Would you rather be a member of the liberal left on the western or eastern side of the Atlantic right now? Not easy. Labour’s in free-fall. The Democrats are devising innovative ways to lose an election that they should own. But Jackie Ashley at the Guardian still sees cause for hope: Gordon might be the new Hillary.
There can’t be a lot that cheers Gordon Brown over his morning porridge, but if he turns to the foreign pages he might ponder the Hillary effect. In Hillary Clinton, we see a politician loathed by a big section of the population, written off, jeered at, ordered to leave the stage, who, by sheer dogged determination – and by fighting, not quitting – has not only managed a comeback but earned grudging respect.
We have become very used to demanding resignations and calling “off with his head” at the slightest provocation. There has been a strange, semi-hysterical mood around Brown, a kind of national rage that he doesn’t either crumble in public or just bog off.
But all is not lost. Gordon is displaying “gritty determination” just like Hillary:
There may come a time when people begin to tire of the hysteria and see this. The Hillary effect is that just buggering on, to use Churchill’s phrase, can win people round.
Stirring stuff. But stirring stuff that suggests that the author is not entirely au fait with the mood among her U.S. counterparts. You want “a strange, semi-hysterical mood”? Then turn to the op-ed page of the New York Times. You’d think McCain was already ensconced in the White House. Here’s Bob Herbert (admittedly an Obama advocate, if now a jittery one) writing in Saturday’s edition:
Anger is growing like a cancer among Democrats. The Clintons have more than lived up to their polarizing reputations, slicing and dicing the electorate and then gleefully exploiting the myriad divisions. Their message varies, depending on whether it’s in public or behind the scenes. But the mantra is roughly as follows: Obama won’t win! He can’t win whites. Jeremiah Wright! He can’t win women. He can’t win Hispanics. He’ll lose Jewish voters. Farrakhan! We’ll nuke Iran.
The share of Clinton voters who have been telling exit pollsters that they will not vote for Senator Obama if he wins the nomination is inching toward the red zone. At the same time, there is growing resentment of the Clintons’ tactics among Obama partisans, especially the young and African-Americans.
What we’re witnessing here — in what was supposed to have been a championship season for Democrats — is a potential train wreck.
Herbert immediately goes on to say that this isn’t just the doing of the Clintons: Obama bears responsibility too. But while Ashley talks about “buggering on”, the Democrats look like they’re buggering up. You want a piece of this, Labour?
