Hillary Has Become an Icon [Source]

The whys and wherefores of the collapse of Hillary Clinton’s campaign are already achingly familiar. The more interesting question is what Hillary achieved in spite of losing, and maybe even because of it.

The rapidly congealing conventional wisdom is that the answer is worse than nothing: Her legacy has been tarnished, her status degraded, and her reputation diminished by the brass-knuckle brawl she waged against Obama.

But arguments can be made that, by historical standards, Clinton’s treatment of Obama wasn’t all that rough.

That, far from weakening him for his tussle with John McCain, she made him appreciably stronger; that by fighting until the end, she helped gin up a fever-pitch level of engagement among Democrats that will redound to the party’s benefit this fall, rather than undermining it.

What strikes me as inarguable is that Hillary is today a more resonant, consequential, and potent figure than she has ever been before. No longer merely a political persona, she has been elevated to a rarefied plane in our cultural consciousness.

With her back against the wall, she both found her groove and let loose her raging id, turning herself into a character at once awful and wonderful, confounding and inspiring—thus enlarging herself to the point where she became iconic.

She is bigger now than any woman in the country. Certainly, she is bigger than her husband. And although in the end she may wind up being dwarfed by Obama, for the moment she is something he is not: fully, poignantly human.

The Change

The new Hillary first emerged in Ohio and Texas. After Obama’s eleven-state streak, it wasn’t just the media who were telling her to cash in her chips.

The Obamans were claiming it was now mathematically impossible for her to secure the nomination. Some big-name Democrats were starting to grumble that her continuing would fatally wound the party.

On the night she pulled off her unlikely twofer, she opened her victory speech with this refrain:

“For everyone here in Ohio and across America who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you.”

With that speech, Clinton had finally found a theme: the resilient fighter, the underdog, the victim.

And with each successive contest, as the calls for her to fold grew louder even as she continued winning (nine of the final fifteen primaries, for the record) that theme only became sharper.

Having abandoned her corporate, Establishment campaign, she seemed more than liberated; she seemed intoxicated.

Suddenly, she was giving terrific, well-modulated Election Night speeches—speeches that were every bit as good, in their way, as Obama’s more-celebrated orations.

Suddenly, she was loving the rope lines, working them feverishly, hungrily, as if … well, as if she were her husband.

Suddenly, the hustings were no longer for her a royal pain in the ass but instead a source of sustenance, vitality, and even joy.

What changed? What turned her from someone roundly dismissed as an automaton into a campaigner whose skills were routinely given props by the likes of Pat Buchanan?

“First of all, I think a lot of the stereotypes were never true to begin with,” she says.

“But I don’t think that I’ve ever been a particularly effective television persona. It’s probably the most common thing that people say to me when they actually meet me.

"So the chance I had to connect with so many people, and then for those people, through the ripple effect—saying, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s really nice, she’s really warm, she really cares, I really liked her’—things really took off. But I’m sure I got better.”

Clinton pauses, then begins to laugh. “Look, I believe in experience! So the more experience you have, the better you will be! And therefore I got better!”

The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton

By groping her way toward a message that put the blue-collar concerns at the center of the Democratic race, and by fashioning herself into what Rendell describes as an “intelligent, sophisticated populist,” Clinton achieved something both substantial and almost entirely unexpected.

Who would have thought a year ago that we would talking today (with a straight face) about the possibility that the term Reagan Democrats would be supplanted by the moniker Hillary Democrats?

This achievement would have been impossible had Clinton left the race as early as many Democrats wished.

Though the outlines of hers and Obama’s coalitions began to come clear on Super-Duper Tuesday, it was only after Ohio and Texas that the depth and severity of the fault lines running through the party became so glaringly apparent.

For Obama and his people, Clinton’s bloody-minded persistence was unwelcome, yet another sign that she cared more about herself than the fate of the party this fall.

But it also served, or should have served, as a blaring alarm about the scale of the challenge the presumptive nominee will confront in the general election.

It would be hard to overstate the private pessimism that Hillary and Bill Clinton feel about Obama’s general-election prospects.

Or the irritation they feel about the dismissive attitudes of some of his advisers toward her coalition, as evinced by the words of Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, after the Pennsylvania primary:

“The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections … This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.”

But the Clintons’ frustration with Obama’s people pales beside the simmering anger they harbor toward the media. And in this they are not alone.

For months now, my e-mail box has been full of messages from women across the country, explaining what Hillary’s run meant to them, why it was so important.

The reasons vary depending on age and race and region, but the one element almost all my correspondents express in common is a furious resentment at the press for what they see as blatant misogyny in the coverage of Clinton.

When I mention this to Hillary, she laughs and exclaims, “I’d love to get a look at your e-mail!” And then, more soberly, she goes on, “There’s a reason for the resentment.

"The level of dismissive and condescending comments, not just about me—what do I care?—but about the people who support me and in particular the women who support me, has been shocking.

"Shocking to women and to fair-minded men. But what has really been more disappointing to me is how few voices that have a platform have spoken out against it. And that’s really why you seen this enormous grassroots outrage. There is no outlet.

"It is rare that you have anybody on these shows or in a position of responsibility at major publications who really says, ‘Wait a minute! What are we talking about here? I have a wife! I have a daughter! I want the best for them.’ ” More...

tags: hillary clinton  rise  fall  icon  

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