The Tightness that Gave Us Donald Trump

Michele Gelfand, professor at the University of Maryland, and Joshua Conrad Jackson, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill have published an intriguing article in the new web magazine the Conversation about Donald Trump's rise to political prominence. They asked: 

What is “Trump culture,” and where is it coming from?
As it turns out, our group at the University of Maryland has been studying the basis for Trump culture for the last 10 years, something that we call “cultural tightness-looseness.”

They found that political power tends to be more concentrated and authoritarian when a society is facing a crisis, or has a tradition of crisis, conflict or natural disasters. When a community/society is faced with a real or imagined threat, it will move away from diversity and tolerance for alternative ethnic and other groups. The researchers write that international surveys, computer models and archival data have shown that

communities are more likely to survive these threats when they set clear rules for behavior, put strong leaders who can regulate those rules in charge and punish those who deviate from the norm.

 We found that across 33 nations, the countries with the strongest laws and strictest punishments were those that had a history of famine, warfare and natural disasters. 

The same trend is true for individual American states, where states with higher death rates from natural disasters and disease tend to vote Republican. Once should not be surprise to learn that the same countries and states lean towards authoritarian leaders. In a follow-up study, the researchers interviewed a representative sample of 550 Americans to see how threatened they felt and their attitudes towards society - the tightness factor.

Our survey yielded many other results which confirmed a powerful truth: Donald Trump has built a monopoly on threat, and has used it to steel his coalition against anyone who might look different or hold different views. This monopolization of threat has produced leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, and it is a devastating and dangerous political tool.

This is of course not a completely new insight, since fear has always been a reliable tool for aspiring or ruling authoritarians. What is interesting is that they have documented the degree to which Trump has succeeded in "capitalizing on fear" and the reminder that the Trump factor will not go away even if he looses against Hillary Clinton in November.

Trump is just one symptom of a larger principle that echoes across human history: perceptions of threat tighten societies, leading to social coordination at best, and intolerance at worst. 

Donald Trump may not win this November, but as long as Americans feel afraid, Trump culture is here to stay.

* 

For the past half a century, we have lived with the perception that democracy and tolerance are natural and strong features of our world, but they are frail and dependent on a stable and relatively rich environment. Only when there is a strong consensus, such as there was in the West after World War II and during the Cold War, was there a foundation for democracy and relative political tolerance. Globalization, extreme greed and inequality, has ripped apart much of this foundation, making entire societies, nations and economic zones vulnerable to fundamentalist zealots, whether political or religious.

*

Amanda Taub: The rise of American authoritarianism, (Vox, March 1, 2016)

*

For my take on the sociology and psychology behind the rise of Trump, see my blog

What Whites with Broken Hearts can Learn from the Crow Indians

Could a Radical Surge Pull the Democrats Away from Centrism?

The political writer Michael Tomasky discusses the future of radical politics in an essay for the New York Review of Books that is nominally a review of Lane Kenworthy's book Social Democratic America (Oxford University Press), but really a discussion of the balance between centrist and radicals in the Democratic Party.

"There exists these days, among Washington policy intellectuals and advocates who tilt toward the left end of the accepted political spectrum, a certain measured optimism. It’s not about Obama, or any feeling that he might somehow, with his sagging poll numbers, be able to persuade congressional Republicans to fund, say, an infrastructure investment bank. Confidence is appropriately near zero on matters like that. Rather, it’s about the widely held perception that the Democratic Party, after years of, in the argot, “moving to the right,” is finally soft-shoeing its way leftward, away from economic centrism and toward a populism that the party as a whole has not embraced for years or even decades."

Will this leftward pressure make Hillary Clinton run as a populist (if she decides to run), rather than cozy up to her and her husband's Wall Street friends? Will she do a reverse Romney and cater to the left in the primaries to fight off Elizabeth Warren, only to turn rightwards once nominated?

Lane Kenworthy's key argument is that the move towards a more welfare oriented - social democratic if we use a more European term - society is a necessity, and he thinks that the Republican party eventually will come to there senses - somewhat. But Tomasky points out that if the Republican party nominates a more moderate candidate and he/she loses, then the extreme candidates may have a chance again.

Hillary Clinton Did the Right Thing And America Will Never Be the Same

“I want to take all our energy and all our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president of the United States,” Hillary Clinton told a roaring crowd at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C.

She did the right thing, and she saved her place in history. America has changed. George W. Bush's extremism took America to the end of the road where there was no way ahead. America is in a deep crisis, brought on by greed and conservative dogmatism. Now is the time for a new New Deal, and the unifying of the progressive America behind Barack Obama is the key to launching it. 

"We all want to restore America's standing in the world," she said.

This is hope we can believe in.

Hans Sandberg

U.S. Cuba Policy: A H.C. Anderson Moment In Miami

Barack Obama went to Miami to talk to the exile-Cuban lobby group, and in one swoop he swept aside half a century of failed U.S. policies towards Cuba.

The Emperor is naked. Nobody has had the guts to say it. Not the "Straight Talking Express" John McCain, who just four days before told the Cuban Americans what he thought they wanted to hear, and not the "fighter" Hillary Clinton who would not dear to challenge her presumed Florida voters. But Obama did. He went right to the core, and laid out a radically different policy against Cuba and Latin America. 

America is ready for change, and so is Miami and Florida.

''I believe he is the only candidate who has spoken sincerely about the intentions that he has toward Cuba,'' said Alina Fernandez, Fidel Castro's daughter living in exile.

Hans Sandberg

Watch his speech:

Is There A Sexist Bias Against Hillary?

It has been suggested that there is sexism behind the democratic voters preference for Barack Obama, rather than Hillary Clinton, but that is just another myth from the Hillary spin machine.

Sexism would probably have been the case if Hillary had become the democratic nominee, as older white republicans might have hesitated to vote for a woman the same way some older white democrats hesistate to vote for a black man. But we haven't seen any sexism in the democratic primary. To the contrary, sex has helped rather than hurt Hillary in this campaign.

I never had any problem with Hillary as a woman, and I might have voted for her, despite the fact that I find her too much like on of the boys in the traditional political game. What is so fresh about Obama is that he dares to be himself as a politician, but who knows who's behind that mask Hillary always wears? I don't know her, and the harder she fights to look like a fighter, the less I like her. In a way I feel bad for her, like I felt for Al Gore Jr., before he broke out of his shell and became a global hero. What she needs is not the White House, but a vacation as Larry David pointed out when he switched from Hillary to Obama. And while sipping a diet coke by the pool somewhere, she would do well reading Eckhart Tolle, the German zen master.

Hans Sandberg

For another take on the sexist issue, read Nathanial Bach's post Obama's Sexist Victory in Oregon on the Huffington Post.

Obama Shines As Orator After Oregon Victory

Barack Obama returned to Iowa after his strong victory in the overwhelmingly white state of Oregon. Even though Hillary won convincingly in Kentucky, her victory will not change the fundamentals in this campaign.

On Tuesday night, Obama announced in Des Moines, Iowa, that he now has the majority of the pledged delegats, and laid out his program in a powerful and passionate speech that left no uncertainty about who is the democratic leader in  this race. It was short, sharp and sassy.

There is now no way for Hillary to win the nomination unless she stages a coup that could split the Democratic party. Obama must be furious about her tactics and egotism, which has hurt the overall democratic campaign and aided John McCain's chances, but he gentlemanly waits for her to do what she needs to do - to muster as much strength as she can, maybe hoping to force her way into the VP-slot, before she bows out of the primary campaign.

Hans Sandberg

Watch the speech!

So, Who Would You Hire? Clinton Or Obama?

In Kentucky, Hillary Clinton once again framed the primary election as a hiring decision. Well, let's think about it as a hiring decision.

Who would you hire?

Candidate A is a wealthy Washington insider who fudges her math (the popular vote is with me....), embellishes on her already inflated resumé (bringing peace to Northern Ireland), lies (ducking sniper fire in Bosnia), panders (no gazoline tax this Summer!), refuses to acknowledge a major mistake (voted to authorize Bush war in Iraq), and doesn't stop at playing the race card (Obama can't win the white working class!)

Candidate B, the son of a struggling single mother, is a brilliant young Senator who gave up a lucrative career as high paid Harvard educated lawyer to become a community organizer in Chicago, a man who has made it a matter of principle to run an honest campaign, refusing the sirens of the lobbyists, and instead leads one of the most innovative, well organized and successful election campaigns in U.S. history, a Senator who had the guts and good judgement to not vote to authorize the war.  

Well, I guess it's a hiring decision after all.

Hans Sandberg

Hillary After W. Virginia Victory: "I Deeply Admire Senator Obama"

Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary as expected, and of course she promised to stay in the fight, but more interesting was the soft tone she choose when mentioning Barack Obama. "I deeply admire Senator Obama," she said in Charleston, West Virginia.

And that may be more important than the rest of the sentence where she said what she had to say at this moment of her campaign, i.e. that "I believe our case, a case West Virginia has helped to make, our case is stronger." Yes, it made her case a little stronger, from 1.2 to 1.4 on a scale from 1 to 10.

And the Winner Is....(Says Time Magazine)*

Veteran political reporter Joe Klein has a very interesting essay about the primary campaign in the new issue of Time magazine, which features Barack Obama on the cover.

"In the end, Obama's challenge to the media is as significant as his challenge to McCain. All the evidence — and especially the selection of these two apparent nominees — suggests the public not only is taking this election very seriously but is also extremely concerned about the state of the nation and tired of politics as usual. I suspect the public is also tired of media as usual, tired of journalists who put showmanship over substance ... as I found myself doing in the days before the May 6 primaries. Obama was talking about the Republicans, but he could easily have been talking about the press when he said, 'The question, then, is not what kind of campaign they will run; it's what kind of campaign we will run. It's what we will do to make this year different. You see, I didn't get into this race thinking that I could avoid this kind of politics, but I am running for President because this is the time to end it.'"
(Joe Klein, Time magazine)

It’s Groundhog Day All Over For Hillary Clinton

Like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the movie, Hillary Clinton wakes up every morning, forced to repeat the previous day, although not in the same place and with the same people.... Today she is off to West Virginia, where she stated "I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee."

She’s obviously not listening to the voters who has rejected her, the analysts who by now have given up on her chances or many of her own advisors, which makes her awfully similar to our current Bubble-Boy-In-Chief, George W. Bush. Like him, she seems to feel that she has been chosen for this job by some higher power than the people, and like him she finds it impossible to admit a mistake, even when it’s such a major one as authorizing George W. Bush to launch an attack on Iraq that sensible people at that time warned would end up in a disaster (Al Gore, Jr., Barack Obama, and many others.)

She knew that she lost big by not scoring big in Indiana. It might very well have been Rush Limbaugh’s republican storm troopers that gave her the less than 2 percent lead over Obama.
It was obvious from her meek voice in her speech late last night, and even more obvious in Bill Clinton’s face where he stood behind her. He didn’t exactly gloat over the minute victory…

Just past midnight, NBC’s Tim Russert blurted out the inconvenient truth:

“We now know who the Democratic nominee’s going to be, and no one’s going to dispute it. Those closest to her will give her a hard-headed analysis, and if they lay it all out, they’ll say: ‘What is the rationale? What do we say to the undeclared super delegates tomorrow? Why do we tell them you’re staying in the race?’ And tonight, there’s no good answer for that.”

But the next morning Hillary woke up and went back to repeating herself, continuing a campaign that she can't win. In Shepherdstown, W.Va. she told reporters "I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee."

"She is the Japanese soldier in the Pacific island that hasn't been told the war is over," Democratic pollster John Anzalone told Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza. "Occasionally she picks off a few islanders and considers it a victory. Well, yesterday she found out the war was over."

But maybe she didn’t get it. Like the Bushies, she had her reality distortion shield up, which is why she probably won’t here the news that the former senator and presidential candidate George McGovern, who is a superdelegate and a longtime friend of the Clinton’s, today asked her to drop out of the race. CNN reports that McGovern was switching his support to endorse Barack Obama. “I think mathematically the race is all but won by Barack Obama and the time has come for all of us to unite and get ready for the general election in the fall,” he said.

Or maybe her race is actually for the 2012 election. By undermining Barack Obama’s campaign, she would help John McCain win the 2008 election, making it harder for him to win the nomination battle and securing it for her self against the then incumbent president who will by then be very old and probably not very popular.

There is only one problem with this strategy, if that is what it is, and that is that Obama is a very strong candidate and that America may have moved further away from prejudice and partisanship than the Clinton’s think.

Hans Sandberg

Hillary Clinton's Pyrrhic Victory In Indiana

Washington Post's media columnist Howard Kurtz gave a neat summary of the outcome in his Media Notes column:

"In a nutshell: After a month of horrible coverage for Obama, the Jeremiah Wright debacle, the caricaturing of the candidate as an elitist, he nonetheless managed to fight Clinton to a virtual dead heat in a state in which she had been favored. All the media chatter about how Hillary had found her voice, won the hearts of the working class and captured the momentum didn't amount to squat. Whether she won Indiana by a few thousand votes was, by that time, beside the point.

Have I mentioned lately that the commentators have been consistently wrong in this campaign?

Clinton had claimed victory in her speech--indeed, Obama had conceded Indiana minutes earlier--but it may have been a pyrrhic victory at best." (May 7, 2008)

Barack Obama Is Back, While Hillary Clinton Is Down

Barack Obama won a convincing victory in North Carolina and delivered a brilliant speech after the election was called, while Hillary Clinton still (at 10:00 PM) waits as the Indiana result is still undecided when 79 percent of the votes are reported.

What happened to the game change? Nothing! The voters rejected Hillary's smear campaign, her sheer dishonesty, and shameless pandering. Obama is winning, and he is winning by playing clean.

It's beautiful! It's hopeful! It speaks well of America.

Hans Sandberg

The Clinton-McCain Election Energizer Policy

Hillary Clinton is soo down to earth. All that mudslinging must be doing her some good. Running up and down those steps in Phila, ducking the sniper fire in Waziristan (there too?), changing tires on her rig (why not? It would look great on camera!) There is nothing the Middle Age Lady cannot do (except getting a cup of coffee from that pesky electric coffee brewer!)

She sure as hell is full of energy, and if you can’t afford to fill up your car or truck now that rising gas prices have eaten up the President’s simulation package before IRS even had a chance to get the cheks out, there is allways Hillary Clinton. Just holler, and she’ll be right there next to you, promising instant gas relief.

Compare that to the elitist Barack Obama. He’s not at all like her and John McCain. Because they are different (well, the rich are different, they have more money, to paraphrase Earnest Hemingway). Hillary and John trust each other, well, at least she trusts that you can call him too at 3 AM in the morning. But Barack Obama, no he doesn’t feel your pain. He scoffs at even the thought of giving the little guy a break at the pump. But Hillary’s new trucker friends doesn’t think so. And John McCain himself said the other day that a gas-tax holiday would come in handy for partents at the end of the summer. They could take the money and use them to buy school supplies, or they could have dinner out for a change. McCain also feels people's pain.

And Barack Obama is actually totally wrong about the impact of a tax cut on gasoline. It’s totally wrong to say that the average consumer is going to save 30 dollars over the period of the proposed tax cut. Totally wrong, but wrong in the right way, because the average consumer won’t even save a tenth of that if we are to believe Leonard Burman, one of many experts who have commented on the Clinton-McCain idea. Leonard Burman was a treasury official in the Clinton and the Reagan administrations, and now heads up the Tax Policy Center, and is a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Urban Institute in Washington. Here is what he told Glen Ifill at Jim Lehrer’s Newshour on Tuesday:

"GWEN IFILL: It's hard for voters trying to decide what to do this year, to decide who's right on things like this. We just heard Hillary Clinton say this can be a lot of money for people who are long-distance truckers or who drive great distances to work. We heard Barack Obama say, 'This is 30 bucks of savings.' Who's right?

LEONARD BURMAN: Well, they're actually both wrong. I mean, $30 bucks assumes that the price would fall for an average consumer and the price isn't going to fall very much. It's maybe a couple of bucks for an average American family driving their car in the summer." (To read a transcript of the entire interview, click here!)

The whole idea is ridiculous, wrote Thomas L. Friedman in his NYT-column aptly named ”Dumb as We Wanna Be”. He credited Barack Obama for ”resisting this shameful pandering”:

”Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.”

This silly discussion is being held instead of giving the alternative energy industry the tax cuts the should have, and developing a real energy strategy.

Friedman concluded:

”The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.”

Hans Sandberg
 

Obama Is Invisible To GOP Strategist Ed Rollins

Just who is Barack Obama anyway? asks GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman Ed Rollins on Anderson Cooper 360° blog today. We don't know, is his answer, taking a cue from Hillary Clinton's slippery campaign.

I wrote him an answer on the CNN blog, and it goes likes this:

Who he is? I guess, you need to be a GOP Strategist and Former Huckabee National Campaign Chairman to be that clueless. What is it about Barack Obama that makes so many people trust him, from the little guy who is leaning republican to democratic superdelegates, former fed chairmen (Volker) and labor secretaries (Reich) and foreign policy experts (Brzezinski)? What is it that they all see, but Ed Rollins can't see? And what would an Ed Rollins have seen and thought about another young and inexperienced representative from Illinois, Abe Lincoln? Inexperienced? We don't know who he is? No record? Connections to suspicious black rebels (John Brown)... I guess you see what you want to see, and ignore the rest.

Hans Sandberg

Barack Obama Breaks With His Fiery Father

Barack Obama in New York.                     Photo: Hans Sandberg 

He had to do it, but I don't think he did it because he has become an ordinary politician like Hillary Clinton. He had to do it, because the issues Jeremiah Wright raises cut to deep into the American fabric of history. And this election is not about setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It’s about cleaning up the mess after George W. Bush, and setting America on a new course, one of fairness, sustainable growth and one that seeks peace and international cooperation.

Much of what pastor Wright said at his speech to the NAACP on Saturday was true (excluding his comments on the spread of AIDS and homecoming chickens), despite what all the pundits say. He named and cursed the abuses and abusers of the past, and drew the line from then to now. And there is such a line.

America’s history is not pretty. For all the progress and greatness, it is also a story about genocide, slavery, desegregation and prejudice, a story of atrocities at home and abroad, like in the Philippines, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, and now in Iraq. For a preacher who is looking for sins to condemn, the U.S. history certainly does not lack material, and Wright surely knows how to spin a gruesome cathartic tale out of it.

But the difference between Wright and Obama is not one of historic morals, but of remedies. Powerful preachers like Wright have staged their thunderous performances for decades, but they have failed to change America. Obama realized that to change America, you have to build a broad coalition, and to build a broad coalition, you have to leave behind emotionally satisfying, but divisive rhetoric like that of reverend Wrights, and seek a conversation that speaks to the majority. Barack Obama understands what Oprah Winfrey understood. You can’t withdraw and lick your wounds and curse injustice. You have to reach out wide, and if you do, you will find that you’re not alone, you’re not an oppressed minority, but part of a broad post-racial coalition that can build the future.

It must have hurt bad to break the bond to a pastor, who might even have served as a surrogate father. He didn’t want to do it, but reverend Wright didn’t give him a chance. He was trapped in his rhetoric of bitterness, and as much as we understand him, we also realize that he could not provide a path ahead in this world.

Hans Sandberg

Note: Check out Maureen Dowd's take on the father-son dynamic

"Having been deserted at age 2 by his father, Obama has now been deserted by the father-figure in his church, the man who inspired him to become a Christian, married him, dedicated his house, baptized his children, gave him the title of his second book and theme for his presidential run and worked on his campaign."
***
"The Illinois senator doesn’t pay attention to the mythic nature of campaigns, but if he did, he would recognize the narrative of the classic hero myth: The young hero ventures out on an adventure to seek a golden fleece or an Oval Office; he has to kill monsters and face hurdles before he returns home, knocks off his father and assumes the throne.

Tuesday was more than a Sister Souljah moment; it was a painful form of political patricide."



 

Bill Moyers Serves Up the Full Jeremiah Wright

I can't think of anybody better to interview Jeremiah Wright, the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, than Bill Moyers, one of America's most illustrious and eminent journalists.

Bill Moyers is probably most known for his fascinating interview with Joseph Campbell, which was broadcast on PBS as the six hour long program The Power of Myth, but as important as this interview was, it's just one piece in his work. Moyers trademark interviews are deep and penetrating, and so was his interview with Jeremiah Wright. Here we saw the a profound and progressive intellectual behind the fiery preacher, who has been cut up and served as political sushi on Youtube and the various news networks.

”God Damn America” has become synonymous with his name, but when we here Moyers give us the context and Wright lay out the Biblical backstory, the words come out full of meaning and well withing the bounds of American self-improvement and reform through unflinching self-scrutiny.

You don't need to agree with him, but you have to respect him for taking his country seriously enough to dare to challenge it. Will it hurt Obama? Yes, maybe, but it might also make the difference between Obama and Wright clearer. If the country can't digest more than soundbites and hypocrisy, then maybe it doesn't deserve better than Hillary or more likely McCain... 

Hans Sandberg

Watch the whole interview on PBS’ website!

Jeremiah Wright's speech at the NAACP dinner in Detroit!



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5




Washington Post-reporter Dana Milbank's discussion of Jeremiah Wright

The Democratic Village Counsel Might Be Getting Ready To Show Hillary the Door

Maureen Dowd wrote on Wednesday that "it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival." (New York Times, April 23, 2008)

Well it might actually happen.

The Huffington Post reports today that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean May Intervene In Dem Primary

"Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid took his comments about the state of the Democratic primary one step further today, suggesting that he and other prominent Democrats would intervene in the race if primary season concludes without a clear winner: Reid said he would consider writing a joint letter with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) demanding that superdelegates make their endorsements public.

'The three of us, we may write a joint letter [to superdelegates],' said Reid. 'We might do individual letters, we are in contact with each other.'"

New York Times Warns Hillary In Editorial

New York Times has endorsed Hillary Clinton, but it looks as if they are having second thoughts, judging from today's editorial The Low Road to Victory:

"The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. 'If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,' the narrator intoned."

Hillary's aggressive campaigning "does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning, New York Times writes and adds the following warning:

"She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama." (Our italics.)

Hans Sandberg

OK, Hillary, You Won Pennsylvania Alright - Now Please Get Out Of the Way!

Hillary Clinton won as expected, but her win was not enough for her to outdo Barack Obama in the democratic primary campaign.

"The senator from Illinois still leads in the number of pledged delegates and the popular vote. He is almost certain to hold the delegate lead and will probably maintain the popular-vote advantage when the primaries end in early June. Perhaps more important, Clinton's campaign is nearly broke, whereas Obama has an enormous amount of money in the bank to throw into the next two contests and beyond." 

(Washington Post, April 23, 2008, my italics.) 

The best she could do for the Democrats and the country would be to use her PA victory to bow out with dignity. But that's not going to happen. She has no business staying in the race other than helping John McCain's campaign. She feels entitled to have her turn at the wheel, and if that means that the Democrats loose in 2008, there is allways 2012. She's driven, and she's got the money (remember her and Bill's 100 million dollar tax return!), so she can wait for more years for her personal triumph. But if Obama wins in November, there is no way she would ever be president.

Also read Maureen Dowd's sharp comment on the Pennsylvania outcome:

Wilting Over Waffles

"Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival. Certainly Howard Dean will be of no use steering her to the exit. It’s like Micronesia telling Russia to denuke."

(Maureen Dowd in New York Times, my italics.)

Hans Sandberg

Baracky - Watch It!