The New Republic
The Autopsy Report
by John B. Judis
Exploring the political reasons for Hillary Clinton's defeat.
Post Date Wednesday, May 21, 2008
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Critics within the campaign have singled out Clinton's decision to run in 2007 as the heir apparent. That was important, but nothing compared to the way she handled the issue of the Iraq war and the possibility of war with Iran. During the campaign's first year--before the Iowa caucus in January--the principal, and perhaps only, way that her opponents (particularly Obama) could undercut her candidacy was through criticizing her support of the resolution authorizing the Bush administration to use force against Iraq.
At the time, the issue of the war overshadowed all other concerns. This was especially true among the party activists who would staff the campaigns and go to the caucuses, and among the Internet donors who would, as it turned out, fund Obama's effort. John Edwards, who had actually been a member in absentia of the Intelligence Committee and had acted far more irresponsibly than Clinton, cut off criticism of himself by apologizing for his vote in favor of the resolution. But Clinton--looking ahead, perhaps, to the general election--refused to apologize. That reinforced an impression that, on an issue as central as the war, she was willing to put politics before principle, and, in so doing, she sustained Obama's campaign at a time when he was making little headway in national polls.
Still, Clinton, who regularly voted in 2007 for resolutions to set a deadline on the war, looked poised to put the issue behind her--until September, when she backed a resolution introduced by Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Jon Kyl directed at Iran's "destabilizing influence" in Iraq and at its Revolutionary Guard. The sponsors watered down the original resolution, which had supported using armed force to "combat, contain, and roll back" the Iranians, but what was important was not the specific wording, but the political context of the resolution. At the time, Vice President Dick Cheney, with Lieberman's support, was beating war drums against Iran; and the resolution, like the infamous Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, seemed to be the kind of measure that could eventually serve as a justification, however tenuous, for another preventive war. Of all the Democratic candidates, Clinton alone voted for it.
Like her refusal to apologize for the October 2002 war resolution, her vote on Kyl-Lieberman may have stemmed from her ignoring the primary and thinking about the general election, or--as Helene Cooper suggested in The New York Times--it might have been an attempt to win support from "the pro-Israel lobby," which strongly backed the resolution. Whatever the case, her vote was a political disaster. It confirmed the worst fears of anti-war Democrats about her foreign policy inclinations. Her rivals denounced her vote, and she had to answer for it in ads, mailings, and debates through early January. It gave Obama an enormous push at a time when he seemed to be floundering and laid the groundwork for his success in fund-raising and in the Iowa caucuses.
Clinton's inability to put her Iraq vote behind her was also a key factor in Obama's pick-up of the important Moveon.org endorsement and in his continued success among young and upscale white voters who believed the war in Iraq was the most important issue. In the Connecticut primary on February 5, for instance, the 31 percent of voters who said Iraq was the most important issue went 63 to 35 percent for Obama. He might still have had an edge among these voters, but it almost assuredly wouldn't have been as great if Clinton had quickly apologized for her vote and rejected the Kyl-Lieberman resolution.
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http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f1281d27-d950-4dfd-a59b-66e905918d20
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