I’ve spent way too much time the past few days in futile email arguments with Clinton supporters who are certain (1) Obama supporters are not thinking rationally; (2) Obama supporters don’t realize how nasty the GOP will be on him in the general election; (3) Obama supporters aren’t real Democrats.

Let’s take the first one. The phrase “cult of personality” is getting applied to Obama supporters because many are young and enthusiastic. (Jeez, let’s just shoot them now. ) Cora Currier has a good response to this at The Nation. See also Michael Tomasky:

Any time you get millions of young people involved in a project, it takes on the feel of a movement. It becomes a little idealistic. Its defining features do tend to include optimism – even perhaps a somewhat unrealistic optimism – and do not tend to include steely pragmatism.

I would have thought these were good things! Would it be better that young people were once again floating along on the usual currents of dissolution and apathy? Would dark pessimism about the country be a preferable state? And most of all, is it incumbent upon the candidate, having inspired this reaction in people, to tamp it down?

Only Democrats could get themselves overwrought because a Democratic candidate inspires too much enthusiasm.

Jim Sleeper has a lovely essay at TPM Cafe called “Obama, Crowds, and Power” that I urge you to read. It begins:

As a political movement gathers what seems to be irresistible force, it rides currents of anger as well as affirmation. How it balances and channels those currents determines its fate. A movement can be fired up by outraged decency, but it will come to little — or worse — if its participants spend more time and energy venting the outrage than advancing the decency.

I can understand why us lefties might be a bit squeamish about big, loud, boisterous, and enthusiastic mass movements. In recent years all of the mass moving has been coming from the Right, fueled by resentment, hate, and fear. “Movement conservatism” has always seemed nakedly negative and destructive to me. But Sleeper steps back and takes a broader view. He provides examples of big, emotional mass movement that did good — mostly because their leadership kept them focused on creating something positive, not just tearing down what they hate.

As for item #2 — please. Like they’re not going to be nasty to Hillary Clinton?

On to item #3 — Paul Lukasiak argues that Clinton has more primary and caucus votes than Obama. Really? John Cole explains,

Apparently, if you only count votes up to Super Tuesday, discount every state that had a caucus, only go by the exit polling, and eliminate any voters who weren’t registered Democrats, then Hillary Clinton actually has the popular vote lead. In other news, based on exit polling and early voting from 2004 President Kerry will be running for reelection.

Robert Farley:

Apparently, pledged delegates totals are illegitimate, because some states have open primaries. Consequently, it is the responsibility of the superdelegates to overturn the preferred pledged delegate candidate if another candidate wins the national popular vote among “self-identified Democrats.” When caucuses are excluded, Michigan and Florida included, and overall totals determined by evaluating exit poll data rather than counting votes, Clinton wins!

To say this aloud is to refute it, but it is nevertheless generating excitement at TalkLeft. For good measure, Lukasiak throws in the “but can Barack Obama REALLY win California and New York?” meme. Christ, the stench of desperation is sickening.

I don’t know about California, but New Yorkers will vote to elect a Democratic potted plant before they will vote for a Republican.

Today the Clinton campaign is calling Obama a plagiarist; see Jeff Fecke to see why the charge is bogus.

This is not what the Democratic Party needs. First, it’s creating charges that will be used against Obama by the Right if he’s the nominee. Second, I am damn tired of politicians who can win campaigns only by telling lies about the other guy.

The Clinton campaign may be in trouble in Texas, which is a must-win for Clinton if she’s going to stay in contention. Matthew Mosk writes at WaPo:

Supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are worried that convoluted delegate rules in Texas could water down the impact of strong support for her among Hispanic voters there, creating a new obstacle for her in the must-win presidential primary contest.

Hilzoy:

When I read this, I dissolved in giggles after the first sentence. It was that part about the Texas delegate selection rules “creating a new obstacle for her” that got me. In what sense are the Texas rules a “new obstacle?” Were they only recently passed? Not as far as I can tell — here, for instance, is a pdf about them from August 2007, which should have given the Clinton campaign ample time to get up to speed. While I was having fun thinking of possible analogies — would I describe the existence of the Pacific Ocean as “creating a new obstacle” for my plan to walk from Baltimore to Beijing? or the fact that five is a prime number as “creating a new obstacle” to my proving that it is a multiple of two? –my co-blogger publius was actually writing the post I might have written, only funnier:

“Good lord, let’s see if I have this right. The Clinton campaign decides to cede every post-Super Tuesday state to Obama under the theory that Texas and Ohio will be strong firewalls. After – after – implementing this Rudy-esque strategy, they “discovered” that the archaic Texas rules will almost certainly result in a split delegate count (at best).

While they were busy “discovering” the rules, however, the Obama campaign had people on the ground in Texas explaining the system, organizing precincts, and making Powerpoints. I know because I went to one of these meetings a week ago. I should have invited Mark Penn I suppose. (ed. Maybe foresight is an obsolete macrotrend.)”

Note to self: If I ever run for office and base my campaign on the idea that I am ready to lead from day one, I must remember to actually run an effective campaign.

That last part is what gets to me. Hillary Clinton’s primary selling point is that she’d be a better manager of the nation’s business than Barack Obama. But the way the campaigns are being run says otherwise.

Russ Wellen of Scholars and Rogues says that the Clinton campaign is trying to guilt-trip the Obama supports into voting for Clinton.

The questions beg to be asked: Where do Hillary’s supporters get off trying to foist a candidate on us whose foreign policy sell-by date has expired? And whose strategy seems to be based on calling in markers on her husband’s administration?

Furthermore, how dare they make women who choose not to vote for her feel like they’re letting all women down? Shame on you, Hillary supporters, for shaming them.

If Hillary is nominated, Obama supporters will be expected to fall in line behind Hillary just because she’s a Democrat. But, no doubt, they’ll still be licking their wounds from the defeat of a candidate whose ambition was leavened by what looks, for all intents and purposes, like genuine idealism.

A defeat borne of strong-arming superdelegates, as well as an after-the-fact certification of the Florida and Michigan primary votes, will leave many Obama supporters in no mood to vote for Hillary. But pressure from not just Hillary supporters, but Democrats at large who are preparing for such an eventuality, has been ongoing.

How dare Democrats desperate to regain the White House at any cost guilt-trip reluctant Obama supporters into voting for Hillary? The onus isn’t on the latter if the Democrats fail to take the White House — it’s on the party for driving a lemon of a candidate out of the showroom.

Also, do read Wellen before you leave a comment here telling me how bleeping accomplished Hillary Clinton is and how you can’t understand why I might have doubts about her. He sums it up pretty well. See also Gary Younge, “It’s up to the superdelegates to prove Democrats believe in democracy.”

On a certain well-known blogger-politico listserv recently there was a long and sometimes acrimonious thread on Barack Obama’s alleged “cult of personality.” It was coming from the conceit that Clinton supporters are rational and knowledgeable and Obama supporters are brainwashed culties. Obama supporters, the argument went, don’t understand the Real World and can’t be trusted to support Clinton when Her Inevitable Majesty gets the nomination.

But some of us — a majority, actually — argued that it was the Clintonistas, not the Obamaniacs, who need the reality check. Whether we are honest enough to admit it or not, we’re all thinking with our guts these days. Clinton supporters, IMO, have wrapped their candidate in a mantle of competence and accomplishment that I just plain don’t see. Going back to the way she handled the 1993 health care proposal, and continuing through to her support of the Iraq War resolution, she has a history of having to be colossally wrong before she can get things right.

There are a number of news stories out now that indicate the Clinton campaign has been grossly mismanaged, while Obama’s has been running along like a well-oiled machine. See in particular Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic, here and here, and Michelle Cottle at The New Republic, here. From beginning to end, the Clinton campaign has been a story of mistakes in judgment and mismanagement of resources.

Yet she argues she’d be the better manager of the nation’s business. I say results speak louder than words.

Another argument I’ve seen made against Obama is that, somehow, he’ll be another George Bush because he’s running on personality and charisma rather than on policy proposals. It’s true that his speeches do not tend to be policy wonk laundry lists, as Clinton’s tend to be, but you can find quite a lot of substance if you check out the issues section of his campaign site.

As Matt Yglesias wrote,

One anti-Obama meme that I notice has gotten a lot of support even among people sympathetic to his cause is the notion that he’s somehow shallow or insufficiently well-versed in policy matters. Obviously, I can’t crawl into either candidate’s brain and take a look around, but this idea doesn’t seem to me to be especially well-supported by the evidence. Instead, it seems to draw support from a kind of implicit Law of Conservation of Virtues — the pretty girl can’t be smart, the not-so-good-looking guy must be really nice — that has people notice that Clinton is well-versed in policy but isn’t a charismatic figure, and Obama is charismatic so it “must” be that he’s not well-versed in policy. He’s cool and she’s the nerd.

This suits the media’s taste for parallels and lazy narratives into which events can be squeezed. But there’s really not much basis for it.

In today’s New York Times, Chris Suellentrop writes that the Clintons have an obsession with discretion and loyalty.

Remember that GQ article about Hillary Clinton that the Clinton campaign successfully scuttled by threatening to restrict access to Bill Clinton for another planned piece? (Here’s Ben Smith’s Politico report on the controversy for the forgetful.) The author of the scuttled article was Joshua Green, a senior editor for The Atlantic, who now says it “focused on the inner workings of Clinton’s presidential campaign” and in particular on the “controversial role” of Patti Solis Doyle, the campaign manager whom Mrs. Clinton recently replaced.

“Clinton chose her to manage the presidential campaign for reasons that should now be obvious: above all, Clinton prizes loyalty and discipline, and Solis Doyle demonstrated both traits, if little else,” Green writes in an online article at The Atlantic. “This suggests to me that for all the emphasis Clinton has placed on executive leadership in this campaign, her own approach is a lot closer to the current president’s than her supporters might like to admit.”

Joshua Green argues that Clinton’s campaign from the start was hamstrung by arrogance.

Such arrogance led directly to the idea that Clinton could simply project an air of inevitability and be assured her party’s nomination. If she wins—as she very well might—it will be in spite of her original approach. As one former Clinton staffer put it to me last spring: “There was an assumption that if you were a major donor and wanted to be an ambassador, go to state dinners with the queen—unless you were an outright fool, you were going to go with Hillary, whether you liked her or not. The attitude was ‘Where else are they going to go?’”

The Clintons were slow to take Barack Obama seriously, and they’ve been playing catch up ever since. Green also tells the tale that Senator Clinton has surrounded herself with long-time associates who are more loyal than they are competent. Recent shakeups in her campaign staff probably should have happened months ago.

I’m not suggesting that a President Hillary Clinton would turn out to be George Bush III. But if she were to run her administration the same way she has run her campaign … well, she might fall short of the degree of transparency and accountability most of us want. (See also Pam Spalding.)

After yesterday’s primaries, I understand that it has become mathematically unlikely that Clinton will be the nominee. It’s not over yet, and she could still pull it out, but the odds are growing against it.

So, can we trust the Clinton supporters to rally behind Obama, if he’s the nominee?

As I posted last night, there’s a new Pew Research poll out that shows twice as many Obama supporters have a favorable, rather than an unfavorable, impression of Clinton (62% vs. 31%). By the same two-to-one margin (60%-30%), Clinton supporters express favorable opinions of Obama. So this idea that Obama supporters would not support Clinton is just plain hysteria on the part of those rational and sensible Clinton supporters.

At this point I don’t mind if the nomination campaign goes on a bit longer. Let the chips fall where the chips are gonna fall. The longer there are two Dem contenders, the less time the wingnuts will have to organize a swift boat campaign against the nominee. I will support the Dem nominee, whoever wins. But, yeah, I’m rooting for Obama.

Update: See Buzzflash, “Obama and Clinton: Hillary’s Campaign Had No Plan ‘B’“:

First, the Clinton campaign hierarchy consists of insiders from the ’90s who have not adapted to changing campaign tactics. They ran with an “inevitability Rose Garden” strategy and had no plan “B.” Since February 5, when Hillary had said it would all be “wrapped up,” they have been frantically improvising. Obama risked his campaign on a consistent and unwavering message; the Clinton campaign has tried on several of them, discarding them when they didn’t have resonance.

In short, the Obama narrative ended up beating — as of now — the Clinton narrative. As more people are exposed to the Obama narrative — whether you are turned on by it or not — more people have backed him. The Clinton narrative has been choppy and ad hoc since Super Tuesday, and has paid a price for it.

Secondly, one of the major themes of the Clinton campaign has been that the New York Senator is “battle-tested” and better prepared to take on McCain and the right wing attacks. But that has been turned on its head by the fact that a junior Senator from Illinois has ended up putting the Clinton campaign on the ropes. It’s hard to argue that you can demolish John McCain when you can’t decisively defeat an opponent who came from nowhere, with no national name recognition, in your own party’s primary.