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Angry Clinton-Obama Democratic Presidential Nomination Race Is Field Day For Cartoonists

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.
Apr 12th, 2008 | Comments

The tooth-and-nail race for the Democratic party 2008 Presidential nomination is a good thing — for cartoonists.

And the latest controversy promises to provide them with even more material.

This weekend the new political angerfest is raging between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over whether Obama’s comments about small town people being bitter means the Democrats will be foolhardy to make him their nominee. The latest development is that a Clinton supporter is saying the remarks are fair play to be used in Clinton ads against Obama and in discussions with superdelegates as Clinton (who does not have as many pledged delegates as Obama) attempts to appeal to Superdelegates to step in and tilt towards her since (she argues) she is more electable than Obama — no matter what her final delegate count (or popular vote) is after the remaining primaries (some supporters have argued that she could get more electoral votes than Obama and that is what counts).

First, here are some comments made by Clinton’s chief strategist Geoffrey Garin to TMP Election Central:

Hillary chief strategist Geoffrey Garin dramatically raised the stakes in the battle over Barack Obama’s comments about small-town America, saying in an interview that they would be “damaging” to him in a general election, could set back the Democratic Party’s efforts to reach heartland voters, and should be something that super-delegates consider when deciding whom to support.

“These are the kinds of attitudes that have created a gulf between Democrats and lots of small-town and heartland voters that we’ve been working very, very hard to bridge,” Garin told me today in his first public comments about the flap.

“I saw Senator Obama’s comments as a step backward to building those kinds of bridges,” Garin continued, saying the following of the impact that the comments could have in a general election:

“They will be damaging. And they could be significantly so…I don’t think that the kinds of attitudes that Senator Obama expressed are consistent with Democrats doing what we need to do to win a general election.”

And, now, here are two recent cartoons:

Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

EBF

I greatly enjoyed your article on the effects that the Presidential Election is having on pop culture and the way that cartoonists specifically are taking advantage of it in order to show the election in a light that would normally not happen in a normal newspaper. The question that comes to my mind is what kind of effect that this would have on the election in general, and if this political satire does a great deal of harm. A specific example of the trouble that political satire can have is what happened in Denmark and their political cartoon mishap. The truth of the matter is that political comedy can have a positive and negative effect on the way that the American public views the Presidential election and politics in general. I believe there are positives when it comes to political satire because it helps for some of the public, who might not normally be exposed to politics, to have a chance to see what is going on in the world. The other positive to political comedy is that fact that it allows for some comedic relief from a process that can be very demanding and sometimes frustrating, in the way that things are run and handled. Conversely, portraying politics in a comedic light can show that there is no respect for politics and that politics are taken in a joking and light manner.
Overall, I believe that your article gives an informative view on what is going on in the coverage of the Presidential election and the artistic manners which have been used to show some issues of the Democratic primary and the Presidential election that are sometimes shied away from.

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