Sunday, May 11, 2008
CAN OBAMA LOSE IF HILLARY CANNOT WIN?
Rahm Emmanuel has just said on TV that Obama is "the presumptive winner" of the Democratic nomination. Hillary cannot win, he said, though Obama might lose. This seems a stark contradiction. If, playing under the rules, Hillary loses, the only possibility left is that Obama wins. However, perhaps Emmanuel, though he did not succeed in expressing it, had another point in mind, namely, that Clinton could not now change the game in her favor. Obama, however, could do this for her by dropping out somehow. Perhaps he would fall into a clinical depression and retire from the scene. Hillary could not as a church-going Christian hope for this. Or something worse might happen to him, something perhaps too unpleasant to name. Nor could Hillary in good conscience hope for this either. So she is staying in the race because something might happen that she cannot admit even hoping for.
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Given just that quote, I am not sure that is what was specifically being indicated. Nor am I sure that was really a contradiction (although it was a paradoxical remark). On the one hand, Emmanuel might have meant that Clinton cannot win, but Obama can lose the general election through the division produced by Clinton's remaining in the race. Perhaps we can draw a more fundamental point that the surface bureaucratic procedures of producing a nominee are only the explicit codification of more general trends of ideological sentiment and disposition. In that case, Obama's nomination might, given Clinton's persistence, be only superficial, without the underlying ideological and emotional backing that would be necessary for a "real" win. Hence, taking into account both the bureaucratic and socio-cultural facets of the primary process, "win/lose" becomes a false dichotomy.
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