by publius
I caught most of tonight’s schizophrenic Mortal Kombat/Kumbaya debate. I know you’ll be shocked, but I came away irritated with the Clinton campaign – more precisely, with certain tactics that I dare call Bush-esque. Hear me out.
To back up, and to echo Josh Marshall, HRC had actually been growing on me lately. The new wave of sympathy hit me one day as I listened to her talk confidently – and with such clear mastery – of some random policy point. I thought, “God, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone that smart and that wonky in the White House.” Her policy mastery didn’t so much win me to her side, as it cooled my opposition. It made me step back, get some perspective, and realize that an HRC administration would be a welcome relief – and would actually be cool in some wonkerrific respects.
But then I listened to the debate. And, ugh. What bothered me was not any of the silly things you usually hear about her personally. What bothered me was her tactics – and in particular, her misrepresentations. They were a particular type of misrepresentation that rang disturbingly familiar.
Josh Marshall got me thinking about all this when I read his scattered reactions to the debate:
I still think Hillary is just intentionally misrepresenting what Obama said about Reagan. It makes me cringe. As much I like her, it makes me cringe.
…Just when I’m seeing Hillary’s side of things, she comes back with crap like this ‘present’ stuff. Anybody who’s looked into this knows the whole ‘present’ thing is garbage. It’s a standard thing in the Illinois legislature.
Both of these attacks – i.e., Reagan and the “present” voting – are clearly factually false. And everyone who pays attention to the news knows it. And Clinton knows it too. Obama’s invocation of Reagan had nothing to do with praising Republican ideas, and the “present” thing has already been debunked too.
But still, she and her campaign keep harping on this — dishonestly. What’s so infuriating is that, in doing so, they assume their audience is too ignorant to learn the truth. It’s not so much that they’re attacking Obama – after all, that’s politics. It’s that Clinton’s attacks illustrate a deep contempt for voters. Call it “the rube strategy” – we’ll say what we want and most people will be too ignorant to ever figure out the difference.
Understand, though, that this type of misrepresentation isn’t easy to do. It’s a fine art. You can’t just come out and lie baldly. The press will keep hitting you for that, and the public will take note. The key is to lie while maintaining plausible deniability – i.e., you must offer some explanation that is good enough even though you clearly don’t believe it yourself.
To see a perfect example of this tactic in action, take a look at the guy who patented it – George W. Bush. In the early Iraq years, you often heard Bush say something like “Saddam funded terrorists.” The clear implication was that Saddam funded al Qaeda terrorists. However, the nominal explanation – i.e., the source of the plausible deniability – was that Saddam funded Palestinian terrorists. With this fallback position in place, administration officials and pundits could go forth and falsely accuse with impunity.
It might have been a misrepresentation, but it was an effective one. Uninformed voters would hear “Saddam/terrorist” and be moved by it. They might not, however, read the NYT expose three days later on why this claim isn’t actually true. And if, by some miracle of God, a Bush official got called on it on TV, they could rattle off Palestinian names if they needed to. As I said, it’s an art. Rudy ain’t mastered it.
The bigger point – indeed, the bigger outrage – is just how little regard Bush administration officials had for the public when they made these types of arguments — arguments deliberately tailored to exploit the uninformed. They not only assumed voters would never know the difference, they relied on them never knowing the difference. It was a conscious exploitation of ignorance.
I hesitate to draw comparisons with Bush, because HRC would be a far better president on an infinite number of levels. But that said, HRC’s attacks are fundamentally very similar to Bush’s. The “present” thing in particular consciously plays on voters’ ignorance of Illinois’s unique political system. Still, though, the allegation strikes a perfect balance. The Clinton team can go out and make the allegation. If, however, they get called out, they have just enough facts to throw out to keep the waters muddied.
The whole thing reminds me of Paul Ohm’s interesting law review article entitled “The Myth of the Superuser.” The idea is that online privacy debates focus too heavily on the capabilities of a small percentage of superusers who can evade controls, exploit loopholes, etc. It would be better, Ohm argues, if the policy debate focused on the larger percentage of regular users who aren’t all that resourceful (i.e., people like me).
The Clinton campaign has apparently taken Ohm’s advice to heart. Attacks like these are demonstrably false to the “super-informed,” but the Clinton campaign doesn’t care. They just want the message of “Obama Hearts Reagan” in the minds of people who are too busy to read multiple national newspapers and dozens of blogs.
All that said, maybe this is a feature not a bug. If you’ve become even more cynical than me about what it takes to beat a Republican, then maybe this practice is a virtue. and perhaps you’re right. But I’m still naively in the “expect more” stage. So I don’t like it.
Just in case anyone wants to watch Obama’s Reagan remarks in their entirety, they are here, starting at about 18:40. (Actually, the whole thing is interesting. I like long conversations with Presidential candidates — easier to get a feel for someone than by watching teensy snippets. In this case, though, it’s a pity many of the questions to him are nearly inaudible.)
“All that said, maybe this is a feature not a bug. If you’ve become even more cynical than me about what it takes to beat a Republican, then maybe this practice is a virtue. and perhaps you’re right. But I’m still naively in the “expect more” stage.”
The problem with even that consolation is that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the lying stops once you beat the Republicans.
Clinton is willing to use race baiting, blatant lying, voter suppression, and the politics of personal destruction against her fellow Democrats. She will use it against anyone who gets in her way at any time.
You can hope that will be mostly Republicans, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Barack Obama’s Wife’s Wal-Mart connection
What, the Clintons? Cynical, manipulative, unscrupulous, and willing to exploit voter ignorance? No way!
I must say, it’s sweet music indeed to hear Democrats complain about this. The rest of us realized it back in the 90’s.
it’s sweet music indeed to hear Democrats complain about this. The rest of us realized it back in the 90’s.
“realized it” is not the right phrase here. i think you need something more like “went embarrassingly screeching batsh!t fncking unhinged insane over it”. and nobody expects anything different this time around.
What makes you think Democrats didn’t complain about this? We just didn’t think it rated impeachment.
“they assume their audience is too ignorant to learn the truth.”
Unfortunately, a pretty safe assumption.
There’s no question that if HRC becomes President, we’ll get eight more years of utter corruption and devisiveness in our national politics.
Nobody has more contempt for and anger about the illgality and corruption of the Bush Administration than I do. But until Bush ’43 came along, I thought Bubba and his horrible wife were the worst occupants evah in the WH. What we’re seeing now from them on the Campaign Trail is a preview how they will govern if given power again: lies, self-dealing, financial corruption of the rankest sort.
Obama provides at least the hope of something better. Our republic certainly deserves better than the likes of Bill and Hillary again. And if anyone takes umbrage at my lumping the two of them together, look at how Bubba is behaving now. Does anyone seriously think he won’t be playing a major role if back in the WH?
“went embarrassingly screeching batsh!t fncking unhinged insane over it”
Not me. I didn’t support impeaching Clinton. Thought he was a mendacious, unprincipled and self-serving in ways that crippled his presidency? Yeah. Hated him to the point of getting out the pitchfork? No. His DLC brand of Democratic politics is actually fairly close to where I am on the political spectrum and a lot of the things he did (welfare reform, NAFTA, etc.), I agree with. A lot of liberal friends of mine genuinely like the guy, though, which I could never fathom, since in addition to his personal sliminess he really wasn’t a very progressive President ideologically.
I hesitate to draw comparisons with Bush, because HRC would be a far better president on an infinite number of levels.
Infinite? Dick Cheney with hair?
They just want the message of “Obama Hearts Reagan” in the minds of people who are too busy to read multiple national newspapers and dozens of blogs.
That’s a strategy that can easily backfire though, at least where Independents are concerned. If I were to believe it (which I don’t) it would be a point in his favor.
at least where Independents are concerned.
Ah yes, but you forget that the Clintons’ apparent strategy is “keep it close until the primaries in which only partisan Democrats can vote, to hell with winning in November”.
the Clintons’ apparent strategy is “keep it close until the primaries in which only partisan Democrats can vote, to hell with winning in November”.
i doubt that’s her real strategy. she’s a lot of things, but she’s not stupid.
Last night Obama said this:
Will Hillary now start saying he praised the good that Bush and Cheney have done?
They not only assumed voters would never know the difference, they relied on them never knowing the difference.
And, curiously, they relied on the so-called “liberal media” not to make the difference clear…
I think that this phrase sums up my discomfort with the Clinton campaign:
It seems that their approach to campaigning does everything it can to deserve the cynicism with which so many Americans view politics.
Between that and Senator Clinton’s triangulation on issues which she voted on in the Senate, I’m very unsure that she’ll actually stand up for any Democratic values, if and when she gets to the Oval Office.
In fairness to Obama it would be nice to know how many of his fellow Democrats voted present. Is this a tactic that Illinois Democrats use to overcome or rebuke the opposition when they use parliamentary procedures to push through unacceptable measures? I know, it’s inside baseball, but…..
Hillary voted to allow Jackass Bush the power to invade Iraq. If she would admit that was wrong and apologize I would consider voting for her in the primary. I will vote for her in the General if I have to, I guess……
Once again, I come here to read what I’ve already been thinking.
Thanks, guys.
“You can’t just come out and lie baldly. The press will keep hitting you for that, and the public will take note.”
Yeah, right.
In the last week, two different people have informed me that Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden are cousins.
I s**t you not.
I want better than “like Bush only possibly not as bad”. I’ve voted Democrat pretty regularly for 20 years, but it wasn’t until I wandered across Legal Fiction lo these 6, 7 years ago that I really started to think about it. Now I think I don’t have to settle for the one that makes me least want to upchuck.
Publius keeps saying politicians won’t stop using these tactics until they stop working. I hope Americans have come enough to their senses that this happens soon.
Slightly off topic, but both Romney and Giuliani are running spanish language ads in Florida.
Why do I get the feeling that would be a big no no in say Texas or California?
Why is it seemingly OK in Florida?
Obama’s calling for a ‘new’ kind of politics is a more honest version of the ‘rube strategy’ (because there is no such thing), It’s preferable (albeit half-baked), since what he’s really talking about is a new coalition, not a new politics, and a new coalition is a screamingly obvious requisite right now. HRC is, like her husband, the personification of mediocrity – humorless and bereft of imagination, political and otherwise. She, not Obama, is the one operating in Reagan’s shadow, steeped in the Reagan Ethos: winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing; it’s fundamentally about *me* and my shoddy ambition. She wraps both her arms around the oldest of ‘old’ politics because she can’t imagine anything else, even in this post-Dubya wasteland; the politics of the Missle Gap.
Can we please just be finished with the Clintons?! Basta!!! They didn’t deserve to be treated the way they were in the 90s, but we don’t deserve their never-ending presence since then! They’re like *herpes*.
In the last week, two different people have informed me that Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden are cousins.
was this woman one of them ? (language NSFW)
What a load of baloney.
What is factually true is that this post is a mistrepresention of what happened. Perhaps you did not listen to the debate closely enough and did not do any actual research on what Obama actually said.
Bottom line: Hillary Clinton did not misrepresent Obama. But you are misreprsenting Hillary.
Clinton attacked Obama for his praise of republicans as the party of IDEAS in order to garner the endorsment of a conservative editorial board. This is true, he did this and this is what Hillary criticized him for.
Obama responded by saying that even Hillary praised Reagan. This is true but dishonest as that is not what Clinton was criticizing him on.
Hillary shot back that she was criticizing him on praising republican ideas, not on his admiration for Reagan. Hillary was representing the facts actually, Obama was trying to mislead the audience.
You’re right, Ginger. Perhaps there’s an implied “if you’re a Democrat” there.
There are blogs out there where they can acknowledge complexity …
… on these issues, but this undelightfully doesn’t seem to be one.
@cleek:
After person number two shared the news with me yesterday, I scurried off to google to see if I could figure out the source. And found my way to … that.
I think that poor woman heard it via the email-net (or from someone who had). There’s tenure waiting for the Poli Sci or Communications adjunct who applies some scholarship to the “forward-all” phenomenon.
Hey, the title practically writes itself:
“Forward-all: The Influence of Email Networks, Mass Communication, and the Reputation Economy on Post Industrial Political Identity.”
Ken, Clinton’s attempt to distract by playing games about the distinction between “Republicans” (in the Reagan era) and “Reagan” got off to a good start, but the attack fizzled when Obama responded that he never said the Republican ideas were good ones. When Clinton even said herself that the Republicans had ideas, Obama agreed that they were bad ideas, and Clinton had nowhere to go.
“What makes you think Democrats didn’t complain about this? We just didn’t think it rated impeachment.”
What Democrats did, Mealworm, was praise the Clintons with faint damns. You didn’t think “it” rated impeachment, because you were only willing to acknowledge the “it” that that was true of, and nothing else.
Yup, sweet music indeed, even if it’s played on a harmonica where a full orchestra is deserved.
If you look at the context of Obama’s comments on republican ideas, sitting in front of a conservative editorial board and seeking it’s endorsement, there can be no doubt that Obama was saying he had a favorable impression of republican ideas. This is one of the reasons democrats got mad at him.
Any other interpretation is a just an excuse of Obama based on wishful thinking. The facts are clear enough.
This is what Hillary was attacking him on in the debate. Obama tried a dodge to shift the issue to Reagan and Hillary did not let him get away with it.
Watch the tape again. Check out the transcripts. Clinton was right.
Obama partisans may be confused by the timeline. Hillary was criticizing something Obama had said in the past. You may be confusing Obamas statements in the debate with what he actually said to the editorial board.
yes, Rilkefan. Much as I dislike HRC and Bill, the Obama team is kind of amateurish, and this is not the only example; of course they are bound to recieve punches landed by the Clintons in cases like this. The ‘Reagan’ comments were a botch, and an important one. It was vague and meaningless about what is, in a way, the core issue of this campaign. Too bad we aren’t nominating the candidate who was explicitly anti-Reagan…oh well. Maybe Obama will come around.
it’s a botch only if he loses the primary. if he gets through, they’ll become a major asset, further increasingly his likeability to indies and Rs.
Rilkefan, it would be nice if you gave us a hint about what you find illuminating in those linked discussions.
In your first link for example I find “who went negative first” within the temporal boundaries of the debate to be a rather uninteresting question. Obama used the debate to hit back against lies that the Clinton campaign had been spreading all week long. That strikes me more as ‘spin’ than ‘complexity. Furthermore none of his ‘attacks’ struck me as dishonest or even misleading. Clinton’s attacks have been unambiguously both.
I don’t know what you think is important about the second link. Even if you think that Reagan was atrocious, Obama’s comments on him are historically accurate and made exactly the point he was trying to make. That point only seems confusing if you buy the Clinton spin on it rather than listening to the actual statement.
Your third link pretty much acknowledges the lies but thinks that might be a good thing. Hilzoy has addressed that issue a number of times. My response to that the hardball doesn’t just hit your perceived enemies, it hits Clinton’s perceived enemies. And she has a rather long history of searching for and finding enemies on all sides. It is ironic, though sad, that all of the complaints I usually hear around this blog about Republicans are being played out in a Republican-free environment. We have race baiting, blatant lying about an opponent’s record, and now voter suppression. If that is what it takes to win at all costs, what exactly do you believe you will have left?
And when exactly will Clinton have ‘won’ enough to stop? It seems to me that the parallel to the War on Terrorism is apt. If you are going to give up lots of your previously principled stands on race and lying and electoral cheating, you might want to figure out when it ends. Because I suspect Clinton will find it in her best interest to raise the spectre of an axis of e-vile Republicans no matter how defeated they are. And heaven help us all if she wins a squeaker.
The fourth link is the only new one I find at all interesting. The ‘present’ thing seems weird to me, but it is apparently a normal function of the Illinois legislature and is often used as a an intentional tactic. I find the pretext behind the smears about it rather amusing—Republicans aren’t likely to be raising ‘present’ votes on pro-life bills and crime bills in the way Clinton is using them (a show of insufficient dedication). And if they try, the votes will function as intended—not giving a clear ‘no’ vote. And the Obama rejoinder is obvious anyway—at least he didn’t vote ‘yes’ like Clinton did on the war. A present vote from her would have been much better.
I liked the fifth link. 😉
ken, I’ve watched the entire interview twice now. I think that your characterization of Obama’s remarks is flatly wrong. You’re entitled to your opinion, but please keep in mind that it’s merely that: an opinion.
Adam, you may be watched a doctored tape.
Here are the facts:
1) In an editorial board meeting with a conservative paper Obama praised both Ronald Reagan and republican ideas.
2) In the debate Hillary Clinton attacked Obama for his praise of repblican ideas.
3) Obama came back and said that even Hillary had good things to say about Reagan.
4) Hillary shot back that she was criticizing him for his praise of the republican ideas and did not mention Reagan.
5) Obama said he was fighting republican ideas when Hillary was on the board of WalMart
6) Hillary said she was fighting republican ideas when Obama was serving the legal interest of an indicted Chicago slum lord.
Ok, I should point out that Rezko, the slum lord in question was not under federal indictment at the time Oboma was representing his interests.
But still, they are very closely connected. Rezko not only helped Obama buy his house but then sold him a slice of land from an ajoining parcel. This occured while Rezko was being investigated for corruption and was widely reported in the Chicago press.
Obama first lied about having any knowledge of this and then finally admitted to knowing about it all along.
ken – you are going to have to do better than your opinion on number 1 above. Give a direct quote from Obama from that interview that praises a specific Republican idea or general idea.
Ken, you complain about Obama’s supposedly changing the subject by referring to Reagan rather than Republicans of the Reagan era, but now you’re so far away from your original point that it’s not even visible any more. In any case, your baseless accusation about the doctored tape makes it clear that there’s no point in engaging you further.
I think it is too bad about all the WalMart hate. WalMart has done more to make good things affordable to poor people than your average Democrat.
And I recently saw some links to this, see also here which strikes me as unusually silly. Obama’s wife was on a board for a company that has WalMart as its major customer?
NewsFlash to people who don’t know anything about consumer products businesses—There are three types of companies—those who have WalMart their major customer, those who wish WalMart was their major customer, and those that are bankrupt.
ken: I suspect that most people have not watched the entire 49 minute video of the interview. I, however, have. And as best I can tell, Obama was talking about elections that have been truly transformative, in the sense of altering the trajectory of American politics.
He said that the election of JFK was one, and that Reagan was another. He also said that during the 1980s, the Republican party was the “party of ideas”, without any suggestion that they were good ideas at all. Having lived through it, I think he was right, and moreover unexceptionally right. (See famous conservative and Reagan admirer Mark Schmitt on this point.)
During the 1980s, I think that Democrats were doing a number of very interesting things. The wonky, down-in-the-weeds policy and activism communities, for instance, were developing a lot of interesting new ideas (the part I’m most familiar with, low-income housing people, spent that decade completely altering their view of the form low-income housing ought to take, and the role government ought to play in it.) This was very, very important stuff, since goal eventually have to be realized, and insights into how best to realize them are of course crucial.
But it did not percolate into general political discourse (which is why, in this instance, liberals still get attacked as though they favored the replication of the huge disastrous housing projects of Chicago’s south side on a massive scale), nor were these views really large-bore ideas. (They were not meant to be. I am not criticizing them, any more than I would be criticizing myself if I said I wasn’t a particularly good toaster-oven.)
When I saw Obama’s interview, I just thought: well, he’s right. It never really occurred to me to think that he was praising Republican ideas, as opposed to acknowledging that during that particular period, they had more of them, and that that had something to do with their political appeal. — I mean, I just cannot see a reading of Clintons remarks that’s remotely accurate.
hilzoy, in the context of a university seminar the words may not give the same meaning as they do in the context of one seeking the endorsement of a conservative editorial board.
Obama was seeking the endorsement of conservatives. In that context he clearly meant to praise both Reagan and republican ideas.
He got the endorsement.
Hillary called him on it. And for the first time in his campaign he said something negative about republican ideas. But interestly he was not as negative on the republicans as he was on Hillary.
More Clinton misrepresenntations: an Obama campaign robo call failed to mentionn the Obama campaign ( they mentioned the Obama campaign but eight seconds after the time limit.) The Clinton campaign pounced on this and tried to sell it as campaign fraaud.
Just yesterday the Obama campaign aired an ad which is playing nationally, which means Florida too. Once again the Clintons are screeching about it. Of course thhey don’t mention that the Onbama campaign asked for and recieved permission from thhe head of the South Carolina Democratic parrty to run thhe ad.
So annother Rove tactic: deliberately misconstrue annd exaggerate harmless acts of your opponent.
[Obama’s Reagan comments are only] a botch only if he loses the primary. if he gets through, they’ll become a major asset, further increasingly his likeability to indies and Rs.
I know what you’re saying, and I hope right along with you that this is what happens, but I still think it’s a larger mistake. Reaganism needs (perhaps without harping on St. Ronnie personally too much) to be reputiated if possible, and it is not only possible, but, IMO, necessary (and high time) in this election. Clintonism is a subset of Reaganism – dimished expectations, small-bore everything – and Obama’s comments were either meaningless (my opinion) or a species of Clintonism. The Dems oughtn’t be a subset. That it’s vitally important *how* this election is won is becoming a cliche, but still terribly true. When Reagan is invoked, it must be done with the greatest care, not with the greatest circumlocuting. Obama futzed it. Maybe he had to do it the way he did, but it’s still sorta too bad.
“It’s that Clinton’s attacks illustrate a deep contempt for voters. Call it “the rube strategy” – we’ll say what we want and most people will be too ignorant to ever figure out the difference.”
Well, its true isn’t it? Hasn’t Bush’s presidency emphasized how profoundly disinterested and apathetic the general voter is (assuming they vote, most people don’t)?
If voters had even the most basic grasp of public policy (an understanding that one could get from a google search), then there would have been significantly more resistance to Bush’s agenda. But there wasn’t because most people aren’t informed, nor care enough to become informed.
Progressives’ antipathy to Clinton arises from the Clinton’s Machiavellian political strategy. What we are failing to account for or willfully ignoring is that Machiavelli was right.
It seems to me that progressives’ objection to Hillary Clinton is a proxy for hating the game, which is a democracy full of voters who know little to nothing about public policy.
The alternative is that Walmart has done more to create poor people than anyone.
Neither statement is true, nor is it inherently dishonest either.
The fact is, when it comes to taking care of it’s “associates” Walmart is pretty bad.
And the sad part is they don’t have to be to remain profitable. One needn’t look further than the employment practices of rival Costco to see that not only are Walmart’s labor practices bad publicity, they are most likely bad for the bottom line as well.
Sorry, I don’t get that. Everything I read doesn’t give me that impression. And I still don’t get it, even after all you’ve written.
Personally, if a lot of other people are saying that they don’t get that impression, perhaps you should reconsider your own impressions. And perhaps not be so condescending in your tone to others; not all of us are idiots.
ken: As I said, I have watched the whole thing. If Obama was trying to disguise his liberalism, he did a pretty bad job of it. Seriously: watch it all, and then tell me you think he was trying to pretend to be conservative.
I’m a progressive and my main objectin to Clinton is thhat she is highly likely to lose in a race againnst McCAin. All this Machiavellian bullshit won’t work against the corporate media’s annoited..
One hhas to keep inn mind thhat for a large fraction of thhe voting public, the souund mmighht as well be turned off. They vote for what thhey see.
HRC did mispresent Obama’s Reagan comments. No one who watches the video could take away the idea that he agreee with Reagan’s ideas or ideology.
The HRC talking points about Obama’s present votes have been out there for a long time. The drill is that he’s all talk, no action or that he “ducks” votes in order to avoid future political discomfort.
Previous posters are right in pointing out that this kind of distortion of a complex legislative record is difficult to respond to in non-complex terms. But, that doesn’t mean that responses aren’t required.
At this point, I believe HRC repeats the attacks for 2 reasons: First, to reinforce the distortion of Obama’s record. I agree with Hilzoy that Obama’s best defense is to start emphasizing the truth in polite terms: He has more legislative accomplishments (and longer legislative service) than she does. HRC has gotten some good legislation through for her constituents in NY. I don’t think she has had any legislative success of national significance.
The second reason for HRC continuing to repeat misstatements about Obama’s record is to needle Obama with the hope that his positive campaign can be derailed. The “slugfest” last night was welcomed by her and by the Clinton campaign. They want to involve him in the mudpie game.
HRC did mispresent Obama’s Reagan comments. No one who watches the video could take away the idea that he agreee with Reagan’s ideas or ideology.
The HRC talking points about Obama’s present votes have been out there for a long time. The drill is that he’s all talk, no action or that he “ducks” votes in order to avoid future political discomfort.
Previous posters are right in pointing out that this kind of distortion of a complex legislative record is difficult to respond to in non-complex terms. But, that doesn’t mean that responses aren’t required.
At this point, I believe HRC repeats the attacks for 2 reasons: First, to reinforce the distortion of Obama’s record. I agree with Hilzoy that Obama’s best defense is to start emphasizing the truth in polite terms: He has more legislative accomplishments (and longer legislative service) than she does. HRC has gotten some good legislation through for her constituents in NY. I don’t think she has had any legislative success of national significance.
The second reason for HRC continuing to repeat misstatements about Obama’s record is to needle Obama with the hope that his positive campaign can be derailed. The “slugfest” last night was welcomed by her and by the Clinton campaign. They want to involve him in the mudpie game.
hilzoy, don’t distort my words.
I never said he was pretending to be conservative. I said Obama was seeking the endorsement of a conservative editorial board.
In that context, along with the documented fact that he commonly uses right wing talking points to attack democratic ideas on social security and health care reform, a fair reading of his comments regarding republican ideas during his interview can only be interpreted to mean approval.
The editorial board got the message and endorsed him.
Most progressives condemmed him for his approval of republican ideas and for his use of republican talking points.
Hillary called him on it during the debate. He tried to deflect with a phony dodge to Reagan. Hillary prevented him from taking that dodge and for the first time in his campaign he started a very weak attack on republicans.
Now the writer of this post does exactly the same thing Obama did and is just as dishonest. That was my original point.
“hilzoy, don’t distort my words”
In context, I say ‘heh’.
Most progressives condemmed him for his approval of republican ideas and for his use of republican talking points.
No Ken, the Hillary campaign team along with people who shill their talking points condemn him for it. I’ve never heard a progressive condemn him for it.
Ken, you don’t seem to want to reply to Hilzoy who, like many of us here, watched the entire video and find Hillary’s (and your) interpretation of his comments to be disingenuous at best.
But, this is another part of the Bush/Clinton strategy. Keep confusing the truth until most people can’t or won’t do the research to find out the facts. While you earn the disgust of people who are informed, you leave the majority with the vague impression that you were right.
It’s a process which has killed some of the most important checks and balances in this country. As much as I like Hillary on policy points, it’s something that has to be ended, even if it means a loss in the general (where I assume Hillary will be our nominee).
ken: sorry. I took you to be saying that because Obama was meeting with a conservative editorial board, he was trying to seem more favorable to conservatives than he actually was. In that context, it does seem relevant that, if you watch the entire interview, you see him being quite openly liberal, in ways it’s hard to think that a reference to the GOP in 1980 as “the party of ideas” would somehow outweigh.
Apologies if I misunderstood you, though.
I do wonder about Ken’s motivations. Here and at blogs he more frequently graces with his presence his comments are exclusively anti-Obama, not pro-anyone. At least Petey outnumbers his over-the-top condemnations of Obama with his deifications of Edwards
More to the point: if anyone can find the part of that meeting (or any meeting) that makes this statement, by Clinton, accurate, please do let me know:
Please, someone, give me the exact quote. Because from where I sit, that’s just a lie.
Thanks for that link to the video, Hilzoy, it was interesting.
Putting aside whether or not the debate techniques were unfair (which I pretty much agree completely with publius, I felt sick in the stomach after watching the whole thing), do people think the image the debate painted will affect things much? I got the impression that the work Hillary did over the last few weeks to portray herself more warm and “human”, if you will, could have been all wrecked after that. People might start talking about cold, calculating Hillary again after she acted the way she did.
Hilzoy,
Thanks for the link. Here is the relevant part of the debate on Hillary’s claim:
CLINTON: “It certainly came across in the way that it was presented, as though the Republicans had been standing up against the conventional wisdom with their ideas. I’m just reacting to the fact,yes, they did have ideas, and they were bad ideas.”
A fair reading of Obama’s comments in context of the setting and his prior statments and campaign cannot possible lead one to conclued he was bringing up the subject of republican ideas in anything but with approval.
Well, Ken’s settled it. If Hillary says it, it must be true. Any other reading is unfair. How can we possibly refute that?
Hizroy, Publis,
Your support of Obama has reached hysterical proportions.
Publis,
I remember when you advanced the Iraq war using the same type of arguments:
My conclusion is correct because my opponents said [insert bad thing here]
In fact, it is amazing to me how many pundits who got Iraq wrong are now drawn to Obama and the MSM spin.
Let me name a few, Kevin Drum, Josh Marshal, Matt Yglias, Publis, Ezra…want more
It is also amazing to me how Obama “a vocal opponent of the war” was so silent about the issue when he ran for and won a Senate seat in 2003/2004/2005
…and now Obama wishes to reclaim that title after letting Russell Feingold, D-Wisc.,Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn. and Senator Kennedy do ALL the heavy lifting, while Obama voted line on line with Hillary [source: Talking Points Memo]
ken: “A fair reading of Obama’s comments in context of the setting and his prior statments and campaign cannot possible lead one to conclued he was bringing up the subject of republican ideas in anything but with approval.”
This is demonstrably false.
Since you claim it’s true, the rest of your claims have to be read in that context. Which is to say, there’s little reason to pay attention to you.
How about this whopper told by Obama?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAkIidChxic
As much as I want to like Obama every time I hear him tell blatent lies or use right wing talking points my stomach turns.
Not sure I can even conceive of hilzoy being “hysterical” in anything.
At any rate, an unconsciously ironic posting.
S Brennan: luckily, I don’t count as one of the bloggers who got Iraq wrong and are now buying into Obama. It would also be helpful if you said what exactly you think is wrong with publius’ arguments.
Ken: I guess two people can see the very same video completely differently. When Obama says that the Republicans were the party of ideas “in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom”, (20:15-30), I don’t understand what would lead anyone to conclude that he was saying that those ideas were good ideas. I mean: I just don’t see it.
I think it’s also worth asking: if he was actually praising Reagan when he said that Reagan moved the country onto a different trajectory, don’t we have to assume that he was also praising Kennedy (his other example)? And dissing both Nixon and Clinton (who he said had not been similarly transformational)? What views, exactly, do you think would make someone align him- or herself with Reagan and Kennedy, and against Nixon and Clinton, ideologically? I can’t see it.
Of course, if one assumes that he was saying that Reagan and Kennedy truly changed political discourse without making any claims about whether the change was good or bad, then that makes perfect sense.
Hizroy, did I name you? No. So what’s your point?
…if some bloggers would start posting some of Obama’s life history stripped of holography voters would be allowed to make a real choice between real people…
We all know Hillary’s Bio and Edwards Bio…
So consider, most of the dirt on Barak “stay in Iraq” Obama* is being held back at this time. *[see senate record]
For example most people don’t know his Kenyan birth father was extremely well off…and not some goat herder as Obama pretends.
That is going to come out at some point and Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
His Mother was a heir to the Armour meat packing fortune.
Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
He grew up wealthy and went the most exclusive high school in Hawaii.
Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
His step-father is an oil man in Indonesia [one of the most corrupt regimes on earth].
Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
He was supported by his family until at least 32 years of age.
Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
And I haven’t even started on his Chicago years…
The issue isn’t that Obama’s a rich kid, the issue is, he has lied about every aspect of his life. All of this should come out a priori to PRIMARY voting…and none of it has.
…but an awful lot of bloggers got the war wrong because they swallowed dis-information…hook, line and sinker. Obama is like the war…a con job.
I posted this in another thread, but, since it’s once again being disputed, here’s my transcription of the relevant portion of the Gazette interview:
Emphasis mine, and the square-bracketed phrases are added for tone, so YMMV and feel free to ignore them. Regardless, I simply do not understand how criticizing the GOP’s tax-cuts-solve-everything cure-alls can be reasonably interpreted as an endorsement of Republican ideas.
At worst, I can’t read the above as anything but neutral, since aside from tax cuts — which he criticized — Obama never actually mentioned any particular policies. As I said, I think that everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but I really wish that someone would explain the basis of the “pro-Reagan” interpretation more specifically so I could at least understand what in the world they’re talking about.
Who’s Hizroy?
Want another direct Obama lie:
Regarding Hillary’s criticism of Obama voting present instead of taking a stand on a bill to protect the privacy of sexual assault victims here is what he said.
Obama: But let’s just respond to the example that was just thrown out. The bill, with respect to privacy for victims of sexual abuse, is a bill I had actually sponsored, Hillary. I actually sponsored the bill. It got through the senate.”
That is what Obama said. Is it true? Or did he resort to a lie in order to deflect the damming fact that Obama would not take a stand?
Well, it was another Obama lie.
According to Hillary’s web site:
“The Illinois General Assembly’s website lists three state senate sponsors of this bill, Sen. Obama is not one of them. The three sponsors were State Senators Geo-Karis, Shaw, and O’Malley.”
S Brennan: but an awful lot of bloggers got the war wrong because they swallowed dis-information…hook, line and sinker
Therefore, we should vote for a candidate who did the same?
This is, after, modern day politics. Tear down the opponent, as opposed to building up your candidate.
Hizroy you say:
“It would also be helpful if you said what EXACTLY you think is wrong with publius’ arguments.”
and yet you think it’s fine if Pulis does this:
“But that said, HRC’s attacks are fundamentally very similar to Bush’s. The “present” thing in particular consciously plays on voters’ ignorance of Illinois’s unique political system. Still, though, the allegation strikes a perfect balance.”
It would also be helpful if you said what EXACTLY you think is wrong with Hillary.
Also, to my knowledge, HRC is not a proper address of a person, it is a crude effort to depersonalize a human being.
WHO THE HELL IS HIZROY?!
For example most people don’t know his Kenyan birth father was extremely well off…and not some goat herder as Obama pretends.
you don’t have to be poor to herd goats.
He grew up wealthy and went the most exclusive high school in Hawaii.
so what?
His Mother was a heir to the Armour meat packing fortune.
cite?
Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
i’m not sure he needs to answer every mischaracterization his opponents throw his way, no matter how many times they say he does.
WHO THE HELL IS HIZROY?!
she’s Pulis’s evil sidekick.
Cleek,
As I said in my post:
“The issue isn’t that Obama’s a rich kid, the issue is, he has lied about every aspect of his life. All of this should come out a priori to PRIMARY voting…and none of it has.”
A fair reading of Obama’s comments in context of the setting and his prior statments and campaign cannot possible lead one to conclued he was bringing up the subject of republican ideas in anything but with approval.
Funny, many of us managed to conclude differently. I, personally, concluded that he was bringing up the subject of capturing the public interest by advancing ideas in approval, and pointing to Reagan as an example of how to do that (which, let’s face it, he certainly was).
Given that later within the interview he specifically makes plain that he thought Reagan’s ideas themselves were abhorrent, it’s almost like your position has no firm ground upon which to stand.
Objecting to “HRC” while managing to come up with both “Hizroy” and “Pulis” is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day.
Oh, like Edwards “has” to answer the fact that he’s rich, despite his empathy for the poor?
Dude, you can do better than this. Those are idiot arguments.
cleek, I don’t know much about Obama’s propensitity to have lied in the past but if last nights debate is any indication he is pretty much a compulsive liar.
He gave us some beautiful examples of bold faced lying regarding his previous positions on health care and on his voting record in Illinois.
See my above comments for the evidence.
“As much as I want to like Obama every time I hear him tell blatent lies or use right wing talking points my stomach turns.”
Fascinating projection: that YouTube clip is one of the most, yes, blatant pieces of dishonest editing I’ve seen in quite a while. What’s astonishing is that only a complete moron couldn’t notice that–it–interrupts–every–eight–wo-wo-words.
I mean, it makes Max Headroom look natural in comparison.
“ken” is clearly nothing but an anti-Obama troll, whose trolling doesn’t even rise to high school level skill; I suggest simply completely ignoring him henceforth.
I have no doubt that I’m more cynical about this sort of thing than some (I’ve been on the intertubes for some time), but I’m sure we’re only going to see more and more of this sort of time-wasting babble over the next nine months, god help us all.
Again, I know I’m less patient than some — and more power to you — but I expect I’m going to be skimming more and more and responding less and less on political threads where most of the content consists simply of fact-free opinion.
There are a number of individuals here whose opinion I respect mostly highly, and others whose opinion I respect quite a bit. Your opinions, which are fact-based, I’ll look out for.
The opinions of people who show up and simply post their fantasy translations of what a candidate allegedly said, or who talk only about their impressions: I’ll leave that to those who enjoy more than I that sort of discussion, and, again, have fun and best of luck to you.
S Brennan: “Hizroy, did I name you? No. So what’s your point?”
Perhaps you mistook the little box you type into for an e-mail link. If not, when you comment in public, you invite response. It’s particularly not unusual when one of the people whose blog it is responds.
The only question is why she would bother responding to you, another content-free commenter, save that we know the answer: Hilzoy errs in the direction of being over-polite and over-courteous and giving people the benefit of the doubt past the point of reasonable doubt.
Sadly, I’m a less good person than Hilzoy.
But, overall, life is far too short to spend much time responding to this sort of endless nonsense. Fortunately, most sensible people who normally hang out here can just see right through it, anyway.
And Cleek,
Most Obama people don’t know:
his Kenyan birth father was extremely well off…and not some goat herder as Obama pretends.
That is going to come out at some point and Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
His Mother was a heir to the Armour meat packing fortune.
He grew up wealthy and went the most exclusive high school in Hawaii.
His step-father is an oil man in Indonesia [one of the most corrupt regimes on earth].
He was supported by his family until at least 32 years of age.
“Dude, you can do better than this.”
There’s where you went wrong.
Cleek,
As I said in my post:
“The issue isn’t that Obama’s a rich kid, the issue is, he has lied about every aspect of his life
and as i said in my post: cite?
oh boy. time to crank up the pie factory.
Damn. I have no comeback for that.
Gary Farber at 03:39 PM
“life is far too short to spend much time responding to this sort of endless nonsense. Fortunately, most sensible people who normally hang out here can just see right through it, anyway.”
Gary Farber at 03:41 PM
“”Dude, you can do better than this.”
There’s where you went wrong.”
Obama needs supporters who can do a better job of lying
Clinton adducing her ’94 health care failure as evidence that she can “stand to lobbyists” is a standard Bush-move: spinning your own abject failures into some kind of success.
and as i said in my post: cite? – Posted by: cleek | January 22, 2008 at 03:43 PM
http://www.barackobama.com/about/
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.
Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.
It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack’s parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.
Learn more about Barack’s life, family, and accomplishments.; Barack; Barack Obama; Barack TV; Obama; Speeches; This appears on the “Meet Barack Page” http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452323111http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=353512430
Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
WHO THE HELL IS HIZROY?!
she’s Pulis’s evil sidekick.
Pulis started out as Publis, which was only half as wrong. I think Pulis’ evil sidekick is Hiroy, who we’ve yet to hear of.
Dude, you can do better than this.
There’s where you went wrong
Obama needs supporters who can do a better job of lying
OK. I’ll stop lying.
You CAN’T do better than this.
hilzoy to ken: As I said, I have watched the whole thing. If Obama was trying to disguise his liberalism, he did a pretty bad job of it. Seriously: watch it all, and then tell me you think he was trying to pretend to be conservative.
I just watched the entire interview at the link, and I came away with two firm conclusions:
1- Obama’s ears are too big: I haven’t seen such prominent aural appendages in the public arena since Alfred E. Neuman was last featured on the cover of Mad Magazine.
2- He’s dropped from my second tier, to third tier choice for Democratic presidential candidate. Hill-Bill first; Edwards second; Obama slipping to a distant third.
For me, the main red flag from the interview wasn’t the Reagan remarks (though they indirectly reflect it) but his own admittance there is “a generational aspect” to his candidacy – that he “didn’t come to age in the battles of the 60s,” and was “therefore not ideologically invested in them…”
Although he was vague about which “battles” he was talking about, the statement is revealing – and reflects the intuitive perception among voters 50 or older who favor Clinton nearly 3 to 1 over Obama in the polls that he’s not the candidate to support:
Like his curious remarks about Ronald Reagan changing “the trajectory of America…” and putting ” us on a fundamentally different path” his ‘generational’ gaffs are also vague enough for wiggle room apologetics: but for Democrats who fought many of the battles in the 60s and 70s (increasing Black voter registration, overturning sodomy and miscegenation laws, ensuring the right to legal abortions, etc) it’s a red flag of warning that Obama is ‘generationally challenged’ and needs more time in the pickling jar before he’s ready to lead a nation.
“What Democrats did, Mealworm, was praise the Clintons with faint damns.”
I suppose that would apply to anyone who didn’t think they’d bumped off Vince Foster, and collaborated in arranging the death of anybody who ever died accidentally after meeting Clinton even briefly, or knowing someone who knew him, or living somewhere in Little Rock, Arkansas.
What the Democrats did, actually, was to be all over the map about Clinton, with some lambasting him for not being progressive enough, some praising him for being a really good president, etc., etc. But nothing other than unified Democratic hatred for both Clintons would satisfy certain people.
Gary, your defense of Obama comes down to saying someone doctored his words?
That won’t fly.
He said last night he NEVER advocated universal single payor health care. This wasn’t a flub. He repeated it several different ways. The video shows him saying he was a PROPONENT of univeral single payor health care.
Why he was lying about this is an interesting point. Is it compulsive that he lies when challenged? Who knows?
But what about his other huge whopper of the night? His blatent in your face lie claiming sponsorship of the bill he refused to vote on protecting the privacy of sexual abuse victims?
Why did he lie about that? It seems obvious that he thought a lie was safer than trying to defend his refusal to take a stand.
If I were inclined to respond to F Grennan, I would say that nothing in his/her last post is in any way contrary to anything else s/he wrote.
But then, as Garry Barber says, some people are best ignored.
Boy, because of F Grennan, ken and Jay Jerome, my admiration of and support for Obama continues to grow.
http://www.barackobama.com/about/
yes, i know all about that.
now where’s the part about his mother being an heir to anything, and his father being a wealthy non-goat-herding Kenyan (and you should be sure to demonstrate that his father was always wealthy and never herded a goat), etc..
you made a bunch of specific allegations. now back them up.
He grew up wealthy and went the most exclusive high school in Hawaii.
Pfft. I spent a year at that same school, when my father – a sergeant in the US Army, and very far from being wealthy – was stationed at Ft. Shafter.
Cleek, it’s definitely time for pie.
Well, given what’s being thrown around, gotta be banana pie.
Obama is not a liar, and Hillary is not a liar.
The objectionable (and troubling) part of Obama’s comment was the part about the last “10 or 15 years” — a definite dig at the Big Dog, because, you know, he was in charge for more than half of the last 15 years. Reagan had descended into dementia by the beginning of that time period.
Hillary keeps coming back to the comment because it was stupid.
“I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
The Republicans were the party of ideas from 1992 through today???? That’s not about Reagan, it’s about Bill. What conventional wisdom have they been challenging in the last 10 to 15 years? That pre-emptive war is a bad idea. That the NIH should be allowed to do science with cast off IVF embryos. That schoolteachers don’t need government-written tests to know if their students are learning. That atmospheric science is a real discipline. That evolution is solid biology.
Obama was clumsy. He was trying to draw a comparison between his own appeal and that of Ronald Reagan. He wandered off that path and into the weeds.
It’s not about anybody lying–it’s about who is better at creating a strong message and delivering it. He screwed up here, and she’s not the sort of opponent who’s going to let him get away with it.
Those look more like cow pies to me, gwangung.
Same general material….different source, Larv….
Jim Parish,
Barack Obama describes the school in Hawaii as a pretty elite school, saying his grandfather had to pull some strings to get him admitted. He described as being the school that trains the future leaders of Hawaii.
Is there a more elite school in Hawaii than the one you and Obama attended?
Anyway, Baracks family was not wealthy. But they did make sure he got the best education.
The school he went to in Indonesia was began by the Dutch for the children of the colonial upper crust. It was taken over by the Indinesean government but still had a certain cache attached to it back when Obama attended.
Is Obama running on his having attended crappy schools or something?
Oh.
Is this supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing?
ken, my objection was to the juxtaposition: attending that school did not require wealth.
I’m an Obama fan, but gotta say that it is fair to challenge him about his “present” votes. To judge by the NYT article publius linked to, “present” is the equivalent of “abstain” – a way to refuse to support a popular measure without catching political heat for a “no” vote. Now, I don’t personally consider that a bad thing, if the difference between “present” and “no” does not change whether the bill passes. I don’t think you’re obliged to stand on principle on every single vote. Besides, on some of those votes, it looks as though he agreed in principle but disagreed with some technical wording or procedural point, in which case a “no” vote would actually be rather misleading to someone studying his record.
But it’s definitely not a “yes,” or a “no,” and it is appropriate to ask him to explain why he didn’t want to vote yes or no on important bills.
I don’t see any reason to call ken a troll, either. He’s not lying, he’s on topic, he’s polite. This is not trolling as I know it.
I think Ken and Hilzoy may not be as far apart as they think, as to Obama’s remarks about the Republican’s as “party of ideas.” It was far from unmixed praise, since Obama continued on to say that the ideas turned out to boil down to endless tax cuts, which are not going to solve everything. But it was at least a conciliatory remark — sort of, hey, I don’t agree with the Republicans, but at least they were smart and active, and it makes sense that people (like, say, the people I’m talking to now) were attracted to that. If you demand partisan purity, you’re not going to like that sort of remark, or Obama. And that’s a fair point to make in a Democratic primary, too.
Oh, we’re talking about PUNAHOU.
Jeez, I know several dozen grads from there. Some were from rich families. Some weren’t. Great school (Iolani grads think different, though).
Thought we were talking about some place SPECIAL.
ken, you’re the most ridiculous partisan shill I’ve ever encountered, even worse than this Petey person, who at least has the ability to string together some sort of argument occasionally – I don’t know if you’re getting paid for your valiant grassroots efforts, but it would certainly be money misspent
S Brennan seems to be just drunk or something
This thread is great! It’s given me a name for my next pet goldfish: Pulis Hizroy, the Hysterical Supporter.
Ken,
You did some yeoman’s work in creating a narrative out of whole cloth. I particularly liked how, when asked by Hilzoy to provide the exact quote that Hillary claimed she had, you moved on to a completely different tangent.
If you don’t like Obama that’s your right. But I fail to see why you feel such a need to play a spin game regarding his comments.
S Brennan,
You seem to be a little slow so perhaps it should be made clear to you. No one was asking you to provide links to Barack Obama’s official biography. We all know that. What was asked for is a link that supports your claims which suggest that not only has Barack Obama blatantly lied about his life, the press has somehow not figured this out yet.
Your posting history here suggests that all that matters to you is smearing Obama with anything and that even a loose relationship with the truth is not necessary.
flyerhawk, good points, but your opening line to S Brennan is close to violating the posting rules, at least IMHO.
You’re right, John. I am not one to go into attacks on other people. But his willful lying really bothered me and his attempt to legitimize his claims by linking to the ACTUAL biography of Barack Obama cannot be brushed aside as a minor typo error.
Yeah, but he’s ON TOPIC for this thread.
john miller: Boy, because of F Grennan, ken and Jay Jerome, my admiration of and support for Obama continues to grow.
I admire Obamma-slamma too, john, and I’d support him to head up FEMA when Bill-Hill are back in office, or maybe even appoint him Secretary Of State (it would make good use of his talent to bring people together and bridge the gap between east and west, and we could all hold hands and dance and sing songs of peace and make the world a better place to live).
But supporting him for prez? Big mistake.
flyerhawk,
Hilzoy never asked me for a quote.
But more importantly you miss the point that the writer of this post and most of the commentary here in support of it is totally dishonest. It is factually dishonest. It is dishonest in exactly the same way that Obama was dishonest on the topic.
The complaint on Hillary is a false one. She never attached Barrack Obama for his praise of Reagan. She attacked him on his praise for republican ideas.
Now in the debate Obama tried to dodge this by claiming that she too had praised Reagan.
Hillary did not let him get away with the dodge and again attacked him for his admiration of republican ideas.
Then today publius uses the misleading Obama line of attack and makes a dishonest argument attacking Hillary Clintons credibility. I am just pointing out the fact that this is all boloney.
I have further offered two blatent in your face outright lies told by Barack Obama last night. One on health care and one on his voting record in Illinois.
No one here, who you might think would be so outraged at being directly lied to, has said so much as a word about these lies.
Don’t you wonder about the credibility of the people here if they won’t even address this issue?
Perhaps Hilzoy or Publius could do a post on the lies told by Obama some day.
Wow, this comment thread is depressing. Can someone please lock it or something? Usually ObWi has great comments, but what has happened here?? I noticed Digby deleted her comment features, it was getting too much. So trolls, go away, that can’t happen here….
As they say, DNFTT.
Davebo:
Why do I get the feeling that would be a big no no in say Texas or California?
Why is it seemingly OK in Florida?
Because Cuban != Mexican. It may not be fair, but it is what it is.
ken:
Hilzoy never asked me for a quote.
Look again.
Or, in case you’re too lazy to click that link or scroll up:
I guess, technically, she didn’t ask YOU for the quote; she asked anyone (including you) for the quote.
I wonder if anyone saw the woman in the gorilla suit at the debate…
ken,
As much as I want to like Obama every time I hear him tell blatent lies or use right wing talking points my stomach turns.
Yeah, every time you type I can positively feel the feverish desire to like Obama dripping from every word. It is palpable. I can *taste* it, in fact.
It approaches a sexual fetish, this need of yours to like Obama. This fixation of desire- but not for the *object*. Desire *for* desire! Lust in the service of lust!
You are just amazing
(Sorry, got cut off there)
-ingly full of cat crap.
tgrish, I see your point. But no I did not think she was asking me for a quote.
I think Hillary Clintons statement later indicated which words of Obama’s she was referring to:
“…the republicans were the party of ideas …they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
A conservative may not see this as a problem, But to a liberal the republican ideas were anethama, not something to praise.
S Brennan,
When you’re forced to tar someone with the brush that ‘their step-father is from Indonesia’, you really need to take a step back. Several steps back.
Also, to my knowledge, HRC is not a proper address of a person, it is a crude effort to depersonalize a human being.
Yeah just like ‘LBJ’ and ‘JFK’. These are obviously terms of derisive contempt, nothing more. I weep for these men, to be so abused by history.
[nb that last word is not a misspelling of hilzoy]
ken, I juxtapose hilzoy’s 2:16 comment
Please, someone, give me the exact quote.
with
But no I did not think she was asking me for a quote.
And I think to myself- game, set, match. Thank you for playing.
For the record: HRC is shorthand. I can’t call her “Clinton”, since that’s ambiguous between Hillary and Bill Clinton. I can’t call her “Hillary”; the feminist in me refuses, though my tired fingers wish she didn’t. I have to call her “Hillary Clinton”. Sometimes, in comments, typing that over and over gets tiring, so i go for HRC, just as, in the last thread, I resorted to “fav/unfav ratings” instead of the more accurate “favorable/unfavorable ratings”.
But if you’d rather think of it as an attempt to depersonalize her, be my guest.
Obama was not praising any conservative or Republican ideas. He was praising the effectiveness of their rhetoric in presenting their ideas to the public. It’s a matter of branding, not of the product being branded.
Precipice? What precipice?
The more I see of Senator Clinton, the more I *begin* to understand how Republicans become so unhinged at the mention of her name – she’s really just another side of themselves.
And, ken: I still don’t see why you think that anything in the passages you cite constitutes praise. But I suspect we’ve now reached the ‘either you see it as praise or you don’t’ point.
Also, about the goat herder v. well off stuff: my understanding was that Obama’s father did indeed herd goats with his father when he was a child, and became reasonably well off later (by Kenyan standards), though he was also frustrated by being blocked in his own career. Sometimes, oddly enough, people who herd goats as children become well off later in life. How odd.
I’d love to see actual quotes showing that Obama lied about his childhood. I do not recall his saying he grew up in desperate poverty, etc. He did say he didn’t grow up wealthy; as far as I can tell, that is true.
The more I see of Senator Clinton, the more I *begin* to understand how Republicans become so unhinged at the mention of her name – she’s really just another side of themselves.
He was praising the ability to come up with unconventional ideas and inspire the citizens of the US to go along with them by creating a wide consensus, not the ideas themselves. Had he praised the ideas themselves, it would have been wholly contradictory to mention both Kennedy and Reagan in the same breath.
That’s not really very hard to understand.
And
“The facts are that he has said in the last week he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years”
is false, Hillary knows it’s false, so she’s lying, ken, to his credit, might have some comprehension problems.
I remember when you advanced the Iraq war using the same type of arguments
hmmm – s brennan. i think you’re mistaking me for john hinderaker. easy to do – no biggie. but i’ll give u a million dollars if you can find one shred of evidence that i ever supported this war.
i can send you copies of donations to howard dean if you’d like (my first ever)
heck ,i started BLOGGING b/c of my opposition to the iraq war. you;ve really outdone yourself on this thread. i remember a time when u would actually argue in good faith
Ken,
“I think Hillary Clintons statement later indicated which words of Obama’s she was referring to:”
She said “The facts are that he has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years, and we can give you the exact quote.”
So what is the EXACT quote?
So tell me what words she was specifically referring to of his.
Instead of insinuation how bout your explain yourself?
As an anonymous friend of mine wrote me: there are two options.
(1) Clinton is lying about what Obama said. My preferred option, and one that just makes it that much less likely that I’ll ever find a reason to rethink my view of her. But consider the apparently more flattering second option:
(2) She actually thinks he meant that Reagan had good ideas. — Now imagine her taking this same ability to understand what other people mean — this nuanced capacity to grasp what they’re really getting at, and to appreciate subtle shadings of meaning — and deploying it in the context of, oh, arms control negotiations.
Fun, fun, fun.
“heck ,i started BLOGGING b/c of my opposition to the iraq war. you;ve really outdone yourself on this thread.”
He’s actually john thullen playing an elaborate gag to illustrate the kind of lies Clinton tells in support of her causes.
Though usually he lets us in on it by now…
Hmm.
I think I should warn everyone that by referring to s brennan as “u”, Purim is engaging in a subtle campaign of depersonalization. Eventually, Puling plans to use s brennan as a paperweight or a garden gnome, and hopes that by then everyone will be so desensitized that no one will notice.
Just saying. Putrid is up to no good. Neither are his henchmen: Pullman Porter, Punchinello, and Punchbowl. You have been warned.
This is getting tiresome.
HIllary did not attack Obama for his praise for Reagan.
Hillary attacked Obama for his praise of republican ideas.
Some people demand that I produce the words Obama used that Hillary was criticising.
I provided a quote from the debate that would lead us to think she was referring to these words of Obama:
“…the republicans were the party of ideas …they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
Now I don’t speak for Clinton so if she produces a different quote then that is the one we should refer to and not this one.
Hilzoy, if you don’t think that the phrase ‘challenging conventional wisdom’ is a phrase commonly understood to be praise then we are at an impasse.
But to democrats and liberals it is clear enough. Hillary brought this up in the debate, Obama tried to squirm out of it, and Hillary didn’t let him.
And so we will see Hillary’s poll numbers go up as a result.
Hilzoy, why does the feminist in you refuse to call her Hillary?
Imagine for a moment if Bush took credit for the Iraq War as an example of his fine statesmanship. I really feel that HRC providing ’94 as evidence that she can stand up to lobbyists is about as much a non sequitur, if not as anger inducing (because the consequences of ’94 are not nearly as grave as the consequences of Iraq).
the exact quote:
“I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.”
Obama supporters, can you tell me what Republican ideas he was talking about over the last 10 to 15 years–the ones that challenged conventional wisdom?
End of the capital gains tax?
Pre-emptive war?
Democrats are all weak and most of them hate America?
Evolution is just a theory?
I’m saying, come on. It’s obvious he got off the rails there in a clumsy attempt to diss Bill Clinton. Big deal, he’s busted being imperfect. I think HRC is right to take this on, because how do read “the Republicans were the party of ideas” — language that is undeniably positive –to mean he wasn’t giving them a compliment.
hitchhiker: LET HIM COMPLIMENT THEM. Do you really think you are going to win over moderates if you’ve decided that there’s not a kind word to be said about the other party?
Ara: “refused” is probably too strong. But something in me thinks it sounds off when the only person I call be her first name is also the only woman in the race. Even if I know that the reason why I do it (or would do it) is because she’s also the only person who needs to be distinguished from a famous spouse with the same last name.
Isn’t there something kinda sad when a one-tune hack gets called out & tries to keep on going? Tries to hold it together with sheer chutzpah?
It seems like a clown at a child’s birthday party, but the child is frightened of the clown. So the clown halfheartedly tries a few funny faces, upsetting the child further. The clown pauses: his techniques aren’t working, yet he knows nothing else. He makes another face.
hitchhiker,
Obama supporters, can you tell me what Republican ideas he was talking about over the last 10 to 15 years–the ones that challenged conventional wisdom?
….
I’m saying, come on. It’s obvious he got off the rails there in a clumsy attempt to diss Bill Clinton.
Ill give you a twofer: Welfare reform. An area where the GOP challenged conventional wisdom & successfully sold their vision to America *and* an example of Bill Clinton buying into GOP ideas rather than implementing a progressive agenda.
It’s misleading to claim that the ‘ideas’ Obama was talking about were things such as ‘voter suppression in minority communities’ and ‘molesting House pages’. A great deal of BC’s success was based on the co-option of Republican ideas- ironically, this is the “track record” that HRC is claiming as her own when she speaks of her vast experience.
hithchiker, please watch the video from 18:30 onwards for three minutes: it is perfectly clear what his point is
Publis,
I remember when you advanced the Iraq war
Brennan, as someone who started reading legal fiction about three and a half years ago I have to say that the idea that Publius ever supported the war is so preposterous as to render anything else you might say totally lacking even a shred of credibility.
but i’ll give u a million dollars if you can find one shred of evidence that i ever supported this war.
Publius, I’m sure that Brennan will be showing up on your doorstep any day now to collect that million. I mean, he’s already proven that you’re an hysterical Obama supporter, so I’m sure he’ll have no difficulty demonstrating that all of your writings were actually in praise of the providential sagacity of the adminstration’s war. Better hope that your next lottery ticket pans out.
This issue speaks right to the heart of Obama’s campaign theme and I wish he would address it as such.
It is precisely THESE TACTICS that have so bitterly divided our electorate over the last few decades. As a semi-uninformed high-school liberal in the 90’s, I was all too willing to chalk up these tactics solely to the Republicans, especially in the wake of the whole Lewinsky debacle. Looking back, some of the Clinton’s political shenanigans have been no better than Bush’s…the presumptuous health-care bill, presented to their own congress on a take-it-or-leave-it basis (a la Cheney’s energy bill) or the numerable indefensible pardons (most likely in return for votes in most cases) just to name a couple.
But the main problem is “The Rube Strategy” you described above, and the Clinton’s have been deploying this one this entire primary season. The bigger problem is that the Rube Strategy has been in full effect on both sides of the aisle for years now, and it has produced an electorate with a complete intellectual-disconnect from the actual issues. Look at where we are with Iraq in terms of the public debate: “I’m against the war – Get out tomorrow” vs. “I’m for the war – Stay for 100 years”. Neither seem like a very pragmatic strategy.
I look forward to a President like Obama, who doesn’t turn his opponents into demagogues or twist their words. It will go a long towards advancing the general knowledge of the electorate, and thus enhancing the sphere of public debate.
“I have to call her ‘Hillary Clinton’.”
“Senator Clinton” is unambiguous, correct, and has an identical number of letters.
Given that biologists frequently characterize intelligent designists as challenging conventional wisdom, but in a derisive manner, then, yes, indeed, WE are at an impasse.
There’s no help for you there.
Would it blow some gaskets even to hold out the possibility that they could be….right on one or two points? Certainly, the moderate voters may think that.
But, no, the Democratic candidate must be ideologically pure, rather than give a bone to the other side.
Obviously learning our lessons well from our Republican masters….
hilzoy: I see where you are coming from on this.
You’ll notice I tend to use HRC when my tone is more neutral and Hillary when I mean to be disparaging. I’d like to think that sexism isn’t involved in that.
But there are precedents. Oprah is Oprah and I wouldn’t think sexism is involved. Saddam was Saddam. Some people are just famous on a first name basis. HRC has been around in the public eye much longer than anyone else in this election, except maybe McCain.
Now, that being said, Hillary’s enemies call her Hillary, which is actually something I am trying to channel — that tone — because that tone will be heard again, and I’d like to remind people that it is still there, lurking.
I remember her beginning to use Rodham more often starting with the senatorial run as if she were trying to reinvent herself (and why shouldn’t she, after all the vilification she had been through?), but between ’92 and ’00 she was just Hillary, for better or for worse.
Some people are just famous on a first name basis.
I use “Hillary” simply because it avoids potential confusion with her husband.
If there was another national figure out there named Romney or Obama, I’d probably be calling them Mitt and Barack.
Thanks, I’ve seen the video. Repeatedly. It is perfectly clear what point he was making: that people liked Ronald Reagan because he seemed to be pointing the country in a new direction, and that the country was ready to be pointed in a new direction, and that he-Obama–believed that his arrival on the scene was similarly timed.
All good.
But I think he stumbled when he kept going about how the Republicans were “the party of ideas in the last ten or 15 years, in the sense that they challenged conventional wisdom.”
Doesn’t that have to be a separate thought from the business about Reagan? Reagan hasn’t been part of the Republican challenging of conventional wisdom in the last 10 or 15 years. Obama was talking about Bill Clinton and how he was, I guess, not challenging the conventional wisdom during his presidency.
And I love that in the same breath I’m getting all-capped to reach out to moderates while being given Bill Clinton’s signature on the welfare reform bill as evidence that Democrats had no new ideas of their own.
The best new idea that Obama should have remembered from the last 10-15 years was a balanced budget. How’s that for challenging conventional wisdom? Democrats can handle money.
I want that news front and center 24/7 from all of our candidates; it will pull more moderates our way than any weird compliments to the Republicans for their “ideas”.
I think it is too bad about all the WalMart hate. WalMart has done more to make good things affordable to poor people than your average Democrat.
OK, I’m late to the WalMart party. But:
I’ll entertain this argument when WalMart preferentially sources anything, at all, from an American supplier located in a poor community.
Until then, AFAICT they’re a company that made a lot of money from being the only game in town in poor rural areas.
Bully for them. That was a great marketing insight, and I’ll even bet that Sam, personally, meant well.
But the “WalMart, friend of the poor” thing doesn’t do a thing for me.
That is going to come out at some point and Obama will have to answer for his pretences to the contrary.
Yes, we can all only imagine the day when Obama is forced — forced! — to confess to being the scion of canned hams, the son of a man with many goats, and a guy who went to a pretty good school.
I hope he can bear the shame.
the Hysterical Supporter
Isn’t that something girls had to wear in gym class?
Thanks –
The best new idea that Obama should have remembered from the last 10-15 years was a balanced budget. How’s that for challenging conventional wisdom? Democrats can handle money.
I want that news front and center 24/7 from all of our candidates; it will pull more moderates our way than any weird compliments to the Republicans for their “ideas”.
Well said.
Thanks –
Geez louise.
Can any liberal/progressive honestly say that the Democrats have been the catalyst for change in this country, heck, for 30 years?
8 years of a Clinton presidency yielded exactly what progressive ideas? Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Welfare Reform? Balanced budgets?
Maybe those are good ideas but they aren’t exactly what I consider progressive ideals.
Hillary is attacking this because it impugns here husband’s legacy. And it is her husband’s legacy that justifies her candidacy.
Watch what the Clinton campaign is now doing about Florida: they accuse Obama of breaking the promise not to campaign in Florida because he airs television ads on national TV. It’s pointed out that Obama tried to keep the ads off Florida’s TV markets, but the cable companies said this was impossible.
Clinton campaign ignores this argument (a la “present”, Reagan, etc.), insists that Obama’s campaigning in Florida. They’ve now laid the groundwork for fully breaking that promise, campaigning a bit in Florida, and carrying it in a landslide because Clinton has greater name recognition and the Obama campaign has no time to mobilize there. Thus, whatever bounce Obama gets out of SC gets neutralized when Clinton carries Florida in a landslide.
Brilliant. Dismayingly brilliant.
at the very least, this whatever-it-takes spirit in HRC is, in a way, encouraging. a couple of weeks ago, i was asking people to point out any example of her oft-mentioned fighting spirit; but i got no answers. turns out she’s answered it herself, in the meantime. and now, it’s pretty clear that she (and her team) will fight for something she wants. so the next step is to convince me that what she wants is going to be good for the country, and not just for her.
since there’s no chance of getting an honorable politician, we might as well have one who may fight dirty, but who at least fights for the right things.
Are you joking? This is one of the perverse lessons that many Democrats seem to have gleaned from the last twenty years or so, so it’s hard for me to tell. Putting aside the ethical implications of condoning gutter politics, simply mimicking the GOP for the sake of schadenfreude isn’t the makings of a sound strategy.
Fighting dirty isn’t effective unless you can do it effortlessly — without getting your nose dirty — and whether it’s because she’s so intensely scrutinized, or because she’s simply not very good at it, Hillary can’t seem to do it without getting dragged down herself. And her surrogates look bad doing it, too — even Bill, who’s normally recognized as a fairly adept politician, looks bad when he tries to play this game.
Bush fights dirty — and hell, lots of people know it — but he’s able to get away with it, over and over again. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. But just because lying and slandering has worked for Bush and Rove doesn’t mean that it’s an effective tactic for every other candidate, nor that it’s the only response to falsehoods and distortions.
As an example, I think that Obama’s mode for dealing with slime politics is pretty effective, mostly because it plays to his strengths. He’s quite good at getting jabs in here and there, and defusing underhanded criticisms, but Edwards’ style, e.g., wouldn’t suit him well, and he’s clearly aware of that. Senator Clinton, too, has many, many strengths as a candidate, but none of them are well complemented by a dirty campaign, nor is she very good at it in the first place.
Sigh…The Reagan debate is amazing. I agree with the poster who said (l) either HRC is deliberately misinterpreting Obama’s Reagan comment or (2) she actually thinks he meant to talk fondly and approvingly of the Reagan agenda.
If (l), HRC is engaged in the same kind of big lie politics that have become old hat under the current administration. If (2), HRC’s reputation for intelligence is overrated. Obviously Obama did not mean to praise Reaganonics: Who but the brain dead could think such a thing?
Re. Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate, the HRC campaign persists in distorting it. He has a stronger and longer record of legislative accomplishment than HRC. He has been resolutely pro-choice and progressive. The suggestion that he would be against the privacy rights of sexual abuse victims was a ludicrous untruth. The HRC website is not a reliable source of information on this subject. Go to the Obama website.
The poster who thinks Obama is the heir to some great fortune and grew up in privilege should really, as has already been suggested, provide a source for these extravagant claims.
The fallout from all of this will be that if HRC is nominated many feminists and traditional Democrats will stay home in November. If the first white woman to become President of the US has to get there on a river of lies and racism, let the election go to McCain. He wouldn’t use thes e tactics.
Sigh…The Reagan debate is amazing. I agree with the poster who said (l) either HRC is deliberately misinterpreting Obama’s Reagan comment or (2) she actually thinks he meant to talk fondly and approvingly of the Reagan agenda.
If (l), HRC is engaged in the same kind of big lie politics that have become old hat under the current administration. If (2), HRC’s reputation for intelligence is overrated. Obviously Obama did not mean to praise Reaganonics: Who but the brain dead could think such a thing?
Re. Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate, the HRC campaign persists in distorting it. He has a stronger and longer record of legislative accomplishment than HRC. He has been resolutely pro-choice and progressive. The suggestion that he would be against the privacy rights of sexual abuse victims was a ludicrous untruth. The HRC website is not a reliable source of information on this subject. Go to the Obama website.
The poster who thinks Obama is the heir to some great fortune and grew up in privilege should really, as has already been suggested, provide a source for these extravagant claims.
The fallout from all of this will be that if HRC is nominated many feminists and traditional Democrats will stay home in November. If the first white woman to become President of the US has to get there on a river of lies and racism, let the election go to McCain. He wouldn’t use thes e tactics.
Yeah, St. McCain is above all that. He’d never make an offensive joke about a political opponent’s 18-year-old daughter or read passages from someone’s psychiatric record into the Congressional Record.
“8 years of a Clinton presidency yielded exactly what progressive ideas? Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? Welfare Reform? Balanced budgets?”
Whatever progressive ideas President Clinton had, he wasn’t able to put them into effect. But what he did do was take progressive action. That’s the lesson of his administration. Working poor people’s lives got better because the earned income tax credit was increased. Labor did better because of better people on the NLRB. Everyone did better because the country’s fiscal house was put in order by raising taxes on those who could afford it.
I guess what I’m saying is, I think new ideas are kind of over-rated. We know what we need to do. A lot of it is just “small-bore” stuff, like making sure that the FDA and OSHA and EPA and CPSC etc. do their jobs. You know, stuff that saves people’s lives.
Oh, yeah, and universal health insurance.
Mark Kleiman on the Clinton campaign:
“Like the Republicans, they want the voters to confuse lack of scruple with toughness, and honesty with weakness.”
If we fall for it, shame on us.
Are you joking? This is one of the perverse lessons that many Democrats seem to have gleaned from the last twenty years or so, so it’s hard for me to tell. Putting aside the ethical implications of condoning gutter politics, simply mimicking the GOP for the sake of schadenfreude isn’t the makings of a sound strategy.
i said nothing like that at all. not even a little. this is not the argument you’re looking for.
“condoning gutter politics” ? accepting the fact that HRC will likely be The One and that she is what she is and that, as long as she can fight, we can hope she’ll fight for good is not “condoning” anything. it’s trying to make lemonade.
I hate to go back to points made further up but the biggest criticisms of Obama seem to relate to his praising Reagan and is saying the Republican ideas were good.
Of course, neither happened.
Point one, he spoke about both Reagan and Kennedy as being transformative, which they were. Focusing purely on Reagan, he spearheaded a movement which ended up with a Republican power base in Congress which had not existed for years. He, at least as it was perceived, reached out to independents and moderate Dems to build a coalition. The face of the government was drastically changed. At no time did Obama say he agreed with or Approved the changes, in fact he did the opposite. Clinton, however (both of them) have been known to praise Reagan directly. And it should be noted that Obama’s response was to a question about how he could affect Congressional races which is eactly what Reagan did.
Secondly, the Republican party has been the party of ideas, at least in terms of what is seen by the public. Does anybody remember “The Contract with America”? A major idea which worked. Forget policy for a moment, because ideas and policy are two different things. What ideas have the Democrats come up with?
One of the key elements of the Republican success from 1994 to 2006 was that Democrats tended to be policy driven (which most voters find boring) and the Republicans were idea oriented. And even more, they were able to present their ideas in such a way that it masked their actual policies.
If I said the Nazis were the party of social change in the 1930’s in Germany, would I be wrong? No. However, would that be the same as saying I approved of those changes? Of course not.
The Clintons are mastering the art of misrepresentation at a level normally only seen by what the Republicans did to Kerry and Bush.
I don’t know if they are afraid they would lose if things were presented in a fair and factual way (I think the Republicans felt that way) or if it is just ingrained in their blood.
And I am not saying Obama is perfect and pure. Nobody that survives in the realm of politics is. But he has definitely not gone to the extreme of the Clintons in this area.
Strikes me that the Clintin campaign has achieved exactly what Rove wanted the SwiftBoat Liars to achieve: distort the debate so that the false accusation about the other person gets repeated over abd over.
On of my neighbors told me that she had doubts about Obama. My response: I don’t care what Hillary said Obama said. Hillary isn’t electable. I don’t want us to nominate a loser again.
Intraspecific agression, or attacks made from candidates in the same party, especially in the twisted, sound-bite context of these tv debates, is much different than the attacks that will come to Obama when he is the Democratic candidate in the general campaign. You see this in the world of animals, and we are animals. Josh Marshall is of Wash. D.C. He thinks in the tired way of Washington which is cynical, not imaginative, does not talk to people who are actually doing good because they are hopeful and believe their work will have a positive effect on the world, or at least the sphere in which they are applying their good works. That is what Obama is trying to do, in the face of cynics like TPM who would think want Obama to be another clone of HC or a hollow shirt like JE. He can’t see beyond his own reflection.
john miller: If I said the Nazis were the party of social change in the 1930’s in Germany, would I be wrong? No. However, would that be the same as saying I approved of those changes? Of course not.
If you said it to a group of Neo-Nazis interviewing you for an election endorsement, and remained silent about the other side of the Nazi coin (you know, all those concentration camps and invasions and bloody conquests, etc. which resulted from those policies of ‘social change) don’t you think that could be interpreted as an acquiescent approval of those policies?
And if you said to them Adolph Hitler had changed ‘the trajectory’ of Germany, and put it on a ‘fundamentally different path’ without pointing out that the path led millions of Germans of a particular religious persuasion into the ovens at Buchenwald and Dachau and Auschwitz, et. al., don’t you think dispassionate observers of those comments might point that you were a wee bit unbalanced on the praise-condemnation scale?
Of course, I don’t mean to impugn Ronald McReagan or the Republican party with comparisons to Adolph and the Nazis – I’m just exaggerating the comparison to indicate Obama while trying to curry favor with a Republican Newspaper used a whishy-washy ass-kissing assessment of the last quarter century of our political history to make points with them – similar to the kind of politely insincere platitudes you might offer to an overweight hostess who invited you to a party and answered the door dressed in a moo-moo the size of a circus tent, and instead of truthfully gasping that she looks like John Travolta in drag in the movie Hairspray, you temper your greeting with a noncommittal meaningless compliment about how stylish she looks: a contextually polite white-lie.
similar to the kind of politely insincere platitudes you might offer to an overweight hostess who invited you to a party and answered the door dressed in a moo-moo the size of a circus tent
Fat hate… that’s going to make people believe your arguements, yessir!
Hillary Clinton is rapidly approaching the point beyond which I will find myself unable to vote for her in the general election. The ad described is one step above editing a quote to elide a negative. This is nothing short of contemptible, no matter how hard she and her supporters try to persuade themselves to the contrary.
Jay, Obama did point out thwe negatives.
So your question is irrelevant.
I thought that was the point of getting things done on the national level. If he can win over Republicans, or at least, forestall attacks until AFTER he’s made proposals, why not?
Are we so inculcated in attack politics that we disdain this type of strategy from the very start?
Gromit, your sputtering fury at a politician using their opponents very own words against them is funny.
“The Republicans were the party of ideas” said Obama, implying that the democrats had no good ideas.
Your anger is misplaced. You should be angry at your guy for seeking the endorsement of a conservative newspaper while in the midst of a campaign where he needs the votes of democrats.
That his words are used against him should be no surprise to anyone. Democrats are very upset at Obama for his embrace of republican talking points. The fact that Clinton is willing to call him on is going to score her big points among all voters disgusted by what the GOP has done over the last 10 to 15 years.
If this teaches Obama to keep his mouth shut about how much he likes republicans while seeking votes from democrats then more power to him.
But sadly, I don’t think he is balanced enough to learn this lesson. He will be furious that someone challenges the wisdom of his words and will look even worse for it. Unless he can resist his impulses to exacerbate the situation the Obama primary campaign is over.
There are no conservative Democrats? No Democrats who hold opinions that could be considered conservative?
News to me. In fact, I’d be quite angry with people who would try to shut such folks out of the party.
Ken, i’m glad to see in your most recent post you have realized that Obama was not speaking favorably of Republican ideas.
yoyo,
Sorry if I led you to misunderstand me.
Obama certainly did praise Republican ideas. He said they ‘challenged conventional wisdom’. Given the context in which the words were spoken, plus his past use of Republican talking points, there can be no doubt he was using language that implied approval.
If he misspoke then let him say so. If he didn’t mean what he said let him first acknowledge how his words are harmful to progressives fighting those republican ideas, and he can retract them.
But until he addresses the issue Democrats will remain upset that a nomenee seeking democratic votes would say such a thing.
Some people might be interested in reading the “conservative” Reno Gazette-Journal’s endorsement of John Kerry from October 2004.
I give up trying to get someone to see what is out there and continues in complete denial.
Sort of like those voters who continued to vote for Bush despite the obvious.
gwangung: I thought that was the point of getting things done on the national level. If he can win over Republicans, or at least, forestall attacks until AFTER he’s made proposals, why not?
Are we so inculcated in attack politics that we disdain this type of strategy from the very start?
Well, yeah, it’s good to win over Republicans (and Independents, and anyone else you can get on your side) but was he being sincere when he made those adulatory comments about Reagan and Republicans, or distorting the truth like a used car salesman selling a jalopy to promote himself?
Does Obama really think Republicans were the party of ideas over the last few decades? I mean really believe that? Or was he just patronizing the editorial staff, patting them on their little pointy heads with a lot of crap so they’d like him better?
Or was there a more sinister reason for his Reagan adulation, his Republican love-fest? Is he in fact a closet Republican? Or worse, a Republican mole? Does Red-State blood run in his veins?
Lets look at some of the other things he said in the interview, to test this theory.
Alongside the positive statements he made about Reagan and Republicans to the reporters who questioned him was an avowal that government had ‘grown and grown” but there was “no sense of responsibility how it was operating,” and he coupled those curious comments with a disparaging aside about the “excesses of the 60s and 70s.” Contextually that sounds suspiciously like echoes of the mantras we’ve heard for decades, right out of the Republican play-book for ways to disparage Democrats: the Democrats-are-big-spenders-without-fiscal-restraint meme; plus other off-sounded negative Limbaugh-like criticisms from Republicans who constantly disparage the 60s and 70s for producing a culture of hippy-immoral-liberal-secularist-abortion lovers, responsible for the moral decline of the nation.
In fact, if you look at it objectively, Obama’s the perfect Republican mole: a disruptive presence sent in to undermine what would have been a sure Democratic victory in 2008 by a liberal female US Senator whose husband was highly esteemed by Democrats in general, and by Black Democrats in particular, who herself would have locked up the women’s vote, and who most likely would have carried large numbers of Democrats running on her coattails into office.
Now, thanks to Obama’s entry into the race, you can kiss that opportunity goodbye. He’s screwed up the Democratic political landscape in a way that will dramatically improve Republican chances to recapture the White House, and both houses of Congress as well.
Obama is a Republican mole for screwing up Clinton’s chance at office? O-kay.
Hm, Ken seeing the context you made that post in I’m sorry i misconstrued your point. I’m glad we can agree that Obama was only speaking about rhetoric and narrative and not the policy implementation.
Call it “the rube strategy” – we’ll say what we want and most people will be too ignorant to ever figure out the difference.
Very good Publius. I personally call it ‘Demoligarchy’. And, guess what, it works!
The whole strategy is predicated on dumbing down the electorate, which is precisely why the Founding Fathers passed their electorate through a means test. Only 12% of Citizens could vote in 1789. The dummies who idealistically believe in universal voting rights and importing Democratic voters are really playing into the hands of the men who would make the vast majority of us wage slaves, or worse.
The ‘rube strategy’ or ‘Demoligarchy’ is probably ten years ahead of us in Central America. Eventually things get to the point where the winner of the election can out and out ignore the voters and cut a direct deal with the men who run the Country (usually countable on one hand).
We’d be headed there too if it weren’t for, I’d say, 30-40 million Americans who refuse to be easily governed. I’m shaky on Ron Paul, but some of those natives of his are starting to get restless.
“Or was there a more sinister reason for his Reagan adulation, his Republican love-fest? Is he in fact a closet Republican? Or worse, a Republican mole? Does Red-State blood run in his veins?”
I doubt he’s even human, myself.
And obviously, if he’s a Republican, he couldn’t be.
I recommend worrying about all this, non-stop.
“He’s screwed up the Democratic political landscape in a way that will dramatically improve Republican chances to recapture the White House, and both houses of Congress as well.”
You’ve only scratched the surface. Once this is accomplished, Skynet will be in position to take over almost immediately.
Oh, totally. Someone who decided to be a community organizer out of college, and then after Harvard Law, when (as President of the Law Review) he could basically write his own ticket and take whatever Supreme Court clerkship or high-paying job he wanted, went back to the South Side of Chicago to work on voting rights because he had given his word, is totally a Reaganite.
Absolutely. No question about it. I mean, d’oh! That’s what Reaganites always do.
I have yet to see anyone come up with any indication that he said that the Republicans had not just “ideas”, but good ideas.
Sometimes the best treatment for ridiculous statements is ridicule….
While the Clinton campaign is slicing and dicing Sen. Obama’s words for attack ads, to the point where they can’t even quote the entire sentence and still maintain the lie that he’s praising GOP policies, Obama’s Georgia campaign is sending out the following email:
The contrast between the two candidates could not be more stark. Far from condemning the dishonest attacks against her opponent, Sen. Clinton is approving those attacks.
Bill, if you’re looking for a disparaging term for mob rule, what’s wrong with ‘mob rule’? It’s what the Founders used.
And goodness knows, we need a return to the Good Old Days when a small band of Virginia oligarchs could agree over dinner on what direction to take the nation in. So it’s good that, as you say, we’re almost back to that. Soon, we’ll return to the wisdom of our Central American neighbors, to let the important men settle important affairs, while the rest of us use our valuable time to practice tugging our forelocks.
And don’t we all miss the days when elections were conducted with stately calm and dignity among well-informed voters who carefully, rationally, judged among fairly-presented alternatives, and we never saw tawdry political deals for the Presidency? Like, say, 1800. Indeed, who can forget those logical debates in the newspapers over the merits of Citizen Genet’s principled disputes with Washington? We hearken back to the halcyon 1820s when the courtly supporters of John Quincy Adams scorned to call Mrs. Andrew Jackson a whore, knowing as they did that such considerations could never affect the judgment of the select few who were granted the vote. Alas for our Republic, so diminished by letting women, Blacks, and other trash vote! O, tempora! O, mores!
Don’t insult my intelligence.
The two are in no ways equivalent.
And stop acting like a Republican. These are the same quote mining, logic chopping arguments I get from creationists all the time.
No, no, Hilzoy, you’re being distracted by shadows, missing the true depths of the deception. In 1969, Karl Rove, then 17 years old, went to Jakarta on a supersecret mission to recruit 8-year-old Barack Obama to be the perfect Republican mole to sabotage the 2008 presidential election for the Democrats. All that stuff about community organizing and voting rights and caring for the poor and his liberal voting record? Don’t be so naive! It’s all a cover!
Hmm, now I’m wondering whether I should have written that, since I don’t want it appearing as fact in Clinton’s next campaign ad.
Obama certainly did praise Republican ideas. He said they ‘challenged conventional wisdom’.
know what else challenges conventional wisdom?
Time Cube.
More artful misrepresentation from ABC News.
Apart from teh YouTubes and teh blogosphere, is just like 2000 all over again.
/nauseous nostalgia
Are people here still trying to prove that Barack Obama was not speaking approvingly of republican ideas as he was seeking the approval of a republican editorial board?
Give it up people, you lost the argument, Obama is taking a beating over it, move on.
Are people here still trying to prove that Barack Obama was not speaking approvingly of republican ideas as he was seeking the approval of a republican editorial board?
Naw. But that Time Cube dude cleek linked to sure is. He’s talking all kinds of smack about the Clintons. I can’t link directly to where it starts but it’s down a little ways. Just start from the top and keep reading…
Argument by assertion really doesn’t fly anywhere.
And telling us white is black and black is white is STILL insulting our intelligence.
Try another tack.
“More artful misrepresentation from ABC News.”
Whoa! I thought Obama was going to hulk out there, for a minute. Man, he’s one scary scary dude when he’s angry! I’ve never seen a politician so hysterical with rage!!!
Imagine what he’d be like with his finger on the nuclear button!
This shows he’s just like OJ inside, which is something Obama supporters don’t want you to know!!!!!
(Anyone else want to try for an entry in the ken-sound-alike pool?)
I think ken must be getting a nickel for every time he types the phrases “republican editorial board/newspaper” and “praise/d republican ideas.” He sure does like repeating them. It seems talking points are okay as long as they’re HRC talking points. Because she’s the savior of liberalism or something. The defender of the flame of progressivism against the Obamamole, minion of the right, alleged tender of goats and attender of semi-nice schools!
I think ken must be getting a nickel for every time he types the phrases “republican editorial board/newspaper” and “praise/d republican ideas.” He sure does like repeating them. It seems talking points are okay as long as they’re HRC talking points. Because she’s the savior of liberalism or something. The defender of the flame of progressivism against the Obamamole, minion of the right, alleged tender of goats and attender of semi-nice schools!
Gary: This shows he’s just like OJ inside, which is something Obama supporters don’t want you to know!!!!!
Werd.
Official Beltway narrative: Nurse Ratchet vs. the Angry Black Man.
Sweet Jesus, I hate teh MSM.
Actually ken emailed me to say he’s having a problem with his keyboard. The control and V keys are stuck down, otherwise he would post about how he really likes Barack’s narrative of transformational politics.
You’ve only scratched the surface. Once this is accomplished, Skynet will be in position to take over almost immediately.
Win.
Cut the Gordian Knot!
ken, I couldn’t agree more with your comments here
tell ’em ken!
it’s true. sage words from a wise man.
rather unfairly (!), too, as you noted above.
Yeah, what a hypocrite she is, right? I’ glad you’re calling her on it.
That about sums it up.
I was wondering why a Republican editorial board would have endorsed John Kerry for president in 2004, but then I noticed that Ken actually wrote “republican”. Apparently they’re just big fans of being a republic. So apparently the criticism now is that Obama was approving of republican ideas, not Republican ones. Perhaps Ken is a monarchist.
“Imagine what he’d be like with his finger on the nuclear button!”
He’d be confused and disoriented, and probably hit the button without knowing it:
From today’s LA Times:
That’s what we need all right: a Prez who doesn’t know his left finger from his right.
“He’d be confused and disoriented, and probably hit the button without knowing it”
On the bright side, I’m really looking forward to seeing Obama starring in this.
He’s one funny guy. Angry, you know, very very angry — but funny angry.
But also scary! Very very very scary!
I’m trying to figure out when the anti-Obama campaign wandered into commentary that seems reminiscent of this script.
This exchange particularly sticks with me:
So true.
But I’m also thinking of Criswell’s entire introductory speech.
Although it’s somewhat over-literate for Ken, to be sure.
I agree with Ken and Jay J.
Obama worked for a slum lord after learning to hide his Muslim identity in a Madrassa while plotting the assassination of Reagan, the very man he loved so deeply. When all is told, this politically divisive character, Barack Obama (scion of the famous Kenyan sheep herding family of the same name), will have destroyed the credibility of the democratic cause by insisting that one vote counts for five… all the while doing something ‘in the neighborhood’ that might or might not have been related to selling crack.
As a former Democrat who left the party when Bill Clinton moved it decisively rightward (welfare “reform” was the last straw), I keep getting the impression that both Obama’s and Clinton’s appeals to progressives consist of focusing obsessively on the other candidate and pointing out (correctly IMO) that s/he is a center-right, corporate Democrat who offers little to progressives. And progressive Democrats seem to have taken the bait.
Ultimately conversations about the race among progressives quickly turn into discussions of campaign tactics because there’s little to separate Obama and Clinton on the issues. Neither candidate actually offers progressives much of anything more than being less bad than any of the possible Republican candidates (which of course both of them are).
It is slightly embarrassing to see ObWi degrade like this. This is not ‘reasonably civil’, it’s coming closer to ‘consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake’ and with the loads of childish snark comes close to ‘disrupting or destroying meaningful conversation for its own sake’.
What I remember from 2004 is that by the time Kerry was the nominee people had worked so hard to reinforce his flaws that even a hugh majority of democrats couldn’t be enthousiastic about him anymore. It’s kind of hard to convince others that voting for that person is a good thing, if enough democrats state that they only do it while holding their nose. *If* Hillary becomes the nominee for the Democratic party that seems to happen again. In wich case the democrats vilifying her now are as much to blame when yet again a Republican becomes president.
A few months ago people wrote that they were glad the Democrats had such a strong field with three good candidates. Now, less than a year later, you’ve all done a lot of the rightwing’s work for them in thrashing those candidates.
Ken made a reasonable point imho, where he says that Obama responded with a remark about Reagan when Clinton had only mentioned the ideas, not Reagan. I think in the original interview Obama expressed approval of the fact that the Republican *had* ideas and tried different things, but that he implied that those ideas didn’t work out well. My impression was that people thought his reaching out to the Republicans by trying to find common ground was a good thing – and frankly I think he would have done a better job in the debate had he explained his comments instead of trying to get back at Clinton the same way.
The email Gromit received is much more postitive for both Obama and the Democrats imho. But unfortunately so far (as a reasonable impartial observer for whom Hillary would not be first choice if I could vote) I’ve not seen the same standards of scrutiny for both candidates – let alone a comparison of records, issues and experience.
It is slightly embarrassing to see ObWi degrade like this. This is not ‘reasonably civil’, it’s coming closer to ‘consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake’ and with the loads of childish snark comes close to ‘disrupting or destroying meaningful conversation for its own sake’.
A lot of the commentary being snarked at is worthy of it, e.g. “I’m glad you agree with me” when no one’s done any such thing, etc. I don’t see this so much as lowering of the level of discourse as just responding in kind. The whole Madrassa thing, e.g., is so ridiculous that I’ve come to think that mockery is the best response — I think it does those sorts of arguments too much credit to trete them seriously.
What I remember from 2004 is that by the time Kerry was the nominee people had worked so hard to reinforce his flaws that even a hugh majority of democrats couldn’t be enthousiastic about him anymore.
Funny, my feeling from the very beginning was that I had to work like crazy to make myself enthusastic about him. Because he was boring. Really, really boring.
A few months ago people wrote that they were glad the Democrats had such a strong field with three good candidates. Now, less than a year later, you’ve all done a lot of the rightwing’s work for them in thrashing those candidates.
Wait, I thought that the current consensus was that it’s better to have gone through the crucible of criticism? I can’t keep up with the spin anymore.
Regardless, this is all a matter of perspective — my impression is that Obama was (and is) schooling Clinton in the campaign and she adopted this strategy intentionally to try and take the luster off of his persona. I don’t think it’s very fair to say that Obama started any of this — e.g., his Reagan remarks certainly weren’t targeted at Senator Clinton, though I bet they pissed off Bill pretty good.
I hate to get back to the “they started it” issues, but all else notwithstanding, it’s pretty clear to me who started all this. Obama was running a very positive campaign, and it was working well — too well — so Senator Clinton put him in a lose-lose situation where he had to respond and look aggressive or stay quiet and look weak. (She tried this back in November, too, and it backfired like crazy.)
The fact that Obama’s stayed as on-message as he has is actually really impressive to me — I think he’s certainly done a better job than Hillary, and far more than Bill. Obama’s clearly gotten under their skin much more than they managed to get under his, and considering the Clintons’ political acumen, that’s saying something.
Ken made a reasonable point imho, where he says that Obama responded with a remark about Reagan when Clinton had only mentioned the ideas, not Reagan. I think in the original interview Obama expressed approval of the fact that the Republican *had* ideas and tried different things, but that he implied that those ideas didn’t work out well. My impression was that people thought his reaching out to the Republicans by trying to find common ground was a good thing – and frankly I think he would have done a better job in the debate had he explained his comments instead of trying to get back at Clinton the same way.
Even if you buy the Reagan/Republicans parsing, it was Bill who made the Reagan comments, and Obama clarified that during the exchange during the debate — that was the basis of the “I don’t know who I’m running against” remark, and I thought it was a fair point in context. She was just playing semantics; the distinction wasn’t relevant to her criticism.
At any rate, as far as I could tell he did exactly what you suggested he do in the debates — he said outright that he thought that Reagan was a disaster for the Democratic Party and that the Republicans in the 1990s had “bad ideas,” but that they managed to connect with voters in a way we didn’t, and it hurt us. That’s a really straightforward argument that a lot of Democrats have been making for two decades now — including both Clintons, frequently — and the fact that he even had to clarify it at all was pretty silly in the first place.
Of course I apologize for the snark, juvenile as it was. Did not mean to vilify posters or degrade the conversation, just voice a little exasperation with my reading of this thread, if in an exaggerated manner. I should face up to the fact I’m not very good at teh funny… so apologies to the Ken and Jay, and the community in general. This is pretty much the only blog I take time to read the comments on, so here’s to an elevated discourse and less snark from me.
Trips: I thought it was funny…