“Clinton is viewed as ‘honest and trustworthy’ by just 39 percent of Americans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, compared with 52 percent in May 2006. Nearly six in 10 said in the new poll that she is not honest and trustworthy.” Who’s bitter now? A new poll finds that a solid majority of voters now believes Sen. Clinton is dishonest. “And now, compared with Obama, Clinton has a deep trust deficit among Democrats, trailing him by 23 points as the more honest, an area on which she once led both Obama and John Edwards.” In other words, all the shenanigans of the past few months seem to have made her unelectable. Oops.
Tag: Election 2008
A Bitter Pill, or a Tempest in a Teapot?
Hey all. As promised, I’ve been working on other things over the past few days, and thus haven’t really been following the election news as closely as in recent months. I’d heard that Sen. Obama had basically restated the thesis of What’s the Matter with Kansas? at a fundraiser in San Francisco, and thought that, lordy, it was a slow news week. So, imagine my surprise when I settled in for the Sunday shows to discover that I was supposed to be outraged — outraged, I tell you! — at the import and tenor of Sen. Obama’s remarks. Across the board, the Washington punditariat had ratcheted up the pique to 11, lambasting Obama for being elitist and out-of-touch because he argued a case for the appeal of cultural conservatism in economic bad times that’s been made all over the place, not the least by the Clintons themselves. (By the way, this televised uprising of the pundit proletariat included several people I dealt with personally during my previous sojourn in DC and, well…let’s just say I wasn’t buying their newly-discovered blue-collar bona fides. Not. One. Bit. (and I’m not talking about Carville & Matalin, although they were in the mix on Sunday too.))
Enter Sen. Clinton, shameless as ever. Apparently seeing “Bitter-gate” as her last, best hope for the nomination, she’s plumbed new depths of self-parody this week, not only calling Obama an elitist but trying to recast herself as some kind of working-class hero. (I guess she assumed we’d all just forget that she made $109 million over the past seven years, has been running around with a Secret Service detail for nearly two decades, and has had people otherwise waiting on her since 1978. Springsteen, she’s not.) Nope, now she’s banging back boilermakers, attacking Obama like he’s the Second Coming of John Kerry (to the point of getting booed for it) and conjuring up this ridiculous ad of small-town folk aghast by Obama’s words.
Well, I guess I’m an out-of-touch elitist too, because, frankly, I’m just not seeing it. Not only does this entire brouhaha seems like a completely media-manufactured (and Clinton-prolonged) event to me, but I’d be highly surprised if the vast majority of people Obama was referring to take any offense whatsoever. In fact, if anything, I’d bet the people who are supposed to feel so put upon here may well end up feeling more condescended to by Clinton and the mass media for trying to tell them they should be ticked off. Just a hunch…I could be very wrong. With fifteen years and counting in BosWash, it’s been awhile since I’ve had my finger on the pulse of the Heartland. Still, I’m willing to bet that the white working-class Americans who are theoretically insulted by Obama’s words are smarter, and made of sterner stuff, than Clinton et al would give them credit for. And this too shall pass.
Update: Speaking of Springsteen, the Boss endorses Obama, in part due to Bitter-gate. “At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams of My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.“
Petraeus: Same as it ever was.
“Judging from Gen. David Petraeus’ Senate testimony today, our military commitment to Iraq is open-ended and unconditional…Their unwavering stance amounted to this: Further pullouts might trigger defeat; the costs of defeat are too horrible to ponder; therefore, we shouldn’t ponder further pullouts.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan takes the measure of yesterday’s Petraeus hearings, and the performances of Senators Obama [transcript | video], Clinton and McCain respectively. “Near the end of the afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee but a junior member of the foreign relations committee, finally got his turn to ask questions — and he homed in on one of the administration’s key conceptual failures…’I’m trying to get to an end point,’ he said. ‘That’s what all of us are trying to do.’ This is what many critics and thoughtful supporters of the war have been trying to do for five years now. The Bush administration hasn’t addressed the issue. And, ultimately, neither did Petraeus or Crocker today.”
Remembering Rankin.
“Remember, Jeannette Rankin was elected before women could vote. So who says men don’t vote for a woman?” Resorting to a blatant gender pitch once more, Sen. Clinton name-drops Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, the nation’s first female representative. (She also took hold of the recent Kinsley meme: “‘Do you realize how much longer it takes for me to get ready than my opponents?” Clinton said. ‘I think I should get points for what I do, plus having to spend so much time getting ready.'”)
Just to set the record straight, Jeannette Rankin was a committed pacifist who not only led the “Jeannette Rankin Brigade” to protest the Vietnam War late in her life, but voted against American entry into both World Wars (and was the only person to vote against entry into WWII.) So, their common womanhood aside, I think it’s safe to say Rankin would be thoroughly disgusted by Clinton’s record on Iraq and Iran, and might well roundly reject the comparison.
For his next trick, Penn disappears.
“After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign.” With Colombia-gate the straw that finally leveled the proverbial dromedary, Mark Penn is gone from Team Clinton. Better late than never, I suppose, but this would’ve been more helpful if done several months ago. And isn’t the captain supposed to go down with the ship?
Well, victory may have been a macrotrend that eluded Penn’s grasp. Still, if nothing else, we’ll always have his ridiculous post-mortem spin jobs. Of “Impressionable elites,” “insignificant states,” and useless primaries, at least one might be remembered someday as a 2008 campaign catch-phrase. Update: The Field also feels a Titanic motif.
The New End: Sunset in Carolina.
“‘I have a sneaking suspicion it’s over after North Carolina and Indiana,’ says Emanuel. ‘It will be clear by then who the presumptive nominee is.‘” In keeping with this analysis, Clinton confidant Rep. Rahm Emanuel argues the primary race will be over on May 6. Since Bill Clinton has recently deemed North Carolina a make-or-break state akin to Texas and Ohio, and since Obama currently leads in Tarheel country by an average of 13 points, a May 6 end to proceedings now seems like a solid bet.
The Clintons’ Colombian Connection.
“The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it.” Clinton consigliere and inveterate torturer of reason Mark Penn gets into trouble for playing both sides of a Colombian trade deal, is forced to apologize, and subsequently gets sacked by the nation in question. If only Sen. Clinton had followed Colombia’s example months ago, she might still have a shot at the presidency right now.
In related news, Al Giordano of Rural Votes explains why Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is rooting against Obama, and why that speaks strongly in the Illinois Senator’s favor. “The Uribe regime, after all, continues a chummy friendship with Bill Clinton, granting him the government’s ‘Colombia Is Passion’ Award last June. That, during the same 2007 spring when former vice president Al Gore cancelled his appearance at a Miami environmental conference because he did not want to share a podium with Uribe, the hemisphere’s poster boy for state-sponsored terrorism, narco-trafficking, and assassinations of opposition political, labor and social movement leaders.“
Nice work if you can get it.
“‘We’ve come a long way from Harry Truman,’ said Leon E. Panetta.” At long last, the Clintons release their tax returns (to Drudge first), and the total post-White House tally amounts to $109 million, “with the former president collecting nearly half of that money as a speaker hired at times by companies that have been among his wife’s most generous political supporters.” The numbers are still being parsed, and the connections to key members of Clintons’ post-presidential rogues gallery — Ron Burkle, Vinod Gupta, the Quellos Fund, etc. — itemized and assessed. Still, the news that leaps off the page here is [a] the Clintons have done very well for themselves since leaving the White House, and [b] speechifyin’ pays top dollar in certain circles. “Sen. Clinton’s financial disclosure forms have offered a glimpse into her husband’s speaking career and the nexus between his clients and her campaign donors. The New York investment giant Goldman Sachs paid him $650,000 for four speeches in recent years…On one day in Canada, he made $475,000 for two speeches, more than double his annual salary as president.“
Now, how ’bout those Foundation records?
The Real World Beckons.
You may have noticed it’s been quieter than usual around here over the past week. This is partly because I’ve come around to the opinion that blogging every minor twist in the Obama-Clinton primary saga has become redundant. We all know Sen. Obama is our nominee, and many of us have known it since Wisconsin back in February. (The most recent evidence of this assertion: Obama picked up a +2 delegate swing in Miss. on Thursday.) So, my inclination to cover this extended garbagetime as closely as I would an actually tight contest has grown more attentuated over the past few weeks. This isn’t to say I won’t be covering the primary anymore, just that I doubt I’ll be spending as much time on it.
More to the point, it’s also been quiet around here because I’ve been busier than usual in meatspace this week. To wit, I’ve been stripping down my apartment, throwing out all the useless junk, as per the spring cleaning norm, but also putting all but really necessary items in boxes, to prepare for my imminent departure from the Columbia environs in two months. I’m still writing at the moment, and don’t plan to defend until the fall term. Still, it’s soon time to leave this place, in preparation for either a return to writerly-type ventures in DC or an academic job search, which I plan to embark on after knowing the electoral lay of the land in November. (Or perhaps I’ll just spend a few years walking the earth like Tom Joad, ’cause you never know.)
Either way, the bills don’t pay themselves, so my non-dissertating, non-blogging time is now mostly spent looking for remunerative employ — if not a full-time gig then at least enough freelance projects to swing the summer months. We’ll see how that goes. Early feelers to Team Obama in Chicago came up blank, unfortunately (they seem more than fine in the speechwriting department anyway), and applications to some higher-profile political blog-jobs didn’t even merit a rejection letter. (Which reminds me, I have a rant about the current state of the paid political blogosphere on broil at the moment — short version: it’s effectively become as insular and echo-chambery as the Weblog Jr. High/”blogger cabal” of the early days — but I’ll save it for another post so it doesn’t come across totally as pique.) But, I’m working on other leads too, so hopefully something will shake out. (Of course, if y’all hear of anything, do let me know — the resume is over here.) In any event, if you’re wondering why it’s quieter than usual here for now, that’s why.
Gasket, Blown. | Carter et al.
“‘It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended,’ one superdelegate said.” From denial to anger? Bill Clinton goes off the rails at a superdelegate gathering in California, after a question about the Bill Richardson endorsement. “It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade. ‘Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that,’ a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.” Meanwhile, it comes out that, while trying to woo Gov. Richardson, Sen. Clinton repeatedly emphasized her view her view that Obama is a general-election loser: “He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win.” She didn’t say why she thought this, although one can presume.
Fortunately, more and more supers don’t share the Clintons’ dim view of the American electorate. Recent announcements of note: Montana super John Melcher, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, and, if you read between the lines, former president Jimmy Carter: ““My children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a superdelegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for, but I leave you to make that guess.” Also, New Jersey Gov. John Corzine, like Cantwell before him, began laying the groundwork for a Clinton-to-Obama switch on CNBC this morning, although he retained some degree of plausible deniability [video.]
Update: The Clinton campaign attempts to elide her unelectable remark, now arguing that [a] Obama is in fact electable and [b] Richardson said it first.