The Politico notes a rather amateurish effort from Hillary Clinton:
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.
Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
McQ lays waste to the latest tactic from Hillary’s campaign:
In fact, this picture has been circulating among blogs for a couple of days and it really shows nothing but another in a long line of politicians doing what politicians do when they go to visit foreign nations. Recently, for instance, we saw George Bush in a Saudi robe.
McQ follows up with a series of pictures revealing just how silly and stupid this tactic is. Personally, I think it shows just how desperate Hillary is , as Peter noted before, since her chances of securing the nomination are exceedingly unlikely at this point. According to Intrade, Obama has a better than 80% chance of winning the nomination (80.5 bid/82 ask), while Hillary is mired around 20% (19.5 bid/19.9 ask). Meanwhile, Clinton’s RCP average is trending downwards, while Obama’s is on the rise. And then today, liberal pundit Jonathan Alter takes a look at the writing on the wall and advises Hillary to quit before the Texas and Ohio primaries:
If Hillary Clinton wanted a graceful exit, she’d drop out now—before the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries—and endorse Barack Obama. This would be terrible for people like me who have been dreaming of a brokered convention for decades. For selfish reasons, I want the story to stay compelling for as long as possible, which means I’m hoping for a battle into June for every last delegate and a bloody floor fight in late August in Denver. But to withdraw this week would be the best thing imaginable for Hillary’s political career. She won’t, of course, and for reasons that help explain why she’s in so much trouble in the first place.
Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn’t. To win, she would have to do more than reverse the tide in Texas and Ohio, where polls show Obama already even or closing fast. She would have to hold off his surge, then establish her own powerful momentum within three or four days. Without a victory of 20 points or more in both states, the delegate math is forbidding. In Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, the Clinton campaign did not even file full delegate slates. That’s how sure they were of putting Obama away on Super Tuesday.
Tenacity is an admirable trait in a fighter, except when coupled with egotistical selfishness. As her campaign circles the drain, expect more ridiculous attacks from Team Hillary.
I see it is defending Obama day today;^)
Meh. I guess I just don’t like seeing falsehoods spread. Obama’s pretty squeaky clean if the best that the Clinton team o’destruction can come up with are excerpts from kindergarten, plagiarism of his own campaign workers, and trying on a gift from Kenyan officials. He deserves better than that (and so do we). Even the “Captain story” is a weak knock on his candidacy, although I understand why the military people were upset. Politicians routinely take constituents’ anecdotes and twist them to support their own agenda, so I just don’t see the big deal there.
The other part of it, I guess, is that I would prefer to see Obama defeated because he’s basically more socialist and more naive on foreign-policy than Jimmy Carter. Raising BS issues to defeat him when there are so many real ones just forever obfuscates the problem in my view. How are we ever going to get a real discussion going on amongst the American electorate if the only points of contention are who’s more patriotic, who said something similar to anther politician, and who had lunch and took a plane ride with some lobbyist (that he might or might not be sleeping with [wink, wink; nudge, nudge])?
Of course, I also tend to value a fair fight, and the Clintons (like most politicians) fight very dirty — they’re also really good at it.
Agreed, on all counts.
Did you read the reply from Clinton’s campaign?
“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.”
And do you buy it?
If elected president, Obama will very likely be a one term “change” candidate similar to Carter. And, just as Carter paved the way for Reagan, Obama will pave the way for a sequence of conservative victories.
The Republican Party is in the midst of realignment. The Reagan coalition* is breaking apart. This was evident when the Republican candidates each spoke to a specific constituency of that coalition but were unable to bridge the cleavages between those constituencies.
For example, Giuliani and McCain are popular with defense hawks but not anyone else in the party, Romney with fiscal conservatives (Rockefeller Republicans), Huckabee with social conservatives, Ron Paul with libertarians, Duncan Hunter with nativists, etc.
Like the Democrats after the collapse of the New Deal Coalition, the Republicans face a difficult choice. Do they try to put Humpty Dumpty (the Reagan Coalition) back together again or is it time for something new? Change is always difficult. It was difficult for the Democrats to support someone like Clinton, a centrist who deviated from the politics of the New Deal Coalition. But, after he won the election, centrist, neoliberal, policies began to prevail in the party.
The Republican Party is definitely undergoing a realignment the question is, in which direction? Will it move in a more centrist direction as well? Given that the southern states are so important it would seem to point to more power going to social conservatives. If they sit out this election and let McCain loose by a large margin, we can expect what the response will be. A shift to the right rather than the center. If McCain wins despite the protests of the social conservatives, it will be an indication that the party is shifting towards the center.
Thanks for the plug, BTW.
–The New Centrist
*: In addition to the standard three: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and defense hawks, I add libertarians and nativists.
Oh, Obama is clearly a Manchurian Islamist. That picture proves it, and I need not read any intelligent explanation as to why he would ever wear such a thing!
But seriously, New Centrist is right about the battle in the heart of the Republican Party. It will be interesting to see if the Dems go through some type of realignment if Obama gets the nomination and then loses to McCain, or if they will continue down the path their members seem to have chosen.