Sensible Liberals

Eugene Robinson writing in the NYT gives it to Edwards by a blog-length:

[…]

So what do the Web sites HillaryClinton.com, BarackObama.com and JohnEdwards.com tell us about their namesakes? At first glance, they seem to confirm what we think we already know. Clinton’s site evokes a super-competent juggernaut, with every base covered and every hair in place. Obama’s is very much a work in progress. And Edwards’s Web site suggests the patience, attention to detail and willingness to take risks that you would expect from a trial lawyer who rose from nothing to become a self-made millionaire.

Clinton and Obama are first-name candidates on their sites — “Hillary” says this, “Barack” says that. Edwards is more formal — he’s “John Edwards” or “Senator Edwards,” if you please. Perhaps that’s a necessary reminder, since he’s not, technically speaking, a senator anymore.

As for overall tone and scope, it’s hard to evaluate Obama’s campaign cyber-HQ because it’s so clearly a provisional, placeholding site with not much but a couple of videos (the announcement; a biography) and a big button you can click to become a contributor. There’s a link to his Senate reelection Web site— he would have to run in 2010 — and if you find the link and click through, you get a fuller picture of the man.

The Clinton and Edwards sites, as one might expect, are largely about the business of getting elected. Clinton’s home page tells you how to “Join Team Hillary” or become a “HillRaiser” of campaign funds. Edwards likewise prominently advises how to join his team, but his home page also focuses on some issues — he’s against global warming, we learn, and opposes an escalation of the war in Iraq.

The real difference is depth and ambition. Both Clinton and Obama (he on his Senate campaign Web site) say they want to have a dialogue with the American people about how best to solve the nation’s problems. But Edwards has already started his conversation with the nation. His Web site is an exercise in social networking that includes not only a blog, where surfers can post their thoughts, but also cyber-diaries written by Edwards’s family members.

“The soft rain of last night has left the field behind the house dewy with a low fog. Maybe the gossamer meadow is the reason I feel contemplative this morning,” begins a recent entry by Elizabeth Edwards. Her diary posts generally draw more comments than her husband’s.

Somehow, it’s hard to imagine Hillary Clinton waxing about any gossamer meadow.

Edwards’s Web site is less YouTube than MySpace. It tries to take advantage of the Internet’s great paradox — that a technology so devoid of human contact can nevertheless create a sense of intimacy and connection.

So, Mama’s playing it safe, Obama’s not quite ready and Edwards is up to something interesting. In the “Second Life” sense, at least. We’ll see about the real world.

I’m hoping (though it’s a hope based on not much actual foundation) that Obama and Clinton are being encouraged to stand as stalking horses for Clark/Edwards, on the principle that they’ll keep the likes of Fox and the Right’s other swiftboating squads busy while the real candidates do an end run round the opposition. Let’s face it , Clinton or Obama won’t get through the primaries, because the voters just don’t trust them.

This is the most deliberately, wilfully and blindly incompetent administration ever: they’re almost proud of it, incompetence is a strategy for them – remember Grover Norquist‘s famous axiom about ‘drowning the government in a bathtub’? The Republicans refined that concept slightly and now they’ve almost but not quite waterboarded the government to death. The American public seems desperate for some saviour to rush in, free the captive and arrest the torturers, someone who knows the difference between right and wrong and knows what do do about it . Even more imporatant, that someone has to be someone the public trusts.

I can’t see how the DLC can hope Hillary will be the candidate even though her adverts are all over the blogs like a rash: no-one trusts her, everybody hates her, even her own side. If she’s depending on the loyalty of the sisterhood and female votes to carry her through, well she’s shit out of luck. Republican women hate her (and paradoxically enough, the whole ‘stand by your man’ schtick post-Lewinsky made them hate her all the more) and Democratic women don’t seem to be much moire enamoured, what with her support for the war and carefully triangulated non-positions on choice and reproductive freedoms.

As for Obama – other than oodles of charisma and photegeneity, what has he got? If elected he’d be another Tony Blair : a one term politician with little experience in national or international politics and with bugger-all managerial experience. And we all know how that turned out. Obama talks a good fight, he looks good, but can you see him running the country yet? 2 elections down the road when he has some solid experience under his belt, yes. Now, no – and I’ve yet to mention the regrettably ever-present possibility of a far-right assassin, something that goes for Hillary too.

Damn it. I hate it that the most viable ‘liberal’ candidates (and I use the scare quotes deliberately, because neither Edwards nor Clark fit my definition of liberal) candidates will be, yet again, white, wealthy middle class men.

But unless some deus ex machina in the shape of the perfect Dem candidate comes along, that’s what’ll happen.