Thank you for posting this. Clinton, as you say, is no angel, but the organized character assassination of her--begun by the right wing 16 years ago, and now polished by the so-called left wing--is one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.
Posted by Diane at March 23, 2008 01:00 PMThis is an interesting post. We'd love to have your point of view represented in this week's Carnival of Politics, a weekly blog magazine about politics. If you're interested please consider submitting this post at www.carnivalofpolitcs.com/submit.
I should let you know, this isn't a spam bot. I've actually read your post and think it is interesting.
Posted by Carnival of Politics at March 23, 2008 01:07 PMoh come now, clinton made her bed, let her lie in it. who's campaign painted obama as ken starr???
who sat back and let him get pasted about the rev wright thing, when knowingly she is a member of the "family," a subversive "prayer group," that has a history of courting nazi sympathizers, and had as a member george 'macaca' allen and many other questionable republican ilk (as posted in the huff post). where is that covered in this blog?
look at today's crooks and liars. they have the "chicken comes home to roost" sermon by rev wright, where he is quoting ambassador peck. i bet that didn't get mentioned here? when has rev wright advocated for the assasination of a head of state? when has he justified natural disasters to america's tolerance for homosexuals? when have any of you looked at the entire sermon? when exactly has rev wright solicited those of questionable ties? yet you put him around obama's neck like an albatross...
but i digress.
when bill richardson says she's divisive, carter, pelosi, and presumably gore (per, chuck todd of msnbc) feel she is splitting the party. when she and bill go beyond the call of duty to praise john mc cain, and tongue and cheekily equivocate a victory in sc as a jesse jackson incident, when you want to disenfranchise an entire voting block in mi and fl because you only want some of the population to vote, or when you make veiled references in questioning someone's patriotism how can you not be dehumanized???
Um, you can not dehumanize her pretty simply actually - just criticize her and don't dehumanize. Don't smear her with sexist slurs and stereotypes. Is that really hard to understand? Um, no.
I don't like Barack Obama one bit - I think he is a fraud and a liar. But that doesn't give me license to use racial slurs and stereotypes against him. And it would not be OK for the MSM, democrats, and liberal bloggers to do so either.
You pretend to be confused. That is only so that you can continue participating in the dehumanization. I guess you enjoy it.
Posted by at March 23, 2008 01:51 PMthanks, e'rip.
yet again, thanks.
barack obama is a very competent politician; and, i suspect we'll learn in due time, a very ruthless one.
from the beginning, obama understood that going negative against clinton was the only road to victory available to him.
and he took that road.
obama's calculatedly negative campaign against clinton was designed to overcome his severe disadvantage relative to clinton in terms of being known and accepted by the voters.
if you are at a such a disadvantage,
one choice of strategy, risky and unfair though it be,
is the time-tested one of attacking the other candidate's decency and honesty in hopes of creating a negative impression of your better known or better respected opponent.
and so obama has relentlessly painted his democratic opponent as cold, insensitive, dishonest power-mad politician,
a picture that i am confident is the very opposite of the person hillary clinton is.
it is important to note that what is happening to clinton in the democratic primary is very much what happened to al gore and to john kerry in the general elections of 2000 and 2004.
barack obama, david axelrod, and david pouffle,
clearly have taken to heart the tactic credited to karl rove in 2000 and 2004:
discredit your opponent by various devious means, while loudly complaining that it is she who is responsible for all the nasty verbiage flying about.
though dishonest - at least in non-political terms - this tactic gives perfect cover for relentlessly attacking an opponent,
as well as putting that opponent perpetually on the defensive.
while we are talking obama strategy,
another rove tactic adopted by obama his mastiffs, axelrod and pouffle,
is to declare the battle over and generate much media claptrap about how your opponent should concede your victory for the good of the nation or of the party.
remember all the media chatter about how it was al gore who should
concede to george bush in nov 2000?
still think the media and rove did us a favor then?
still think gore should have given up for the good of the nation?
anon:
it appears you are directing that last post to me.
if you truly read what i said vs. taking out your hack pen, you'd see i pointed out examples of what she did or was tacitly a part of. i did not once attack her person. the title of the post was her "dehumanization." rhetorically, i asked with those examples, how could she not? i did not advocate for nor do i condone the attack of anyone.
i have not ever attacked her person. her politics, yes. you called him a fraud and a liar. attacking the person, but not the politics. i think she feels entitled to the presidency, and that she takes things for granted (the loss of the african american vote, so she runs to the hispanics). she did have the majority of african americans in her camp. we can go round and round as to who did what and when. for every point you make, i could make a counter. where does that get us? again, the title of this post is her dehmanization, i was speaking to that.
it seems you sir/ ma'am are the one confused.
both engaged in mudslinging. who started-- that's open to debate. however, shedding the light shows more roaches leaving her kitchen, than his.
if she wins this thing, then i'd happily pull the lever for her, without reservation. i hate gwb, i hate what he did to this country, i hate how the repubs usurped religion and engaged in the hypocritical politics of today's day and age. i hate how the dialogue is so poisoned that one can't disagree without being blasted or called a "dimwit," but again, i'm confused, right??? yeah, i guess i am...
btw-- that's rhetorical too.
Posted by anthony at March 23, 2008 02:19 PMAnthony,
You ended your post with the question "how can you not be dehumanized" after citing a litany of Hillary's 'problems'. I answered your question. It's really quite simple. Stop dehumanizing her. None of your criticisms or anyone else's can be justification for dehumanizing her.
Your response doesn't make any sense. Unless we are to believe that your question was simply rhetorical. And I don't believe that. Period.
Posted by Anon at March 23, 2008 03:22 PMin a comment at 1:55P above,
i wrote that obama understood from the beginning that in order to win he needed to attack clinton personally and to devalue her image in the eyes of democratic voters.
he's done that, in spades.
but the results of the statewide democratic primary elections so far
do not under any circumstance
validate any claim by or on behalf of the obama campaign
that clinton should give up her campaign in favor of obama.
consider this political numbers game:
suppose the democratic primary is not a primary, but, instead, an extended the national election.
suppose the two major candidates in that election are mr obama and ms. clinton, representing the "Y" party and the "X" party respectively.
recall that, unlike the democratic primary, the united states has something called an electoral college which is interposed between the votes of individual citizens and the ensuing official certification of one political candidate as having won the country's presidency.
the principle rules for this electoral college are that each state gets a certain numbers of electoral college votes, based on the most current u.s.s census and equal to the members of congress from that state,
and that whichever candidate wins the popular vote in a state gets all of the electoral votes accorded that state.
suppose this NATIONAL election is not planned for a single day, but is to take place over the course of several months -
december through june, 2008.
further suppose the first candidate to get a majority of the electoral college votes is declared president.
question:
at this point in time, approximately three + months into this imaginary presidential election,
which of the two candidates would have garnered the most electoral college votes?
would one or the other of the two have, by now, won enough votes to have been awarded the presidency?
here are some numbers for candidate clinton:
the numbers for the electoral college vote for each state i mention below are from a Federal Election Commission document "Distribution of Electoral Votes" (State-by-State, using the 2002-2010 column).
the state by state winner of the democratic primary contests i mention below is from the CNN web site "Election Central 2008 Primaries and Caucuses" (results:Hillary Clinton").
california 55 votes (clinton 52%)
arizona 10 51%
arkansas 6 70%
massachusetts 12 56%
nevada 5 51%
new hampshire 4 39%
new jersey 15 54%
new mexico 5 49%
new york 31 57%
ohio 20 54%
oklahoma 7 55%
rhode island 4 58%
tennessee 11 54%
texas 34 51%
in limbo:
florida 27 50%
michingan 17 55%
coming up before 3, 2008:
pennsylvania 21 -- (4/2208)
indiana 11 -- (5/6)
north carolina 15 -- (5/6)
west virginia 5 -- (5/13)
kentucky 8 -- (5/20)
oregon 7 -- (5/20)
by my addition in this little make-believe game, clinton has "won" 209 electoral votes.
she (or obama) need only to reach 270 of these imaginary votes to win this imaginary presidential election.
were clinton to win pennsylvania in april, her total would be up to 230.
at that point she would need only the electoral college votes of florida and michigan to be over the 270 mark.
of coarse this is all play.
the real point is that, despite the relentless attacks on her person by the obama,
despite fighting ferocious head-winds generated by blow-hard analysts and commentators,
and despite calculated calls from obama supporters and obama friendly media for clinton to concede to obama now,
for the good of the party, you understand!
(perish the thought these pleas for amity, and comity, and inanity should be viewed as having been made solely for the benefit of the obama campaign.)
clinton has still performed admirably, admirable enough to be within easy reach of 270 imaginary electoral votes.
Posted by orionATL at March 23, 2008 04:09 PMin my comment at 4:09P above,
i discussed a little game in which the democratic candidates are considered as opposing party rivals vying for electoral votes in a presidential campaign.
by my count in this little game,
clinton had 209 "electoral" votes.
using the same criteria for obama as for clinton,
i.e., if a candidate "wins" a state, whether by caucus vote or otherwise, he/she gets the state's "electoral vote",
barack obama has 226 "electoral votes".
sometimes
a game can assist real-world analysis.
of clinton's 209 electoral votes,
only 5 came from a caucus situation (nevada).
the rest came from the more typical "general election" voting situation
in which voters get in their cars, drive to the school, church, town hall, fire station, etc. walk inside, go thru the paperwork, go to the voting machine, vote, and then to work or go back home.
obama's total of 226 "electoral votes" is constituted much differently.
by my count,
179 votes came from elections in which those "general elections" conditions i just described held.
another 47 votes came from caucus victories: minnesota (10), alaska (3), idaho (4), kansas (7), north dakota (3), colorado (8), maine (4), and iowa (8).
comparing "general election condition" votes to "general election condition" votes,
clinton has 204 votes
to
obama's 179 votes.
of obama's "general election condition" votes,
63, about one-third, came from states where there was either a very large, or a moderately large black voting contingent -
south carolina (8), georgia (12), alabama (9), mississippi (7), louisiana (10), district of Colombia (3), virginia (13), and maryland (10).
perhaps it is to his credit,
that obama's "electoral" votes can be said to come from diverse voting populations:
from heavy black voling in the very "heart of dixie" - south carolina, georgia, alabama, mississippi, and louisiana,
to the d.c., virgina, and marlyland vote,
to the votes of alaska (3 electoral votes), idaho (4), north dakota (3), maine (4), vermont (3), utah (5), hawaii (4), delaware (3), wyoming (3), and nebraska (5).
make of it what you will or wish.
if i were one of those super-delegates that the obama campaign had been trying to
a)denigrate
and
b)stampede to obama,
i might want to give these numbers a second glance.
Posted by orionATL at March 23, 2008 07:26 PMAnthony: You have been very successfully brainwashed, and are dutifully repeating every slanderous thing that has been deliberately planted without verification. You read ONE article about Hillary's scarey prayer group on HuffPost (a real reliable anti-Hillary site) and now you are an expert on her religious activities? Hardly the same as a 20 yr. mentorship with a racist and anti-semite that is well-documented. You blame her because she "sat back." Again, blame Hillary to avoid Obama's own behavior--he can't possibly be accountable for anything he actually did--it must somehow be Hillary's fault! And the Ken Starr comment by Wolfson was in response to the Obama campaign bringing up Whitewater of all things. That WAS Ken Starr, and it has been investigated ad nauseum with no charges ever brought. You are the perfect example of how impressionable people are and how easily manipulated they are by Axelrod and Rovian tactics. You prove the point of this piece.
Posted by Fran at March 23, 2008 08:21 PMfran:
brainwashed? really? are you telling em bill's equating the sc victory to jesse jackson, both bill and hillary's talking up of mc cain, wolfson using the ken starr analogy when it was brought up that those scandals would be used in the g.e. by the republicans, her involvement in a prayer group that actually exists, is not documented or did not occur? or are they taken out of context? huff post is pro-obama like the left coaster is pro-hilary.
fran, have you attended a black church? have you listened to all of rev. wright's sermons? a racist, anti-semite church as you called it, would not have a thriving white constituency as trinity does if it was so? would not be considered a cornerstone of the chicago community. what do YOU know of this church that is not provided in two minute snippets? who is espousing talking points now? or are you telling me all black churches whose pastors have beef with the historical and continuing injustices and racism fostered and perpetuated at times in this country and use it allegorically in sermons are anti-american, racist and anti-semitic? if this is so well documented, besides the 24/7 soundbites reproduced, show me ONE sermon in its entirety that supports your view? when has he advocated for the killing of heads of state? equated natural disasters to our tolerance for homosexuals? advocated the killing of docs who provide abortions? or called for the death of supreme court justices? when did he do that???
because i favor obama over hilary means i'm impressionable. can you get any more patronizing or disengenuious?
Posted by anthony at March 24, 2008 12:53 AMAnthony:
Your screeds are so irrational and ill-informed that I'm scared for your mental health. Get some help, really. You seem to be on the brink of disaster.
Fran, you're so right - Anthony is the perfect manifestation of the post written here. I guess we should thank him for proving it!
Posted by Anon at March 24, 2008 05:37 AMI written my letter to some Super D's and included an excerpt from Bill Clinton's farewell address on Jan 18, 2001. I included these words after hearing Obama's advisor McPeak describe Clinton as McCarthy-like:
"As we become ever more diverse,
we must work harder to unite around our common values and our common humanity. We must
work harder to overcome our differences, in our hearts and in our laws. We must treat all our people
with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, and
regardless of when they arrived in our country--always moving toward the more perfect Union of
our Founders' dreams. "
The Obama campaign and Axelrod should be ashamed!
Posted by Glennmcgahee at March 24, 2008 06:08 AMirrational if i don't agree with you.
proves my point. if i don't support hilary, obviously i'm daft in the head. so let me get this straight... if i don't follow your train of thought or your candidate, i'm impressionable, irrational, ill informed, etc.
all of this from fellow dems?
sorry, don't want that kool-aid.
Posted by anthony at March 24, 2008 06:17 AMHillary, the victim of what this time. Writing that Sen. Clinton is a victim, or victimize doesn't help her politically. If she has the the victim syndrome she's not ready to be commander and chief on day one. d
Posted by a4L at March 24, 2008 06:44 AMAnthony,
Thank you once again for supporting the point of this post. It's like having a hands-on larger-than-life living example at the front of the classroom!
You keep deflecting everyone's points in order to twist logic, which is one of the strategies eriposte described. You're simply a perfect little illustration!
Nobody said you were irrational or illogical because you "don't support Hillary". But you already know that. You're just continuing to prove how disingenuous you are. Win the debate at all costs, but blatant disregard for truth or fairness.
Bye. Enough time has been wasted on your immature rants.
Posted by at March 24, 2008 06:53 AMwell, well.
according to an article at talking points memo this morning, sen evan bayh, appearing on a cnn program made centrally the same argument that i made here in the comments above.
the numbers bayh cites in the tpm article don't match mine.
bayh says 219 for clinton;
202 for obama.
the numbers i came up with were 209 for clinton;
226 for obama.
itrs not worth the time to me to reconcile those differences.
this just goes to show,
if you just can stand to watch teevee,
and,
having succeeded at that difficult requirement,
you can stand to watch cnn,
you can save yourself lots of time and trouble.
Posted by orionATL at March 24, 2008 07:01 AMi think the "electoral college vote" argument is an important one for the clinton campaign to make.
it serves as a strong reminder to those politically sensitive superdelegates that a stampede to obama right now might not be in the best interests of the democratic party.
and make no mistake about it,
the obama campaign is trying very hard to generate such a stampede in order foreclose NOW on any future for clinton's candidacy.
they understand that pennsylvania may end their long run of keeping just barely ahead of clinton.
and force obasma to stop dealing in clinton tear downs
and start dealing in credible explanations of why he has not been able to win any big state except his home state of illinois.
Posted by orionATL at March 24, 2008 07:12 AMPosted by anthony at March 23, 2008 02:19 PM
PLEASE.
All your posts are doing are upchucking Obama's talking points.
"general peak" blah blah blabbity blah.
Here, try this for once...critical thinking! Code words? I'll give you code words:
http://www.malcolm-x.org/speeches/spc_120463.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboozled
Who's bringing up race?
How about this quote made Feb 4th, before Obama really rolled out his Clintons are racist crap:
"New York State Senator Bill Perkins used quite explicit racial stereotyping in a speech aimed at discouraging his constituents from voting for Clinton by saying, Harlem "is not Bill Clinton's backyard or his plantation. Underscore, plantation."
You call this fair? I call it GARBAGE, the kind of rationalizing that Obama encourages from his hordes of non-thinking lemmings.
gee, where did this crap come from?
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/did_clinton_darken_obamas_skin.html
Here ya go "anthony," the number one reason I will never EVER vote for Obama:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/12/obama-camps-memo-on-clin_n_81205.html
Especially after the media did this:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200801130004
and you rode that lie, to more votes.
As far as "fairy tale", what do you call this, in response to Barack I Was Against The War Obama:
"So it’s not clear to me what differences we’ve had since I’ve been in the Senate. I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices. So that might be something that sort of is obvious. But, again, we were in different circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test." [The New Yorker, 10/30/06]
"Not only was the idea of an invasion increasingly popular, but on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." ["Audacity of Hope," 2006, p. 294]
Geraldine "Obama is where he is because he's a black man, and me, because I'm a woman" Ferraro:
"In winning the Democratic Senate primary in Illinois, Obama drew as many as two white votes for every black one, showing nearly unprecedented crossover appeal for a black candidate in a statewide race.
Obama acknowledges, with no small irony, that he benefits from his race.
If he were white, he once bluntly noted, he would simply be one of nine freshmen senators, almost certainly without a multimillion-dollar book deal and a shred of celebrity. Or would he have been elected at all?"
You "anthony," suck.
Stop it, just STOP IT.
It doesn't matter what YOU and the people within the Obama bubble think; Obama is done before he even hits November. The Republican machine is already making sure of that.
Thanks for losing the Presidency to the republicans for another 8 years!!!
vitriol level high here...
i now "suck," cuz i support someone else. critical thinking and reading clearly shows i stated both engage in mudslinging. however, that point is not considered because i don't follow your chosen candidate. i thought we are all dems here, entitled to differing opinions; however, adult discourse seems futile to a bunch of holier than thou bullsh*t artists who rail on a point here or a point there without reading the ENTIRE thought, examples be damned, since they negatively affect your candidate. attack the messenger is all you are able to do. as i've clearly stated above, for every point you post, i can find a counter, so what. i've said over and over again that if she wins i'd happily vote for her, but of course you'd rather throw stones and complain because if he wins we lose. why is that, cuz you won't vote for him? how fcukin immature is that?
you make me sick. talking points on either side can be debated, spun, and counterspun. i am on record stating it. a select few of you namely those that feel justified in calling me various names, can't seem to debate without debasing the conversation. if you have your collective heads so far up her ass that not only you can tell what she had for her three square, but what flavor lip gloss she has on how can you possilbly think to stop mc cain this november??
Posted by anthony at March 24, 2008 01:34 PMIs the Clinton campaign advocating Calvinball? It sounds a bit more like that card game in "bang the drum slowly", tegwar. That Amazing Game Without Any Rules.
Obama is winning by the rules that were set. I expect that he'll win in the fall using the rules that are set then as well. The fact that Ms. Clinton and her husband continue to favorably compare the republican candidate to their (yes, Their) primary opponent is just reprehensible. But, I didn't expect any more from the democrats from arkansas. Walmart, Tyson, the iraq vote, kyl-lieberman, the anti-flagburning amendment, campaigning for lieberman, fundraised for by murdock, and a host of other reasons lead many of us to choose Obama.
It's the facts, not koolaid.
I like how swiftly the Obama camp swoops in on posts like these to blame it all on Hillary. But the fact is that the Obama campaign started systematically dehumanizing and character-assassinating her right out of the gate, and for months her only response was fact-checking; no direct criticisms of Obama, no divisive claims that she would win all of his supporters but not vice-versa, no call for anyone to drop out of the race.
If Dems fail to re-take the White House in 2008, the dehumanization strategy of the Obama campaign will be the primary reason why. I wrote about it months ago:
Posted by PanMetron at March 24, 2008 03:33 PMHillary Campaign maching isn't immune from dehumanizing groups of people either:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080324/ap_on_el_pr/carville_richardson
(insulting the Latino's, that one can be bought)
And don't forget she wanted to deport immigrants without an hearing..
Posted by a4L at March 24, 2008 03:52 PM