originally published by Pajamas Media
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Short answer: Hillary and her team didn’t think being Hillary was enough. They didn’t trust what this woman brought to the table all by herself. They thought
attaching her candidacy to her husband’s presidency would get the job done.
It didn’t work.
But first there was Iraq. Somewhere along the line, back in the Senate in 2002
or earlier, I believe, Hillary and her team decided you couldn’t win the general
election being against a war. That went double if you were a woman. It evidently
never occurred to them that they’d have to get the nomination first. No doubt
she believed Saddam Hussein was a threat. But the core belief was that a woman
voting against a war to oust Saddam, especially so soon after 9/11, would not
be considered tough enough for commander in chief. It crippled her campaign
from the start.
What if Hillary had voted against funding the war?
What if “Fighting Hillary” of the last few months had shown up on
day one, replacing “inevitable Hillary?”
What if Robin
Givhan’s cleavage column had never been written? That’s where it began for
me. It was obvious that Hillary was about to get dissected on terms that her
male counterparts were not. Happening simultaneously was the back and forth
between Clinton
and Eric Edelman, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, with the added
gift of him being a former
Cheney aide. When she dared to ask
if they’d prepared a plan for redeployment, she got back a
letter from Edelman stating: “premature and public discussion of
the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda.”
Secretary Gates stepped in to do damage control, because a senator on the Armed
Services Committee asking questions about redeployment plans, even if a woman,
isn’t exactly asking for a recipe.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, in
an interview with Bill Moyers, called the anti Clinton media out. There
was “the
cackle” coverage: “Hens cackle. So do witches.”
Pimpgate. The Clinton
“nutcracker” sold in CNBC stores in airports. With the only left-leaning
prime time news show, hosted by Keith Olbermann, reduced to becoming the quintessential
anti-Edward R. Murrow and a parody of himself as he degenerated into an unhinged
special comment screamer. The big
blogs got caught
up in it and piled
on too. Even David Gregory, one of the finest reporters around, reduced
himself to doing a piece on his MSNBC show after Obama clinched the nomination
that focused on Clinton’s “political obituary.” The first viable female
candidate for president, who got more votes than anyone in Democratic Party
primary history, was dissected, eviscerated and humiliated for political sport,
then pronounced dead.
All it did was make her supporters madder, more loyal and less likely to support
anyone but her.
But her tour de force moments came through the noise as women came out in droves.
Hillary in policy action. Blowing her counterparts off the stage in forum after
forum and debate after debate, starting with the
first health care forum, when nobody else came close. Then it just kept
happening. “Scary smart” it was called. It was clear to me she was
the strongest candidate by far. I’d heard the
speech on Iraq I needed to hear from Hillary, so now I was all in.
Meanwhile, nobody was paying attention that her primary message “ready
on day one,” coupled by her charge that Senator Obama was inexperienced,
didn’t seem to be dimming the enthusiasm he was receiving, the crowds he was
garnering, or the lack of scrutiny by the traditional media on the flaws she
was raising. I watched this unfold with alarm. I’d been miffed at the
flyover he did to skip the very first forum in Carson City, followed up
by his halting performance at the health care forum, but nobody cared. He was
already charming them. Then just a month later I saw him in action again, this
time on the stage with his fans. Off the cuff. Lighting up the gym we were in.
A candidate finally finding his stride. He was a run away phenomenon, “the
natural.” The type of political talent that once it gets going and
catches on is hard to stop, inconvenient truths be damned.
Then came Iowa where Clinton came in third. Third. How did that happen?
I had one response.
Then New Hampshire revealed
Hillary and she came
back. But when February hit the delegate pile up began.
Hillary didn’t flinch. Up from the turmoil, amidst the challenge and her shifting
staff, Hillary changed or maybe simply took charge. Finally she realized she
would have to do it herself. She almost did. Up rose the populist message, the
impassioned liberal, the woman determined on taking it back: the stage, the
message, the moment. And she did. Texas.
Ohio. Pennsylvania. … West Virginia. For the first time in decades Reagan
Democrats were even voting their own best interests. And they were voting for
the woman who was raising hell, with the president husband to whom she’d once
tied her campaign hopes nowhere in sight.
What if that Hillary had shown up on day one or even the second, unencumbered,
un-inevitable and uninhibited? What if Fighting Hillary had walked out that
very first day, not sitting on a big chair in some cozy room, but into an empty
room as if to say I’m starting from scratch and I need you to help me do it?
Simply saying: I learned a lot from my president husband and I respect him
a lot, but this is my time, our time, because it’s long past time that a woman
took charge. It’s time for a change and nothing says change like the first female
commander in chief in U.S. history. But to do that she would have had to
trust that she was enough. That a fighting Hillary didn’t need the trappings
of power, of incumbency, or her husband’s presidency and clout, all she had
to do was believe it and build it and the people would come.
Hillary Clinton didn’t get the nomination and is ready to embrace and work
hard for Barack Obama, as am I, but many of her supporters are not. Some never
will be. Some will have to be courted. Some are still in the fight. Others are
content to wait for word another day, another hour, another year, when Hillary
will rise again. Because make no mistake about it, they’re convinced she will.
Because Hillary Clinton might have begun this journey to win the presidency,
which didn’t pan out, but in the process she sparked a new revolution and a
movement over which she now holds sway. She is the leader of an 18 million strong
army of women and men, of dreamers and believers that the time is coming.
She came so close. And her supporters all keep one thing tucked tight in the
corner of their minds. Next time. Because next time they intend to win.
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