Hillary vs. Obama: Is she the stronger candidate?

“It is one of the last cards Hillary Clinton has to play,” said James Romoser in the Winston-Salem, N.C., Journal. With only 10 Democratic presidential caucuses and primaries left, and Barack Obama holding a nearly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, the Clinton camp is making a daring argument: Obama, they say, is unelectable. Hillary’s argument, said Mark Halperin in Time, is that Obama’s base of wildly enthusiastic support “is largely a mirage.” Her case, directed at the 800 “superdelegates” (party officials and officeholders) who will put either her or Obama over the top, goes like this: To beat Republican John McCain, a Democrat will need to win over blue-collar whites, independent women, and Hispanics—all of whom have been wary of Obama, while strongly supporting her. Ignore the naïve, wishful thinking of the Obama supporters, she’s telling superdelegates, and make “a subjective decision” about which candidate is best positioned to take back the White House. “It’s a breathtaking gambit. And it could work.”

If you look at the election in terms of the Electoral College, said Sean Wilentz in Salon.com, Hillary’s argument makes sense. The general election will hinge on the winner-take-all system of electoral votes. If the Democratic primaries were conducted the same way, Clinton’s victories in the bigger states—including California, New York, and Ohio—would give her 1,743 pledged delegates, and Obama, 1,257. Under fairer, more sensible primary rules, Hillary would be winning, so the superdelegates should support her.

Yes, and if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bus, said Jonathan Chait in The New Republic Online. What a “bizarre” argument. First of all, imposing a winner-take-all system on the Democratic primaries would make them less democratic, not more. The current system—allocating delegates based on the proportion of the vote each candidate receives in each state—provides the purest measure of support, and though the Clintonistas hate to admit it, Obama is winning the popular vote. Maybe that’s why “Clinton supporters are spending an inordinate amount of time devising scenarios where Clinton would be winning if the rules of the primary were changed retroactively.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Hillary’s belief that only she can win key states is also nonsense, said Jeffrey Anderson in The Weekly Standard. She’s mostly won states that “no Democrat can realistically lose in November,” such as Massachusetts and New York, or states the Democrats have no hope of winning, such as Texas. Of the 17 swing states “that will likely determine the Democrats’ fate” this fall, Obama has so far won nine in the primaries and Hillary only five. The claim that Hillary is electable, and Obama isn’t, is a “fallacy.”

Wait, though, until the general election campaign, said William Kristol in The New York Times. If Obama gets the nomination, Republicans will challenge his claim of being a bipartisan uniter. The airwaves will be flooded with ads highlighting his “left-wing voting record in Illinois and Washington,” spiced up with videos reminding voters of his long association with the Rev. Jeremiah (“God damn America”) Wright.

Yes, Obama has some vulnerabilities, said Roger Simon in The Politico.com. But he already has a very effective counterargument to Clinton’s contention that she’ll be a stronger general election candidate. In the primaries, Clinton has run a terrible campaign, with no clear message, open dissension among her top staff, and several forced resignations. Obama, by contrast, has run a focused, smart, well-organized campaign. “You can tell a lot about a candidate by the campaign they run,” says Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod. In coming weeks, it’s an argument the superdelegates will be hearing a lot of, as they ponder their final choice.