Redstate

I have no doubt that Hillary is the big deal in the democratic race but Obama has one advantage over Hillary which is the fact that he is not nearly as hated/dreaded as Hillary. I dont doubt that Obama would also stand a better chance at getting the independant vote than Hillary would.

Veritas vos liberabit - The truth will set you free

As a conservative, I think this is going to be kind of fun... watching Clinton, Inc tear into Obama. And not just the pure joy that comes from watching democrats try to emolate each other... It will be fun to see how the "black leadership" comes down on this... Obama may not be their first choice, but he IS a black man running for President of the United States... Clinton, Inc. had best be careful, lest they alienate the black vote...

You really can't class incumbents as machine candidates. Even without the advantage of the party machine they are playing on a different level than a challenger. In general it needs something colossal to dislodge them. Witness Lieberman vs whats his name ? Lament ?

Gary hart wasn't done in by the machine. He was done in by being an obvious idiot.1988 made plain to everybody not already in the know just how big an idiot he was. Also he was running not so much on new ideas as being younger and more telegenic than Mondale. Pretty certain either one would have been slaughtered by Reagan, of course not everybody could make raising taxes their key platform plank.

Tsongas was kind of laughable no matter what. Witness as you point out he was the darling of the NPR crowd. Its only in the Post Moveon (PM) times that they have gained the ascendancy they have.

Gore had more appeal to the lefty Dems than the more centrist Bradley. Gore also had more name recognition.

Its more the case that that after a nominee is selected that the machine is easily able to assimilate them. The very process of running the campaign starts the assimilation. They surround themselves with political consultants, campaign advisers. By the time they get to the convention they are machine candidates.

Oh on the republican side there is my favorite example of the Idealistic candidate beating the machine. Lets just say I still like Ike. Taft was the machine candidate and a long time Republican political figure.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

My meaning is that if Clinton, Inc. does what they would normally do to an opponent: lie, cheat, steal, character destruction, etc... using their normal techniques (including, but not limited to making up scandals, accusations of everything under the sun, bald-faced lies about a person), which they have already tried to a small extent with the "did Obama sell cocaine" and "Obama is a muslim" issues, St Hilary might find herself with the democrat nomination, but with a significant part of the party base very angry at her... which could have serious repercussions on down-ticket races... say that the African-American vote for the democrat ticket is 55% instead of the normal 80%+... what does that mean for races like the Louisiana senate seat, or many southern house seats where 2-year old incumbents who barely won in 2006 are now missing a significant part of their voters? I'm not in any way saying black voters would only vote for Obama... I don't believe that at all... but IF Obama is savaged by Hilary's campaign and/or surrogates, she, who has huge negative polling in the first place, might end up tearing down the whole democrat coalition... maybe it's wishful thinking... but it's a possibility...

...the aggrieved constituency - most obviously women and African Americans, but also some subordinate groups - will be worth looking to for future tactical adjustments. The most obvious would be in selection of a VP candidate, but the appearance of tokenism may cause such a move to backfire. Whatever the means, a concerted effort to win over women voters or further alienate them from Democrats in case of an Obama victory, or African Americans in case of a Hillary comeback, might be very worth the effort, and more so than in prior cycles. Some starry-eyed idealists are going to find themselves very frustrated in a couple of months.

Republican interests and Hillary's partly coincide at the moment: Even if she goes down in flames, we can hope that, in addition to mauling Obama personally, she pins him down on policy in a way that he's been trying to avoid. I heartily applaud her campaign's suggestion to New Hampshire voters that they ask Obama about the issues. Just raising the question underlines how far he's gotten on the basis of a big smile and platitudinous happy talk.

...one thing we know for sure is that Hillary isn't going down without a long, bitter fight. She has the cash and organization to stay in this thing until the convention.

“.....women and minorities hardest hit”

But Bill Clinton wasn't the "machine candidate" in 1992. I'm not sure there really was one that year. My recollection is that a lot of top Dems avoided the race on the early assumptions that GHWB would be tough to beat.

By the time it became apparent that he was in trouble, it was too late for them to get back in.

Bill Clinton was the youthful, hopeful insurgent that year. The DC outsider, known only for his rousing convention speech.

Of course, that's no longer true. The Clintons define "machine" nowadays. But we're a long way from 1992.

I think there are a few exceptions to this analysis, though it certainly has been correct several times before, the following recent exceptions are worthy of note.

1976, Carter was not the machine candidate.

And, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree the classification of 1992 Clinton as the machine candidate; he may have not been the idealistic upstart, but I don't think he had the backing of the national democrat establishment in the primary.

I am not a regular listener of Michael Savage but I did have him on in my car the night after the Iowa fiasco. He was insisting that there were a ton of college students who did not live in Iowa but did vote in the caucus because of the weird rules that allowed such things to happen.
His point being that Obama's numbers were not truly reflective of the State of Iowa.
He was also castigating Obama for encouraging them to do so.

Obama skewed the caucus by inviting out-of-state students back to caucus, who are unlikely to vote in Iowa for two reasons.

Students don't show up at the polls.
They're not Iowa residents nor likely to be.

So comparing the recent results to previous elections won't work. All this was was PR fodder.

Now Clinton is stuck between a rock and a hard spot. She can do everything above and below board to tear down Obama and possibly cut off the Democratic candidate at the knees.

Or keep to the high road and just try and differentiate the two which will seem weak and diluted and, almost, Obama'ish.

We're about to see a pulic display of just how egocentric the Clintons are.

I think the real victim in this is the PR bubble around the 'Clinton' political machine, blocking them from remaining a major force in future elections. The Clintons are heavily dependent on influencing a few deep pocket donors to keep their throne. If it appears that they can't deliver results they'll lose that influence.

That's why the Republicans are so smart to differentiate on smaller issues and remain lockstep on the larger ones. Infighting now would just hurt perception among independent voters in the general election.

My problem with the analysis is not historical. I think you have accurately recorded the past campaigns. My problem is that none of the past Machine Candidates were as despised among Democrats as Hillary. She has not captured hearts and minds in her party. Instead, her inevitability is based (almost) completely on her Stalinistic control of the machine. A lot of Democrats don't like that. A lot of Democrats.

She and Bill have ruthlessly controlled the machine, combining the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove. And she ain't the Velvet Glove.

The idea of inevitability lasted longer with the Democrats than it did with Republicans. Initially, McCain was the Inevitable Republican. The mantle almost moved to Romney because he had the money and organization.

Democrats had to wait for Iowa of the Inevitability Cloak to drop a bit for Hillary. It may have only fluttered and not actually dropped, but her well-documented lack of warmth OR scruples doesn't play well. Her willingness to personally stoop to slime her opponents reveals her pettiness. And her voting record on Iraq has left her very vulnerable in the Party.

In the campaigns that you discussed, I can see only one campaign where the Machine Candidate had serious negatives going into the election, and that was the 1980 Carter campaign. His loss was pretty much assumed because of fuel prices and inflation. Kennedy offered himself as a not-so-serious alternative. The problem was that Kennedy had/has very serious negatives for the Kopechne problem, which had happened only 11 years earlier in 1969. 11 years was not enough to rehabilitate Kennedy. (Hopefully, 38 years is not enough time to rehabilitate him. Politically, that is. He can quit drinking any time.) So his negatives were greater than Carter's.

But I think you're right. Obama has to do something pretty darned spectacular to overcome the Clinton control of the machine. It may be possible to do that, since Hillary's negatives are so significant.

Here's another thought: The Machine is uncertain, and therefore not easily controlled.

Do Dems continue to condemn the war in Iraq because they feel that it is immoral? It has become a loser for everyone except Democrats.

Was the immoral issue only significant because it looked like Bush was vulnerable? It certainly is less significant now that Iraq is going well, and Bush is much stronger vis a vis the vetos.

Can the party continue to alienate the citizenry by looking weak on defense? A lot of folks are concerned about a nuclear Iran.

Does the party continue to alienate the citizenry by threatening to increase taxes to pay for programs that the citizens don't really want? SCHIP showed the Dems that they cannot assume that the nation is willing to go socialist.

And let's not ignore the push/pull of illegal immigration.

If the Machine was healthy, would Pelosi and Reid have the most visible leadership positions in Congress? Maybe not. Perhaps the IQ requirements would be a tad bit higher.

I would like to see a similar analysis of Republicans. I don't think the Machine is quite as powerful in the Republican party, Reagan 1980 being the most notable exception. But evangelical Christians are a voting block that keeps the Wall Street/Main Street Machine from dominating the elections. But the evangelicals have shown no interest in creating their own machine.

I'm surprised you left this one out, as it seems to be the epitome of what you're talking about.