CE Week #5: “Clinton blasts Obama campaign’s tactics”
New York senator says opponent sent false mailings
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Perry Bacon Jr. and Alec Macgillis
Washington Post
February 24, 2008
HUBER HEIGHTS, Ohio – In perhaps her sharpest attack of the 2008 presidential campaign, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton accused her Democratic rival Saturday of “using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” declaring at one point, “Shame on you, Barack Obama.”
Clinton’s comments represented a marked shift from just two days ago, when she and Obama engaged in a generally good-natured debate in Austin, Texas. The Illinois senator responded by noting “the sudden change in tone” and questioning Clinton’s timing, ahead of Sunday newspaper deadlines and with another debate three days away.
“It makes me think there’s something tactical about her getting so exercised this morning,” he said in Columbus, Ohio.
Clinton took strong exception to Obama mailings that criticized her views on health care and trade. Both mailings have been sent before by the Obama campaign, and her aides had expressed frustration about them, but the senator from New York had not previously addressed them in such a pointed way.
“I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings,” Clinton said, holding the fliers in her hand. “He says one thing in his speeches, and then he turns around and does this. It is not the new politics the speeches are about. It is not hopeful. It is destructive.”
She added, “Enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook. This is wrong, and every Democrat should be outraged. … Shame on you, Barack Obama.”
One mailing says that Clinton’s health care plan would force people to purchase insurance, even if they could not afford it. The other quotes a Newsday article that says Clinton regarded the North American Free Trade Agreement as a “boon” to the economy. The Long Island newspaper has acknowledged that was the word it chose to describe her view of the controversial agreement.
Obama defended the accuracy of the mailings, though he granted that it is “fair” to question that Clinton used the word “boon.” He said the mailing was produced before Newsday clarified that Clinton herself had not used the word.
But he added that the overall thrust of the publication stands.
“Senator Clinton, as part of the Clinton administration, supported NAFTA. In her book, she called it one of the administration’s successes,” he said. “We’re pointing that out in a state that’s been devastated by trade and is deeply concerned about the position of the candidates on trade.”
It is indisputable, Obama added, that Clinton’s plan would require people to buy health insurance even if they did not think they could afford it. She may not want the plan described that way, he said, just as he does not like her characterizing his plan, which does not include a mandate, as leaving out 15 million people.
“We have been subject to constant attack from the Clinton campaign except when we were down 20 points. They need to take a look at what they’ve been doing,” Obama said.
Clinton and Obama have agreed to a debate Tuesday in Cleveland, and Clinton hinted that she will use the opportunity to press her point.
“Meet me in Ohio, and let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign,” she said.
It is estimated that Clinton’s health care plan would cover more people than Obama’s in part because it would require people to purchase insurance, although it stipulates that Americans would have to pay only a certain percentage of their income for health care costs. If government subsidies are large enough, Clinton’s plan is not likely to force people to pay excessive amounts for health care, although it is difficult to define what is “affordable.”
Clinton has sought to distance herself from NAFTA throughout the campaign. In Cincinnati, she said that George H.W. Bush’s administration, not Bill Clinton’s, had “negotiated” the agreement. But her husband was an enthusiastic backer of NAFTA in the 1990s, helping get it passed despite opposition from some Democrats in Congress. Obama’s campaign on Saturday put out a long list of statements from the 1990s in which Hillary Clinton expressed enthusiasm about NAFTA.
Obama has won 11 straight contests in the Democratic campaign, heading into March 4 primaries in four states, including Ohio and Texas.
Look at all of the current articles coming out recently. Instead of focusing on the candidate’s stances and platforms they are more concerned with which candidate has a relationship with a lobbyist and how candidates are battling it out against each other. This is yellow journalism. The media is focusing more on horse race than it is on the important things. It goes with the orchestra pit idea. The media is writing articles on the relationship McCain has with Ms. Iseman and not on his platform or how he feels about the election so far. It’s very stereotypical for our nation to want to know more about the scandals than the policies. Anyways, back to the actual article that I read. As the election goes on I feel like Hillary Clinton seems less desirable. She is going back and forth from trying to be this sweet leader to stooping down and attacking Obama for ridiculous non-credible reasons. Hillary Clinton is digging herself a hole that no super delegates can dig her out from. She’s getting very desperate in her campaigning; she appears unstable which is sending her voters away. The fact that Hillary is attacking Obama’s campaign tactics is a sure sign that she is running out of ideas. Don’t run for president if you can’t handle someone running against you making remarks about your position. I mean come on, with all of her “experience” shouldn’t she have expected this?
All we hear about lately is “Obama slipped up here”, and “Hillary attacked Obama there”. Honestly is this letting us know more about the actual campaign, what their doing, their stances, and their thoughts on the issues. No not really. This is just good ol yellow journalism. The media is focusing more on the “back-and-forth” fighting and name calling than on the actually election and its important issues. Hillary’s new tactics of attacking Obama at every corner don’t seem to be helping her much in the polls. The
medias is really letting the country know what she’s doing and her tactics and honestly I don’t think that they like them very much and yet she continues to try and attack him on everything, now even his own campaign tactics. “Meet me in Ohio, and let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign,” Hillary said at one point. Honestly I think that sounds a little b****y, but that’s just me. It’ll be interesting to see if she continues to use these tactics or if they will continue to hurt in the polls and she’ll realize that. I think that she should stop using them because the worse tactics she uses the harder she is making it for her to “bow out gracefully” and hopefully keeping her political career in tact.
At first I was very surprised by Mr. Obama’s tactics, but as I thought about it more, I realized that I shouldn’t be. My initial reaction was that I thought Obama should have stayed away from the anti-Hillary flyers, while just allowing PACs that support him to do that sort of thing. PACs tend to do this sort of thing, because they can effectively smear an opponent to whomever they are supporting, while allowing their candidate to claim that he or she had nothing to do with the actual flyers. Unfortunately, the Obama camp took to doing this, but why not? They have tons of money and tons of momentum. He has gained a great amount of ground on Hillary in Texas and Ohio over the last few weeks and is probably looking to get that slight edge that could push him into the nomination. If he can afford to be sending out Hillary-bashing flyers, than he obviously is swimming in the money (literally). Also, more and more superdelegates have been switching over to Obama. Whereas Hillary was previously ahead of him by about 100 superdelegates, CNN says that she now only leads him by 56. In a way it saddens me that Obama has taken to sending out flyers in order to make people shy away from his opponent, but at the same time it makes for an even more entertaining campaign. We’ll have to wait and see how Texas and Ohio play out to determine if these flyers had an impact that was even relative to the outcome at all. (I doubt it will be.)
Reply to Shauna’s post. The very first thing that you talk about is how people are pointing out the dirty side of the race, not the race itself, and the policies of the candidates running. Then you say its just good yellow journalism. Of course it is, honestly that is the stuff that sells, people don’t want to hear about the policies of the candidates they want to know what is going down outside of what we see, and they want to know dirty secrets. So when a writer gets a topic like this of course they will pounce on it because it will sell. Now honestly did Hillary have the right to blast Obama like that? Unfortunately I have to say yes because he did send that stuff out, and it was hurtful to the Clinton campaign. Then Shauna says that Hillary’s tactic of attacking Obama on anything he says will be shot down, but I am hear to tell you that I think it will work because eventually he will have a slip up and he will not know what to do in that situation. So to answer your question I think Hillary will continue with her tactics, because eventually they will work.
For this entire election season Hilary has never been solid on her platform and ideals towards issues and her personality for that mater. She has always been on this metaphorical “fence” but now it seems worse than ever.
Now that she is falling behind Barack in practically every aspect she has taken a different approach on how she debates and campaigns. Before it was about her showing her “feelings” and how “compassionate” she may or may not be. But now to her it’s all about putting down Barack Obama with pointless false accusations. I found it a little funny now that’s she is loosing she stooped down a few levels to put down Barack. What’s next name calling? What has Hillary become? Its not even about the issues anymore, its about making fun of Barack. It doesn’t help that the media likes to take advantage of all this and misquote people and such. It’s just a bunch of yellow journalism, which sadly is affecting the public somewhat. Its hard to say what’s going to happen next with Hillary, it just seems to me she is just digging herself a hole that she now cant get out of.
~Ryan Brannan
I’d have to say I agree with Brian on this one. Barack basically has nothing more to loose anymore. It may seem a bit cocky but its true. He has what seems like an endless amount of money so why not? The only thing I would worry about is making a bad image for himself but I guess at this point in the race it really doesn’t matter. This almost seems like retaliation to Hillary attacking him and not just Barack attacking her for no reason. According to Brian it seems to be pretty affective as to getting more super delegates so I guess he’s doing something right. Only time will tell who the democratic nominees will be, and at this point Hillary isn’t looking so hot.
Like we have talked about in class Hillary’s only chance of staying in for the nominee is winning Texas and/or Ohio, and she needs to win big! So it would make sense that Barack would attack her there. In a way he is being more strategic than just being a bully like Hillary seems to be doing. She is just attacking Barack because she has nothing left. As the public we are just playing the waiting game, but it seems that Barack and Hillary in a political boxing match.
Response to All:
Two sided politics? So very strange. This is the fun stage of the election everybody! This where everything gets all Jerry Springer! While I was reading Brian Bakers post I read a part where he says “In a way it saddens me that Obama has taken to sending out flyers in order to make people shy away from his opponent,” well that’s the way every election is, all candidates have their dirty little tricks, its commonplace in modern American politics, plus if you think about it Hilary would probably do a similar thing if she were in Obama’s spot. But yes Brian I also agree that it makes everything a lot more entertaining.
Some people have also talked about the fact that Hilary has “stooped” to a lower level to try to put Barack down, once again this is not all that shocking or surprising, any candidate would do this, if anything I say what Hilary is doing is a good strategy, because it’s a classic strategy, and it works sometimes. This sort of political fighting will continue on both sides, before long I suspect all sorts of blog articles focusing solely on Hilary’s and Obama’s dirty stinking political tactics and how they are just so “shocking” and “suprising.” Honestly I think I will be focusing more on the articles focusing on the issues of the times, the sort of stuff that will probably affect us ten years down the road.
To Cody:
Ok seriously are you serious?! You said and I quote, “people don’t want to hear about the policies of the candidates” Yah some people may not be completely interested in the tiny little details on the polices and what they want to do with health care but that does not mean that all the public wants to here about is what Obama ate for lunch! Also I would seriously hope that you would not just want to hear about that stuff. To vote you should be informed! Informed about the policies that your candidate supports and what they actually plan to do if they get elected to office. I’m not going to vote for Obama just because he is black (which sadly some people are) or if he was hot I wouldn’t vote for him because of that either. Yellow journalism is one of the worst forms of journalism. Also for your, “I am hear to tell you that I think it [Hillary attacking Obama’s campaign tactics] will work because eventually he will have a slip up and he will not know what to do in that situation” Every candidate will eventually have a slip up but about the whole thing about him not knowing what to do in the situation is completely false. Hillary says that Obama is inexperienced but honestly he has gotten this far and elected as a senator of Illinois he knows the business and if he ever does blank out he has an experienced campaign staff. Either way I’m shocked that you could think people only want to hear about is the “dirty secrets” of campaigns and I hope that you do not vote on the basis of that!
Response to Shauna to Cody
Yeah I agree with Shauna that it is very sad that people vote for the candidate based upon what the media gives, which is saying who is ahead in the polls. Like Shauna said, “to vote you should be informed,” we should not vote for a candidate just because he or she is ahead in the polls or what tactics they are using in their campaign. Honestly, the public should not be focusing on that garbage. We need to pay attention on the candidate’s platform. Let’s think about this. When the presidential campaign finally comes to a end, are campaign tactics and polls going to help our country? I do not think so. The media needs to stop with the yellow journalism because it does not help. It treats this the whole election like it is a game.
With the whole issue about Barack Obama, Clinton says that Obama is inexperienced, but like Shauna said he has made it this far. He knows what he is doing and has made it this far in the nomination process. As far as I’m concerned he seems to have enough experience to be President. If you think about it, everyone is “inexperienced” to become President because no one knows what it is like to be President until they actually become the President. Even though Hillary Clinton was the first lady, she is also “inexperienced” to become President.
Kirk:
Yes I said that it saddens me that Obama is resorting to dirty tricks reminiscent of the Republican Party of the 1960’s, and yes that is all just part of the political game people play in the middle of the evening; the game people play in the middle of the night. (Alan Parsons reference; I hope you enjoyed it.) This however, does not entitle you to point out that fact to me. I am highly aware that politics is all about undercutting your opponent, sometimes to the point where you undercut cut yourself (e.g. Dean in ‘04). While I understand that this is a crappy reality that most have probably allowed themselves to accept, I myself will not accept these dirty tactics. I dream of a perfect political world where Hillary and Barack hold hands and hug onstage after a tough Super Tuesday while wishing each other the best of luck and truly meaning. These are pretty high hopes, yes, but we were almost to that before Texas and Ohio when Hillary thought she was out and told reporters that she wouldn’t mind being on a dream ticket with her homie Barack. Then she won and the words began to fly and now we’re back to angry Democrats who could very well be ruining their party’s biggest year. Ever. If only the world was perfect… I’m going to keep dreaming.