Another long HRC campaign postmortem in which the word "Iraq" does not appear. For that matter, neither does "Iran" or "Kyl-Lieberman." But it's a bit perverse to look at this race wholly as an election Clinton lost. But these topics were integral to Obama's critique of Clinton and you can't understand the more purely tactical issues in the race without having some grip on the issues the candidates were debating.
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Don't Talk About the War
08 Jun 2008 10:06 am
Comments (46)
I agree that HRC's vote Iraq in 2003 is critical to how the campaign played out. The folks writing these postmortems would probably respond by saying that they had to restrict the scope of their articles to the time period of the campaign, roughly early 2007 to present. But of course Kyl-Lieberman was during the campaign. How odd!
I gotta ask all the people who are so outraged by her vote for the AUMF - what have you done this week to end the war in Iraq? Have you stood in a peace vigil in your community? Have you started one if none exists? Have you scheduled a meeting with your member of Congress during the coming district work period? Have you organized a peace group in your community? Have you joined one? Have you protested outside an event where your member of Congress is appearing? Have you requested time to speak against the war at a senior center, PTO meeting, anywhere? Organized a petition drive? A call in day? Anything?
I'm all about reaffirming hatred, god knows we can't get enough of that, but how about some action on the ground to end this war? That'd be swell too.
Exactly. Amazing how few postmortems mention the obvious. The idiot Adam N. on the Times (the Judith Miller of national politics) is all tactics and personality, no politics.
And, its just not the vote on Iraq .. she was a cheerleader for the war. Review the tapes of Bush's earlier speeches and note that she jumped up and applauded more than anyone. I can't understand why those pictures aren't on YouTube (or at least I've never found them).
And, like Bush, she could never admit error, never apologize .. in war policy and personal manner she was far to Bushian.
Exactly. Amazing how few postmortems mention the obvious. The idiot Adam N. on the Times (the Judith Miller of national politics) is all tactics and personality, no politics.
And, its just not the vote on Iraq .. she was a cheerleader for the war. Review the tapes of Bush's earlier speeches and note that she jumped up and applauded more than anyone. I can't understand why those pictures aren't on YouTube (or at least I've never found them).
And, like Bush, she could never admit error, never apologize .. in war policy and personal manner she was far too Bushian.
There was also a symposium in the Times Week in Review that had about 8 pieces, and one actually dealt with Iraq (Kathleen Hall Jamison). The level of the others was typified by Heather Wilson's comment that Hillary was "Hermione" from Harry Potter.
There was also a symposium in the Times Week in Review that had about 8 pieces, and one actually dealt with Iraq (Kathleen Hall Jamison). The level of the others was typified by Heather Wilson's comment that Hillary was "Hermione" from Harry Potter.
I gotta ask all the people who are so outraged by her vote for the AUMF - what have you done this week to end the war in Iraq? Have you stood in a peace vigil in your comm...
wow. sanctimonius much?
Most of the anti-war people I know wanted Edwards not Obama -- and we all know how Edwards voted.
It's only after Edwards bowed out that they broke for Obama -- but that was just as likely because Obama appeared to be the least "establishment" candidate of the two.
Yes, the Iraq war vote at the beginning and all downhill from there. I saw her vote as purely political, making tough "man" choices, the opposite of what I would expect for a female president, which I would expect better judgement, thinking of the consequences of what happens in a war, as in, it's the regular populations that suffer, all the death and destruction, the children, and much, much more. All of it is part of that vote to seem as strong on national security, which she already had with the Afghan war. She couldah, wouldah, shouldah...but never said she regretted it until near the end and never the "I'm sorry" that we seemed to need to hear from her.
Clearly, the root cause of Clinton's campaign to lose the nomination is sexism, pure and simple. It just happens to be the case that the majority of polled voters had no idea Hillary was a woman pre-January.
Her loss had nothing to do with her signing off on an unjust, illegal, foolish war that has killed thousands of our troops and cost us trillions of dollars. It also had nothing to do with her trying to lie about her vote.
eRobin, you're really full of shit, you know that? None of the things you mention will actually, you know, end the war. All they are is pointless feel good tactics to make middle and upper-class liberals feel a little better about being ineffectual. Hillary actually could have been a real leader and stood up at the time. It might not have done much good, but you never know. Your moronic comparisons of a bunch of internet commenters to a sitting Senator and party elder are just a pathetic excuse you use to ignore the flaws of someone you idolize. Grow up.
Upper West,
Noticed that too. Even Jamieson, however, seems to think the problem was that HRC failed to convey the true meaning of the AUMF vote--giving the president the tools he needed to force Iraq to comply and so on, whereas the problem went much deeper than this. For many years given many opportunities to fault the use Bush had made of the power given to him, HRC did nothing. She came around to the obvious grudgingly and very late.
I remember many occasions when she explained that the vote was not a vote for war, but to give the president the power blah blah. One would then wait, think "yes?" "And?" "What do you think of how Bush used that power?' and we got nothing.
Upper West,
Noticed that too. Even Jamieson, however, seems to think the problem was that HRC failed to convey the true meaning of the AUMF vote--giving the president the tools he needed to force Iraq to comply and so on, whereas the problem went much deeper than this. For many years given many opportunities to fault the use Bush had made of the power given to him, HRC did nothing. She came around to the obvious grudgingly and very late.
I remember many occasions when she explained that the vote was not a vote for war, but to give the president the power blah blah. One would then wait, think "yes?" "And?" "What do you think of how Bush used that power?' and we got nothing.
It can't be underestimated how much democratic primary/caucus voters wanted a change in democratic leadership. That was why Dean got so much support for DNC chair over the establishment candidates. To a great extent Hilary represented the "business as usual" that many democratic voters, myself included, were completely sick of.
Matt, all I've got to say is: ???
You think Iraq, Iran and Kyl-Lieberman were a big part of Clinton losing? Did you even watch like 5 minutes of national news coverage of the primaries on TV?
Those were not the stories the public had force-fed to them. Rather, they were whether Hillary Clinton tipped a waitress of not, whether Bill Clinton was campaiging too hard for her, whether every bad rumor that started circulating around the Internet could be somehow linked to someone who claimed to be a Clinton supporter, and so on, and so on.
What's up with you Matt? The quality of your posts has gone down in the past 6 months or so.
Here's another look at Hillary Clinton, written by me: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/8/11226/55486/872/532046
Swan, lots of voters are capable of thinking for ourselves, you know. We don't need to listen to the media to decide that being against the Iraq invasion, against Kyl-Lieberman, etc. is one of our defining issues. We're not as stupid as the media would like us to be.
If you count only news programs (not interview-style programs like Meet The Press), I'd bet the major cable networks spent more minutes covering Hillary Clinton's cleavage shot and the story about whether she tipped a waitress or not than they spent talking about her stances on Iraq, Iran, and Kyl-Lieberman combined. And probably even if you count the interview shows, too.
I thought the Iraq war had something to do with my preference in presidential candidates. But now I clearly see that Hillary Clinton's tipping average explains my voting behavior. Thanks Dr Swan, hope you won't be charging for this hour.
Chris O., people can't think about things unless the media informs them about it. A lot of soccer-moms and independent-contractor-dads don't have the time to go cruising on the Internent for news (or think they don't have the time) and they get it from TV instead.
Matt Y. - You should write an op-ed on this very topic and submit it to the nation's largest newspapers. You're an author now and your book is on this same topic. Put on your big boy pants and do something about it the disparity of views in the press. I know having a blog on The Atlantic is pretty grown up but it's not the same as having your own op-ed.
Moderate--interesting point. True of me, for one--I thought Edwards was the most progressive on a substantive, policy level (health care being only the most prominent example). He neutralized the Iraq thing by simply acknowledging that voting for the AUMF was a mistake. Hillary struck me as marginally more progressive than Obama on a substantive level, but for me the Iraq question was a deciding factor. If she had acknowledged AUMF as a mistake... And for me this was not just a matter of principle but also pragmatics: I simply did not see how anyone who couldn't run against the GOP on Iraq could win. Nor could the election be a referendum on this administration's lies and abrogations of the Constitution without such a candidate.
But because the Corporate Meeeedia are absolutely determined and convinced that they committed no real errors in facilitating those lies and the war that resulted therefrom, that same Meeedia are bound and determined that this election must NOT be a referendum on the war and those lies. Therefore it WON'T be. They will do their absolute best to cast it as being about "elitism," bowling, effeminacy, race, generational animus, whatever. Anything but Iraq and the lies they helped promote. See, for instance, yesterday's WaPo editorial about how McCain and Obama just rully rully rully aren't that different when it comes to Iraq policy going forward. Nothing to see here, let's talk about haircuts. I expect to see much more of the same.
Swan, your 11:51 post was somewhat astonishing. People do not need the inter-tent to inform them of the Iraq War, or Hillary's vote to authorize it. This is a relatively old issue, and it predates any of the follies of the campaign trail.
Without her pro-Iraq war vote, Hillary never could have even been challenged. There would be no constituency for it. I'm one of the most rabid anti-Clintonites in these comment sections, and I was fine with her up until that point.
We don't need the media to tell us what to think. We aren't independents.
Those were not the stories the public had force-fed to them. Rather, they were whether Hillary Clinton tipped a waitress of not, whether Bill Clinton was campaiging too hard for her, whether every bad rumor that started circulating around the Internet could be somehow linked to someone who claimed to be a Clinton supporter, and so on, and so on.
Given the effect that the whole "Hillary cried!" media freakout had on the New Hampshire primary, I suspect it's the other way around and the media's incredibly unfair treatment of Clinton actually extended her campaign. She is a popular Senator and the wife of a popular President who was the object of an attempted coup by impeachment.
As long as the media concentrated on her cleavage and her crying and how much she reminded them of their ex-wives, they were pissing off more and more voters, who then turned around and voted for her.
The media has lost a huge amount of its power to influence elections, which is why they were blindsided by the Democratic victory in 2006 and why they will be equally blindsided in November.
I agree the war vote was a liability for Hillary. The war is a big issue and her stand was well-known. But the Kyl-Lieberman proposal? I would be stunned if 5% voters knew what that was. Commenters need to stop generalizing from their own experience and that of a few political junkies they know. If you are writing in blog comments you are orders of magnitude in political interest and knowledge away from most voters.
A non-sinister reason there is a focus on campaign tactics and strategy is that there is every reason to believe that HRC could have won regardless of her Iraq vote, which was well-known at the time she was leading in all the polls. Her huge mistake in failing to organize caucus states and save money for the post Feb-5 period is much more directly responsible for the loss. The exclusion of two large states that favored her until it was too late for their presence in her column to sway superdelegates was the other big problem. Neither of these factors was predictable at the time the race began, years after the war vote. They don't do much for Matt's book or for the convictions of a bunch of you, but they are the undisputable mistakes of her race. No one could know how that war would play out, but abandoning caucuses was crazy from the beginning.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of revisionist history going on. The premise seems to be "everyone knew" not just that the Bush claims about Iraq were exaggerated,which really was widely known, but that there was nothing at all, so when Hillary and others voted for the Iraq resolution they were cynically playing to the politics of fear, or perhaps neocons bent on regime change for its own sake.
In reality, in fall 2002 even the leading anti-war Democrats, people like Al Gore and Ted Kennedy, who argued that Bush was hyping the threat, still assumed Iraq had WMD. They made arguments like Saddam will use the WMD against our troops, and attack Israel with them to drag it into the war. Gore spoke of this whole scenario in which Bush left Iraq too quickly (!) and failed to secure all the WMD sites, which would later fall into the hands of the wrong element etc.
Conceivably, some of you are actually too young to remember all of this. But for others is it is a post-facto simplifying of history.
Here is Gore's speech:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-23-gore-text_x.htm
and Kennedy's
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0930-05.htm
But the Kyl-Lieberman proposal? I would be stunned if 5% voters knew what that was
General election voters, no.
Primary voters, yes.
While talking both at precinct caucuses and the Maine state Democratic convention, I heard frequent comments about whether Clinton would be reliably skeptical about actions against Iran.
I agree that the vote on the Iraq Resolution was a liability for Hillary. The war is a big issue and her stand was well-known and not popular, given the way the war has played out. But the Kyl-Lieberman proposal? I would be stunned if 5% voters knew what that was. Commenters need to stop generalizing from their own experience and that of a few political junkies they know. If you are writing in blog comments you are orders of magnitude in political interest and knowledge away from most voters.
A non-sinister reason there is a focus on campaign tactics and strategy is that there is every reason to believe that HRC could have won regardless of her Iraq vote, which -like her gender- was well-known at the time she was leading in all the polls. Her huge mistake in failing to organize caucus states and save money for the post Feb-5 period is much more directly responsible for the loss. The exclusion of two large states that favored her until it was too late for their presence in her column to sway superdelegates was the other big problem. Neither of these factors was predictable at the time the race began, years after the war vote.
These explanations don't do much for Matt's book or for the convictions of a bunch of you, but they are the undisputable mistakes of her race. No one could know how that war would play out, but abandoning caucuses was crazy from the beginning.
Meanwhile, there is a lot of revisionist history going on. The premise seems to be "everyone knew" not just that the Bush claims about Iraq were exaggerated,which really was widely known, but that there was nothing at all, so when Hillary and others voted for the Iraq resolution they were cynically playing to the politics of fear, or perhaps neocons bent on regime change for its own sake.
In reality, in fall 2002 even the leading anti-war Democrats, people like Al Gore and Ted Kennedy, who argued that Bush was hyping the threat, still assumed Iraq had WMD. They made arguments like Saddam will use the WMD against our troops, and attack Israel with them to drag it into the war. Gore spoke of this whole scenario in which Bush left Iraq too quickly (!) and failed to secure all the WMD sites, which would later fall into the hands of the wrong element etc.
Conceivably, some of you are actually too young to remember all of this. But for others is it is a post-facto simplifying of history.
Here is Gore's speech:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-09-23-gore-text_x.htm
and Kennedy's
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0930-05.htm
The biggest surge of sexism in the campaign was with the crying. It also is what won her New Hampshire, and what kept her in the race.
The problem for Clinton, I think is that she spent the last 8 years playing "against type". She felt that she had to prove that she was tougher than the men in order to stay in the running.
This of course is the real sexism, it's just more of a social norm issue and less of a this person is sexist issue.
When, for a moment she stopped playing against type, her positives went way up. That's what created the race.
For my part, is it sexist to say that I would prefer more traditionally "feminine" traits than "masculine" traits in my leaders? And that I saw both Obama and Edwards as having more of those traits than Clinton, who obviously worked very hard to push them down?
Like I said. There's obviously a huge amount of cultural sexism that happened in this race. But I think that those people who are really focusing on it are looking at the wrong place.
"While talking both at precinct caucuses and the Maine state Democratic convention, I heard frequent comments about whether Clinton would be reliably skeptical about actions against Iran."
Posted by Davis X. Machina
Again, the handful of people who go to a party convention are political activists who follow the ins and outs of candidate posturing and are also considerably more extreme in their views than most voters. Decades of research have shown that convention delegates -of both parties- are far more ideological and polarized than the voters they purport to speak for.
In contrast, millions of people vote in primaries and they are not all that different from general election voters in their knowledge and activism.
The people making speeches at a caucus are by definition the activists of the activists. And I really can't say I've seen many votes swung by caucus speeches, especially once a race is down to two candidates.
No, eRobin, I have not protested this week outside an event where my member of Congress is appearing.
That's because my member of Congress was actively against the war. He voted against the AUMF and he actively tried to stop the rush to war, even though it opened him up to political flack from Republicans who labeled him "Baghdad Jim". That's the kind of judgment and moral backbone that I want from the people I vote for.
Years ago, while the people of my district were organizing peace vigils, and petitions and trying to keep Iraq from ever getting started, it would have been nice to have Senator Clinton on our side. She wasn't. We didn't forget that.
When I hear all these people criticizing Clinton for the AUMF, I wonder where they were in 2003. I was at an anti-war rally. I had written letters to elected and to the media. There were some big rallies in a few places, but many people were still to scared of being called unpatriotic to show up or actually supported the war.
They were wrong then but they have changed their minds. So did Clinton...but they cannot forgive her error, though many seemed to have no such trouble with Edwards.
WOW! What's amazing to me is that anybody posting here actually thinks the media was unfair to either Clinton or Obama when quite frankly the horse racers spent about the same amount of time reporting non-stories about both candidates. For every story about boobies there were stories about scary-sounding middle names. For all of Bill's gaffes (overblown, and--sadly--otherwise) there were discussions of Marxiam and madrassas. And if Hill's adventures in foreign policy were overstated, "Wrightgate" was never ending.
BOTH candidates were the victims of typical, self-interested beltway reporting (and sometimes their own gaffes) and only John McCain got a free pass.
Also, considering the historical standard the media have reserved for reporting on the Clintons, I'd have to say that Hill was treated better than I would have ever expected. That's not saying much, but we should all thank our lucky stars that the Vince Foster nonsense didn't even get too thick on Faux.
Simply said: Hill took lumps (fair and unfair). Obama took lumps (fair and unfair). McCain got a cakewalk.
It's time to just acknowledge that the MSM is center-right, self-interested, etc. and too move ahead knowing that the struggle is twice as hard, and will be for some time to come.
Independent-contractor-dads? I'm sorry, is this Mark Penn we're talking to?
A lot of soccer-moms and independent-contractor-dads don't have the time to go cruising on the Internent[sic] for news (or think they don't have the time) and they get it from TV instead.
And those were the voters most likely to have supported Hillary. The huge number of new coters who turned out for the primaries and party activists that actively took over the caucus process in the states and turned out for Obama in droves didn't really care about whether Hillary cried or whether a waitress was tipped or not. What they did know was that there was a candidate who could mount a credible challenge against Hillary by talking about his opposition to the war, and Hillary wasn't able to outflank or co-opt voters who wanted that in a candidate.
Without Hillary's unapologetic pro-war votes and pro-war rhetoric, Obama wouldn't have had the available oxygen to mount a credible campaign.
I wonder where they were in 2003.
I was out supporting an opponent of the Iraq war, Howard Dean, for president. In 2004, I was supporting a local candidate and organizing my city committee to stack them with Howard Dean activists. In 2006 I was supporting Lamont against Lieberman and helping use our control of my own state's city committee to help Deval Patrick. What I wasn't doing was deluding myself into believing that joining a petition drive or a peace vigil was a tangible way of stopping the war.
many people were still to scared of being called unpatriotic to show up
I can name one elected official who showed up.
Yeah, the nerve of HRC taking the same stated position on the AUMF as Hans Blix--a necessary leverage to pry open inspecitions of Saddam's weapons sites. And why couldn't HRC have bravely taken a pass on Kyl-Lieberman, like Obama and McCain did?
As AP noted a year ago, the difference between Obama and HRC in actual votes on Iraq related legislation is invisible. I'm sure the antiwar candidate will one day cast an antiwar vote though. Only a phony politician would do one thing while talking another.
what have you done this week to end the war in Iraq? Have you stood in a peace vigil in your community?
About 5 times. And you?
Alright, the comments at 2:09 and 2:30 are a little hard to answer because they're not exactly clear, but I'll make some points and hope they help.
Although I don't know what the "Mark Penn" comment is supposed to mean, the basic idea is busy people. I think it's unfair of you commenters to equate what I said with the Appalachia demographic that refuse to vote for Obama or something. There are people all over the country who live in houses and apartments, and therefore there are people all over who need plumbing, light-switches, and other fixtures fixed, or who need a deck built or a roof repair or some kind of carpentry and masonry done. Consequently, there are zillions of independent contractors all over the place and I am sure they support an array of candidates. Even more than that, a socio-economic demographic of people who are like those independent contractors includes a lot more people. So I really wasn't talking about a very narrow polling group that you can paint one way politically and not another- rahter I was talking about the middle-class, the voting-class- just about everybody in America except the relatively few nerds who actually do a lot of following politics on the Internet.
I think the comments poo-pooing my comment about the TV news being virtually taken over by anti-Hillary goons are really incredibly and those comments just about have to come from Republican goons.
It amazes me that there are people here arguing that Clinton's war vote, and yes Kyl-Leiberman, didn't have an large effect on this race. How short our mememories are. Wasn't it the number one question before Hillary entered the race: How will the anti-war base, the ones most likely to come out to vote in the primaries, feel about Hillary's vote. Another one was should she apologize. Edwards did, Hillary didn't, maybe later I don't know, but at the begining this was a big deal. It was probably why she lost Iowa. As the primary wore on less active voters came on line, but at the begining it was not disimilar to a regular race, although there were a lot of new comers brought in by Obama.
Kyl-Lieberman vote was Sept. 26 2007, primary voting started just over three months later so that vote was still very fresh in everyones minds. Voting for ANYTHING with Lieberman's name on it would never be seen as a good thing by the most engaged liberal and progressive Democrats, the ones most likely to vote in the primaries, but to give Bush, more power after all that we had seen really had to make one question her judgement. Maybe ma and pa didn't know what was happening but you can bet your ass the active Dems did.
"In reality, in fall 2002 even the leading anti-war Democrats, people like Al Gore and Ted Kennedy, who argued that Bush was hyping the threat, still assumed Iraq had WMD."
And they were morons and expedient politicians, too. And still are.
I didn't even get interested in the whole business until the war actually started. Then I started following the war on iraqwar.ru since they had Russian military analysts feeding them Russian intelligence on how things were going for the US (hint: not well much of the time, although of course the outcome was never in doubt).
It didn't take long for me to discover that there was absolutely no reason to believe in Iraq WMDs. But the harsh painting of the critics like Scott Ritter (framed as a alleged pedophile) and Blix and others made it clear that there were other motivations involved. A little study of alternative sources outside the MSM from people like Greg Palast and others revealed the true story of the war.
Clinton didn't bother. She kept spinning the same right wing bullshit right up to the start of the campaign and beyond. She's STILL spinning the same crap about Iran - as is Obama, let alone McCain.
Granted, it's unlikely most of the Dem voters know about her lies about Iran, or the Kyle-Lieberman vote. But presumably they knew about her Iraq war vote. And they knew that she has never once since admitted to not having studied the intelligence on which most of the critics of the war relied on before the war.
In other words, the game plan for Clinton was to deny that the critics of the war BEFORE the war were right BEFORE the war.
But they were. And this is obvious if you go back and read those critics.
Which means Clinton was a liar then and is a liar now.
And that's why she lost - because people know that Clinton is a liar. The Tuzla story just made it painfully obvious to even Democrats who did still like her.
What the Obama idiots haven't realized is that Obama is in EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE WITH REGARD TO IRAN. He either hasn't studied the intelligence on or the critics of the notion of an Iran nuclear weapons program OR HE IS LYING.
So in a couple years, assuming he gets elected (which is a questionable assumption given the upcoming Iran war), we will be asking the same thing about Obama that we're asking about Clinton: What did you really know about Iran and why haven't you admitted being wrong about Iran?
In the meantime, I ask the same questions of Matt - and he stonewalls just like Clinton.
Which makes Matt a hypocrite about Clinton.
I really wasn't talking about a very narrow polling group that you can paint one way politically and not another- rahter I was talking about the middle-class, the voting-class- just about everybody in America except the relatively few nerds who actually do a lot of following politics on the Internet.
"Middle-class", "busy", "gets most of their news from TV" was pretty much the very model of your typical Hillary Clinton voter. It was why she won big states like California. Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner "default" candidate that the "soccer moms" and "independent contractor dads," as you call them, supported. How do you think Hillary's campaign survived as long as it did?
Let's recall when the race began there were two ;principal arguments against Hillary: dynasty and Iraq. They were related. She inherited from the Clinton administration the liberal hawks who supported this war. Her victory was going to assure the return/restoration of those hawks to power.
Obama was NOT an anti war leader in the Senate -- he was no Chuck Hagel. But he did not appear as a future president who would fill his administration with hawks. We will see. But with Hillary it was a sure thing. Advisers count and she had bad ones.
Look, if Clinton partisans want to argue the Iraq War shouldn't have been important, that's their right.
But even if all of us Obama supporters were dummies who should have never been taken in by Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq, and that their positions were really the same, that really doesn't deny Matt's point, which is the Iraq War DID make the difference. At most, if that argument is credited, it means it shouldn't have made the difference. But it still did.
Personally, I am suspicious that there are many folks who really SUPPORT the prior hawkish bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, either on its merits or because they are scared that the voters will favor Republicans against a dovish Democrat. So they at all costs want to prevent the narrative that hawkishness cost Hillary the election from taking hold.
Re: Voting for ANYTHING with Lieberman's name on it would never be seen as a good thing by the most engaged liberal and progressive Democrats
So I guess voting for the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act is something that would Democrats out of the running too.
Comments closed June 22, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
At one point, Mr. Penn argued that Mrs. Clinton should find subtle ways to exploit what he called Mr. Obama’s “lack of American roots,” referring to his Kenyan father and his childhood years in Indonesia and even the offshore state of Hawaii...
Ick ick ick ick! I'm holding to my resolution not to badmouth the Clintons any more, but my God. Can't all of us reaffirm some hatred for this dude?
I agree with MY that there was a basic lack of understanding by HRC how much the Iraq War angered some Dems, including myself. Obama was not my "imaginary black friend", as some early Clinton supporters insultingly phrased it. Instead, I saw Obama as a more electable Howard Dean: articulate in his opposition to a pointless, ill-concieved, destabilizing war. The whole racial element to his campaign, while obviously real, has been exaggerated by people who don't understand the motives of many early Obama supporters.
Posted by sweaty guy | June 8, 2008 10:48 AM