August 22nd, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
If you thought you saw negative campaigning up till now, to use a phrase made famous in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan and in the 1920s by singer Al Jolson: “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
On a day when Republican John McCain got pounded in an ad by rival Democratic Senator Barack Obama for not knowing the number of houses he owned, the McCain campaign is sending out signals that it may go nuclear.
There apparently are several prongs to what sounds like a no-holds-barred approach.
First, there’s this new McCain ad quickly put up that raises Obama’s ties to Chicago’s sleazy land wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko.
The second prong, according to the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, is that the McCain campaign is accusing Obama of going more negative than they have and are using this as a justification for moving into what sounds as if it’s going to be a no-holds barred phase:
Though McCain is widely perceived to to drawn first blood by attacking Obama’s character, the official said that the difference between Obama’s mocking McCain for his wealth and his shaky answer on the number of homes he owns was that McCain’s charge “reflects an existential reality,” where Obama’s charges “attack Cindy. She owns the homes. I thought he said the wives were off-limits.”
Wait! Roll the tapes…Where did Obama mention Cindy McCain? How many people would have known that until it was….mentioned by the McCain campaign?
And “existential reality”? Is someone on the McCain staff taking meditation?
The third prong can be seen in a hint that the campaign will soon go for The Wright Stuff:
McCain strategists hope that Obama’s brass knuckles punch doesn’t work. “Americans don’t like this class warfare stuff,” the official said. They aspire to be rich, the official said. They don’t aspire to eat arugala or hang out with celebrities.
Brace yourself for more arugula ads, or perhaps ads linking Obama with Whole Foods, Henry’s Marketplace or one charging that he eats organic yogurt.
But here is the kicker:
Earlier in the news cycle, McCain’s press team invoked Obama’s friendship with a former member of the Weatherman, William Ayers, and an official said that even Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, “is now fair game.” The official declined to say whether the campaign was contemplating running an advertisement linking Obama to Wright.
UPDATE: There is a fourth prong, one not directly-tied to the McCain campaign. ABC News reports:
A conservative group called the American Issues Project will tonight begin running a TV ad in Ohio and Michigan highlighting Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., ties to Bill Ayers, a member of the 1970s radical group, Weather Underground.
Using images of the U.S. Capitol on 9/11, and then rewinding to images of it 30 years ago, the ad reminds viewers of Weather Underground’s effort to strike the Capitol, Pentagon and police stations. A narrator then notes the Obama/Ayers friendship and that Obama is on the record defending Ayers as “mainstream.”
“Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama,” a narrator says.
There appears one flaw in the McCain campaign’s argument that, due to Obama’s ad about McCain’s forgotten houses, Obama has now gone negative so they they are forced to follow suit:
Tuesday marked a number of key primaries for the November elections.
In Missouri, Congressman Kenny Hulshof (R) has defeated State Treasurer Sarah Steelman (R) by a 49-45 margin. Hulshof will now have the honor of probably losing to State Attorney General Jay Nixon (D) in November.
In Michigan, Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D), the mother of the crooked mayor of Detroit, was in a tight primary race with State Representative Mary Waters (D). The late returns showed Kilpatrick with a very narrow lead of less than 1,000 votes. Given that margin there is a very good chance of a recount, though local politics would favor Kilpatrick in that event.
Whoever wins the primary will win in November as the district is 90% Democratic.
In Kansas, ex Congressman Jim Ryun trailed State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins, also by a margin of around 1,000 votes and also so close that a recount is likely. Ryun would probably be an underdog to incumbent Nancy Boyda while Jenkins would be a slight favorite but the race will be close either way
You will not read a more visceral and affecting account of what the demise of the Big Three means to individuals, families, neighborhoods and regions than this one from Michigan (cross-posted from Michigan Liberal):
Yesterday my family joined the ever-growing group of Michigan families who now face an uncertain economic future due to lay-offs in the auto industry.
My dad’s employer, once part of The Big Three, offered their employees age 50 and over a puny buyout package, with the hopes that 300-400 people take them up on it. Whispers around the office led most to believe that if the buyouts weren’t taken, they’d still most likely be without a job, and the measly benefits. So as of August 1st, my dad will stay in Michigan, unemployed, with a mortgage, bills, and a very uncertain future. His job, like so many others, is heading to Mexico.
The news broke my heart and my spirit, just as it has for thousands others.
Here’s what worries me most - like many other laid off auto workers, my dad’s in his late fifties, with a bad back, arthritis starting to set in, and a minimal college education in auto repair, no thanks to the GI Bill. He can send me email, watch the funny YouTube videos I send him, but that’s about as far as his computer skills go. With a crummy economy, how does my dad compete with all the hungry, tech-savvy college graduates that don’t have families to support?
This is not the American Dream, this is the Auto Industry Nightmare.
Now what? Barack Obama? John McCain? Gov. Granholm? Anybody?
So are we now close to the endgame in the seemingly-endless Democratic primaries? Or will it go all the way to the Denver convention in August, with supporters on each side of the nearly evenly divided Democratic Party continuing to be increasingly irritated and frustrated with the other side as Republicans watch the spectacle with bigger and bigger smiles?
Yesterday’s decision at the DNC, which gave the Clinton campaign some of what it wanted in terms of Michigan and Florida delegates but not its actual demands, ended up being the decision that many on the DNC reportedly actually wanted.
And now the predictions and questions have started. Will Clinton start to ease her campaign to a close or suspend it this week? Will she withdraw? Will she fight on in Denver? Will Obama make a big victory speech this week if, as expected, he’s within a hair of the nomination or over the top by the end of the week in pledged delegates and more superdelegates come out for him? Or will he make a more modest pitch?
The Telegraph reports that there’s an Obama effort behind the scenes to offer Clinton a “graceful” exit — one that notably avoids asking her to run as Obama’s Veep:
Hillary Clinton will be offered a dignified exit from the presidential race and the prospect of a place in Barack Obama’s cabinet under plans for a “negotiated surrender” of her White House ambitions being drawn up by Senator Obama’s aides.
The former First Lady would get the chance to pilot Mr Obama’s reforms of the American healthcare system if she agrees to clear the path to his nomination as Democratic presidential candidate.
Senior figures in the Obama camp have told Democrat colleagues that the offer to Mrs Clinton of a cabinet post as health secretary or to steer new legislation through the Senate will be a central element of their peace overtures to the New York senator.
Not inviting her to be his running mate is not an oversight:
Make no mistake about it. The decision rendered today by the Democratic National Committee’s rules panel showed that Barack Obama has displaced Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as boss of the party.
…..Losing what they needed today proves that for the first time in 16 years the Clintons are no longer in charge of the Democratic Party. There is a new boss in town.
The Drudge Report has just put up a link to a You Tube of an audio of a fundraiser last month where ex-President Bill Clinton said in private on April 29, 2008 at the Westglow Spa in Blowing Rock, NC that solution is to seat half a delegate for each delegate in the disputed primary states. VIDEO IS BELOW.
Also listen to what Clinton said about Democratic party rules. Apparently the participants had a tape recorder and this was not supposed to be an official public pronouncement.
FOOTNOTE: Nothing official has been announced yet, but The Huffington Post political reporter Sam Stein reports that two sources have told him that a compromise has been reached over Florida that will entail the awarding of half-delegates to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — but Michigan remains possibly unsolvable and could go all the way to the convention.
In his webchat with readers yesterday, Washington Post Congressional reporter Paul Kane had two juicy political tidbits: (1) undecided superdelegates have actually concluded the race is over and are just waiting for Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out, and (2) supporters of front-runner Senator Barack Obama shouldn’t lose sight of just how narrow a victory (if it occurs) their candidate has over Clinton.
Here are the parts of the chat:
Washington: Looking at the most recent Rasmussen daily polls, I see that Hillary manages a tie today against McCain, but Barack is down by five points to McCain. What piqued my interest was that while Hillary had a “highly unfavorable” rating of 32 percent (i.e., as I see it, people who never will vote for her) Barack was at 35 percent. On Jan. 30, as we entered primary season’s main show, Barack’s “highly unfavorables” were 20 percent and Clinton’s were 35 percent. Is this something superdelegates may be watching?
Paul Kane: I’ve spent the past several months talking to as many super-delegates as any reporter in America, I’d guess, since I cover on a day-to-day basis about 280 of them here on Capitol Hill.
I hate saying this, because all the Clinton people are going to flip out and say, You’re biased, you’re biased, you’re biased. So go ahead and flip out if you want, but the simple basic truth is that the super-delegates stopped paying attention to the Clinton-Obama race about a couple days after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
They’ve stopped paying attention to the primary, and instead they’re focused on an Obama-McCain matchup in November. That’s the basic, simple, definitive reality that has happened in this race. The “undecided” super-delegates at this moment are not going to “decide” any time soon, because to them the race is over, they’re just waiting for Clinton to drop out.
AND:
Centreville, Va.: I was surprised and disappointed that The Post did not seem to address the Gallup poll yesterday which seemed to say Hillary Clinton had somewhat of an advantage over Barack Obama in the so-called swing states. The news of that poll was bandied about all day on the political blogs, and I have to say the Obama supporters seemed to be getting the worst of it. (Or is it “worse” with only two candidates in the poll?)
Paul Kane: Again, don’t yell at me because I’m only the messenger here. But the super-delegates have moved on, they’re no longer looking at how Hillary Clinton fares in battleground states against McCain. This is very hard for Clinton supporters to hear, I’m sorry, but the super-delegates are not paying attention to your candidate anymore. These head-to-head matchup polls (Clinton v. McCain, Obama v. McCain) are not having the impact on people’s thinking anymore.
AND then this comment about how Obama supporters should not lose sight of the narrowness of this contest:
Lashing out?: Why? I know that there are many out there who vastly prefer Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama. I know they think that she’s more qualified and better-equipped to beat John McCain in the general election. I know they think that Clinton has been unfairly treated by the media and that the primary system is all screwed up. I’ve heard all their arguments. And I don’t doubt that they genuinely believe all of these things. My question, though, is this: What realistic outcome are they still holding out for?
Paul Kane: They want their candidate to win. I’m not sure they know how that outcome would occur, but they want Clinton to win, it’s that simple. If Obama was losing this campaign by just as narrow a margin, his supporters would be just as upset. It’s important for Obama supporters to realize just how narrow a victory he appears to have pulled off, rather than running around the country acting like they blew out Clinton. If she had been semi-competitive in the post-Super Tuesday states in February — rather than losing them all 60-40 or worse — it’s highly possible she would be the nominee.
This provides some of the context for today’s big showdown over the Michigan and Florida delegations. If party bigwigs feel they’ve come up with a compromise that is legally sound, they’ll do it. And if superdelegates have all but formally decided the race is over, then maneuvers the Clinton camp does will be fruitless unless there is some huge development or revelation about Obama before the convention.
And, as we’ve noted here before, if some revelation about Obama or someone close to him surfaces on the Drudge Report before the convention, many will correctly or incorrectly attribute the sourcing to the Clinton campaign due to reports about the Clinton campaign’s symbiotic relationship with Drudge.
It sounds like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s patience is wearing thin as she watches the the increasingly divisive battle between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination unfold: she has issued a pointed warning to Clinton supporters about the need for unity ASAP:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday warned supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who are threatening to take the delegate fight as far as the Democratic National Convention, that they are pursuing “a scorched earth philosophy” that would seriously damage the chances of electing a Democratic president in November.
“There is too much at stake in our country for us to be thinking that we can afford the luxury of intra-party battles eight weeks before the election,” said Pelosi, in her strongest words yet on the battle over seating delegates from Florida and Michigan. “We’ve had many months to have a debate, to come to a conclusion. And one way or another … we have to come together.”
Tomorrow is The Big Showdown when the Democratic Party’s rules committee meets in Washington to decide the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegations. Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle earlier in this week that if the Obama-Clinton battle isn’t resolved by then, she will “step in.”
“The American people have to know the Democratic Party can run its own delegate selection process … if they want to govern America,” Pelosi said Friday. “The rules are what the rules are.”
“Instead of talking about process,” Democrats now need to “talk about how we have a progressive economic agenda. … That’s what the American people want to hear about,” she said. “That’s how we can take America in a new direction.”
Pelosi responded to Clinton supporters who have vowed to take the New York Senator’s fight all the way to the floor of the convention - chaired by the Speaker.
“I admire the enthusiasm of those who want to take this to the limit,” Pelosi said. “But it will harm our party’s chances to win in November. Their enthusiasm is wonderful … but it’s a luxury I can’t afford.”
Pelosi stressed again that “a June timetable is one that we (party leaders) all share” to resolve the issue of seating delegates from Florida and Michigan.
USA TODAY’s Fredreka Schouten spoke today with Allida Black, a professor at George Washington University and co-founder of the WomenCount PAC, which wants Clinton to get the nomination.
“I thought it was undemocratic,” Black said about what Pelosi told The San Francisco Chronicle yesterday. Never in the history of our party have we precluded any candidate from going to the convention floor. … I’m an elected delegate from the state of Virginia. … She has no right as a leader of this party to say the party has to make a decision before the convention. That’s what the convention was created to do. … I don’t want Nancy Pelosi telling me who my nominee is.”
On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine Clinton’s camp completely ignoring Pelosi who will have a bit of influence at the Democratic convention in Denver: Pelosi will chair the convention and is in touch with many superdelegates. Meanwhile, both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have asked superdelegates to make up their minds and commit by next week. So if the Clinton campaign wants to take it to the convention, it’ll be doing so as the party’s top Congressional leaders try to get a unified party show immediately on the road.
AP photo by Steven Senne
It turns out some of the people swelling the ranks at what is expected to be a large pro-Clinton demonstration in Washington to pressure the DNC rules committee to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations as per Clinton’s demands won’t just be Clinton supporters — but some others (for instance, some McCain Republicans) as well.
All’s fair in love, war and politics — but this was probably not supposed to get out as widely as it will now that it’s on the Internet. If this report is correct it is sooooooooo “old politics.” And it’ll be interesting to see if some enterprising mainstream reporters at the scene interview some McCain and Huckabee supporters to ask them why they’re out demonstrating in a Democratic party rules controversy.
P.S. Have invitations gone out to supporters of Bob Barr and Ralph Nader yet?
So what’s REALLY behind Senator Hillary Clinton’s big battle to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations and lump the two states’ popular primary votes into hers, even though her own associates had originally backed the DNC’s stand on “punishing” the two states for not obeying party rules — and just one week after many analyists claimed Clinton was toning down her polarizing campaign?
Some websites and analysts now think the motor of action on this could be, to put it bluntly, this: the Clintons want Hillary to be Vice President on Senator Barack Obama’s Democratic Presidential campaign ticket if, as many expect, he gets the nomination.
What will Clinton’s terms of surrender turn out to be? Her husband, for one, seems to have a pretty clear idea what he thinks she should get as a consolation prize. In Bill Clinton’s view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama’s running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill “is pushing real hard for this to happen,” says a friend. Hillary is more opaque about what she might want, divulging little even to those who see and talk to her every day. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face that this whole thing has shifted to a different mode,” says a top Clinton strategist. “But I don’t know what she wants. I don’t know what she’s thinking.”
The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said “no.” Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process.
And that is all that anybody needs to know to understand the childish and wounded behavior of Senator Clinton yesterday, grandstanding hypocritically to senior citizens in Florida..
In matters like these, I won’t put much stock on anyone’s secret sources — whether it’s Time or the always excellent Al Giordano– since there’s so much bullshit, misinformation, and rumors floating around that it would be impossible for anyone to sift between fact and fiction. There are probably only a handful of people who would know whether this is true, and they’re not publicly dishing.
But as a theory, Clinton’s over-the-top outbursts yesterday really would fit the pattern of someone scorned of a prize they felt they had rightfully earned. In the stages of grief, we may have gone from “bargaining” back to “anger”.
Later, as Giordano points out, Talk Left’s always excellent Big Tent Democrat, writing about a Clinton conference call (TMV wasn’t invited but we will break our rule once here about passing on posts about blogger conference calls to which we were not invited) notes that the top Clinton strategists talking to bloggers and newspeople flatly deny the report.
The bottom line? It seems logical that Clinton is pressing this issue in this hot-button, highly polarizing way because (1)she thinks she can win, OR (2) her campaign feels more will come out about Obama or he will seriously stub his political toe OR (3)she is doing a full-court press to accumulate maximum power within the party for some influence on Obama’s campaign or the party’s future course OR (4) she’s doing pressing her case so delegates in effect say to Obama “Oh, please, Daddy, please, make the lady stop — give her the Vice Presidential slot on your ticket!”
It is plausible that this is pressure tactic to get the Vice Presidential nomination. According to reports, Obama is now starting his search for a Veep. And, the New York Times now reports, as the race (supposedly) wants, talk of an Obama-Clinton ticket grows.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said Hillary Clinton shouldn’t run for vice president on a ticket with Barack Obama because her husband, former President Bill Clinton, could cause problems for the new administration.
“If she got back into the White House, she’d bring along Big Daddy, and he would overshadow the president,” Menino said in an interview Thursday.
Bill Clinton is “pushing real hard” for his wife to be Obama’s running mate, Time magazine reported this week.
Menino, 65, was reelected to his fourth term as mayor in 2005. He endorsed New York Sen. Clinton in 2007 and is a pledged Clinton delegate to the Democratic convention this August.
Confirmed? No. Possible? Yes.
If it’s true, will the Democratic party, its DNC apparatus — and Obama — be pressured into putting her on the ticket to halt what seems to now be a Democratic party march towards an ugly, election-losing split?
For more viewpoints on this story GO HERE.
You know a candidate has jumped the shark when his/her own supporters start saying in public that the candidate is showing signs of desperation. And the pro-Clinton Governor of New York state has said just that:
New York Gov. David Patterson, a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s White House bid, said Friday the New York senator is showing signs of “desperation” in her continued push to get the full delegations of Michigan and Florida seated.
“I would say at this point we’re starting to see a little desperation on the part of the woman who I support and I’ll support until whatever time she makes a different determination,” Paterson told New York radio station WAMC, according to the New York Daily News. “I thought she was the best candidate and I thought she had the best chance of winning.”
The comments come a day after Clinton delivered a fiery speech in Florida demanding that that state’s delegation, as well as Michigan’s, be fully seated at the party’s convention in August. The party stripped both states of their delegations last year after the state legislatures there voted to hold their primaries before February 5.
Clinton won both states’ primaries, though Barack Obama removed his name from the ballot in Michigan. Clinton uses popular vote totals from both Florida in Michigan in her claim that she is beating the Illinois senator in the overall popular vote.
Patterson, who has a reputation as a straight-shooter did not mince words but still supports Clinton — but not her position on the two disputed states:
Patterson, a Democratic superdelegate, said he disagreed with the party’s initial decision to penalize the states, but added he thought the party should now “leave it where it is.”
He also noted none of the presidential candidates — including Hillary Clinton — objected to the penalty when it was imposed last year.
So hopefully this will (and I know it won’t) spare me the angry emails and comments saying that our posts on this issue showed (a) we didn’t understand the real facts, (b) we don’t want a woman President and (c)that posts critical of Clinton are due to Hillary Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Patterson, a log of list pundits and bloggers are calling the situation as they see it — one in which Clinton is steadily upping the rhetorical heat after she earlier moved the goalposts, hoping her supporters would go along with whatever her position was earlier, and that others would forget.
The first is happening.
The second isn’t.
P.S. Note that Patterson is a superdelegate. If a superdelegate who supports her sees it this way, how are the superdelegates who are wavering or torn perceiving this?
If it becomes a formal talking point, you have to wonder how this tidbit reported by Balloon Juice’s always blunt John Cole will play with many superdelegates, DNC party chair Howard Dean and the mainstream media that has been covering the Democratic party race:
Lisa Caputo, one of the Clinton hacks on MSNBC tonight, just claimed (fraudulently) that Hillary had the popular vote but was behind in the delegate math, and that this felt like “Al Gore in 2000 when it had to go to the Supreme Court.”
Caputo was one of Hillary Clinton’s best spokespeople at the White House and is considered close to her. Her Wikipedia bio notes:“She now serves as a campaign supporter for Hillary Clinton and speaks out to television stations on her behalf. She is frequently seen on CNN as a representative of the campaign.”
Several things about this:
(1) The Clinton camp can make the argument about the popular vote in a clinical, hard-nosed way, outlining their case and in time it could be an argument some superdelegates could consider.(See Pete Abel’s excellent post below).
(1) Hillary Clinton this week started making this argument about the popular vote repeatedly and strongly and it was noted by the New York Times. Just as George Bush’s supporters on talk radio, weblogs and in the media would immediately pick up his battle cry when he makes a new assertion, Clinton’s most partisan supporters immediately picked up the talking points, even before yesterday’s primaries. On the right, the National Review’s Byron York now agrees with her.
It’s one of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s last arguments — she’s ahead in the popular vote, she should be the nominee, even though she has won fewer delegates.
“Right now more people have voted for me than have voted for my opponent,” Clinton told Kentuckians recently. “More people have voted for me than for anybody ever running for president before.”
One problem with these claims — they don’t appear to be true.
The problem is not Clinton mendacity. The problem is that popular vote tallies are woefully wrong.
Read the entire post.
2. The suggestion that the Democratic party apparatus is behaving like the Supreme Court squelching Al Gore’s argument is actually a mirror argument of what some progressive blogs have been suggesting about Clinton’s campaign. Some blogs over the pasts few months have suggested that if the party gave the nomination via superdelegates to Clinton over Obama after voters went to the polls, donated money and Obama won more pledged delegates THAT would be like the 2000 Supreme Court decision. The cartoon above reflects that viewpoint.
3. Use of this argument suggests that even though some rhetoric has cooled, the Democrats are far from starting to mend fences, since arguing that the party is having like Justic Scalia et. al. given the way the Supreme Court decision is perceived by many Democrats is a nice way of saying the party’s actions are illegitimate.
4. If bloggers suggest it, it’s one thing. But this has come from the aide of a candidate — which puts it on a higher level. This would be– once again — highly polarizing and not help the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House in November (if that is what the party’s and its partisans truly have as their goal on election day).
Cartoon by Wright, The Detroit News
Now, look - I chastise my father whenever he calls me anything remotely close to sweetie, and he’s used a whole bunch of those terms (let me be brutally honest since my mother reads this blog but my father doesn’t: I hate it when my father uses alleged terms of endearment like “doll” “babe” or “baby” - but I don’t like it when anyone calls me those things either - never have).
And after watching the clip, I believe Barack Obama when he says it’s a bad habit, as here in the Detroit Free Press:
Sen. Barack Obama, who is edging toward the Democratic presidential nomination, offhandedly called a Detroit television reporter “sweetie” during a tour Wednesday of Chrysler’s Sterling Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights after she hurled a question at him: “Senator, what are you going to do to help American autoworkers?” The incident got picked up by the national news media, and the video, which shows Obama saying, “Hold on one second, sweetie, we’ll do a press avail,” to WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) reporter Peggy Agar, is playing on YouTube.com.
Several hours later, Obama left a message on Agar’s cell phone, apologizing.
“It’s a bad habit of mine,” he said in the voice mail, which is on the TV station’s Web site. “I mean no disrespect, so I am duly chastened on that front.”
Agar said in a televised report that she was more upset that Obama didn’t answer her question.
But you know what? That not answering the question, that’s exactly right. Enough readers have seen how I get when I don’t get my questions answer. And the “sweetie” spin is a very, very common way of trying to say, in what too many people find to be an acceptable tactic, “now calm down there - I’ll get to you when I’m ready - you little woman you” kind of thing.
It is a bad habit, and a lot of people do use it, men and women - I use it with my kids to put them off or cool their jets.
So you better believe Obama had an intention, even if unconscious, that when he is soothing with sweetie, the tough question can be finessed away. Calm down, now - I’ll get to you when I’m ready, don’t you worry now.
But he never did get to the question.
So why doesn’t this rise to the level of a macaca moment? Because a lot of politicians use similar techniques with the media, and private citizens use it too. It’s too common a bad habit to make it a macaca moment, which was really quite outrageous and mean-spirited.
However, the good senator would be very wise to work on undoing that bad habit because at its base? It was an avoidance tool that got turned at a female reporter. I understand it in context, but a lot of people, particularly men and women of voting age - may not.
See also The Moderate Voice’s Joe Windish’s post on the incident. T-Steel leaves a comment mentioning that the sweetie involved is a “good reporter” whom he sees all the time on the Detroit news (that’s very helpful commentary - thank you btw).
Later, the station said Obama had left an apology on the reporter’s phone, admitting he had a problem calling women “sweetie” and saying he intended no disrespect.
If there’s no disrespect intended, why wouldn’t he have used it during, say, one of his debates against Sen. Hillary Clinton? “Now, Sweetie, you’re not describing my health care plan accurately.” How would that go over?
April 18th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
For Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton it is definitely not “Thank God it’s Friday” - today was the day when a tape of her surfaced blasting part of the Democratic party’s leftist base — and she got some stunningly bad poll numbers.
The tape creates yet another credibility problem for Clinton since MoveOn.org, the group in question with its millions of activists, was created to defend her husband Bill Clinton against impeachment — and the tape contains an assertion by Clinton about MoveOn.org that the group says is flat-out wrong. Meanwhile, a new poll conflicts with an earlier poll and indicates Clinton’s relentlessly negative campaign against rival Senator Barack Obama has definitely raised the negatives — of Hillary Clinton.
The Huffington Post — which last week unleashed a furor over comments Obama made at a fundraiser saying people in small towns were bitter and clung some traditional values — again got the scoop… a scoop in which Mrs. Clinton sounds bitter:
At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the “activist base” of the Democratic Party — and MoveOn.org in particular — for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had “flooded” state caucuses and “intimidated” her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.
And here is the key paragraph that is likely to spur Clinton’s foes to even more get to the polls to get the vote out for Obama:
Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.
What will hurt Clinton is that the group immediately denied that it ever opposed going into Afghanistan. Additionally, this quote has many elements of how Bill and Hillary Clinton have framed the primary season: the caucuses (where Clinton has not done that well) are flawed because they are flooded with activists…and the activists aren’t just there to vote but to intimidate.
Whether you agree with Moveon.Org (and many of us on TMV do NOT) on many issues, this comment is similar to the tone of comments Clinton has made about Obama — on the offensive, seemingly to discredit. There is a pattern now to how Clinton deals with those who oppose her.
How has this fared among activists and blogosphere pundits? It’s not exactly good press:
This is pretty remarkable audio, Clinton attacking MoveOn — incorrectly, in fact — for purportedly opposing the Afghanistan War when that was not at all the case.
But even more astounding than Clinton’s specific attacks on MoveOn, a grassroots organization founded to defend her husband against the Republican power-grab that was the 1998 impeachment, an organization that is made up of more than three million activists, most of whom are diehard in their loyalty to the Democratic Party, is the fact that Clinton is maligning the Democratic base, specifically those who have been driven to the polls at least in part in response to the Iraq War.
…It could be that there is a valid explanation for these comments, that they were taken out of context, that they don’t really reflect her views of the Democratic base and the netroots, that they were merely the result of the inevitable exhaustion brought on by near-constant campaigning. I’d like to hear it. But until I do, it’s hard not to come away from these comments with the sense that Clinton holds a key part of the Democratic base in contempt.
–The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes that the Obama campaign is getting the word out on the Clinton HP comments:
But doesn’t MoveOn.org, which was formed in response to Republican attempts to impeach President Clinton, represent (for Obama) the type of polarized pressure group that Obama seems to decry when he talks about moving beyond the traditional encumberances of Old Politics? (General Betray Us? etc. etc.) Anyway, maybe it’s not that great of a point. What makes this story interesting to me is that the last thing Hillary Clinton needs right now is another credibility question.
In short, Clinton doesn’t like us and doesn’t agree with us….Well, for a campaign that has morphed into nothing but “Republican talking points”, it shouldn’t come as any surprise. I’m curious though, what part of our foreign policy approach doesn’t she agree with? The ending the war in Iraq part? I’d like more details on that one.
It’s funny. Hillary was a big fan of the online grassroots (or Netroots, as we call it) when ABC was defaming her husband in its fictional account of September 11, “The Path to 9/11.” At that time, we led a ferocious counterattack that put ABC in its place by exposing the serious errors in ABC’s bizarrely inaccurate account of that day’s fateful events. The Clintons didn’t seem to have much of a problem with the Netroots when we came to their rescue. But now that we’re defending Obama against the same biased attacks from ABC, Hillary dismisses us with a wave of her regal palm.
To paraphrase Rev. Martin Niemöller, Hillary has embraced so many right-wing talking points in her campaign, and bashed so many core Democratic constituencies (blacks, gays, gun control advocates, and now the Netroots), that pretty soon she’ll have no more Democrats left to blame. Nor will she have any Democrats left to support what has become a truly pathetic caricature of what was once a great Democratic family.
Senator Clinton is now using Karl Rove lies in attacking MoveOn. It’s a bit galling as this is the same MoveOn that was born of a fight to stop impeachment of her husband because he had an affair with an intern. She needs to be rescues from herself. I’d still vote for her over McCain, but she will not be the nominee. And while I and every Dem I know will vote for her over Mccain… I’m starting to have a lot of NY Dems tell me they’ve never been so excited about a primarying a Dem for Senate since Joe Lieberman.
But there’s some irony in the scorn for MoveOn, whom Hillary courted and which was founded, after all, to save her husband from impeachment. What’s striking here is the the “us” and “them” view — the almost cultural scorn — toward a section of the Democratic Party to whom, at times in the White House, Hillary was seen as the ambassador for the more conservative Bill.
I defended Hillary Clinton when she refused to bow to right wing pressure and condemn MoveOn over the “General Betrayus” ad (and was sad when she finally capitulated). MoveOn are valuable progressive partners who have been with us on Donna Edwards, net neutrality, trying to bring an end to the war, FISA, and other issues we’ve been fighting for.
They’ve accepted the challenge of organizing the left in the virtual arena and done an amazing job that the right struggles to replicate. They now have 3 million members, of which I’m one. And their skill at online organization and movement building has developed a model that both of the Democratic candidates have been able to copy and learn from, acting as a democratizing influence and making candidates more responsive to the public at large and less to high dollar donors.
Clinton’s words to her supporters go beyond the “elitist” charge. They’re outright lies told behind another’s back for the purpose of personal gain. That’s not leadership; it’s liarship.
I like the “intimidate” part. Not long ago, the Clintonistas were calling Obama’s voters “latte drinkers,” but now they’re thugs. Latte-drinking thugs - somehow I’m having trouble conjuring up that image…
I never thought Obama’s “bitter” remark would hurt him because it wasn’t an attack on anyone, just a bad attempt at amateur pop psychology. But I think Hillary’s remark will hurt her, because it is an attack on 3.5 million Moveon members and every Democrat who agrees with them.
Bloggers want clarification: what specifically does she not agree with us on? Getting out of Iraq, perhaps? She has said at least 1,000 times, “I will end the war.” Has she been lying to us about the single most important issue in the campaign? I certainly hope not.
Here’s the deal, Senator Clinton: you’re not going to win enough pledged delegates. You’re not going to convince the remaining majority of superdelegates. The people who decide these things are us, the party’s base of active primary voters. It will be us who complete the job of defeating your endeavor and you’ve made that a fait accompli with your dishonest remarks that now try to slur all of us who’ve fought against this damnable war in Iraq since well before the first shot was fired. Even a majority of Congrssional Democrats voted against the AUMF while supporting the effort against the Taliban and Al Qaida.
I’m shocked. Hillary doesn’t like voters. Especially those that are concerned about national security and foreign policy. It must be a left-wing conspiracy.
Does the junior Senator from New York have a deathwish for her campaign? ….What part of THE BASE DOES NOT WANT YOU have you not figured out, Senator?
THE BOTTOM LINE: Politicians generally try to win votes by aggregating interests. The Clinton campaign in recent weeks has been a medley of negative tactics and statements more aimed at raising Obama’s negatives then making an affirmative argument to vital Superdelegates that she herself can excite voters and win the election. And, in the process, Clinton seems to be aggravating interests.
Clinton’s own negatives have already started going up — and now she has now seemingly thrown down the gauntlet to a key segment of the Democratic party that helps to get out the vote…and fund political campaigns.
What impact is THIS and the likely criticism it will spark — and activist efforts to defeat her in future primaries — going to have on her efforts to move Superdelegates to overturn Obama’s delegate count, if he remains the front-runner at convention time?
April 16th, 2008 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that her no-holds-barred campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination against Senator Barack Obama has given Senator Clinton an unfavorable rating higher “than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992.”
This confirms what many had suspected was an emerging trend: the more Clinton went negative to drive up Obama’s negatives and in effect make him unelectable so Superdelegates would consider opting to her, the more her own negatives went up. The danger for Clinton: she began the campaign overcoming a history of negatives, which Obama didn’t have.
More bad news: 6 out of 10 independent voters now view her negatively.
Still another bit of bad news: the poll indicates that despite her arguments to the contrary, Democrats now consider her more unelectable than Obama.
But there is a silver lining for her: Democrats want the contest to be allowed to run its course, rejecting the arguments of those calling for Clinton to pull out so that front-runner Obama can start to battle presumptive Republican nominee Senator John McCain.
However, the news of Clinton’s negatives represents a major problem for her and the Democrats: it means Republicans will have an easier time uniting against her, and if she gets the nomination via a controversial procedure, these numbers indicate she will face a massive internal fence-mending effort to woo some angry segments of her party back ….efforts she’ll have to do against a backgroup of negative perceptions:
The fierce battle…appears to have taken a toll on the image of Clinton, who was once seen as the favorite. And Obama has widened his lead since early February on several key qualities that voters are looking for in a candidate and has narrowed sizable advantages for Clinton on others.
He now has a 2-to-1 edge on who is considered more electable in a general contest — a major reversal from the last poll — and has dramatically reduced a large Clinton lead on which of the two is the “stronger leader.”
Keep in mind that Clinton’s campaign had been designed to creative exactly the opposite effect. AND:
While Clinton retains a big edge over Obama on experience, public impressions of her have taken a sharply negative turn. Today, more Americans have an unfavorable view of her than at any time since The Post and ABC began asking the question, in 1992. Impressions of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, also have grown negative by a small margin.
In the new poll, 54 percent said they have an unfavorable view of Sen. Clinton, up from 40 percent a few days after she won the New Hampshire primary in early January. Her favorability rating has dropped among both Democrats and independents over the past three months, although her overall such rating among Democrats remains high. Nearly six in 10 independents now view her unfavorably.
Obama’s favorability rating also has declined over the same period but remains, on balance, more positive than negative.
Meanwhile, the poll has about the same results when Democrats are asked who they want as their nominee as the recent Gallup Daily Tracking poll did: Read the rest of this entry »
One of the basic themes of the long-running Democratic nominating campaign between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton speaks to the need for a new era in American politics. But increasingly it seems as though their race could be decided by a method quite old–a decision by the convention credentials committee that is voted up or down on the convention floor.
Why is that? Because the Clinton-Obama battle could very well be decided by the fate of Florida and Michigan, two states currently denied representation because they violated party rules by holding January primaries. Clinton won the unsanctioned events but thus far that has settled nothing. Virtually everyone agrees that delegates from the two states, both vitally important to the Democrats in the fall, should be seated. But “how” is the rub. The candidates cannot agree, nor can party leaders find common ground for a solution.
Hence, the growing specter of the credentials committee. It is the court of last resort in the nominating process, the place where politics is at its rawest and the stakes are the highest, because which candidate’s delegates are seated on the convention floor often determines who wins and who loses.
In the fight for power, the credentials committee is a place where niceties are stripped aside, and a watching TV audience would see not smiles, but fangs. Nor would the infighting end there, because the losing side could file a minority report and send the issue on to the convention floor for final resolution. In short, it would be a viewer’s delight, but a nightmare for image-conscious Democratic leaders. And put in parlance long outdated, it would be a blast from the past….
