Tuesday, December 18, 2007

More on the Clintons

I'm trying to put my thoughts about the Clinton campaign of late into some sort of coherence.

What I have witnessed the past week and a half is that they have been skating on the thin end of the pond. Allowing the NH Co_Chair to innocently suggest the GOP would wonder if Obama was a drug dealer, followed by her top strategist the next day trying to play nice by saying the word cocaine twice in one minute.

Along comes Bill on Charlie Rose, who damns Obama with faint praise. His "performance" was one for the ages, where I saw the Clinton charm offense become offensive.

Then on Sunday, Bob Kerrey refers to obama's "Muslim father" and "Muslim paternal grandfather" in the same sentence. He claims to be praising Obama, but mentioning Obama repeatedly in the same breath as Islam was an extremely conscious choice of words. Then yesterday, clarifying his sunday remarks, he refers to the "secular madrassa" that Obama attended when he was a little boy, again attempting to insinuate he had attended a muslim school, when in fact it was a public school, nothing of the sort.

I point this out not as sour grapes necessarily, but as an example of what is obviously an extremely orchestrated effort by the campaign to plant these little weeds in the public mind. This is nothing but dirty politics, which brings me to my observation.
As someone who supported the first Clinton administration I was obviously attuned to the whole "right wing conspiracy" that followed the Clintons from Arkansas to DC. So what I see now is the right wing conspiracy turned on its head. All of the tactics they rightly decried they are now using on someone from their own party and it made me upset to see it, especially the former President on Charlie Rose.

My question is will this sort of campaigning leave people with a bad taste in their mouths especially because it is coming from the Clintons, who had cried foul (wolf?) on this sort of thing? Or will they see it simply as hardball? If I was a Hillary supporter would I be offended? I doubt it, as I always had an excuse for Steve Spurrier when he was the Florida Gator. He was MY SOB! But I wonder if voters who were leaning toward but not committed to Hillary will have the same reaction I did. If they do, then this could be an extremely bad development for the campaign. I'm cynical so my guess is that it will, if only to hand Iowa to Edwards, mortally wounding Obama and allowing Hillary to head to New Hampshire and be the comeback kid all over again.

We'll know in a few weeks.

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