Can Hillary save the Democratic Party from her supporters?

Jean Marbella

August 28, 2008

The good news after Hillary Clinton's stemwinder of a convention speech is that at least one Hillary voter has been persuaded to shift her support to Obama.

The bad news is that her name is Hillary Clinton.

What's it going to take for the rest of them? Flowers? A weekly delivery of their preferred late-night consolation, Haagen-Dazs or Grey Goose? A promise that Hillary gets her old West Wing office back? Plus a Supreme Court nomination? And a thank-you-Hillary-for-completing-me in every speech, from the inaugural address on through every State of the Union?

What's it going to take to get these Hillary-or-die Democrats to love the one they're with?

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The fact that Clinton cowboyed up at the Democratic National Convention the other night, swallowing her primary defeat and urging her supporters to embrace her one-time rival, Barack Obama, hasn't persuaded all of them to follow the leader.

No, the Clinton Cling-ons live for another day in the galaxy.

They're still wearing their NObama buttons, or they've booked flights out of Denver before (Not) The One makes his acceptance speech. They've dug in their heels, they're going to be busy washing their hair on Nov. 4, they're pounding toward the vault like a gang of Shawn Johnsons determined to stick their landings - in McCain's camp.

Some of this stubborn display, no doubt, you can chalk up to the media's need to keep a conflict going, to find all-too-willing participants who will play out the What-About-Hillary narrative that has hovered over convention coverage. If you were to turn in a story saying that just about every delegate in the Pepsi Center fell in line behind Clinton toward the greater goal of Obama, here's what your typical editor would say: Bor-ing! (Also: Scary! As in, who are these placid people speaking as one, and what have they done to the real Democrats?) So after Clinton's rousing, to-the-barricades speech, we hear not only from those who heeded her call but from those who I suppose are going to hold their breath until they turn blue - or, in this case, red.

But the Hillary holdouts are not just a media invention. They do exist, and you can be sure the McCain campaign will provide them every opportunity to be heard. Presumably, they'll better articulate their change of heart and party than the Clinton supporter who has already starred in a McCain ad, but at a later news conference seemed to think that he was pro-abortion rights even though he has vowed to work to overturn Roe v. Wade.

If nothing else, that ship-jumper has provided what I consider the word of the week so far: "post-rational." That is how MSNBC's rising star, Rachel Maddow, characterizes this kind of leap toward a candidate who stands against one of their core beliefs. Post-rational, as in, far beyond rational or even irrational.

Maybe all voters are essentially post-rational anyway. People say they want to hear about the issues, but in the end, I think voting comes as much if not more from the heart than the brain - particularly today, when so much of campaign coverage is of the up-close-and-personal variety. Those video tributes we've seen at the convention would be entirely at home as part of the Olympics - all those struggles overcome, all those anecdotes wryly related. There's this mutual, and entirely false, projection: candidates are just like us; never mind the fact that, no, they usually have more power and wealth and someone to drive them around and pick up their dry cleaning.

It's not coincidence that Clinton got one of her biggest boosts of the primary campaign when she teared up at that New Hampshire diner, finally revealing a crack in her formidable armor and letting voters think, hey, I feel that overwhelmed sometimes, too.

Clinton, more so perhaps than other candidates, seemed to serve as a mirror to many of her supporters. In her, they saw their own struggles, particularly in the workplace. Any woman who has ever been dissed in a meeting by a scornful man, or seen men get promoted for the same kind of ambition and toughness that gets them only a reputation for being "difficult," surely felt a measure of kinship, regardless of who they actually voted for.

So I guess I can understand the reluctance to let go at this point. Not that all her holdouts are women, but many are. Maybe that old saying about loss is true: women mourn, men replace.

I would also turn, by way of explanation, to the legendary Japanese story of the 47 ronin, as samurais without leaders are called, that I learned all too much about as my husband, Stephen Hunter, was researching his last novel, The 47th Samurai. Bereft of their leader, the untethered warriors plot and successfully execute their revenge.

An honorable ending? Perhaps. But then they all kill themselves.