LA Times: Hillary's campaign tactics are causing some liberals to turn against the couple

[TeamJordan23]

Is the right right on the Clintons?
Hillary's campaign tactics are causing some liberals to turn against the couple.
Jonathan Chait

January 26, 2008

Something strange happened the other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters. Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We're not frothing Clinton haters like ... well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they'd go away.

The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging that Ronald Reagan changed the country. Everyone knows Reagan changed the country. Bill and Hillary have said he changed the country. But they falsely claimed that Obama praised Reagan's ideas, saying he was a better president than Clinton -- something he didn't say and surely does not believe.

This might have been the most egregious case, but it wasn't the first. Before the New Hampshire primaries, Clinton supporters e-mailed pro-choice voters claiming that Obama was suspect on abortion rights because he had voted "present" instead of "no" on some votes. (In fact, the president of the Illinois chapter of Planned Parenthood said she had coordinated strategy with Obama and wanted him to vote "present.") Recently, there have been waves of robocalls in South Carolina repeatedly attacking "Barack Hussein Obama."

I crossed the Clinton Rubicon a couple of weeks ago when, in the course of introducing Hillary, Clinton supporter and Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson invoked Obama's youthful drug use. This was disgusting on its own terms, but worse still if you know anything about Johnson. I do -- I once wrote a long profile of him. He has a sleazy habit of appropriating the logic of civil rights for his own financial gain. He also has a habit of aiding conservative crusades to eliminate the estate tax and privatize Social Security by falsely claiming they redistribute wealth from African Americans to whites. The episode reminded me of the Clintons' habit of surrounding themselves with the most egregious characters: Dick Morris, Marc Rich and so on.

The Clinton campaign is trying to make it seem as if the complaint is about negativity, and it is pointing out that Obama has criticized Hillary as well. That's what politicians are supposed to do when they compete for votes. But criticism isn't the same thing as lying and sleaze-mongering.

Continue Reading: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait26jan26,0,7890763.column

[mod mom]

1. ABSOLUTELY! The folks in Ohio who were appalled at the blatant racial disenfranchisement

by the GOP and NOT sitting back and saying if Bill does it it's ok. It's despicable whoever does it.

[Bright Eyes]

2. The DLC is taking the liberal base vote for granted.

And I guarantee it will come back to bite them. Maybe not in 08' but it will happen. We won't be pushed around forever.

[John Q. Citizen]

8. I won't vote for Hill if she's nominee. I can't reward this shit.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. This piece of shit has been posted all day long here.

It's the opinion of one goofball written as though it's all inclusive. It's shit.

[BootinUp]

7. Heres how it works

If one thread has enough alternative viewpoint answers to lessen the impact of the OP, then just start another.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. I'm glad it is. It's how I see it. I must have missed the others. I'm recommending this post.

[TeamJordan23]

12. sorry, I didn't see any. nm

[Big Blue Marble]

14. You can rationalize these feelings however you want.

This expression of disgust with the Clintons is showing up in commentary in many places.

Keep your head buried as deep as you can, but this sense is percolating around the country.
A lot of us cannot stand what the Clintons are willing to do within their own party to
gain the nomination.

[Barack_America]

4. WITHOUT A DOUBT! I started the primary season respecting Hillary, but preferring Obama...

...and I now loathe Hillary.

What they've done is awful for this party.

[usregimechange]

5. As it should...

[RufusTFirefly]

6. This is a fallacious argument

As I told a friend who sent me this article

I'm a liberal, and I have always been against a Hillary Clinton candidacy. The notion that all liberals have supported her up to this point is wrong.
Also, I am against her not because of her sleazy, Rovian campaign tactics but because she is an unapologetic, war-mongering corporatist triangulator.
Rethugs hated Bill Clinton, not because he was a liar or a sleazy politician but because he embodied the side of the 1960s they loathed and because he isn't a plutocrat.
Rethugs hate Hillary Clinton (yes, I'm over-simplifying) because she's (usually) pro-choice, but primarily because she's a strong woman.

So Chait is conveniently muddling the whole issue by suggesting that those of us who are disgusted with Hillary Clinton are somehow buying into something the Republicans have been saying all along and thus are reluctantly realizing that the Republicans were right.

Chait's wrong, and so are the Republicans.

[formernaderite]

16. i dont' really see her a a strong woman

because she stuck with bill? does that make her particularly strong? because she had a job, and ran for senate on his coat tails? i've asked my wife the same question...does she see hillary as particularly strong, she also explains...it's that she's opportunistic, and that's her strength. So is corporate america...opportunistic. I actually find that the most cowardly of traits...but that's just me.

[RufusTFirefly]

17. Strong woman = shoes, no apron

Point taken, formernaderite. However, my hunch is that our definition of "strong woman" differs significantly from that of a Limbaugh-lovin' Rethug.

[SoFlaJet]

9. Talk about a guy with his finger on the pulse

except he didn't mention us Edwards supporters who are feeling the same way.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

10. 'baahhhh. What should I think MSM. Hep me Hannity"

[Yael]

13. Some of us have felt this way from the beginning

It isn't a change, it is just confirmation that we weren't wrong. :P

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. Hillary pulled the wrong sentance from Obama's comments on Reagan

I fully agree with Obama that the Republicans were driving the political agenda then, and that Reagan was an agent of change. If thre was anything controversial in Obama's comments, this sentance goes more to the heart of it:

"I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating."

The only valid point to question IMO was whether Obama was giving validity to a Right Wing view that excesses from the 60's were to blame for our nations problems. With this too Obama didn't say those were his views, but he did not counter that view in his own comments, leaving it possible to speculate if he tacitly accepted that view. At the least he gave voice to that view without directly challenging it.

Was Obama or was he not playing it both ways here? Is he, to use a word frequently attached to Hillary Clinton, triangulating? Yes he can't accurately be pinned down for praising the political effects of Reagan, or the Republican world view that managed to bring Reagan to power. He did not. And I don't believe Obama really praises what Reagan did to our nation.

Clinton overplayed her hand with her commercials because she wanted to highlight one interpretation of Obama's comments, and she did so by taking the one short sound bite out of context that did so most tellingly. She got burned for that and it is fair to burn her for it. But the larger point remains. Since Obama was too ambiguous to leave Clinton with a clean sound bite to use against him, she went for "the next best thing" and that wasn't good enough.

But Obama was making noises that could be construed by many as favorable to Reagan and his political world view even if that literally is not what he said. And he was doing so at the exact same time that he was making his blatant "become a Democrat for a day" appeal to Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries and caucuses to help him win the Democratic nomination. I don't suspect Obama of really being Republican lite. I think he is the 2008 version of Bill Clinton's 1992 version of "New Democrat". But I do suspect him of trying to lure Republican voters into his camp for the primaries by evoking Reagan in a way that was meant to sound positive to them.

[rhett o rick]

18. She's not losing any liberal votes because she never had any. nm

[nealmhughes]

24. And I am unanimous with that. (Sorry Mrs. Slocum.)

[frog92969]

19. "that loathing seems a lot less irrational"

Mine never was.

[MissPuddy]

20. Remember Geraldine Ferraro? Mondale lost...

I am a woman but remember when Mondale blew it when he picked Ferraro as his running mate. A woman running mate lost the ticket THEN and TODAY a woman nominee can lose the ticket. Let's face it. We need to pick a man to beat the Republicans. The only viable candidate is EDWARDS.

[HooptieWagon]

25. I'd disagree

I don't think Ferraro hurt Mondale near as much as Mondale hurt Mondale. She hardly gets a mention nowadays, and certainly not in the context of "If we'd only selected a man as VP" - you're the first I've seen. The country was likely ready for a woman as VP at that time, IMO. There had already been women governors, senators, and even a presidential candidate (Shirley Chisolm).
I think the majority of the country is ready now for a woman president... just not Hillary. I think Ann Richards (RIP) could have been an extremely strong candidate this election - strong, pragmatic, southern governor, great one-liners the media would eat up, and not afraid to speak her mind. And she wouldn't need to ride anyone's coattails or fight her battles for her.

[nikto]

21. Anything...

Hillary/Bill would do, no matter how "hardball",
or even outright sleazy,
would be nothing, I said: N-O-T-H-I-N-G
compared with the inevitable
Repug attacks we will enjoy from summer on.





My guy is Edwards.

But Edwards for Prez
seems impossible now,
so how about:

OBAMA/EDWARDS?

[Boo Boo]

22. One small "kick" for mankind... /nt

[Omega3]

23. what's really turning ppl against them, if it is...

is the MSM's treatment and sensationalism re: Bill Clinton, what about all the shit Michelle Obama says?

you're all being duped, and I'm an Edwards supporter.

[Kablooie]

26. Now that she's lost S.C. I hope we don't hear more about her crying.

Though this time it might have a crybaby tone if she did.

[Hepburn]

27. Gotta agree with that opinion.

I NEVER liked Hillary ~~ and that is from the time she was First Lady. She hit me as phony and cold. But....I always adored the Big Dawg and when he left office, missed him like crazy...until now.

Bill Clinton has acted like a complete horse's ass lately and I am sad and embarassed over this. And, I really don't like him very much right now.

BTW: I am NOT an Obama supporter so it is nothing about him attacking someone I support. I just think Bill Clinton is NOT acting like an elder statesman should. He should show a hell of a lot more dignity than he has displayed as of late.

JMHO