Electability

by digby

Everyone’s already said what needs to be said about this, but I’d just like to add one other thing. Talking about “electability” is advanced process talk and process talk is cheap and it’s a way of distancing candidates from voters. I’m against it. But I’m not sure, having read the article this post was based upon, that it really was about electability.

Judging solely from the quotes and not the reporter’s interpretation of events, it appears to me that Mark Penn was trying to beat back a media narrative that said Clinton was unelectable because of her negatives. It seemed to me that they were trying to rebut that by saying that it’s her experience in the national spotlight that created those negatives and a national spotlight will create those negatives in anybody who enters it, so it’s not a relevant factor. Maybe he said something more specific about Obama being unelectable, but I didn’t get that from the quotes.

I can’t blame her team for trying to convince people that Hillary is capable of withstanding the beating that the Republicans are about to inflict. It’s a powerful argument that I’m sure they know they need to make explicitly. In conversations in RL, I’ve found people’s instinct is to be immediately exhausted by the thought of another round of non-stop Clinton character assassination. But when you mention that there’s nothing new to learn about her after all those years of investigations and smears, people agree that she might just be the “cleanest” candidate in that way — no surprises. (Gore has that advantage, as well, in my conversations.)

I think we are all going to have to gird ourselves for the fact that Democrats are going to be beating up on each other for the next year at least.(It’s a horrible, horrible time and I actually hate it.) But there’s no other way. My position is that primaries require us to be vigilant in pointing out when candidates cross the line into character assassination or right wing memes that harm the party. (I agree that “electability” is a dangerous meme that makes it look like Democrats don’t care about anything but winning.) I will not hesitate to point it out when I see it and as I said, I hate process talk and I’ll point that out as well. These are bad habits that I think many pols and their handlers have internalized and we can help them see it when they are doing it. But we can’t make them be nice to one another. This is tough bigtime politics and it’s an open field that’s going to get very ugly before it’s done.

Based on that article I honestly don’t think this was one of those “electability” arguments. I think it was a defensive argument against an emergent media meme, which all candidates have to do.

If someone knows what was actually said in that call and I’m all wet, I’ll be more than happy to correct this post.

FYI: I am not working for any candidate and just because an ad appears on my site doesn’t mean that I’m endorsing them any more than I’m endorsing Leonardo DiCaprio (although I might come out for him later.) My opinions are all mine, I tell you, mine.

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