Continuing in the vein I started in the last post: why didn't Clinton see the light and get out of the race when the getting was good? I'm afraid I'm going to have to go a little psychoanalytical here, but oh well.
I find it revealing that many Clinton supporters mock Obama as having a messianic cult--which has a kernel of truth to it, but isn't generally true, in my opinion--while Clinton supporters (especially older ones) seem to be far more guilty of this than do Obama supporters. Remember that Hillary "ad" on YouTube about how she would accomplish all of our hopes and all of our dreams, set to some cheesy 80's music that sounded uncannily like Olivia Newton-John's Xanadu? Older women seem to treat Clinton's candidacy with an almost talismanic power to right all the wrongs of our sexist, sexist society. That element is also present in Obama's appeal, but it's not so central to his appeal that it spills over so often, and many people of many different backgrounds find different things to like about the guy. Libertarians, for example, seem to like Obama because he's more of an evidence-based, free-market, free-trade type than Hillary. Some conservatives, like Andrew Sullivan, like him for other reasons as well. You can read his blog to find out why.
In any event, my impression that Hillary is in the race because she's in denial. My sense is that she charted out her destiny long ago, and that destiny culminated in being a popular, historic, two-term president who got her designated successor elected to office. My sense is that this dream is so much a part of who she is and what she's worked for that it cannot simply be discarded. And after having to suffer through the dozens of episodes of whoring that her husband indulged, after the decades of late-night jokes, after all that humiliation, that she is simply owed this for getting through it all. She sees the presidency as her destiny. To be honest, I've had enough of leaders who feel driven by destiny. Isn't that Bush's whole deal? And there is a myopia present to both--neither are imaginative enough to escape the boxes into which their personalities have stuffed them, and both have lost immeasurable clout and power because of it.
I also find it interesting that Clinton's campaign (and Clinton herself) seem so insistent that Obama is just full of hot air. For all the cynicism in their campaign it seems like they really believe this one, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. I tend to see it as related to the cynicism of the Clinton campaign. Obama's talked about high-minded reform, which Clinton seems to scoff at--lest we forget, she defended lobbyists at Yearly Kos a while back. She doesn't think the system can be changed or that politics can be elevated, and considering her experiences this might be understandable. So when Obama starts talking in these high-minded turns of phrase, she naturally assumes he cannot be serious. Nobody can change the system--her husband tried and failed, after all, to change how Washington works. So she sees Obama as, at best, naive. At worst, she sees him as a con man. Maybe Obama is naive, but the idea that people say what they mean is a foreign idea to the Clintons.
