WP, E.J. Dionne: Loose Lips and Democratic Ships; "Dumb" word choice, "shameless" pile-on

[DeepModem Mom]

Loose Lips and Democratic Ships
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008;

The Democratic presidential candidates are doing a splendid job of helping John McCain get to the White House.

Barack Obama violated two elementary rules of political campaigning. A candidate should never play the role of a political scientist or sociologist analyzing a key electoral swing group from afar and should never dissect the motivations of less privileged people when talking to a group of privileged people....

***

...there are those two Obama words that shook the campaign: "cling" and "bitter." Really dumb word choices. The second paragraph, far less empathetic than the first, makes Obama sound like the author of an undergraduate paper, not a candidate for president. At one level, who can blame Hillary Clinton for going after Obama's mistake? Her campaign looked set to collapse, if not in Pennsylvania then shortly thereafter. Of course she capitalized on his error by accusing him of being elitist.

But something doesn't parse when a Wellesley and Yale Law School graduate whose family made $109 million since 2001 relentlessly assails a former community organizer on the grounds that he is an elitist. (McCain enthusiastically dittoed the charge Monday.) It's also disappointing that Clinton, whose husband bravely battled the National Rifle Association over a ban on assault weapons, now presents herself as a Second Amendment hero.

And not contenting herself with bashing Obama, she denigrated the last two Democratic presidential nominees, John Kerry and Al Gore, at Sunday night's CNN forum on faith. Oh, yes, they were "very good men and men of faith." But conferring her blessing upon the crude stereotypes peddled relentlessly by Republican consultants, she then asserted that "large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to or, frankly, respect their ways of life."...

It has been sickening over the years to watch Republicans, who always rally to the aid of the country's wealthiest citizens, successfully cast themselves as pork-rind-eating, NASCAR-watching, gun-toting populists. To have the current White House occupant (Yale, Harvard Business School, son of a president) run as a good old boy should have been the final straw.

But here are the two remaining Democratic candidates, Obama by speaking carelessly and Clinton by piling on shamelessly, doing all they can to make it easy for Republicans to pretend one more time that they are the salt of the earth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/14/AR2008041402649_pf.html

[BeyondGeography]

1. Fair points

K&R

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Thanks, Beyond -- I think Dionne maybe has it about right here. nt

[Cresent City Kid]

2. That sums it up

If he had replaced "cling" with "vote based on", he could have got away with saying "bitter".

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I have said it before and I will say it again

when John McCain wins, who are all these partisans going to blame?

[THX1138]

5. Diebold

Count on it