Category: Hillary Clinton

Shame on you, Hillary Clinton.


“Enough with the speeches and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook. This is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged…So shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics.” What was that about feeling “absolutely honored” the other night? No doubt in an attempt to stem all the final days talk, Sen. Clinton goes ballistic on Barack Obama this afternoon, claiming he’s the one that has used Rovian tactics this primary cycle. (Watch the video for the full “Dean Scream” effect. I wonder what Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, fidgeting behind her, was thinking.) Sen. Obama responds here and here, and the Obama campaign’s official rebuttal is here.

Ok, I’m going to try to put this as delicately as I can: Sen. Clinton, shame the fuck on you. After all the low-down, reprehensible, and thoroughly scummy maneuvers we’ve seen from your campaign this primary cycle, no doubt courtesy of your $10 million bust Mark Penn, how dare you get before the public and act the aggrieved party here? I’ve compiled this list before, but let’s go over it again. In the past three months, Sen. Clinton and/or her campaign has:

  • tried to play the 9iu11iani fear card, the defining strategy of the Rovian playbook.
  • attempted to wallow in drug hysteria, and argued Obama was soft on mandatory minimums (Willie Horton ring a bell?)
  • blatantly distorted Sen. Obama’s remarks about Reagan to paint him a closet GOP’er.
  • sent out an obviously misleading mailer suggesting Obama was a closet pro-lifer.
  • sent out a blatantly false mailer about the social security cap that invoked the GOP standby, “He’s gonna raise your taxes!”
  • sent out a mailer on Obama’s health care plan that’s clearly more disingenuous than the one she decries above.
  • repeatedly tried to mischaracterize Sen. Obama’s stance on the Iraq war.
  • insinuated Obama was guilty of some undefined, unknown scandal later to emerge.
  • lobbied constantly to change the rules after the fact in Florida and Michigan.
  • suggested Obama was a well-spoken empty suit who peddles false hopes.
  • suggested Obama voters were dupes or cultists wanting only an “imaginary hip black friend.”
  • tried to push the story that Obama was soft on domestic “terrorists.”
  • seen campaign staff forward along “muslim”/madrassa e-mail smears about Sen. Obama.
  • seemingly sent out anti-“Barack Hussein Obama” robocalls in Nevada.
  • argued in obviously ridiculous fashion that Obama is a no-good plagiarist.
  • dabbled in the classic Southern strategy of the race card.
  • indulged in oppo research about Obama’s kindergarten stances.
  • tried to salvage her campaign with an obviously illegal 527, made up of $100,000 donors.
  • indulged in union-busting rhetoric when convenient (“They think they’re better than you.“)
  • actually attempted to suppress the vote in Nevada with the ill-advised casino lawsuit.

    And I’m sure I’ve missed a few things. So who’s “using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook” again? Don’t you worry, Sen. Clinton, “every Democrat should be outraged, and they are: That’s arguably one of the main reasons you’ve lost eleven contests in a row. It seemed the Clinton campaign had seen the situation for what it was, and was content to fade away, with grace and dignity intact. Had they done so, I might’ve let bygones be bygones. But, once they start indulging in this sort of Hail Mary raging against the dying of the light, which will no doubt poison the well for an easy reconciliation once Clinton has conceded, all bets are off. Update: This well-made video helps put today’s rant in perspective, and with Pink Floyd to boot.

    Update 2: She’s getting worse.

    Update 3: A few hours before the final Ohio debate, Sen Clinton concedes she “got a little hot over the weekend in Cincinnati.” Presumably, this means that the campaign’s internal polling suggests it backfired massively.

    • The Writing on the Wall.

    “Some supporters said they had discussed how to raise with Clinton the subject of withdrawing from the race should she fail to win decisively on March 4. One option was to wait a day or two and then dispatch emissaries to former president Clinton to urge him to make the case.” Despite the show of bravado regarding Florida and Michigan this morning, the WP reports that Sen. Clinton is well aware the end is nigh. “One adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said Obama’s 17-point Wisconsin victory on Tuesday had started to sink in as a decisive blow, given that the state had been viewed weeks earlier as a level playing field. ‘The mathematical reality at that point became impossible to ignore,’ the adviser said. ‘There’s not a lot of denial left at this point.’ Despite Clinton’s public pronouncements of optimism, this adviser said: ‘She knows where things are going. It’s pretty clear she has a big decision. But it’s daunting. It’s still hard to accept.’” Update: The NYT has more of the same, but that isn’t stopping Sen. Clinton from upping the ante on Tuesday’s debate.

    Man in the Middle.

    “‘Barack is very precise,’ the governor observed, sitting in his office at the New Mexico Capitol. The Obama campaign rarely pesters him with surrogates. Mr. Obama’s approach is like ‘a surgical bomb,’ he said, while ‘the Clintons are more like a carpet bomb.‘” Governor Bill Richardson tells the NYT of his being wooed for an endorsement, and says at the moment he’s “genuinely torn.” “‘I feel a great deal of personal loyalty to the Clintons,’ Mr. Richardson said several times in the interview, his face betraying the agony of indecision as much as fondness. He went on to describe Mr. Obama as ‘remarkable,’ ‘someone I like very much’ and a leader ‘who is creating something that’s really good in this country.’”

    Nardi for Obama. | And More.

    “Barack Obama began his career in public service helping to restore opportunity to a community that was devastated by a steel plant closing, and he has been fighting for economic fairness ever since.” Sen. Obama picks up another superdelegate endorsement in Ohio Teamsters president Sonny Nardi. According to Ohio’s Buckeye State Blog: “This is a huge deal. Sure, it’s a superdelegate pickup for Barack, but more importantly, it will open the flood gates. Ohio superdelegates leaning for Clinton or Obama are going to be more likely to come out now, because Nardi just gave them cover.“

    Update: According to DemConWatch, Sen. Obama also picked up a few more: Overseas superdelegate Connie Borde, PA super Leon Lynch, and Rep. Steve Kagen of WI. And, most importantly (as you’ll see if you scroll down), Sen. Feingold moved further towards Obama, and voted for him last Tuesday. Update 2: AP counts a super switch of +27 for Obama over the past two weeks.

    Back to Reality | A Peek at the Ground Game.

    “I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are.” Uh, Texas doesn’t matter? And, just like that, Sen. Clinton dispels all the warm fuzzies she attempted to earn with her reverse Muskie nostalgia moment last night. Sadly, it seems the evidence of a “reality check” among Sen Clinton and her campaign was misleading, and they’re instead indulging in the “false hope” they can still steal this thing, vis a vis Michigan and Florida.

    Well, if these (admittedly anecdotal) peeks at the Texas ground game are any indication, one can see why that screw-Texas spin is already starting to kick up now. First, Sen. Obama’s team, by way of dKos: “Today I talked to a reporter working on a piece on the Obama movement, who had just returned from Texas to see the Obama ground game close up. I asked if it lived up to the hype. He said that he had gone down there cynical, not expecting much, but had been utterly blown away…[H]is volunteer-driven ground game is blowing whatever meager operation Clinton has completely out of the water.” Update: Here’s another positive testimonial about Obama’s TX organization.

    And for Clinton? Read this sad tale: “Although the Clinton Campaign has been telling the press that they have the ground operations to pull off a win in Texas, those ground operations have not been in evidence when I’ve traveled to small towns to see how Bill Clinton is doing on the Texas stump. Wednesday evening in Victoria, down in the southeastern part of the state, incipient chaos threatened to overwhelm the ‘Early Vote’ Rally precisely because there was no ground operation…’It’s a clusterf**k! Just a clusterf**k!’ the Corpus Christi producer for a local news affiliate shouts into his cell phone.“

    Update: A Clinton endorser in the Rio Grande Valley confirms trouble in Texas: “I made a commitment to Hillary Clinton and I must maintain it. I gave my word. However, as an observer, it appears to be increasingly evident who is going to win.“

    Update 2: Someone with Texas skillz has made a revised delegate projection for the Lone Star State based on recent polling. It’s not good for Sen. Clinton.

    Deep in the Heart of Texas.

    In case you missed it, debate No. 19, held in Austin, TX, came and went this evening. (Transcript.) My quick take: Not all that much news made here, and, as a tie goes to the defender, that’s a win for Barack Obama.

    The big question coming in tonight was whether, after losing eleven contests in a row, Sen. Clinton would go into relentless-attack-mode (as desired by Mark Penn) or instead try to reassert her positives and perhaps prepare for a dignified exit to the race (as advised by Mandy Grunwald.) Well, the answer turned out to be yes. The first forty-five minutes or so were civil, agreeable, and thoroughly stultifying, basically a duller continuation of the LA debate of three weeks ago. Then, in the middle going, Sen. Clinton began trying to score some points, for example, by (once again) calling Obama a plagiarist and saying the Senator represented “change you can xerox.” (That canned line backfired rather badly, and drew the only boos of the night. I hope this is because most people realize the plagiarism charge is absolutely moronic.)

    For his part, Sen. Obama — looking ever more presidential, as is the frontrunner’s wont — took the high road, correctly calling such maneuvers part of the “silly season” of politics and keeping the conversation mostly about substantive differences, such, as, once again, the interminable mandate question. (He had a particularly good response to the “cult” charge: “The implication has been that the people who have been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional…The thinking is that somehow they’re being duped…and that eventually they’re going to see the reality of things. I think they perceive the reality of what’s going on in Washington very clearly.” Touche.)

    The moment that’s getting a lot of the buzz right now is Sen. Clinton’s closing statement, which (Xerox alert!) borrowed heavily from both John Edwards and Bill Clinton in 1992. (I actually don’t care at all about that, but if you’re going to throw around spurious claims of plagiarism, you’d best be careful about that glass house.) More troublingly, in her close Sen. Clinton explicitly invoked her surprisingly game-changing Reverse Muskie back in New Hampshire. (She began this particular lip-quavering moment by asking herself the same goofy question she got in the diner: “How do you do it?”)

    Now, I don’t want to claim Sen. Clinton is a fraud, even if she’s seemed considerably less than “absolutely honored to be here with Barack Obama” over the past three weeks of scurrilious charges and no concession speeches. If anything, I agree with CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, who was much less enthralled by the moment than that venerable Establishment Davos-boogier, David Gergen. I think she got genuinely choked up for exactly the same reasons as she did back in NH. With the writing on the wall for her candidacy, this was a valedictory moment of sorts. Fine, she’s earned it, and I applaud her for seemingly choosing, at least for a few moments, a graceful exit that will help bring the party back together. That being said, I wouldn’t get such a guilty twinge of Bernie Birnbaum-ish grandstanding about it all if she hadn’t explicitly invoked the diner tear, and/or if Clinton flunky Howard Wolfson hadn’t immediately try to tell us afterward that this was “the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice.” Um, no, not really.

    Some More State of the States.

    Electability update: In case you missed the recent state poll findings showing that at least nine swing states choose Obama over McCain and McCain over Clinton (totalling 100 electoral votes, if you throw in Michigan below), the polling firms have crunched some more numbers. Here are a few more where the party winner doesn’t change, but the margin of victory/defeat is considerably better for Sen. Obama:

  • Kansas: McCain beats Obama by 6 (50%-44%), McCain beats Clinton by 24 (59%-34%).

  • Michigan: Obama beats McCain by 8 (47%-39%), McCain and Clinton are tied (44%).

  • New York (yes, Sen. Clinton’s home state): Obama beats McCain by 21 (57%-36%), Clinton beats McCain by 11 (52%-41%).

    The only state examined thus far where Sen. Clinton outpolls Sen. Obama by a significant margin is Florida. (McCain beats Clinton by 6 (49%-43%), McCain beats Obama by 16% (53%-37%)) That margin seems to have a bit to do with the Florida delegate fiasco, however: “Most notably, just 55% of Sunshine State Democrats say they would vote for Obama over McCain.” One would presume that figure would change after the convention, and after Sen. Obama has a chance to campaign in the Sunshine State.

    • Feingold leans Obama, as does Rae.

    “‘His mind is as sharp as anybody’s I’ve ever met,’ Feingold said of Obama. ‘He’s done extremely well for somebody with his level of experience.’” While he’s apparently not ready to officially endorse, Sen. Russ Feingold tells a Wisconsin paper he’s “highly inclined” to vote for Obama. Meanwhile, Obama has picked up the vote of another Wisconsan, superedelegate Jason Rae, 21, who was recently wined and dined by Chelsea. “He cited Obama’s support from an overwhelming majority of young voters as the major reason for his decision.” Update: Another super, Margaret Xifaras of MA, backs Obama. So that’s 2 today…3 if we count Sen. Feingold.

    Update: Count him. Sen. Feingold tells The Nation he voted for Barack Obama in Wisconsin. “‘I really do think that, at the gut level, this is a chance to do something special,’ Feingold said of the Obama campaign and the potential of an Obama presidency, which he said has ‘enormous historical opportunities for America and for our relationship with the world.’“

    Clinton: It’ll be your fault.

    “‘If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be. It’s all on you,’ the former president told the audience at the beginning of his speech.” Well, some of it at least is on Mark Penn. Echoing remarks by James Carville after Super Tuesday, Bill Clinton underscores the importance of Ohio and Texas (and conveniently ignores the fact that Sen. Clinton must not only win but win by 20.)

    Ex-Pats United.

    It’s not just here at home. Sen. Obama takes the Americans Abroad primary 2-1 (65%-32%), winning most of the countries around the world (Ex-pats in Israel and the Philippines opted for Clinton.) Thanks, Kris, and all the other Obama voters out there across the seas. Update: Clinton did well in the DR as well.