Hillary Clinton courts bigots
February 26, 2008 at 2:52 pm by Andisheh Nouraee in Not-lantaHillary Clinton hasn’t been able to stop Barack Obama with “35 years of experience,” “Ready on day one,” “He’s a cokehead,” “He’s the new Jesse Jackson,” “He’s stirring up false hopes,” “He’s all talk,” “Change you can Xerox” or any other of her approaches to voters.
So yesterday, with just eight days to go until must-win contests in Ohio and Texas, Clinton played her last card — the “Barack Obama isn’t really American” card.
If you have an ounce of doubt in your mind about the inspiration and source of this week’s Obama costume drama, read this post on The New Republic and watch the accompanying video. It features Clinton supporter Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, insinuating that Obama is a foreigner — three times.
One of the more interesting parts of this story to me is that it puts good people who support Clinton in the position of having to defend their candidate’s naked appeal to bigotry.
Some, like JerryT at Blog For Democracy, are honest and upset:
I’ve rationalized quite a bit of crap to justify my support of Sen. Clinton, but I am running out of excuses.
Some, like MelGX and Phlange, are positively Baghdad Bob-like in their refusal to acknowledge the obvious:
“I don’t think it matters who sent it out.”
“Can we just agree to hold off on accusing HRC of doing this until proven guilty??! Thought this was the land of Innocent Until Proven Guilty.”
February 27th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Andisheh:
According to Andre you got hoodwinked, bamboozled, etc because you don’t accept Hillary’s words unconditionally.
Your thoughts?
February 27th, 2008 at 8:53 am
To readers:
The Andre to whom the above commenter refers is Andre Walker, who keeps the blog Georgia Politics Unfiltered.
He responded to my above post with a post on his own blog calling me a sucker for blaming Clinton’s campaign for the Obama picture. But rather than let anyone respond, he disabled the comments function on the blog. He even deleted a comment that arrived before he was able to switch off the comments function.
So much for unfiltered politics.
http://georgiaunfiltered.blogspot.com/2008/02/andisheh-you-got-suckered-by-matt.html
Andre is a strong Clinton supporter. Supporter really isn’t the word.
Fantasist is more like it.
He thinks Clinton is losing because she’s a woman. He thinks Obama supporters are mentally defective.
Do you think I’m exaggerating?
After Obama trounced Clinton in Wisconsin and Hawaii last week, Andre wrote the following explanation on his blog.:
“Sexism is more powerful than racism is this country.”
http://georgiaunfiltered.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-thoughts-on-obamas-victories-last.html
In his post criticizing me, he asserts that by blaming Clinton for the Obama photo leaking, I was suckered by Drudge.
The problem with his argument is that my argument has nothing to do with Drudge. I don’t quote Drudge. I don’t hint at Drudge. Not here. Not in the comments I’ve left elsewhere.
I believe the photo came from the Clinton campaign because a) She’s the one flailing to beat him right now b) It’s consistent with her tactics thus far c) the mendacity of comments about the photo by Maggie Williams and Rep. STJ (see above).
and a big big big d) Her campaign will not issue an unhedged, unlegalese denial.
I’ve never met Andre, but I’ve read his blog enough to know he’s a smart person.
If he believed he could win this argument, he wouldn’t be filtering my comments.
I e-mailed him this morning and asked him to give me the opportunity to respond on his blog.
In the meantime, he won’t be filtered if he attempts to comment here.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Man, closing comments is the ultimate blog self-emasculation. L to the AME.
I was even more disappointed to see one of the BfD’ers parroting the “Obama refuses to say the pledge” crap over there like it was real and not just some crap Jack Kingston inaccurately perpetuated.
This is like watching people on the Titanic try to inflate dead babies to float on.
February 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Shelby, I was disappointed by many at BfD who thought that the Muslim/anti-American smears were fair game somehow. They tried to couch it in terms of just being “realistic” about what average voters would hear and care about, but I am appalled that anyone thinks untrue rumors that someone’s a secret mulsim or won’t say the pledge are legitimate areas of concern.
I’m pretty sure the Obama campaign would have heaping gobs of untrue and unfair rumors about Hillary Clinton that they could use for whisper campaigns, if they wanted to play that angle. Thankfully they don’t. And the fact that we don’t see “rogue” Obama staffers circulating Vince Foster conspiracy theory emails, and don’t have Obama surrogates repeatedly admonished by the campaign for bringing up Whitewater or Travelgate, shows a huge difference between the 2 campaigns. One has message discipline and has made it clear to the full organization that certain tactics will not be tolerated. And one has a chief strategist who repeated the cocaine rumor on national TV mere seconds after he said it was inappropriate to reference it. Not hard to figure out who is strict about what’s fair game, and who isn’t.
February 27th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Spot on.
I think if Obama was slipping in the polls, you’d see him committing desperate moves like Hillary’s. But he’s not. If it was intentional on her campaign’s part, I think it was a last-ditch effort to garner some support. And people saw it for what it is. Maybe she thinks she has nothing to lose going for stuff like this. But she just solidified my support for her opponent.
Still dirty, still nasty, still disappointing.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
And here’s something else that’s certain to “disappoint”. The picture that was supposedly “leaked” by the Clinton campaign was linked to on Blog for Democracy over 10 months ago. It was posted as a joke by an Obama supporter. I add that only because I understand you have some humor issues.
http://www.blogfordemocracy.org/2007/05/breaking_news_obamas_middle_na.html
If the best you can do is troll blogs for content Andisheh, at least try and keep up with the group.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Thanks for joining the talk, Mel.
The Obama picture was supposedly taken in 2006. Although I never saw the photo before, I never said nor did I imply that it was never seen by anyone before. The reasons I believe Clinton is responsible for the most recent appearance are written above.
Explain to me how the photo’s appearance last year could have precluded anyone, Dem or Repub, from re-circulating the photo last weekend to reporters or bloggers who had not yet seen it. You can’t because it doesn’t.
As for your “keep up with the group” crack — it might have had more zing if not for the fact that you commented about this photo half a dozen times on Monday and Tuesday at BFD without ever bothering to mention the old BFD link.
Ex. http://www.blogfordemocracy.org/2008/02/thinly_veiled_accusation.html#comment-8295
If you, a BFD front page contributor, can’t remember a nine month old post on your own blog (a post that you actually commented on) then you can’t really blame me for not remembering it. Unless, of course, you’re a hypocrite.
Your candidate is appealing to ignorance and xenophobia to try to stay alive in this campaign. I realize its embarrassing for a self-professed liberal to admit aloud that her candidate is stooping to Karl Rove/Lee Atwater-style bigot tactics to win an election. But at some point, acknowledging the obvious is going to be less embarrassing than twisting yourself into rhetorical pretzels to defend the indefensible.
February 28th, 2008 at 12:07 am
The only thing rhetorical here Andisheh is your tedious writing. By suggesting you keep up, I was referring to the comment with the photo link having been posted hours before you posted this entry. True, I didn’t recall the original post, but unlike you I don’t blog for a living. Yet somehow our blog is more populated than this one. Why is that do you suppose?
As for “how the photo’s appearance last year could have precluded anyone…from re-circulating the photo last weekend…”, I can only assume you’re pleading ignorance. No surprise there. Too bad Rudy is out of the race, because I’ve got some great pics of him in a dress I could send along!
When (and if) “my” candidate leaves the race, I will be more than happy to support Obama. But if your suggestion that I “acknowlede the obvious” is code for jumping ship like a rat or joining your Clinton hatefest, I’ll pass.
And your comment software sucks. It took about 6 attempts for this to post.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Why are you so mad, MelGX? Can’t we all just get along?
The Clinton team itself has said this is time for throwing the “kitchen sink” at Obama. It’s very likely that Hillary or Maggie Williams or Penn knew nothing about some low-level staffer sending this to drudge with a little ha-ha note. As you note, the photo’s been circulating forever. Combine that with the poor performance or her surrogates, Williams and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, and you reach an obvious conclusion: The campaign may not have sanctioned the distribution of the photo but they sure as hell enjoy it getting attention and they’re not above keeping the story alive.
I will not go quite as far my pal Andy and say they’re absolutely dirty on this. But if the situation were reversed – let’s say drudge posted some years old photo of Hillary looking menacingly at Vince Foster – do you think the Obama campaign (and Obama himself) would deny any connection to it or play coy and say “If the Cinton campaign thinks a picture of Hillary with a dear old friend is divisive or a smear, they should be ashamed. Barack has many pictures of himself with old friends…we will not be distracted.”
Bet you dollars to donuts that Obama would issue an uncategorical denial. That’s a major difference between these campaigns. Voters are drawn to authenticity. The folks around the Clinton campaign seem anything but authentic.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Going with your hypothetical, Mr. T, do you think anyone would have just taken Matt Drudge\\\’s word for it that the Obama campaign was responsible for it, like many people seem to have done in this case? I\\\’m no die-hard Clinton supporter, I\\\’m just asking.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
People will take Drudge’s word for it when it suits their purposes…same as any other media. Regardless of that, all the Clinton team had to do was say “Not us, we didn’t do it.” and Drudge would’ve either produced the evidence or the story would’ve died.
I get your point about the Obama team’s outrage being based on Drudge’s word. Good observation. I still maintain that Clinton’s team enjoyed and encouraged that outrage and did nothing to distance itself from it. That makes them look guilty as hell, even if they ain’t.