While I think many allegations leveled against Hillary Clinton lack basis in fact and logic, and have explained my positions here ad nauseum, I have also made clear that in part I am giving Clinton the benefit of the doubt with respect to some of the more ambiguous allegations against her because I believe she has earned it from years of fighting the right wing smear machine.
Now, it appears to me that this whole Obama/Wright business is a right-wing hit job, based on the involvement of Fox News and right-wing radio's long-time flogging of Obama's association with his church.
That the remainder of our MSM media goes along is par for the course, given their record of laziness, incompetence and herd mentality.
So far, Sen. Clinton appears to have stayed away from the issue. Personally, I wish she had more vigorously defended Obama (or if not Obama, the general principle that people frequently find meaningful spiritual guidance from someone with whom they disagree on political matters), but at least she has not tried to explicitly and publicly use it to her advantage -- yet.
However, in a speech the other day, she came close, with an oblique reference, in connection with the re-vote dispute in MI and FL, to it not making a difference "which church you worship in," or something to that effect. Was that a subtle reminder of Obama's current problems? It could be, but it could also be the more general point that the value of one's vote should not depend upon where you live, your race, your religion, etc. I'm not sure.
Then, I come across this in today's NYT:
[T]he [Clinton] campaign hopes that Mr. Obama will have been battered by five rough weeks that raise questions about his past, including the pastor's incendiary comments, that would underscore Mrs. Clinton's warning to Democrats that they were rallying around someone who was untested and unvetted.
NO! NO! NO! This controversy did not arise because of a lack of vetting, but because, as Rob notes above, of the political hit job strategy known as "swiftboating." No amount of vetting can guard against this kind of dishonest, immoral and shameless tactic of trying to associate a candidate with the political views of his spiritual leader.
While there may be a relationship between one's religion and one's worldview and politics, one's spiritual life and one's political life also exist in two completely distinct realms. I don't need to ask, as some of our idiotic political punditocracy has over the past several days, why Obama did not disassociate himself from this Reverend previously and leave the Church. The answer is obvious: Rev. Wright was not a political mentor for Obama, but a spiritual mentor -- his Reverend's political views were quite properly beside the point for Obama.
If America means anything, it means that a person be able to choose the spiritual path that they find most meaningful (which includes, in my mind, a lack of belief in any deity) for themselves and their children without fear of retribution or necessity of explanation.
So, it disheartens me to also read this:
Mrs. Clinton's advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama's association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election.
That argument could be Mrs. Clinton's last hope for winning this contest.
I, for one, will be forced to abandon Hillary Clinton should I continue to see this argument being made. It is offensive. It will be my line in the sand. To the extent that there is a Clinton advisor who reads RK, and who cares what one of your candidate's most ardent defenders on this blog thinks, tell her to stop it now.
Link to full NYT atricle here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03...
h/t - TPM
P.S. Sorry - I try not to get on a soapbox here at RK, but this is just pissing me off no end.
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.Frank Schaeffer then goes on to name all the Republican conservatives who lauded his father and him back in the 1980s.Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
His father, by the way, was the late Francis Schaeffer, a fundamentalist Christian theologian who was not as well known as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and some of the more flamboyant preachers, but whose writings provided the theological underpinnings of the Christian Right. In short, he was their idea man.
His son, Frank, eventually broke away from fundamentalist Christianity. I don't know what his political views are but he is very critical of the religious right.
The cratering economy could very well be the issue that impels the superdelegates to demand an end to the Clinton/Obama contest, even before the PA primary on April 22.
As her husband did so successfully in '92, Clinton should promise to "focus like a laser beam on the economy." It looks like Obama might be pivoting in that direction. If so, Clinton better hurry before it's too late.
Today, Obama made his third speech in three days. Today's speech dealt with the domestic consequences of the war, especially the economic consequences. Prof. David Dante Troutt has a new post up at washingtonindependent.com that succinctly depicts what Obama is trying to do:
"It is audacious to think that what is good for the poorest among us can benefit the middle, too, but it may be true....Now comes the fear and what we do about it."
Obama, like Edwards, boldly has chosen to champion the poorest among us and is challenging those up the next rungs of the ladder to overcome their fear of falling and believe that change is not only necessary, but also beneficial to all in the long run.
There is no time to waste, and it must be a joint and very very public effort. Call a halt to this here and now. The damage to every Democrat is already apparent in plunging poll numbers, including to Senator Clinton. Offense is the best defense. Enlightened self-interest (which, granted, requires a long-term view, rather than slithering for short-term "profit") dictates that even Obama's rival for the nomination should see the long run advantage in supporting another Democrat, indeed, in protecting the Democratic Party label itself.
Why has this not been done already? I am infuriated with the entire party Establishment. Whether you are for Clinton or Obama (or Edwards, etc, or undecided) you must remember that we supposedly learned the lesson with Kerry and Dean: let no smear lie unaswered and do it very quickly. Makes no difference if the smear is innuendo, anonymnously done on You-tube, ranted on talk radio, or hinted at slyly in the press, and so on. It is not just the responsibility of the unfortunate victim, it is the Party's responsibility.
Lies are lies, smears are smears and we cannot permit this continued debasement of the political process to continue. Democrats are going to lose this election unless they come together and roar down the sewer sludge; hang together or hang separately, you dolts.
You have to admire the Republicans - regardless of how much we disagree with them, they always rally behind their ideas and never waiver.
And the Iraq war is a perfect example. With polls showing how unpopular the war is, and with Bush's approval ratings approaching Nixonian levels, Republicans still back Bush up.
Meanwhile, the Dems offer empty rhetoric about ending the war in Iraq - and choose to do nothing about it. They can cut-off funding for the war but they CHOOSE not to, allowing the number of troops killed or maimed to increase. We have spent $680 billion dollars (NBC News on 3/19/2007) funding this war and that number grows by $12 billion a month. By the time we inaugurate the next president, another $120 billion will have been spent in Iraq and the death toll will reach numbers that are simply unacceptable. But the Dems will sit around for the next 10 months, sending out offensive emails like this from Senator Frak Lautenberg of New Jersey, who is using the issue to raise money:
Dear ----Five years. Nearly 4,000 lives lost. And still no end in sight. That's the result of the failed policies of George Bush and those who march in lockstep with him.
While our troops continue to fight bravely under terrible conditions, President Bush refuses to get the Iraqi government to live up to its commitments. So our troops continue to be stuck in the middle of a civil war in Iraq.
George W. Bush, John McCain and their Republican allies have a choice: They can continue to stubbornly insist on having it only their way on the war, or -- they can listen to the American people and embrace our plan that would start bringing our troops home now.
And whether they like it or not - we are going to force change on them with a strong Democratic victory in November.
Please sign and forward my petition calling on President Bush to bring our troops home now!
In the meantime, I am working to get our men and women in uniform a fair deal:
When we saw our service men and women being put onto the battlefield without proper body armor, and families paying out of their own pocket to buy body armor for their loved ones, I took action by leading the fight to pass a law forcing the Bush Administration to reimburse those families.
When the Bush Administration tried to raise prescription drug co-pays in the military health care plan, my legislation blocked it.
And I am cosponsoring a plan for a new GI Bill with Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, so troops returning home have a real shot at a college education.
While John McCain and George Bush are open to a 100-year war in Iraq, we say five years is more than enough.The best thing to do for our country is to start getting our troops home now. Please sign and forward my petition today.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Lautenberg
What a crock! If he were so concerned about ending the war, he should introduce a bill to cut-off funding. The Senate offered numerous bills and amendments to end the war that were useless because they couldn't get the votes to pass it or Bush threatened to veto or vetoed the bills. And offering a petition to send to Bush is useless and nothing but political grandstanding.
I left the Republican Party because of disgust with what they had turned into. I knew when I joined the Democrats (in an effort to stop the insane policies of the Republicans, and the damage they were doing to my country), I knew the Democrats were by no means the epitome of organisation. But I never expected that seasoned Democratic politicians would have so little sense of self-preservation, so little loyalty to their party brand that they would repeatedly roll over and put their paws in the air at the first sign of the opposition's viciousness. Nor, did I expect them to turn on each other like sharks in bloody water. You must demand respect to receive it, and who can respect such craven behavior? "Change," my foot. "Big tent," my foot.
You can have disagreements among yourselves, but to preserve your own a*s in politics, when one of your family is slimed and attacked unfairly you rise in righteous anger and defend him, because thereby you defend yourself.
This entire episode makes me wonder: Does one single, amorphous Super Elite overlay both political parties and everything done by the visible so-called leadership, everything done by the grassroots, in the long run is sounding brass, signifying nothing. What the Super Elite wants is what finally happens. I do not plan on giving up, and I do intend to express my demands (okay, requests) to every one of the many politicians who ask me for money or send me self-serving e-mails... and that's a lot of feckless politicians. It ain't over 'til it's over.
Plain and simple.
Lets review yesterday
cheney"So what"
Bush "what"
Complaints like this are often dismissed as merely whining. However, at some point, there are so many dots in the pattern that anyone can connect the dots and see the pattern.
And so when I tuned in briefly to Meet the Press, and saw for the first time the unedited soundbites of Reverend Wright screaming "God DAMN America", I concluded that now they have started to take down Obama.
How many more national Democratic political leaders can we stand to lose this way? What can be done to put a stop to it?
One thing for sure, is blogging isn't going to make a difference. If blogging were enough, Kerry would be President.
The thought that Hillary Clinton should take the laboring oar in Obama's defense isn't really practical, because she has been more of a target than Obama, and she would only feed the flames. For the same reason, Obama shouldn't be left to defend himself. No, the ones who should be standing up for Obama are all the big names who have endorsed him so far. Where have they been lately?
The media millionaires have to be made to feel the heat, through letters to the editor and opeds. They have to know that engaging in shoddy journalism and broadcasting Republican talking points as "news" is not going to be risk-free.
I have already written one letter to the editor myself (on Obama's speech in Philadelphia), and will write more. Also, I intend to reply to all the letters and e-mails I receive from the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and candidates (all across the country) begging for donations. What I will say, basically will be: stand up and be counted this time when the media, new and old, start with the lies repeated as truth, the crossquoting of fabrications designed to make them appear as true, the swiftboating of another Democrat, especially on the national level, whether done formally in national media or slyly on You-tube---- and for god's sake show some character and backbone. And no ditzing around and foot-dragging, either.
Reading Media Matters every day does my blood pressure no good. I realize that correcting any of Rupert Murdoch's slander sheets, or pinging the talk shows, or nagging the Moonie Washington Times is little more than futile, but they deserve to hear it... repeatedly. Hopefully, if more of us do so, and keep at it, it might dawn on them their bottom line could suffer if they continue. I do not have a television set, so I thankfully miss a lot of the crap, but I do see it on You-tube, so I know what's up.
Letters to the editor in local and community papers is a stellar way to reach the grassroots, and so are calls to the news departments of local radio (or, if you listen, local talk shows). I keep WTOP's newsroom number by my phone; when I hear a clear piece of bias or lies, I call them immediately. It can make a difference.
Frankly, given the craven leadership of the national Democratic Party, I think it is up to the grassroots to respond to the smears, and maybe push the national Dems into some sort of action.