Obama or Clinton?

Interesting article here about the unelectability of Hillary Clinton. In match-ups against the Republican front-runners, Clinton loses where Obama would win (or at least is in much greater danger of it). The argument then is that if you're dead set on Clinton then vote for her, but if you're on the fence, the smart choice is for Obama. Clinton is only viewed favorably by 50% of the population, and disliked by 46%.

As a brief qualifier to his basic point, he says:

You can imagine Obama running a horrible general election campaign and becoming less popular. No doubt his favorable ratings would drop a bit in the face of Republican attacks, as would hers.

But actually, I disagree about Clinton dropping at similar rates.

Clinton has already hit rock bottom in terms of public perception. Everyone knows who Hillary Clinton is, and formed a hard opinion of her years ago. The reason she looks like a bad match-up with poor ratings is because she's been sent through the Republican wringer already.

But even after 16 years of attacks, books and FOX news, she won't budge below 50%, and might even start to creep up a bit as she gets her message out. She's already been swift-boated within an inch of her life, and she holds approval with half the population? Thats actually pretty impressive. Bill Clinton himself rarely got above 60, and that was considered good.

So while her favorable ratings could fluctuate, the changes she'd see in polls this year would be very different from the ones he'd be bound to see. Obama is the golden boy right now, but that won't last forever. Its hard to remember now, but when he won the primary, John Kerry was a war hero made of steel. By the time they were done with him, he was a pathetic flip-flopper. The truth is none of us really know that much about Obama, except that he seems really interesting and promising. It's the political honeymoon for the new face. But that phase will pass, and fair or not, he'll get a beating, and look like a different person to us once he's through it.

All this comes when I'm having second thoughts about him. I'm beginning to notice that while Obama does great speeches, he's pretty lightweight when it comes to policy. When you put aside all the media frenzy about being Clinton being too frigid, etc, and just listen to her speak, she has a really impressive grasp on policy. Obama is inspirational, but I can't help think the job requires more than that.

Someone wrote to me on Reddit-

To me the reasons for voting for Obama in 08 sound a lot like the reasons people voted for Bush in 00: likeability, electability, representing an outsider's perspective, hope and change. Not that that's all bad, but this time 'round there are some serious fucking issues to be dealt with that being a handsome black man won't solve.

Not that being black matters either way, but otherwise, good point. I like and am more persuaded by Obama's image far more than I ever was by Bush's. But it remains that, an image. As much as I love the guy's speeches, I'm getting a little disturbed by how warm, fuzzy and vague everything he says is. He's great at waxing poetic, and in a movie he'd make a great president. But the real job has to involve a lot more than that.

I was just watching the SC debates, and Clinton came out with all kinds of great ideas for the economy -a 90-day moratorium on interests rates to try to make workouts for families close to losing their homes, energy bill tax credits, etc etc. She really had it down, it was impressive. They were some of the first good, concrete policy ideas I've heard this whole season.

Then Obama spoke, and I think he started out with a long, rising analogy to Martin Luther King, before offering a simple plan that sounded like a really basic version of Clinton's, but with less detail and thought. And as good as he was with the abstractions, for the first time I thought, "You know what? That's just not enough".