« Now With Substance | Main | Original Wingman » Perspective16 Apr 2008 04:59 pm I'm with Stoller nothing I've seen or heard from the 2008 primary compares with this from 2004: Under the circumstances, it seems wrong to call this "the most bitter and negative Democratic primary in the last forty years." The difference is just that the 2004 primary, though extremely negative at its height, also had a very short duration in terms of peak negativity before quickly morphing into the odd dynamic where Edwards refused to seriously attack Kerry and got rewarded with the VP slot. Comments (17)
I think another important difference, though, is relative enthousiasm for the candidates in '08 vs. '04. I know there were a bunch of people who were "Deaniacs" in '04, but that was mostly people who longed for an authentic anti-war Voice. The reason Obama people find HRC attacks so negative is that they really, really like Obama. Full stop. The stakes were actually HIGHER in '04, giving Bush another term vs. giving McCain a shot. Most intellectually honest Dems would admit that a McCain administration would be more tempered then what the last 4 years have been (esp. of course because of increasing Dem control in Congress..). 
Another difference is that although Dean was viewed as the frontrunner because of polls, he wasn't anywhere near being the nominee. Obama, on the hand, is extremely likely to be the nominee, so damaging him is worse than damaging some random candidate, and it becomes more damaging the closer it gets to the election. And I don't remember Bush getting involved in attacking specific Democrats that early in 2004, so I don't think there was quite the sense that one Democratic candidate was acting as a surrogate for the Republican and echoing his attacks against the Democratic nominee -- though of course the bin Laden ad was very Republican.
I don't have much interest in whether this is the Official Bitterest Primary ever, but I do question the ontological standards of Stoller/Yglesias. The issue of whether an entire campaign has been particularly negative simply cannot be resolved by one youtube embed. There are issues of duration (which Matt rightly points out) but there are also issues of breadth (i.e. the number of lines of attack pursued), group loyalty (how much you're willing to aid the opposition), surrogate behavior, challenges to legitimacy (questioning the integrity attacks on supporters themselves . . all of which play a role.
ack, part of my comment got cut out. should read: . . .challenges to legitimacy (questioning the integrity of the primary process), and attacks on supporters themselves . . all of which play a role.
MikeO I don't think that's the current wisdom... (insert various examples of McCain's bellicose nature)
Under the circumstances, it seems wrong to call this "the most bitter and negative Democratic primary in the last forty years." In 1980 Ted Kennedy refused to shake President Carter's hand at the convention.
What's NOT noted is that most Democrats still do not realize WHO was behind the above attack and WHY. The ad is depicted as defense of America -- but that was deceit. The above ad was put out by an ANONYMOUS 527 to sabotage Howard Dean's campaign early in the Iowa primary --before the Dean Movement could grow. The 527 --Americans for Jobs -- REFUSED to identify its donors until several months later -- when it had to submit the quarterly FEC report. As I've noted here before, The largest donor to the 527 for the attack ads --at $200,000 -- was a billionaire named S Daniel Abraham. Abraham has long exerted pressure for Israel in US foreign policy --but this 527 went well beyond his past practice. Even Forward was gaping in awe --normally one has to look in Deutronomy to see curses of this nature. What was ironic was that Abraham's assistant had a high position in the Dean campaign and Abraham had donated $5,000 to Dean earlier. But in a debate with Lieberman, Dean touched off a storm simply by saying that the US government needed to be evenhanded in the Israel-Palestinian peace process. The attacks began shortly after. The Israel Lobby backstabbing became almost comical when Dean's campaign manager, Steve Grossman, said that Dean should throw in the towel if he didn't win in Wisconsin -- about two days BEFORE the Wisconsin primary. Dean dismissed Grossman immediately but the damage was done. Grossman is a former head of AIPAC. I've given citations on this matter before -- if any newcomers would like links to the news articles, just let me know. I should note that I worked as a volunteer in the Dean campaign in New Hampshire and Delaware.
PS Note that some of Gephardt's people and I think a union? linked to Kerry also chipped in money to the above 527 --but S Daniel Abraham was the largest donor. I think Bernie Schwartz threw in some money as well.
Good to see someone placing this primary in some kind of larger context and calming down about it! Better late than never. Personally, I think that Obamamania (which, I hasten to say, has been a good thing in many ways) combined with the Clinton Rules produced a toxic convergence of the punditry in both the MSM and the left blogosphere, which bubbled over when HRC and all of her supporters were cavalierly accused of racism. ( I don't support HRC, but I think people of all stripes tend to have very irrational feelings about her.)
when HRC and all of her supporters were cavalierly accused of racism. I'm certain it happened on occasion, but post Cuomo, post Ferraro, please spare me. It's not like the DLC has never previously been identified with the Dixiecrats.
I think historians will eventually come to judge the combined Clinton-Bush years (both Bushes, single Clinton) as one of the more destructive periods in American post-war history, or at least the root of whatever future reckoning is sure to come out of our current wrong-headedness. Extremely briefly, Clinton's supposed decade of peace and prosperity was designed to be short-lived (by Greenspan) and followed by an awful hangover (the bursting bubble), and the intolerable measures for properly addressing such dysfunction would be of course avoided, leading to subsequent, worse bubbles, such as we're in now, etc. etc. The bitterness of this primary is about the general realization that a Clinton redux would not promise the dramatic improvement over Bush II it was once reflexively assumed to. Because it would spell more bad, cynical governance of the polarizing variety. The process of seeing Clinton slowly defeated has exposed her (and Bill's) actual unsavoriness to people who were too accustomed to the old polarization, who operated on the assumption that as long as the Clintons were sticking it to the Gingriches and Delays of the world, then they couldn't be that terrible. Turns out they pretty much are, when cornered.
I think the 2008 primary HAS reached this level of nastiness. Clinton has certainly suggested that Obama doesn't match up to McCain as a potential commander in chief (the same premise as the ad). In addition, the race baiting was clear and unmistakeable, and came from the highest levels of the Clinton campaign -- Bill Clinton and Mark Penn.
The reality is that the Democratic nomination fight has been a tea party of politeness. Obama has mostly avoided pointing out the absurdity and humiliating Third Worldiness of the ex-President's wife running for President, while Hillary avoided bringing up almost all the obvious skeletons in Obama's closet, such as Rev. Wright.
1) Actually, the SAME thing that made the 2004 Democratic primaries so filthy -- wealthy donors pressuring the Democratic leaders into supporting the sacrifice of US soldiers for purposes other than defense of the country -- and destroying the Democrats who refused to go along --is ALSO at work in this primary. 2) Make no mistake -- if Hillary is elected, 10,000 more of our sons will be dead within a year -- trying to invade Iran. An Iran on the other side of the world which is not a serious threat to the USA but which is seen to be a major threat to Israel by a few billionaires who think they own the Democratic Party-- and who have made no bones about where their ultimate loyalties lie.
Ten, maybe twenty years from now, modern historians will excavate this ad and postulate a splitoff in human evolution. Even today it rings more of a comedy sketch than a political ad.
... Hillary avoided bringing up almost all the obvious skeletons in Obama's closet, such as Rev. Wright. Is Steve Sailer posting from a parallel universe? That would explain a lot.
Comments closed April 30, 2008. |
Search
Subscribe to this blog by Email Books by Matthew Yglesias
Recent Comments
Recent Posts
Weekly Archives
Categories
|
Copyright © 2007 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
| 
Heads in the Sand
Weirdly, I think some people are imputing the viciousness of the attacks on Dean to the attacks on Obama out of a belief that the same people are behind each. That is, in some sense, it isn't HRC vs. Obama, but Faction DLC vs. Faction not-DLC, and so people's sense of the opposition goes beyond what is happening today.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | April 16, 2008 5:12 PM