That (complete with misspellings) is the "deep thought" Atrios (alias Duncan Black, right) often offers concerning the Clinton-Obama race.
The implication, made explicit when he addresses the point at some length, is that it doesn’t much matter, in the end, which Democrat runs in November. Just that they win.
If you look at their policy positions he’s right. Choosing between these candidates based on the proposals on their Web sites is a losing proposition.
But what’s left is not atmospherics, as some may think. There is in fact some there there.
And that there is probably why my preferred candidate, John Edwards, has yet to make an endorsement. It’s worth exploring.
There is a big difference in how the two campaigns are approaching the coming election, and what that might mean in terms of how the country is run.
Clinton’s campaign theme is "just win, baby." Politics is a zero-sum game. It certainly has been for the last 8 years. Once you have the power, you have it, and little else matters.
Getting the power is the tough part. It won’t be given to you. You have to fight for it. What Clinton implies, in all her huffing-and-puffing, is that she is a fighter. This is very attractive to someone like John Edwards, who has had to fight the Nixon Thesis his entire life, who knows they never give up, that they can only be forced to give way, and who made this idea of constant struggle a key part of his own campaign.
This is also how the nattering classes see Washington. It’s all about the 51-49, or the 50-50 with the Vice President breaking the tie. That’s how it has been for two decades now, a very narrow divide between the parties defining not just our politics but the policies we have pursued. And there have, in fact, been enormous differences between the parties, in terms of what they have done in office.
The Obama view is different. It’s not just about drawing everyone together. It’s about building the kind of massive coalition, a 60-40 split, in which basic structural change is possible.
This is the kind of thing we’ve seldom seen, in living memory. I’m not just talking about a President dominating the other side, as Reagan dominated the Democrats in the early 1980s. I’m talking about the other side barely existing.
You have to go back 44 years, to the high point of the Roosevelt Thesis under Lyndon Johnson, to see what I’m talking about. The 89th Congress was the last one which featured enormous majorities for one party. The Senate had 68 Democrats and just 32 Republicans. The House had 295 Democrats and 140 Republicans. That’s not just a veto-proof margin. That’s a margin you can change the Constitution with.
This was made possible not just by the Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater, but a down-ticket landslide of epic proportions. Only six House delegations were majority-Republican that year. Only 8 states sent two Republican Senators — two of them were California and Vermont.
This was the Congress which passed the Voting Rights Act, the Freedom of Information Act, which created Medicare and Medicaid, and our first environmental laws. The Republican Party has spent an entire generation chipping away at these acts, and has not overturned any of them.
It was possible because Americans shared a common set of beliefs and assumptions, myths and values, about life and politics and government, assumptions which had been building for a generation and whose first challenge they explicitly rejected. It was in fear of such a rejection that the national Democrats destroyed Howard Dean in 2004, even at the risk of Kerry’s narrow defeat, believing that an ideological challenge would lead to utter ruin.
We can’t have that kind of election in 2008. But if the wind is with us, and if we embrace the idea of a large coalition, we could get something like the 73rd Congress, which took office in 1933.
Clintoncrats believe that’s naive. Such consensus is impossible, they will scoff. Only a Nixon-like victory is even possible.
Obamacans believe a victory as the Clintoncrats conceive of it would be pyrrhic. With a narrow majority, a new Democratic President would be swimming upstream. Their achievements would be so limited that Republicans would have every incentive to do what they’re doing now, to filibuster everything, accomplish nothing, blame the other side, and come back all the stronger.
Going for a consensus entails a risk. A huge coalition has loose bonds. A narrow victory means tighter bonds among those on the winning side and the chance, through continued struggle, of slow political progress. While if you go for consensus you may get nothing, you leave yourself vulnerable, the other side might even win.
In football terms, it’s the difference between running and passing. In baseball terms it’s the difference between pitching and slugging. In soccer terms it’s the difference between set plays and playing beautiful. In cinematic terms it’s the difference between greenlighting a bunch of Will Ferrell sports movies or Lord of the Rings.
It’s a real difference. It’s an important difference. Which means, despite everything the nattering classes may tell you, it’s an important debate, and one worth having.
