Dana Milbank makes an interesting point.
As I sat in the East Room last week watching a forlorn President Obama account for his shellacking, I listened with concern as he described the presidency as a "growth process" and suggested that the midterm setback was somehow inevitable. "You know, this is something that I think every president needs to go through," he said.
It brought to mind Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. phone-call ad from the 2008 campaign, and her withering criticism of Obama: "When there is a crisis . . . there's no time for speeches or on-the-job training." I wondered whether Democrats would be in the fix they're in if they had chosen a different standard-bearer.
Would unemployment have been lower under a President Hillary? Would the Democrats have lost fewer seats on Tuesday? It's impossible to know. But what can be said with confidence is that Clinton's toolkit is a better match for the current set of national woes than they were for 2008, when her support for the Iraq war dominated the campaign.
Back then, Clinton's populist appeal to low-income white voters, union members and workers of the Rust Belt was not enough to overcome Obama's energized youth vote. But Clinton's working-class whites were the very ones who switched to the Republicans on Tuesday.
And Milbank makes it clear that he wishes Hillary Clinton were in charge now, citing Obama's (for example) to charge ahead on health care reform "rather than allowing it to monopolize the agenda." He also comes up with this devastating reminder:
Clinton, for example, first called for a 90-day foreclosure moratorium in December 2007, as part of a package to fight the early stages of the mortgage crisis with a five-year freeze on subprime rates and $30 billion to avoid foreclosures. But an Obama campaign adviser dismissed Clinton's moratorium, saying it would "reward people for bad behavior."
Calls for a moratorium returned a few weeks ago with news of lenders' foreclosure abuses. Polls indicate public support for a moratorium, but Obama ruled it out. It's a safe bet Clinton would have done otherwise. ...
...Back in April 2008, a Clinton ad delivered a populist blow to Obama: "When the housing crisis broke, Hillary Clinton called for action: a freeze on foreclosures. Barack Obama said 'no.' . . . People are hurting. It's time for a president who's ready to take action now."
All of which is true and to the point. But something tells me that, had Hillary been president, somebody -- maybe even Dana Milbank -- would have come up with a couple of really good reasons why Obama should have been elected. Maybe the biggest mistake (who made it?) was not having Hillary as vice president. Who knows?
