Last throws
With her campaign tottering on the brink of disaster a few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton set an increasingly desperate course in pursuit of her presidential aspirations. She participated in and condoned the smearing of her honorable opponent, by joining Republicans and their media whores in a full-scale war of trivial pursuit. She has sifted through Obama's every word in search of nuggets to exploit, painting a grossly distorted picture of a dedicated public servant, casting doubts about his integrity and patriotism, and demonstrating to my complete satisfaction that there is nothing she wouldn't do to win the nomination. Her campaign has been an ugly, vicious affair, a steady stream of lies about Obama and about her own meager accomplishments as First Lady.
A similar criticism can be directed at the campaign currently being run by Richard Moore. As is the case with Clinton and Obama, there is barely a whit of difference between Moore and Perdue when it comes to substantive policy issues. As a result, the fight shifted early into the gutter, with Moore boldly questioning Perdue's long-standing commitment to abortion rights. It stayed in the gutter until recently when Perdue wisely shifted strategy with a promise to go positive. Many have questioned her motives, but I'm willing to take her explanation on face value: she heard from too many of us that we were sick and tired of all the damn mud-slinging.
Having bet his candidacy on a campaign manager who specializes in tearing down opponents, Moore has had little choice but to continue to follow in Hillary's dirty footsteps. With his latest parsing of her record, Moore attempts to paint Perdue as out-of-touch on racial issues, an assertion that seems especially bizarre in the face of a recent endorsement from Harvey Gantt.
Many believe that negative campaigns work, and there is ample evidence to support that belief. But when a commercial makes assertions that fly in the face of reality to score political points, it's time to call it what it really is: a lie.
Hillary Clinton has been telling lies about Barack Obama. In the vast wasteland of racist America, those lies have taken root and spread. I do not want a person in the President's office who has been willing to run that kind of campaign. And sadly, Richard Moore has been telling lies about Beverly Perdue. He knows she is strongly pro-choice, and that she is not a closet racist. And yet he allows Reiff to demonize her in hopes of turning the tide. I do not want a person in the Governor's office who has been willing to run that kind of campaign.
Hillary Clinton and Richard Moore both could have won my vote, but instead they pushed me away by running vile campaigns. What a waste.
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Last throws
This is the last I'll have to say about any primary contest. I voted earlier this week, and was very glad to be done with the whole damn mess. But I'll leave you with one final thought.
It's not the Mud--it's the Blood
Hillary Clinton's vote for the invasion of Iraq, no matter how the Clinton campaign spins it now, was a calculated political vote. She may have disagreed with the Bush administrations's push to war personally, but she (like Edwards) was convinced that in order to position herself as "Commander-in-Chief" she had to outhawk the hawks. Remember, shock and awe was a hit in those days. Claiming that she did not really vote for the war or that she could not have known that the Bushmites would lie about the intelligence is bogus: there were plenty of respected and informed people who pointed out the blatantly dishonest warmongering well ahead of the vote. Tens of millions of people all over the world knew it too. Edwards had the good graces (and political smarts) to apologize later for this mistake; she never did because, like Bush, she thinks that admitting being wrong is a sign of weakness. Her current hawkishness regarding Iran is based on the same self-serving calculations that informed her vote on Iraq. She clearly cannot be trusted to do what is best for our country.
It is very sad that when the first woman finally had a real shot at the presidency in this country, it had to be Hillary Clinton.
Resistance is Fertile
Speculation on the consequences of Hillary's campaign
from an African American Congressman from South Carolina.
I guess it figures
that the more I hear people rail at and about Hillary the more she starts to grow on me.
I have that same problem
on many fronts. In most areas of my life, I am not only not a fan of anything that is popular or trendy, I actually go out of my way to distance myself from such things. That's why I was leaning to Hillary before Edwards dropped out ... because everyone was getting all gushy over Obama.
That's also why I don't wear shoes, except under duress. Just because everybody else does.
Oh yeah?
Well I like to wear socks with Birkenstocks.
Beat THAT!
Oh crap
Robin Hayes lied. Nobody died, but thousands of folks lost their jobs.
Don't make me scan a picture
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
Laura Leslie (Radiogirl) weighs in
Dang I wish I could write like this:
I'm tired of arguing logic over emotion...
I went to see Sen. Clinton yesterday for the second time in Fayetteville. No negativity...she didn't even mention Sen. Obama by name. This is compared to the one Sen. Obama appearance I went to in Fayetteville where he spent 5 to 10 minutes attacking her by name.
I'm not saying she hasn't attacked, but to act like he has an untarnished halo is just ridiculous.
Whatever, you support Sen. Obama, that's great; I support Sen. Clinton, that's great. I don't think I've ever attacked him on here, b/c I don't have to: I have enough positive things to say about my candidate. I wish I could see more of the same from other campaign supporters (I just don't confine this to some of the Obama supporters).
But it's politics, and it'll never be clean, I got it. I just expect too much from supporters not to engage in the biting and gnashing of teeth like that of the actual campaign staff and media...
I appreciate your perspective
My view of Clinton is only from afar ... through her television commercials, her performance in debates, her husband's stump speeches, and her surrogates.
J
PS When it comes to negative campaigns, a lot of folks say it doesn't matter who started it. I disagree. As we've learned with George Bush's so-called "pre-emptive war," the initiator of an attack bears a special responsibility for how things go. Unless I've been duped by the mainstream media, it looks to me like the Clinton campaign is more negative by a factor of three than the Obama campaign. No one is acting like he has an untarnished halo. But neither is he standing waist-deep in slime.
Slightly less than logical, but
did you see Hillary's ad where she's sitting at a picnic table with some folks talking about veteran's issues?
Okay, I was trying to pay attention to what she was actually saying (I liked it), but her eyes kept shifting around down around the tabletop. I'm pretty sure she didn't have any notes to look at there, and it really seemed like she couldn't look those folks in the eye. Like she was uncomfortable in their presence.
Maybe it shouldn't have, but it turned me off big time.
Moore negative radio ad.
I posted this elsewhere, assuming this was a post about Iraq!!!
Richard Moore and Jay Reiff are idiots
Thank god they'll soon be put out of our misery.
Can you believe this is what gubernatorial politics looks like in North Carolina?
They are most certainly not idiots
They may well be out of your misery soon, but no, James, they are not idiots.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
-Edmund Burke
Idiots?
I suppose it's a matter of opinion.
But for a campaign that is flailing for a foothold among the electorate to be spending its time in Georgia photographing confederate flags in a convenience store seems to me to qualify as idiotic by almost any measure.
Hmph!
I would point out to you, SIR, that "flailing" isn't necessarily a function of being an idiot. It might also be a function of desperation.
It's not pretty.
Point taken
Idiot is probably the wrong adjective. I know they are both really smart guys who are very accomplished in their respective areas. This just seemed like a boneheaded thing to push.
That said, I'd applaud anyone for calling out the husband's business for stocking racist memorabilia.
I don't think Jay Reiff is an idiot.
Really more the adult step-son's business... it looks like a place you go to buy Slushies and Vienna sausages and plastic roses for your girlfriend on Valentine's Day. I can't imagine anyone goes there to purchase tasteful apparel, and I can't imagine that Bob Eaves has anything to do with stocking it.
I don't think Jay Reiff is an idiot. I think he's trying to extrapolate what worked in Pennsylvania against National Lampoon's Rick Santorum to a primary race against a respectable Democrat. It's a gamble, but I think it's a bad one. Negative ads work, but the studies suggest that they only work when they're viewed as relevant and believable. Rick Santorum just provided more legitimate fodder for negative ads than the desperate grasping at straws in this race. Plus, Jay may be using outdated studies, which suggested that African Americans are more likely to think that negative ads are true and informative. A more recent study I've found actually rejects that. Either way, I'd find that kind of targeting condescending to African American voters.
It's probably easy, when you're on the inside, to think you've found *the* smoking gun. Taking a step back would give them some perspective -- it just looks desperate.
This is probably the best
This is probably the best analysis I've read about this race in a long time. Thanks, Blue Ridge
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Pointing at Naked Emperors