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
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.