“I regret the way that this matter has been used,’ Clinton told reporters. ‘The comments about it are baseless and divisive. I was personally offended at the approach taken that was not only misleading but unnecessarily hurtful.’” When asked about Congressman Jim Clyburn’s dissatisfaction with her recent remarks on the civil rights movement, Sen. Hillary Clinton suggests she‘s the aggrieved party here, and, worse, that a vast Obama conspiracy is to blame for people — including Clyburn — finding fault with her remarks. “She suggested reporters consider the sources of the criticism, much of which has come from the black community. ‘I think it clearly came from Senator Obama’s campaign and I don’t think it’s the kind of debate we should be having in our campaign,’ she said.” Wow. I mean, I’m running out of ways to be surprised here. Isn’t this the exact same cynical and misleading strategy that President Clinton just accused Senator Obama of running? This is just getting depressing.
Update: On Meet the Press, Sen. Hillary Clinton continues the “Vast Obama Conspiracy” defense. “‘This is, you know, a, a — an unfortunate story line that the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully,’ she said. ‘They’ve been putting out talking points. They’ve been making this — they’ve been telling people, in a very selective way, what the facts are.” Uh, swift-boat much? What evidence do you have that the Obama team is responsible for people finding your recent actions dismaying? And why not just say your words could be misconstrued, apologize, and move on? Instead, we get: “Clearly, we know from media reports that the Obama campaign is deliberately distorting this.” What media reports? (The closest I could find was this, when an Obama spokesman suggested there might be a “pattern” here. Well, given Billy Shaheen, mandatory minimums, “imaginary hip black friend,” and such readily misconstruable remarks as “fairy tale” and “kid,” and the LBJ “It takes a president” history lesson, I can see why one might think so. But I see little other evidence that the Obama campaign is responsible for the general dismay surrounding the Clintons right now. These people have no sense of shame.
Update 2: Obama’s response: “‘The notion that this is our doing is ludicrous.” Meanwhile, the Clinton people point to this memo, drawn up by Amaya Smith, Obama’s press secretary in SC but not released to the press. Sigh…this may well be the dumb mistake the Clintons have been baiting the Obama team to make. Still, having read through the memo, I’m not seeing any “deliberate distortions” of the Clintons’ behavior, so much as a litany of the unfortunate incidents that have been emanating from the Clinton camp. (I hadn’t heard the Trippi v. Penn “cocaine” one. Cute.) Plus, the memo seems to follow the concerned responses of leaders such as Jim Clyburn and Donna Brazile — in fact, that’s the newspeg. Hard to say that it created them.
Update 3: Hillary Clinton is defended by BET’s Robert Johnson, who also sees fit to bring up the drug spectre again. “‘As an African American, I’m frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won’t say what he was doing but he said it in his book’…Clinton’s campaign says Johnson was not referring to Obama’s past drug use. Meanwhile, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, another African-American supporter of Clinton, said of the comments, ‘Sometimes people say things that aren’t sanctioned…I can’t speak for Bob.’“
Update 4: Johnson — previously a stalwart foe of the estate tax, by the way — also went on to compare Obama to Sidney Poitier, and not in a good way. Yep, a classy day all around for Team Clinton. I have to think this’ll backfire.
Update 5: Johnson’s official response to his earlier comment: “Johnson said it would be ‘simply irresponsible and incorrect’ to read his words that way. ‘My comments today were referring to Barack Obama’s time spent as a community organizer, and nothing else.’” Now, read back into the original quote, that clearly doesn’t make a lick of sense. But who’s got his back? Why, Bill Clinton: “I think we have to take him at his word.” It’s not a lie if you believe it, right, Mr. President?
what do you think the chances are of this flap actually getting out into the electorate and harming her chances in SC? where do you think the race there now stands?
Hard to say. The most recent poll has Obama up 12 on Clinton in SC, but, after NH, I’ve temporarily lost my faith in polling. Still, I think he definitely has a good shot there regardless.
As for this sort of flap, it’s hard to figure out what game the Clinton camp is playing, or how it will redound in South Carolina (other than that it’s obviously sickening, and plays like all the unfair nastiness the Clintons have — rightfully — accused Republicans of in the past.) It seems they could just be trying to goad Obama into a dumb mistake, borne of anger. (Al Gore did this sort of rope-a-dope with Bill Bradley all the time – Gore would spew forth a bunch of flat-out untruths about Bradley’s record, and then when Bradley finally blew his top, Gore would act like he was being attacked unreasonably.) This would go a long way toward explaining what both Clintons have done today, even though Obama himself hasn’t said a word about this stuff.
Another theory is that they’re just pulling a Bush here. They know what they’re saying is patently untrue (How could they not? The Bill Clinton quotes are particularly egregious.), and they know they’ll probably get called on it in the media (because we all know the MSM unfairly hates the Clintons, right?) But the legions of Democratic voters who don’t bother following all the nuances, and have been conditioned to defend Bill & Hillary against all right-wing comers, will respond to the message regardless. I’ve been reading a lot of comment boards this past week, and you see a lot of angry Clinton voters popping up to virulently attack Obama in ways that don’t hold up to even the barest of scrutiny. (He’s a right-wing stalking horse, for example.)
They could also be thinking — and this gets really sad — that any time the coverage becomes mostly about race, the Clintons benefit nationwide, even if it means losing South Carolina. That’s really low-down, but they’re obviously aware of it. (See the last paragraph of the Lizza piece, where a Clinton pollster obliquely references exploiting a perceived divide between blacks and Hispanics.)
So who knows just yet? The only thing I can really be sure is it took all of a week for the Clinton campaign to start wallowing in the gutter. It was bad enough when the “people from Hope” started ranting about “false hopes”. It was worse when the man the GOP called “Slick Willie” started suggesting Obama was a slick charlatan. But between the Clinton half-truths, the fake mailers, the Giuliani fear-baiting, the vote suppression, the racial/gender push-buttons, and now this…I never really thought I’d be the one saying this, but when the Clinton machine has its back to the wall, it can get downright craven.
If it’s the politics of hope against the politics of the gutter, I have no problem making my stand against this godawful GOP-worthy garbage. The Clintons have shamed their legacy.
I know that now’s the time to stand one’s ground and stay strong, but if voters reward the Clintons’ swift-boating of the Democratic Party’s best hope in creating a majority coalition in forty years, then that’s the end of the road for me. The way forward is clear, but if Democrats don’t want to take it, they deserve to lose.
I feel much the same, Ted. It’s gotten to the point where it’s hard to imagine my voting for Clinton in November, for all the reasons I just mentioned.
Fortunately, tho’, I still believe we won’t have to. To defeat Obama, the Clintons are dredging up all the hate and divisiveness of the 1990s, a culture in which they thrived, usually by portraying themselves as always aggrieved by vast conspiratorial forces. Now they’re doing it again.
I really do believe that the longer it continues, the more people will tune out, and come to see Obama as the needed step forward.
That’s my hope, and I refuse to submit to Clinton’s “false hope” rhetoric just yet.