I must say, I’m feeling proud to be a South Carolinian tonight. (But why is Bill Clinton delivering the concession speech on CNN right now?) More to come…
Tag: Bill Clinton
Our Rove Problem.
Another column update, as per yesterday:
TNR’s Jonathan Chait examines the “vast left-wing conspiracy” emerging against the Clintons. “Something strange happened the other day. All these different people — friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read — kept saying the same thing: They’ve suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we’ve reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons…Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational.“
The American Prospect‘s Paul Waldman agrees with the assessment that the Clintons are running a thoroughly Rovian primary campaign: “Three weeks ago, I wrote that Clinton was working to make voters uneasy, utilizing just enough fear to encourage them to stick with the known quantity in the race. But in the time since, her campaign has begun to appear more and more as though it’s being run by Karl Rove or Lee Atwater. Pick your tired metaphor — take-no-prisoners, brass knuckles, no-holds-barred, playing for keeps — however you describe it, the Clinton campaign is not only not going easy on Obama, they’re doing so in awfully familiar ways. So many of the ingredients of a typical GOP campaign are there, in addition to fear. We have the efforts to make it harder for the opponent’s voters to get to the polls (the Nevada lawsuit seeking to shut down at-large caucus sites in Las Vegas, to which the Clinton campaign gave its tacit support). We have, depending on how you interpret the events of the last couple of weeks, the exploitation of racial divisions and suspicions (including multiple Clinton surrogates criticizing Obama for his admitted teenage drug use). And most of all, we have an utterly shameless dishonesty.”“
Vanity Fair‘s Bruce Feirstein has had just about enough of Bill Clinton: “Clinton’s response offered an unusual lens into the powder-keg that is our former commander-in-chief: Starting with an almost jocular dismissal of the accusation, he then proceeded to wind himself up into a finger-pointing fury, attacking Barack Obama, painting himself as the victim, and generally blaming the press for everything, before walking away with the taunt, ‘Shame on you.’ It was not, well, presidential.“
The Clintons try to Cheat on Delegates (Again).
It’s getting hard to keep up with the Clinton outrages these days. (I’ll leave Bill Clinton deciding to praise Obama as ‘articulate’ alone for now, as — perhaps — that was just a poor choice of words.) As telegraphed by their moves after Michigan, the Clinton campaign is now explicitly trying to change the rules and get the Michigan and Florida delegates seated (a move which has brought Bill Nelson into the Clinton camp.) Says TPM’s Josh Marshall: “[Y]ou don’t change the rules in midstream to favor one candidate or another. This is no more than a replay, with different factual particulars, of the attempt to outlaw the at-large caucuses in Nevada after the Culinary Union endorsement made it appear they would help Barack Obama.” Adds the Prospect‘s Ezra Klein: “This is the sort of decision that has the potential to tear the party apart.”
Words to Vote By.
“If one candidate is trying to scare you, and the other’s trying to get you to think; if one is appealing to your fears, and the other is appealing to your hopes — it seems to me you ought to vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.” — Bill Clinton, 10/26/04
Kerry Returns Fire.
“[B]eing an ex-president does not give you license to abuse the truth, and I think that over the last days it’s been over the top. Things have been said about Barack Obama’s positions that are just plain untrue. It was said in Nevada, it’s been said about Social Security, it’s been said about Yucca Mountain, and it’s been said in South Carolina. I think it’s very unfortunate, but I think the voters can see through that.“
John Kerry calls out Bill Clinton to the National Journal, and lays into the experience canard. “We made some tough decisions [in the ’90’s] and we ought to be proud of them, about the budget and the deficit. But the fact is, that was not Hillary Clinton making those decisions. It was a different team, at a different time. In fact, Barack Obama has more legislative experience than either of his two opponents.”
Lies, Damned Lies, and “Dunce-Cap Dems.”
While the NYT, in venerable (and dismaying) establishment form, swung behind Senator Clinton (and John McCain) — despite contradicting their 2006 endorsement — this morning, others in the commentariat are not so sanguine about the prospect of a Clinton restoration:
“Obama’s best hope is that Democratic voters aren’t as dumb as Hillary and Bill Clinton think they are.” Newsweek‘s Jonathan Alter decries the Clintons’ cynical strategy of misinformation. “Obama is stronger among well-educated Democrats, according to polls. So the Clintons figure that maybe their base among less educated white Democrats might be receptive to an argument that assumes they’re dumb. Less well-educated equals gullible in the face of bogus attack ads. That’s the logic, and the Clintons are testing it in South Carolina before trying it in Super Tuesday states. They are also road-testing major distortions of Obama’s positions on abortion, Social Security and the minimum wage.“
USA Today experiences Clinton fatigue. “[H]is famous lack of discipline, angry outbursts on the campaign trail and habit of drawing attention to himself all suggest that voters have every right to wonder how this would actually work.“
But the NYT‘s Matthew Continetti senses a pattern, and calls shenanigans on red-faced Bill’s recent (and conveniently timed) public screeds. “It’s been said that Mr. Clinton’s recent feistiness has revealed a side of him previously unknown to most Americans. But this is incorrect: he is rather a master of what one might call ‘strategic emotion,’ the use of tears or anger to comfort voters or intimidate the press.“
Claiming “‘if Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander,’ E.J. Dionne remembers when Clinton loved Reagan. “His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to ‘set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan.’ Clinton’s ‘readiness to defy his party’s prevailing Reaganphobia and admit it,’ the paper wrote, ‘is one reason he’s a candidate to watch.’“
And, despite having written Primary Colors, TIME‘s Joe Klein just can’t wrap his mind around it all: “Let me get this straight: Obama wins Iowa. In a desperate move — unprecedented for an ex-President in American politics — Bill Clinton decides to impede Obama’s momentum by inserting himself into the campaign. He attacks Obama on an almost daily basis, sometimes falsely. He makes a spectacle of himself. And then he blames the press for not covering the substance of the campaign?”
Update: Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich has had enough: “I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a ‘fairy tale’) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it…we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.“
Daily News: Clintons, be cool.
“Employing innuendo and half-truths against Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former President, have introduced the politics of personal destruction to the Democratic presidential campaign. They bear responsibility for cheapening the tone of the contest.” Another NYC newspaper gets into the mix: The NY Daily News asks the Clintons to cool it. “She is indulging in the partisan-style politics that Americans are desperate to leave behind and certainly don’t want in a President. And she is either giving free rein to, or failing to control, her husband. Neither possibility bodes well.”
ABC News: Scared of Obama.
“‘I am trying to make sure that his statements by him are answered. Don’t you think that’s important?’ Obama shot back, while walking away. When Zeleny yelled a follow up question suggesting the Illinois senator had not answered the question, Obama fired back angrily, ‘Don’t try cheap stunts like that.’” Read this ABC News story of Obama apparently getting “testy” about questions involving the Clintons. (“Is Bill Clinton getting in Obama’s head?”) Then watch the video of this overblown encounter. What was that about the Obama-loving media?
The Running Mate.
Speaking of the Palmetto State, while Senator Clinton concentrates on Feb. 5 contests, she’s currently relying on her husband to try to hold down South Carolina “Along the way, he often sounds as if he’s campaigning for a third term. Here in Aiken, he tried mightily to talk about Hillary, but he kept lapsing into the first person: ‘My position on that is simple…When I was in law school…When I was president…When I was governor of Arkansas…When I started this schools program…I made the governor of South Carolina secretary of education…I got a Mercury mini-SUV.’…With varying degrees of accuracy, Clinton has made Obama look as if he were an ally of President Bush, a fan of Ronald Reagan, a supporter of the Iraq war and a practitioner of electoral dirty tricks.“
Like all too many Democratic observers, I’m thoroughly disgusted with the former president right now. It looks like that vaunted “Bridge to the 21st Century” runs in both directions. Update: They’re lying again.
Update 2: “The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four more years. The thought makes me queasy.” The Nation‘s William Greider comments on recent events.
The Gloves Come Off.
“I understand that most viewers want to know, how am I going to get helped in terms of paying my health care? How am I going to get help being able to go to college? All those things are important. But what’s also important that people are not just willing to say anything to get elected. And that’s what I have tried to do in this campaign, is try to maintain a certain credibility.I don’t mind having policy debates with Senator Clinton or Senator Edwards. But what I don’t enjoy is spending the week or two weeks or the last month having to answer to these kinds of criticisms that are not factually accurate.“
The faux bonhomie of Nevada’s roundtable well behind them, the Democratic candidates started throwing haymakers in tonight’s lively South Carolina debate. [Transcript.] Unlike the last two meetings, I’m not going spend a lot of time on a full-fledged summary, since — when it gets this heated onstage — I don’t think it’s particularly useful. Judging from the comment threads at the various political sites, people will see what they want to see. Clinton supporters are coming out of the woodwork to say she won the night. Well, that was definitely not my impression.
For my part, I was glad to see Barack Obama strongly counter Clinton’s continued distortions in the first hour, and finally push back on Clinton’s dubious “35 years of change” line (including, as it does, twelve years at the Rose Law Firm, which has been billed as Arkansas’ “ultimate establishment law firm.”) And he did a great job in the seated second hour of reasserting his positives — the funny and gracious “first black president” answer, for example — while staying on message.
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was at her evasive, misleading, Rovian worst. She did ok on the first question, about the economic stimulus package, but went rapidly downhill thereafter. Rather than running on her own record, She repeated her distortions about Reagan. She repeated her husband’s distortions about Obama’s stance on Iraq. She tried (and failed) to turn Obama’s present votes in the Illinois Senate into a vote for sexual abuse. And she like her husband — basically accused Obama (wrongly) of being Clintonian. (“[I]t is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.“)
Clinton also tried to inject the Rezko story into the debate. For those not following, Tony Rezko is a clearly shady Chicago businessmen with whom Obama had dealings with as a state legislator, and an iffy-looking land deal thereafter. An error in judgment, to be sure, and one he’s apologized for (even though it looks like there’s no there there.) Now it’s a fair thing to bring up, as Obama himself admitted. But,to be honest, Rezko is really not a road Hillary Clinton wants to go down. For one, you’d think the Clintons — of all people — would try to avoid insinuating corruption-by-association when it comes to land deals. For another, do Norman Hsu, Marc Rich, and Johnny Chung ring a bell? Shady operators in the margins are and have been the Clintons’ forte.
But I digress. Once the fur started to fly, John Edwards got plugged into the “above the fray” role by default, which may have helped him out among undecideds, I guess. Still, I was glad to see he directed attacks at both Obama and Clinton as he felt warranted, which should prevent another embarrassing post-debate spin along the lines of “the men were picking on me.” But you never know. After all the outrageous displays of intellectual dishonesty from the Clinton camp, both tonight and over the past few weeks, I’d put nothing past them at this point.