CONCORD, N.H.—Touchy, touchy.
Primary Day looms, and some of the candidates and their supporters are becoming super-sensitive.
That’s when they’re not getting crotchety, petulant and in some cases downright apocalyptic.
Touchiest of all is the campaign of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, perhaps because she and her supporters see her losing Tuesday to Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont.
Clinton herself repeated her unhappiness with what she considers Sanders’ effort to “smear” her by suggesting – without ever bluntly stating – that Wall Street bankers and brokers were “buying my vote” with the $200,000-a-pop speaking fees they paid her.
Touchy, perhaps, but also possibly effective. As he began his last day of campaigning before the primary, Sanders delivered his usual attack on the Goldman-Sachs financial firm, pointing out that it had paid a fine for “selling worthless sub-prime mortgage packages.”
This time, though, he did not mention Clinton speeches to Goldman-Sachs or how much it had paid her.
But the Clinton campaign did not rely only on its candidate to complain about Sanders. With Clinton out of the state Sunday for a speech in Flint, Michigan, former President Bill Clinton assailed Sanders as dishonest, hypocritical and “hermetically sealed,” and mocked Sanders and his supporters for their habit of dismissing anyone who disagrees with them as “part of some mythical establishment.”
Clinton had a point here. It is both easy and meaningless to dismiss all opposition as part of “the establishment,” as Sanders is wont to do, especially because nobody knows exactly what “the establishment” is.
Still, Clinton’s blast probably did his wife’s candidacy little good. It smacked more of personal petulance than political strategy. If anyone should know that, it’s Bill Clinton, who also probably understood the campaign’s other self-inflicted wounds of the weekend.
On Sunday, two of the Clinton campaign’s celebrity supporters – former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and feminist icon Gloria Steinem – came to New Hampshire to sing the praises of their candidate.
In the process, Albright scorned young women who are supporting Sanders, telling them that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Then Steinem had to apologize for having told a TV interviewer that young women were backing Sanders because “the boys are with Bernie.”
Forget for a moment the feminist generation gap herein revealed. Leave that discussion to the feminist college professors, of which there is no shortage. Just stick to the politics.
This is very bad politics. For appealing to undecided or persuadable voters, “you young whippersnappers don’t know what it’s like,” is not an effective message.
Neither is petty carping. Getting back into their cars after the first Sanders event Monday morning at Daniel Webster College in Nashua (a for-profit college wholly owned by Indiana-based ITT Educational Services; did Sanders know that?), drivers and passengers found a Clinton campaign flyer stuck under their windshields.
The flyers reported that the Politifact organization had rated as “false” both a Sanders commercial in New Hampshire and his explanation of it in last week’s candidate debate.
Yes, the Sanders campaign had been a little less than forthright in the commercial, which might have led a viewer to believe the Vermont senator had been endorsed by two newspapers which did not in fact endorse him.
But as political crimes go, this barely rises to the level of misdemeanor. As political judgment goes, the Clinton campaign made a bigger mistake (worse than a crime) by thinking voters are going to give a hoot about it.
Perhaps the Clinton campaign has hired too many political strategists. Because it is their job, political strategists feel they must engage in political strategy. Because they care about political strategy, the delude themselves into thinking that others do. What the campaign needed was a super-strategist to tell the others that no Bernie Sanders supporter was going to switch because some campaign aide might have fudged the words of a commercial.
The Clinton campaign is not the only one being touchy and petulant. No, Sanders and his aides are not. But then, they’re ahead. It’s easy to be generous and noble when you’re ahead. Let’s see what happens when and if they fall behind.
Meanwhile, there are Republicans. Oodles of them, in fact, some of whom display touchiness, petulance, and a mysterious amount of ominous and even apocalyptic analysis.
Thus a Donald Trump commercial complains of “an assault on everything that we stand for.”
No specifics, which is too bad. Many people would like to know what they should be on guard against.
Then there is Ted Cruz, who likens the present day to the era just before Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, allowing America to step back from “the abyss.”
The abyss? Wow.
It isn’t that 1980 was a great year. Inflation and interest rates were very high, and unemployment rose to 7 percent. Those hostages seized in Iran in November of 1979 were still held captive. The U.S. boycotted the summer Olympics, and at the end of the year, John Lennon was murdered.
But good things happened, too. More jobs were created during Jimmy Carter’s presidency than in Reagan’s first four years. The U.S. hockey team beat the Soviets in the “Miracle on Ice” at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. “The Empire Strikes Back” opened at movie theaters.
Life went on. People went to work, to the movies, to the theater, to restaurants. The Steelers beat the Rams (then, as next year, in Los Angeles) in the Super Bowl, the Phillies beat the Royals in the World Series. The Lakers beat the 76ers for the 1979-80 NBA title.
The end of the world did not seem to be at hand.
But maybe Cruz knows something others do not.
