will hate her forever. This creates incentives of its own.

Is that why she sponsored a constitutional ammendment to ban flag burning?

But I think that the eventual strategy of the republican party against Obama is going to be perfectly clear--it will be to argue with quite a bit of rage that Obama is "playing the race card" to get "sympathy" and to prevent "legitimate criticism" of his lousy "affirmative action like" policies.

This is right on the money, folks. Listen up.

You are forgetting the extremely important cultural environment that impacted both Clinton's election and the Republican take over of Congress: '92 was the "Year of the Woman" -- when women both ran for office and voted in greater than usual numbers and contributed to a significant gender gap. And, '94 was the NRA election when the gender gap worked in reverse. In that campaign year, mostly under the Washington media radar, yet very effectively, the NRA advertised heavily and poured unprecedented resources into defeating Democrats in Red State and rural districts. (The gun issue most likely had more to do with the Republican take over of congress than the Contract with America, which many if not most voters weren't really even aware of.) While the NRA was successful in bringing men out in great numbers in '94, women, perhaps disillusioned with the health care failure, or, perhaps just following their lower participation pattern in non-presidential elections, stayed home.

A lot of Clinton hatred was rooted in those old culture wars.

Today, the cultural environment is somewhat different, and perhaps not as raw, but the Democratic candidate will still have to depend on an energized women's vote to win.

Bill Clinton pioneered a campaign style -- more open to listening, more interactive, more issue and detail oriented, less posturing and preaching -- that appealed to women and paid more than usual attention to their priorities and their take on the issues.

So far, every indication is this is one, very important, area, in which Obama is not like Clinton.

You are forgetting the extremely important cultural environment that impacted both Clinton's election and the Republican take over of Congress: '92 was the "Year of the Woman" -- when women both ran for office and voted in greater than usual numbers and contributed to a significant gender gap. And, '94 was the NRA election when the gender gap worked in reverse. In that campaign year, mostly under the Washington media radar, yet very effectively, the NRA advertised heavily and poured unprecedented resources into defeating Democrats in Red State and rural districts. (The gun issue most likely had more to do with the Republican take over of congress than the Contract with America, which many if not most voters weren't really even aware of.) While the NRA was successful in bringing men out in great numbers in '94, women, perhaps disillusioned with the health care failure, or, perhaps just following their lower participation pattern in non-presidential elections, stayed home.

A lot of Clinton hatred was rooted in those old culture wars.

Today, the cultural environment is somewhat different, and perhaps not as raw, but the Democratic candidate will still have to depend on an energized women's vote to win.

Bill Clinton pioneered a campaign style -- more open to listening, more interactive, more issue and detail oriented, less posturing and preaching -- that appealed to women and paid more than usual attention to their priorities and their take on the issues.

So far, every indication is this is one, very important, area, in which Obama is not like Clinton.

This is right on the money, folks. Listen up. - Anonymous

GOP smeers on Dem. candidates have generally been 100% predictable. And yet the Dems. seem always to be blindsided by them.

Is it any wonder people don't trust Dems. on national security? If Kerry, et al, could be blindsided by obvious attacks from Karl Rove, how could we trust him to be prepared for a terrorist attack?

So far, every indication is this is one, very important, area, in which Obama is not like Clinton.

Really? I can see the argument that he might depress female enthusiasm because he is not a female (although young, affluent female voters like him) but I don't think he's any less empathetic, "policy oriented" or more given to soaring rhetoric than Bill Clinton was.

Ezra, this is EXACTLY why I have leaned towards Obama since the beginning. The country and the world are in pretty terrible shape, and in particular global warming is a massive problem that needs to be dealt with immediately even though most Americans don't care about it much. I think it will take a transformative presidency to make the kind of, well, transformation that we need.

So in my mind, the question is not the expected performance of the candidate as President, on a scale of 1-100, it's the odds that that candidate will be over a 95. I think Clinton may beat Obama on expected performance, but he beats her on the odds of 95+. And that's why I'm supporting him!

So far, every indication is this is one, very important, area, in which Obama is not like Clinton.

Really? I can see the argument that he might depress female enthusiasm because he is not a female (although young, affluent female voters like him) but I don't think he's any less empathetic, "policy oriented" or more given to soaring rhetoric than Bill Clinton was.

So far, every indication is this is one, very important, area, in which Obama is not like Clinton.

Really? I can see the argument that he might depress female enthusiasm because he is not a female (although young, affluent female voters like him) but I don't think he's any less empathetic, "policy oriented" or more given to soaring rhetoric than Bill Clinton was.

Akainson

I wanted to respond to your comment but I find its content lacking. Try again perhaps?

Phil,

Not all of us comparing Obama of 08 to Bill Clinton of 92 are doing so favorably, but to warn Obama supporters, especially those who complain that the Clinton presidencies were too timid, and capitulated to much to republicans, to be careful what they wish for. Of the frontrunners, he is appearing to be the most repub-appeasing.

wouldn't it be easier to write "I know you are, but what am I" phil? seriously the arguments are predictable-- let me list them out, "Republican talking point," "Obama hater" a Clinton tourette's statement like "she's a bitch and evil" etc and so forth. You people lack originally- I believe thats the reason why you emulating an approach that's already failed us once. You should emulate the things that work, not fail.

I think there's an even better analogy: Obama '08 is Blair '97.