Clinton wins big by going negative. And rather than looking like desperation, people buy it. C'est la vie. She still can't win very easily with the math of the thing being what it is. Still, it's nice to know that, at least in Ohio, most Democrats are perfectly contented to stay with the status quo of Bush-pioneered politics.
Still, this was a test to see if Obama would be able to respond to this sort of fearmongering, and it turns out he couldn't. So, at least he'll have some time to work on that. I do sorta wish that Obama hadn't slathered on the anti-NAFTA talk in Ohio--it cost him when his advisor blabbed to the Canadians about how he wasn't serious, and had he made a defense of free trade he might have gotten some "straight talk points" from the media. Of course, McCain did exactly that and got killed in Michigan to Mitt Romney, who promised them a bunch of bullshit that he had no intention of delivering on, and most Michiganders probably knew that. The reality is that those old manufacturing jobs just aren't coming back, and folks in those states prefer to be lied to than to be told a truth that they probably know intuitively but don't want to believe. It recalls a line from Gorky Park: it doesn't matter how ridiculous a lie is if the lie is that you'll escape, and it doesn't matter how obvious the truth is if that the truth is that you'll never escape. Sadly, the livelihoods of these folks are just gone, and various politicians have attributed this to free trade, which is true, but not necessarily to NAFTA in particular--more due should be placed to Bush II-era agreements lacking the sorts of environmental and worker rights stipulations that NAFTA contains. And it's not like you can't be liberal and pro-free trade (as I am)--the argument to take then is to say that free trade isn't the problem, but that it introduces some new issues that can only be handled by an augmentation of the welfare state, e.g. more job training programs, universal health care, beefed-up unemployment insurance, and so forth, as well as expanded union power in every sector, all paid for by increased taxes on the wealthy. Some of the programs exist but are anemic. Others need to be created from scratch. But this is how much of Europe has gone about solving the issues attendant to globalization, and with no small amount of success.
I wish Obama would have made an argument like that. In retrospect, Clinton might have looked vulnerable on trade because her husband signed NAFTA but people's finances were good in the 90's and they're not so good now. My light reading of the entire situation is that people associate the positive effects of free trade--cheaper stuff, dynamic economy--with Clinton and the negative stuff with Bush, which, I hate to say, isn't really fair to Bush. The manufacturing industry was dying before Clinton took office, it was dying while Clinton took office, and it's effectively dead after Bush's term, and that's partially because of some bad trade agreements but also because that's just how long it took for manufacturing in the US to reach its end. Obama's arguments in this regard were less than impressive. He's supposedly a free trader and more lower case "p" progressive, but he was off in John Edwards land with this one--which might as well be William Jennings Bryan land as far as I'm concerned. But Democrats feel the need to kiss the ring of old Democrats who want the old days back again. So much the worse for us. I expected more from Obama here. Not so much from Clinton, who seems to be the lefty version of John McCain and is thus willing to say whatever the base wants in order to get the nomination (aside from that she was wrong in Iraq--that would be weak! Evidently saying that you were duped by George Bush, though, doesn't make you look weak)...
Texas is a bit more interesting--and amazingly less racist than Ohio, if you can believe that (see my post a few items before this one). Obama lost a nail-biter here. If I were his team, my spin would be that Obama would have won were it not for conservative Rush Limbaugh fans that voted for Hillary explicitly because they would be easier to beat. Seems like a fair line of attack. "Do you want Rush Limbaugh choosing your nominee?" Could work. Still, I think this whole thing shows that Obama's strategy has some drawbacks. Clinton hit him a bunch of times virtually unanswered last week. I know that he has the general election in mind and he wants to make it easy on Clinton supporters to vote for him in November, but this unwillingness to attack the Clintons needs to give way somewhat. Obviously, you don't really want to alienate Clintonistas or anything like that, but there are ways to do it without aping the right wing, etc. And he needs to have a short, sweet comeback to stuff like Hillary's 3 a.m. ad. I think he needs to go after Hillary's "experience" and show that, when the big moments came, she's not exactly shown herself up to them--healthcare and Iraq come to mind. It's dicey, and it might not be necessary, but you have to strike back when someone hits you. That's the only way to stand up to a bully, be it a member of the Republican attack machine or the Clintons, who most certainly are bullies. That shouldn't be too controversial--after all, that's one of their major selling points, is it not? That they'll give the GOP a dose of their own medicine, right? Obama offers a different prescription altogether--an end to the base-driven Rovian politics in which the worst elements of a party's base tend to be rewarded because they can easily be outraged enough into turning out to vote. Clinton isn't at that level yet but she's in the same ballpark, and her win-at-all-costs, scorched-earth path to the nomination is going to drive away more people than it brings in.
