The Clintons and the 'War on Obama' [View All]

[EV_Ares]

Last December, when I first learned via Clinton insiders that their “oppo” package would include Barack Obama’s associations with fiery black preacher Jeremiah Wright and Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers, I shrugged at what sounded to me like sub-standard fare from the dark side of American politics. So what if someone’s minister said some stupid things or that an aging one-time student radical had lent some support to a politician’s campaign, I thought. Besides those two themes, Clinton insiders were plotting how to exploit Obama’s past political ties to indicted real-estate developer Tony Rezko, and they even were hashing over how they might slip in suggestions that Obama’s dead mother had been a leftist. (When I heard the “oppo” about the dead mother, I really couldn’t believe my ears.)

Even then – in December before the first votes had been cast – the Clintons were so caught up in their ambition to return to the White House that they were veering toward the worst aspects of politics, what is generally associated with the American Right and the most ruthless Republican operatives – guilt-by-association, red-baiting, McCarthyism and racial messaging. The rationale that I heard from the Clinton operatives was that these Obama vulnerabilities would be exploited by the Republicans in the general election, so it was necessary to destroy Obama when there was still time for another Democrat (i.e. Hillary Clinton) to be nominated.

But part of me didn’t believe the Clintons would go through with this War on Obama. I had trouble envisioning people who had been victimized by similar tactics – indeed whom I had defended when they were on the receiving end – resorting to such acts against a fellow Democrat, who by all accounts is a decent fellow and a good family man. It is now clear, however, that the Clintons did decide to go through with it, “throwing the kitchen sink” at Obama, as one Clinton aide explained to the New York Times.

Plus, in doing so, the Clinton camp struck an enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend alliance with some of the same pro-Republican media outlets that Sen. Clinton had dubbed in the 1990s the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” This alliance of convenience made Hillary Clinton an odd bedfellow with right-wing media mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, Fox News and even Rush Limbaugh, who has been urging Republicans to vote for Sen. Clinton in the Democratic primaries as a way to block Sen. Obama’s nomination. And, with the right-wing media onboard, the mainstream news commentators could be counted on to tag along – which many did.

But the Clintons also got special help from one of their old advisers, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, who reprised many of the anti-Obama “oppo” themes during a key prime-time debate before the Pennsylvania primary.

entire article @ link: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/050308.html