It’s morbidly funny watching the liberal blogosphere wetting its collective trousers about the state of the Presidential race. This crap happens around this time every election year, because panic sells and people who eat, sleep and breathe politics every day don’t generally have the best sense of perspective. But this year things are just completely out of hand.
Donald Trump’s refusal to sink in the polls has sent everyone into a lather. Even more well-adjusted commentators like Charlie Pierce are getting in on the orgy of doom and gloom, with post after post bemoaning the failings of the media and the stupidity of the electorate. Over at Huffpo, some dolt actually penned a premature obituary of the Clinton campaign, a piece of drivel below even the dubious standards of that digital rag. Then, of course, there’s Digby, who has devoted virtually all of her output to Trump-related panic for the last six months. She’s on the verge of apoplexy at this point, ranting in a recent post about how “it will be a miracle if Clinton manages to pull this off.”
Good grief, get these people an ice cream cone or something.
There’s lots of obvious stuff to be said here: this happens every single election. It’s way too early to panic. The media was always going to do its best to normalize Trump. The media was always going to be extra tough on Clinton. Trump voters don’t give a shit about his being offensive or about what anyone in the mainstream media says, does or thinks. This was never going to be easy. Suck it the fuck up. Blah blah blah.
However, one thing missing from a lot of this commentary, framed as it usually is in a fog of indignation over the media’s ill-treatment of Hillary over the years, is ironically Clinton herself. Desperate to refute the cartoon image cultivated by years of Republican hatred, liberal bloggers can’t seem to agree on who the hell Clinton is as a candidate, what her overall message is, what she’s bringing to the table. It’s usually just a laundry list of issues she supports, a lot of references to her obviously fat resume, and the meat of the issue: she’s better than Trump.
That kind of thing is great when you’re preaching the the faithful, but it doesn’t win elections in this country. Candidates like George H.W. Bush and John McCain massively outclassed their Democratic opponents in national experience, Washington savvy and establishment support. They got their asses kicked memorably. Like Clinton, they banked on voters recognizing that they were obviously more fit for office than their untested, callow opponents. Voters didn’t give a shit. They may have been highly qualified, but those two stiffs lacked any sense of showmanship or verve. They were wrong for the historical moment they occupied and out of touch with the mood of the country.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton is quite at that level yet, but she’s flirting with it. This goes way beyond the media narrative of the moment, or any of the pseudo-scandals that orbit around her or her husband. Clinton is an aggressively mainstream politician in a time and place where the mainstream is reviled as out-of-touch and out of ideas. She would have been swimming upstream no matter who the Republicans nominated, and her boosters should be thanking their lucky stars that she’s facing an boorish, incomptetent oaf like Trump and not someone like Ted Cruz or John Kasich , who could channel right-wing anger without committing a constant string of gaffes or offending the country club set. That she’s still having to fight this hard is a testament not just to media bias, which was always going to be a factor given her history, but to a 2016 America that has lost patience with the elite status quo.
I don’t think that Donald Trump will win in November. He might be gaffe-proof to his hardcore followers and enjoying the benefits of nonexistent expectations, but his ground game in the states is still pathetic. Clinton has a big advantage in the infrastructure and money that get asses to the polls on election day, and the experience to capitalize on that advantage.
That’s a powerful position to be in, but it doesn’t make her invincible. If she wants to close the deal and come out of November with any ability to get things done, she needs to stop letting Trump define the election and find a way to engage with the concerns of the moment. It’s going to be extremely difficult, because that’s not her wheelhouse, but she needs to do her damnedest. The stakes are too damn high for her to keep running a defensive, lethargic campaign, and way too high for her online supporters to be sinking into self-pitying malaise before the real work has even begun.
Yes, we can still lose this thing. But we’re not going to.
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