The Perils of Playing Front-Runner

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: The Perils of Playing Front-Runner
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: October 9, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, ahead in polls and fund-raising and seeking to position herself as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is doing what candidates in her circumstances like to do: avoiding risky moves, sidestepping clashes with rivals from her own party and trying to run simultaneously as a primary and general-election candidate.

The strategy reflects a growing confidence among Mrs. Clinton’s aides that she has so far weathered the intense personal scrutiny her candidacy has attracted. But it carries risks for any candidate — and particularly for one named Clinton, as she has found in recent days.

In trying to appeal both to the Democrats’ liberal base and to a more centrist general-election audience, Mrs. Clinton, like her husband before her, risks feeding into the assessment of critics that she is more about political calculation than about conviction. The point has been driven home these past few days in her efforts to present herself as the antiwar hawk: vowing to an audience of Democrats to end the war in Iraq while voting in Congress for a harder line against Iran, a move that some Democrats argue could lead to another war.

That vote led an Iowa Democrat to challenge her heatedly on Sunday in an exchange that ended with her apologizing for accusing him of being a plant for a rival campaign. And it was mocked Monday by a statement from the Republican National Committee that pointedly described it as Mrs. Clinton’s “Iran calculation,” and condemned by one Democratic opponent, former Senator John Edwards, who suggested that Mrs. Clinton was giving President Bush license to wage war in Iran....

***

With the first of the nominating contests only three months away, the campaign is entering what promises to be a turbulent period in which Mrs. Clinton will come under greater attack from both inside and outside her party. And if past campaigns are any guide, this will also be a time of “Clinton in trouble” accounts in the press, inspired by missteps or any signs of slippage, real or merely perceived....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/us/politics/09memo.html?hp

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. Adam Nagourney is a liar or a hack

How the hell can a professional political reporter recycle this kind of crap?

"That vote led an Iowa Democrat to challenge her heatedly on Sunday in an exchange that ended with her apologizing for accusing him of being a plant for a rival campaign."

That's not at all what happened, but what the heck... it's just the NYT. Not like there's any reputation to protect.

The point is not media bias for or against any candidate or party. It is that most campaign reporters are hacks who write down overheard gossip from the hotel bars they live in.

[monktonman]

3. I'm not familiar with that story

Do tell.
Whats this about a plant?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. She suggested a questioner was reading from something he was sent

(bearing in mind that every campaign is doing massive mailings in Iowa right now) because she said she had heard the same question three times in the last day or so. The guy said he was reading from his own research and she apologized.

The issue was the language of Kyl/Lieberman and the guy was reading something he got somewhere that was not accurate... he was asking her why she voted for the draft language which was never actually voted on by anybody.

There was no claim that he was a plant from another campaign. (There was an intimation that the text he was reading might be something disseminated by someone else, which it was. It didn't come to him in a dream. The draft language was all over DU and a number of blogs that day, with claims that it was what had been voted on. Since the draft language was being circulated by folks unfriendly to the Clinton candidacy with the claim she had voted for it, and this fellow had printed it out from a source that claimed she had voted for it, she was actually closer to correct than not. But she apologized just to apologize.)

MSNBC ran a story with a bogus characterization "Clinton accuses questioner of being a plant." Perhaps they misread "you were sent" as referring to the guy, rather than the text he was reading from.

The Washington Post ran the real story with the actual exchange while invalidated the MSNBC characterization.

Now the NYT is recycling the bogus version. God knows why.

[rpannier]

2. Interesting article (as usual)

Thanks for posting.

[illinoisprogressive]

4. I have not noticed any difference in the media's usual coverage of the candidates.