On the rollercoaster that is the narrative of this year’s presidential campaign, this week happens to be a down week for Hillary Clinton. Big losses in Wyoming and Mississippi, the resignation of one of her most prominent backers and superdelegates, Elliot Spitzer, and the bigoted, ignorant behavior of her campaign’s finance chair Geraldine Ferraro have captured the attention of the media and the public, which had previously been aimed at her convincing victories in the Texas and Ohio primaries just over a week ago. In light of all of that and the increasingly negative general tenor of the Clinton campaign, some pundits and activists have called for Senator Obama to “take off the gloves” and go on the attack in response to the Clinton’s fear mongering, scorched earth campaign tactics. But should he take that advice he will lose a golden opportunity to put the Clinton campaign into the dusty trunk of the “old politics” and throw it on the junk heap for good. So as someone who's been motivated and inspired by Obama’s call for a new era in our political discourse, I have the following message for the Senator: Stay on message, and ride that message into the White House.
Barack Obama’s rapid rise to frontrunner status can be attributed to many things (no, not THAT one Geraldine) but above all, his success has come from his ability to make us believe that he is capable of bringing about a new age in American politics. His charisma and ability to bring people together are evidence for many that “maybe this guy could pull it off.” Since March 4th it has oft been asked: “Can Obama run his campaign on hope and post-partisan cooperation and at the same time stand up to a Clinton political machine that has no qualms about tearing him limb from limb in order to win? Can you preach hope, defend yourself and define your opponent at the same time?” The answer is “yes.”
The Clintons seem to believe that their only path to victory is to strip Obama of his “Obama-ness” and reduce him to what Ben Tribbett calls a “puddle of hope.” They calculate that once they knock the shine off, many party insiders (read: superdelegates) will see him for what he is and move to hand Clinton the nomination. Certainly not pretty work, but if the result is another Clinton White House the end is certainly going to justify the means. It’s a game that’s been played since the Tories and the Whigs; why should this year be any different?
The answer to that last question is the central message of the Obama campaign. “This year can be different, because I am running.”
That message is Obama’s opportunity to point to the Clintons’ willingness to make that Machiavellian choice to win even at the cost of the health of their party and to explain to the American people how he will lead us in a new direction. By encouraging us to view the Clintons through that “say anything to win” prism, he can draw an important contrast between himself and them, and also lay the groundwork for his response to future attacks. How many of the “kitchen sink” attacks could have been turned into positives with a simple denial, followed by Obama’s own “there you go again” moment, in which he explains why such desperate tactics are soon going to be a thing of the past.
If Barack Obama will continue to explain his vision for a new political order, and clearly point out how that vision conflicts with what Hillary Clinton is willing to do to win, he can cement his standing with the superdelegates, insulate himself from her desperate volleys and begin to look forward to the next, hopefully easier challenge: beating John McCain. If he instead makes the decision to enter the fight, even partially, and take Clinton head on, he will suffer perhaps irreparable damage. No one out-Clintons the Clintons, and in order to engage in their brand of politics he will have to shed some of his “Obama-ness,” which once gone will be tough to recapture. This is why the winning option for Obama is to stand strong and lead us forward as Hillary Clinton, her backers and soon the Republicans attempt to drag him and the rest of us back to their political “reality” of the past.
Yes, the politics of hope takes a lot of discipline. Most of us want feel compel to strike back when hurt, especially when they are hurting you with the sole purpose of getting you to betray your convictions.
Someone here said before that since Obama's message is that of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, that they were afraid that they were going to use the same techniques to try to to bring him down. And among those techniques is to try to bring down their the reputation of the people presenting nonviolence and tolerance by trying to get them to fall into violence and fights.
I was expecting this from the Republicans, but it seems that our own Hillary was the one who started using the tactic. Our own Hillary, who often has said how the Civil Rights movement, our most famous nonviolent mass movement in our history, inspired her so much. How ironic then that she uses the same methods of those who opposed the Civil Rights movement to try to discredit the same message of Hope and tolerance 40 years later.
There are some among us who actually have a direct connection with nonviolent training from the civil rights movement time, and who are a lot more qualified than I am to give us direction to what to do (hint, hint, teacherken).
The little the I know and the little that I can offer is to present to the Hillary campaign the same kind of principled opposition that King and the thousands of people who participated in the Civil Rights movement presented to the racist Segregationalists in the south:
Presenting the truth of the wrongness of their current actions, of the race baiting, of the incitations to violence, and a strong embrace towards the humanity of the Hillary campaign and the Hillary in particular.
Or as King may have said, we must love the Hillary campaign to change their hearts.
So let's be truth witnesses, Obama and Hillary supporters together, and lovingly show the Hillary campaign and Hillary how wrong her tactics are to change her heart.
So let's start by clearing our hearts and mind of any ill will towards Hillary, her campaign and her surrogates so that we can embrace the person while rejecting their actions.
Can we do this?
Yes we can.