Political Wire has this item about comments by Clinton supporter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — and Townsend’s analysis makes us wonder if she reads The Moderate Voice. Most of this analysis is what we’ve been saying on this site:
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton, spoke at St. Mary’s college in Maryland last week and offered a very frank assessment of the state of the Clinton campaign. A Political Wire reader emails a summary:
“Townsend said she expects Sen. Barack Obama to win the Democratic presidential nomination and that Clinton is finished. She believed that the Wisconsin results demonstrated that Clinton’s coalition (voters over the age of 50 and those earning less than $50,000) had fallen apart. When asked why the Clinton campaign had failed, Ms. Townsend had plenty of opinions and she placed significant blame on Bill Clinton and his racially tinged statements in South Carolina. She also felt that Clinton made a tactical error in making “experience and inevitability” her central campaign themes. Townsend argued that Clinton had little more experience than Obama and far less than candidates such as Senators Dodd and Biden. Additionally, making the inevitability claim hurt her when she lost Iowa… Townsend then lamented Clinton’s decision to go negative and question Obama’s readiness. She said that she called the Clinton campaign and advised that they ‘go out on a high note’ but her advice was politely dismissed.”
It sounds like a campaign that still intends to do what it wants to do, despite advice it may receive from those who disagree with its course of action.
Cartoon by Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com
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.