It Couldn't Be Going Better

Whether or not there is a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, it may sometimes prove a useful heuristic to interpret some events as if there were. We might call this the "conspiratorial stance." (Apologies to Daniel Dennett.)

So here's an application of the conspiratorial stance to Obama's recent troubles. Suppose you are the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, and suppose you want your candidate to run against Obama in November, avoiding a match-up against HRC. Naturally, you'd want to provide as cushy a ride for Obama as you could, just up until it became all but mathematically certain that he would garner the Democratic nomination. At that point, you would then start to lodge the pro forma illegitimate attacks that have by now become your stock in trade.

Your reasons for this timing are twofold. First, and more obviously, you want to maximize the time you have to tarnish Obama's character and attack his politics while minimizing the risk of actually eliminating him as your challenger (and thus having to face an ostensibly more formidable HRC in November).

Second, and more subtly, you recognize that a desperate HRC will be highly incentivized to use any perceived scandal associated with Obama's campaign to her own advantage, with the result that she will legitimate the basis of the scandal. This legitimation will have obvious utility when the "scandals" are re-raised toward November. [1]

And indeed this is exactly the pattern we've seen. Right around the time it became more or less clear that HRC's late-contest wins wouldn't be enough to turn the primary tide, up came the first major "scandal" of Obama's campaign, compliments of Jeremiah Wright. [2] Then, as the Wright matter started to lose steam, Obama's unremarkable but admittedly clumsy articulation of a fairly banal point about class resentments is transmogrified, first by conservative hacks, then by a desperate HRC, into a sign that Obama is "out of touch" with "normal" Americans.

So, again, far be it from me to say there's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy afoot to maximize the chances of McCain's running against a thoroughly weakened Barack (cough--Hussein!--cough) Obama. I'm just saying that if there were...

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NOTES

1. If a large swath of Democrats jump on board, it will be hard come November to claim the "scandal" in issue is mere partisan swift-boating.

2. Of course Obama's relationship with Wright has been well known among insiders for years, as has been the nature of Wright's fiery, politically and racially charged oratory. In fact the infamous remarks that were only just being placed in controversy in mid-March of 2008 dated back to 2001-2003.

Comments

[Stuart Buck]

Or -- Occam's razor -- given that Republicans didn't have any way of forcing Democrats in various states to have voted for Obama (one of the premises here), it could just be that the Hillary camp itself is growing more desperate.

No, Stuart, I'm afraid appeals to methodological niceties like Occam's razor are impotent before the consummate soundness of my conspiracy theory.