Tomorrow I will begin posting my arguments for voting for Barack Obama.
But first, some arguments I will not use. Because they’re sucky.
Top Ten Bad Pro-Obama Arguments
1) Clinton is just plain selfish for not dropping out of the race! It shows she has bad character.
2) Racism has benefited Clinton this election, totally unlike sexism benefiting Obama, which has never happened and if it ever did happen didn’t matter.
3) Clinton is eeeevviiiil.
4) Obama will run center but govern left.
5) Obama is the next JFK!
6) Obama is the messiah. Worship him, foolish mortals, or your very soul is lost.
7) Hilary is only where she is because of her husband.
8) Hillary is a horrible role model because she stayed with Bill after Monicagate.
9) Hilary has shrill laughter. She reminds me of my hectoring mother. She’s a woman, and woman things disturb me.
10) The math proves Hillary can’t win, so no one should vote for her.
(UPDATE: Thanks to Jackie in comments for providing an eleventh bad argument for Obama:)
11) “Clinton is playing the victim card, as if sexism, and not 1-8 above, is to blame for the fact that her inevitable nomination turned out not to be so inevitable. Even if she believes it’s true, how does whining and blaming spell empowerment?”
(How did I miss including that one the first time around?)
Yes, these are exaggerations of what some Obama supporters have said; but only just.
And yes, I think that Clinton supporters make some sucky arguments too (including some of the above arguments with the names reversed). But that’s not my focus right now.
My point is that people on both sides of this debate can and should strive to make the debate less stupid. A lot of my fellow Obama supporters have not managed to do this, unfortunately.
More tomorrow.
UPDATE: See also, Kate’s not-the-reasons she voted Clinton.
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I’ve been guilty of using #10, at least in a general sense. And agreed, it’s not particularly persuasive. #6, sadly, is at the root of 85% of left-of-center blog posts these days.
You don’t think #4 is true?
Or, rather, you think it’s a bad reason?
You don’t think #4 is true?
Is there any particular reason to believe he will?
I’ve seen over and over again where Obama’s supporters try to reassure me that he’s a progressive in moderate’s clothing… that I should understand that he’s just fishing for votes in the middle and that his real agenda is somewhere to the left, wait and see, he’ll be progressive once in office.
Trouble is, I don’t see how that argument is any more persuasive than the reverse possibility: that he’s fishing for just enough support from the left to firm up a mostly centrist coalition, and that his campaign rhetoric is actually fairly close to his proposed style of governance: centrist and religion-friendly.
If there’s a downside to being *too* convincing on the stump, it’s this: when Obama phrases things in language meant to be soothing and comforting to the religious right, I believe him, and he makes me frightened that on some level, he believes these things too, and that in his quest to re-unite America, he’ll abandon progressive principles in his haste to cross the aisle. If he were a less convincing campaigner, it would be easier to shrug this off as standard-grade pander-to-the-masses type rhetoric, but Obama makes it sound like something real, so much that I can no longer sit back and trust that he’ll somehow find a way to make good on it and be all things to all people.
Phrased another way, if the recent pro-religion stuff he says is real, why *shouldn’t* I be worried? And if the best reassurance I can be given is that the stuff he’s said recently are just empty words, how can I be sure that the more liberal stuff he said earlier wasn’t empty as well?
Now I’m voting for Obama because I always wanted a pony and this one does nothing but shoot rainbows out of his butt. And I certainly didn’t turn away from Clinton for any of these purely superficial reasons:
1.) She is politically blind if she doesn’t acknowledge and deal with the unfortunate reality that there are negatives associated with the “Clinton Brand” and not everyone just Loved Teh Clintons during the 90s.
2) There’s no excuse for lying about things like being under sniper fire, or a big player at the negotiating table, when you really weren’t. Not to mention that it erodes credibility.
3) She’s run a drama-ridden, short-sighted campaign that sends the message that she is not in control.
4) Instead of facilitating important discussions around real core Democratic issues like race and class, widespread discontent and economic opportunity, she is using divisive Republican tactics that are counterproductive to any serious discussion. In fact, she is all but saying that the Republican representing a continuation of disastrous Bush policies is the second-best choice after her.
5) She uses the Republican noise machine as part of her tool box – not just the same tactics, but she’s using their mouthpieces as well, lending credence to a beast that ought to be starved and ignored.
6) Her 3 a.m. phone ad plays to the politics of fear and in the past eight years that has not made for good policy.
7) That she’s not paying her vendors and served six years on the Wal-Mart board say more to me than how many shots she throws back or ducks she’s bagged to show she understands the common man.
8) Her valuing of loyalty over conscience or competence remind me of someone currently in the White House and we don’t need more of that.
9) She is playing the victim card, as if sexism, and not 1-8 above, is to blame for the fact that her inevitable nomination turned out not to be so inevitable. Even if she believes it’s true, how does whining and blaming spell empowerment?
10) I have a deep seated aversion to pantsuits, having been forced to wear them by my “progressive” mom who didn’t understand that they were nearly as bad as a dress for playing on the jungle gym and climbing trees. In other words, as a symbol for feminism, she is the vanguard for my mother’s generation. She has brought nothing new to the table.
Arkades: Yes yes yes yes YES.
You’ve just beautifully summed up one of the main reasons why I don’t currently support Barack Obama for the nomination. Thank you. Obama and a Republican House or Senate could be disastrous.
5) Obama is the next JFK!
I’ll vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination (the primary having already happened in my state.) I’ll even happily vote for either Obama or Clinton. I think either of them would be mediocre to excellent presidents and either would be vastly better than McCain.
However, I must admit that the JFK/Obama comparison gives me the creeps. JFK, the guy who gave us the Bay of Pigs (though Eisenhower should take partial blame for that), the Cuban missle crisis, the “missle gap” rhetoric, and the first escalation of the Viet Nam war, along with dozens of lesser known acts of aggression in mostly third world countries, all on the excuse of “stopping communism.” And someone who reminds us of him is a good thing?
Unfortunately, I can see it. Obama has talked about chasing al Qaeda through Pakistan, regardless of Pakistani opinion, and bombing Iran (possibly nuclear). And, honestly, I can’t see his Iraq policy being all that different from Clinton’s.
This is starting to come off as an anti-Obama rant. Sorry. I could make at least as many objections to Clinton. I expect Obama to be reasonable, intelligent, and competent. But, in the end, the comparison to Kennedy has teeth: a young, intelligent, somewhat arrogant man in a vastly powerful position. What could possibly go wrong…
Thanks for this, Amp–and I look forward to the good reasons to vote for him list. I might even do similar top 10s for Clinton, ’cause I think analyzing both the good and the bad is important for everyone.
That’s a very good list. Very good food for thought.
I do differ with you somewhat on the math question though. I think that if a candidate has no numerical way to mount up the delegates to win decisively then a logical and reasonable (and honorable) thing to do would be to acknowledge this fact and end the campaign.
But that’s not the same thing as saying that a person should not vote or should vote for something.
Hi, Kate. I’m glad you like this — I’m a big fan of your blogging. (And we have something in common; as fat acceptance people, we can be sure that neither candidate is on our side.)
My followup posts won’t be in list form; they’ll be more sustained arguments. But I hope you’ll give me your reaction. And I’ll be eager to see your top ten bad arguments for Clinton. :-)
The same political forces that make Obama a more effective candidate if he campaigns as a centrist won’t go away if he’s President.
To get anything passed through congress, he needs the support of centrist Democrats and of at least a handful of Republican Senators. So no matter what he feels deep inside, he won’t govern from the left; he’ll govern as a centrist Democrat. The politics give him little choice.
Furthermore, if elected, he’ll want to set himself up for re-election in 2012. Nor will he be willing to trash the Democratic party’s electoral chances in pursuit of an agenda (which is what Bush has arguably done to the Republicans). So not only will he have to contend with the political reality that nothing gets through the Senate without centrist (including some Republican) support, but the exact same electoral considerations which are currently making him genuflect to the center, will continue to apply.
(Note that these same arguments also apply to why Clinton won’t govern from the left, either, even if she secretly would like to).
Arkades and Dark Matter, specifically what are you worried Obama will do when elected? Are you worried that he’ll appoint anti-choice Justices to the Supreme Court, for instance?
I don’t understand what the specific policy issues you’re concerned about are.
…
Jackiebinaz, I think you’ve provided exactly the arguments that I wish Obama supporters would make much, much less often — or better yet, not at all. Thank you for illustrating my post’s point so well.
Jackie, let me answer some of your arguments more specifically:
This is too close to “the Clintons are eeevvilllll” for my taste. The fact is, Clinton is only a few percentage points away from having more votes than Obama; the fact is, Bill Clinton won two national elections. There is a lot of Clinton-hatred out there, but the evidence suggests that both Clintons are able to successfully deal with it.
Agreed.
I think it’s undeniable that she hasn’t run as good a campaign as her supporters would have hoped.
These three points all add up to the same thing, which is that Clinton is willing to argue from the right, using Republican talking points, to gain an electoral advantage over Obama.
That’s true, but it’s also true that Obama is willing to argue from the right against Clinton: Look at his arguments against mandates for health care, which — if they have legs — could severely damage prospects for good reform of our health care system.
We could wish for better candidates than we have, but in this campaign, there is no plausible candidate who is not running from the right on some issues. So I don’t see any reason to favor one candidate over the other on this basis.
I agree that she doesn’t have much of a claim at being just ordinary folks. Neither does Obama, author of books that have earned millions, and sticker of foot in mouth when it comes to guns and gods. Again, no reason to vote for one over the other.
Frankly, I’m not sure I want a president who is “just ordinary folks” anyway. I think presidents should ideally be way, way above the mean, in their accomplishments and in how smart they are.
This goes back to point three, and I think you’re right: her campaign would have gone better if she was more willing to fire her friends. However, I don’t see the core problem with Bush as being competence, because even when he hires competent people, such as the current Attorney General, I still hate them. This is because Bush’s policy priorities are disgusting. I don’t see any danger of this repeating in a Hillary Clinton administration.
I do think there’s a real argument to be made that Clinton’s running of her campaign suggests that she has big flaws as a manager; flaws that, judging from how Obama runs his campaign, Obama does not share. So if that’s your argument, I agree that it’s a reasonable argument to make. But there’s no way Clinton would ever be as bad as Bush, because Bush’s primary flaw is not his loyalty to his people.
As feminists, we are well aware that any time sexism is pointed out by a woman, she will be accused of “whining and blaming” by people who prefer to minimize and dismiss sexism. This is a good reason to vote FOR Clinton, not a reason to vote against her.
Sexism is not the sole reason Clinton has had troubles in this campaign. But it’s one of the reasons, and Clinton supporters are right to object to it. Objecting to sexism isn’t whining; it’s necessary and worthwhile.
If you really want to continue this line of argument — and you really shouldn’t want to — then you better actually support it with specifics quotes and links. My guess is that you won’t be able to find a single instance of Clinton saying “the only reason I haven’t won the nomination already is sexism”; to imply she said that is, I believe, a lie.
Yes, because goodness knows feminists in my mother’s generation never brought anything worthwhile to the table, and have nothing more of worth to contribute. (Rolleyes).
That so many people disdain older feminists is, in my view, another argument in favor of voting for Clinton, not an argument against.
I think presidents should ideally be way, way above the mean, in their accomplishments and in how smart they are.
And both Clinton and Obama are. Let’s not lose sight of that: Both may be less than ideal, less progressive than most of us on this blog would like, and capable of using racism and sexism when it is to their advantage. But both are smart, accomplished, and determined. Either will make a fine president if they can acheive it. Not necessarily stellar, but competent. And after 8 years of Bush, that counts a lot with me.
#6 isn’t true? Damn.
Won’t do a list, but will say I lost interest in Clinton as her campaign made blunder after appalling blunder. If she can’t run an intelligent campaign, how does she plan to run the country?
Arkades and Dark Matter, specifically what are you worried Obama will do when elected? Are you worried that he’ll appoint anti-choice Justices to the Supreme Court, for instance?
I don’t understand what the specific policy issues you’re concerned about are.
It’s more a matter of what I fear he won’t do… there’s little reason to expect his moderate candidacy will morph into a progressive presidency, for the very reasons you outlined in your response numbered 11. The electoral currents, present and future, will continue to push him toward the center.
Couple that with his desire to live up to the ‘heal the divide’ stuff people have been saying about him, and one might obtain this scenario: a centrist making overtures toward the right, and worse, making concessions *to* them, in the name of compromise and unity… meanwhile progressive can expect to have their attempts at reform stiff-armed as too divisive. So we get a slightly right-of-center administration rather than a wildly-right-of-center one, which (after the past 8 years) is a definite improvement, but so far short of what we need.
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I’m not sure how #4 is supposed to be a pro-Obama argument. When I encounter people making that argument, I hear “Vote for Obama because he’s a liar and a shameless panderer!”
Right now I have no regrets about sitting out the AZ primary (sorry, “presidential preference election”).
In an election between Obama and McCain, I’ll mash the button for Obama. McCain is now frantically working to prove to Republicans that he’s not a Democrat, as if being more like Nixon and less like Shrub were a bad thing (Nixon couldn’t get elected today either).
On the other hand, in an election between Clinton and McCain, I’d probably mash the button for McCain and hope and pray enough Republicans are tossed from the House and Senate that McCain can’t play Tin Soldier and invade still more countries or perpetuate the stupid war in Iraq for 100 years or even 100 months.
Clinton is not campaigning for a better America, which I think both Obama and McCain are doing. One might not like their vision — whether warm and fuzzy liberalism, or the prospects of fresh new wars in far away places, but at least they seem to have a vision for America. Clinton has a vision of The Clinton Dynasty, which is just SO wrong because I don’t think there is any denying that she has been politically active and involved long enough that her appeals to her experience are more valid than not. Of the last 28 years worth of presidential administrations, she was certainly more active in all areas of POLITICS than Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, or Laura Bush. In response to “she has no experience”, there were enough attacks against her while Bill was president for BEING involved that she could have used that as stock footage for campaign ads rather than attacking Obama or airing those idiotic 3am phone call ads.
Her behavior is better likened to the spoiled rich kid who isn’t going to get into college, or the power-mad Al “I’m in charge here” Haig (and when Google’ing for that quote I found this, and think it fits Clinton well), than the shrill, moody, cat-clawed or emotional cow Clinton is somehow trying to get us to think Obama is telling us she is. Male or female, Al Haig or Hillary Clinton, these tactics do more damage than good, regardless of how great ones politics are. It takes a certain amount of give-and-take and warm and fuzzy consensus building to run anything as complex as the US Government, and Clinton is proving, day by day, she doesn’t have the self-control or personality needed to do so. As a vice president who works more and attacks people less, perhaps she’d be great. We’d have a vice president who could work on policy and implementation better than any VP that I’m aware of. But if she is going to engage in slash-and-burn politics were she in the Oval Office, far from pulling America together, she’d do anything to consolidate still more power, no matter how much it tears America apart. As a consensus builder, she is Shrub in drag, and we don’t need 4 or 8 years of a president tearing people to pieces for daring to get in his or her way.
Amp said: ” My guess is that you won’t be able to find a single instance of Clinton saying “the only reason I haven’t won the nomination already is sexism”; to imply she said that is, I believe, a lie.”
Ah, but what about feminist dog whistles? I’m not saying they have or haven’t happened, but c’mon – these are politicians running for president – it has in other instances been claimed that such things have been implied based on dog whistles – perhaps Hillary is using some feminist dog whistles? In other words, asking for a specific quote of a bald-faced confession is rather silly. I could ask you for a specific quote from you where Obama says that “Vote for me because you shouldn’t vote for a woman over a man.” Your failure to find such a quote (because it does not exist) does not prove that there was no sexism from Obama in the campaign.
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DBB, point well taken.
I’d still disagree with the comment-writer’s “whining about sexism” point, though, because the tone implies that it’s not a real concern. If even subtle references (or “dog-whistles”) to sexism are painted as “whining,” that seems to lean strongly towards the conclusion that sexism against Clinton can never be a reasonable thing to complain about or object to.
Amp wrote: I’d still disagree with the comment-writer’s “whining about sexism” point, though, because the tone implies that it’s not a real concern. If even subtle references (or “dog-whistles”) to sexism are painted as “whining,” that seems to lean strongly towards the conclusion that sexism against Clinton can never be a reasonable thing to complain about or object to.
I think this more points to the belief some of us have that it just doesn’t matter what negative thing is said about her because it’s either going to come across as idiotic, sexist, or juvenile. Would you rather people — Obama included — said she was acting like a big poopie head? Even that could likely be make into a sexist remark — how come women are always being likened to babies? Evil sexist, calling her a poopie head. I wrestled with comparing her to Al Haig because then it’s “Oh, Furry is saying she’s acting like a man, and only men are allowed to act like men.” No, she’s acting like a power-mad schmuck, and so was Haig.
Her best chance now, I think, is to be magnanimous in defeat and hope she gets the VP nod, learns to play well with others for 8 years, and runs again in ’16. As it stands, she has four more years as Sen. Clinton (D-NY), and if McCain takes the Oval Office, she could try again then.
She, like too many other politicians on both sides of the aisle, have forgotten that she serves US, not we serve HER. We are not the facilitator of her ambitions. She’s supposed to be the facilitator of the collective ambitions of the citizens of this country, and that’s one message Obama has nailed cold.
Her best chance now, I think, is to be magnanimous in defeat and hope she gets the VP nod, learns to play well with others for 8 years, and runs again in ‘16.
Is there the slightest evidence that Obama is interested in Clinton as a VP? Personally, I think Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama would be an excellent ticket, but I’m not sure anyone else agrees…especially Clinton and Obama.
It’s exactly for those reasons that I could never support a DLC or NDN candidate, which is why I never warmed up to Clinton.