The Electability Fallacy

Watching the returns roll in last night and suffering through the months-old analysis, it struck me that everyone is spreading the same premise. Promulgated and disseminated by the Clinton camp, this premise maintains that, if Barack Obama loses a constituency to Hillary Clinton in the primary, he’s bound to lose that constituency to John McCain in November. The premise is so prima facie faulty that it’s embarrassing to see intelligent, studied people support it and spout it as their own. Obvious in its short-sightedness and comical in its leaps of logic, it’s still pervasive.

I call this the Electability Fallacy. It devalues entire blocs of Democratic loyalists, overlooks Sen. Clinton’s revered status in the Democratic Party and completely discounts the power and ferocity of the Clinton political machine.

Fallacy 1: Clinton Voters = McCain Voters
Senator Clinton’s rightward veers notwithstanding (furtive trade agreements, threats of war with Iran, attacks on Senator Obama’s patriotism), this Democratic primary remains just that. Both candidates have captured reliable Democratic constituencies, and their supporters are to be commended in their enthusiasm and devotion. But to suggest that Sen. Clinton’s voters will defect to the Republican Party, should Obama win the nomination – voting against generations of tradition and their own self-interest, prolonging a deeply unpopular war and extending disastrous economic policies – is nothing if not hyperbolic.

We’ve seen “down-market” voters opt for much haughtier candidates than Barack Obama, and a young Bill Clinton captured the senior vote against a much older George Bush in 1992. It’s a wonder her supporters don’t cry foul at the insinuation that a Clinton voter in the primary is simply a McCain voter in the general.

Fallacy 2: It’s Easier to Convert Clinton Voters than McCain Voters
Clinton voters are rabid and loyal. As loaded with negatives as she may be (or “baggage,” in her own words), Hillary Clinton is beloved among Democrats. Moreover, Bill Clinton remains the most popular living ex-President and, of all politicians in either party, no one is more revered among Party faithful than the Clintons. No one, perhaps, but Barack Obama. As any political observer will attest, the Clintons do not part with their voters easily.

The support for Hillary Clinton among the Democratic base is much stronger than McCain’s among the Republican base, and to erode her support by 15 percentage points in two weeks in a state as stacked in Sen. Clinton’s favor as Pennsylvania is nothing to scoff at.

Fallacy 3: A Tight Race with Sen. Clinton is a Sign of Weakness
The suggestion that “if Obama can’t beat Hillary Clinton, he can’t possibly beat John McCain and the Republican Attack Machine” is simply naïve, if not disingenuous. We’ve heard it repeated ad nauseam, even by Dr. Evil, Karl Rove himself. In any other primary, this would certainly be a valid – and fearsome – argument. Their bag of tricks is vast and well-documented. An ordinary politician in an ordinary primary might stop short of such tactics, but no one ever accused a Clinton of being an ordinary politician.

As esteemed commentators have pointed out, the Clintons are not afraid to tear their Party down to get back to the White House. The Clintons have never been stellar Democrats, from triangulating on policy to intra-party quarrels and behind-the-scenes back-biting. To believe that Hillary Clinton will abdicate a place she considers home – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – without a bitter, mean-spirited and, yes, dirty fight is not to know Hillary Clinton at all. There is no better opposition research team than Clinton's and no strategist more comfortable in the muck than Mark Penn (whose strategies still guide the campaign posthumously). Beating Hillary Clinton is no easy task, and the fact that Barack Obama has done so and continues to do so is an unassailable testament to his toughness, his poise and the clarity of his own message.

The question of lasting damage to the Democratic Party is one to consider, and there is a strong argument to be made that a protracted, bitter primary will dampen what would otherwise be a favorable landscape for Democrats. But to further the Clinton spin that this race between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton somehow casts doubt upon Obama’s ability to “close the deal” or “win Democratic constituents” in a general election against John McCain is short-sighted. At best.