John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei have a column on "What Obama wishes he could say":
The one line from the what-Clinton-thinks column that most agitated Obama supporters was our assertion that Clinton, for better or worse, was a known commodity. Her “baggage” has already been “rummaged through.”
To which Obama supporters say: Oh yeah?
All manner of Clinton controversies, Obama partisans argue, have not been fully ventilated.
This includes old issues, like Hillary Clinton’s legal career, which includes lots of cases that never got much public attention even during the Whitewater era.
It also includes new ones, like recent stories raising questions about the web of personal and financial associations around Bill Clinton. Since leaving the presidency, he has traveled the globe to exotic places and with sometimes exotic characters, raising money for projects such as his foundation and presidential library and making himself a very wealthy man.
Which gets us back to gall. In the fantasies of some of his high-level supporters, Obama would peel off the tape to say something like this:
You want to talk hypocrisy? How about piously criticizing me for Jeremiah Wright when you have a trail of associations that includes golden oldies like Webb Hubbell? (‘90s flashback: He was one of Hillary Clinton’s legal partners and closest friends, whom she installed in a top Justice Department job before prosecutors sent him to prison.) It also includes modern hits like Frank Giustra. (In case you missed it: There was a January New York Times story, which did not get the attention the reporting deserved, highlighting how this Canadian tycoon and major Bill Clinton benefactor was using his ties to the ex-president to win business with a ruthless dictatorship in Khazakstan.)
Obama has never pressed Clinton to talk about Marc Rich, even though the former fugitive financier who won a controversial pardon from Bill Clinton gave money to her first Senate campaign.
He has never mentioned her brothers, even though Hugh and Tony Rodham once defied Bill Clinton’s own top foreign policy advisers by entering into a strange investment in hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia (they later dropped the deal) and Hugh Rodham took large cash payments for trying to broker presidential pardons.
Obama is likewise galled to be lectured by Clinton for not being sufficiently committed to universal health coverage. Why is it, his team asks, that Democrats have done so little to advance a long-time progressive goal for the past 15 years? The answer has everything to do with Hillary Clinton’s misjudgments when she was leading the reform effort in 1993 and 1994.
Most irritating of all to Obama partisans is what they see as her latest pose: that she is selflessly staying in the race despite the long odds against her because of devotion to the Democratic Party and the belief that she is a more appealing general election candidate.
It is an article of faith among most people around Obama that the Clintons were a disaster for the party throughout the 1990s. When Bill Clinton came to town in 1993, Democrats were a congressional majority, with 258 seats in the House. When he left in 2001, they were a minority with 46 fewer seats. There were 30 Democratic governors when he arrived, 21 10 years later.
This just scratches the surface: Hillary Clinton was the main attorney drafting the documents on some of the Whitewater deals, including both sides of sham transactions in which the profits for sales were funneled to Web Hubbell's relative, rather than the actual sellers. At times, she headed up efforts to trash the reputations of Democratic women who plausibly claimed that they were sexually assaulted by her husband. The John Huang case detailed in "Year of the Rat" was the most outrageous and dangerous payoff of a large campaign contributor that I have ever heard of, exceeding even anything in the Nixon administration. I could go on . . . .
One of Harris and VandeHei's arguments (attributed to the Obama camp) against the Clintons, however, lacks merit. It is almost inevitable that the party in office would lose seats in Congress and lose state governorships. This "lightning rod" effect is detailed in a Yale Law Journal article that I co-authored, which can be downloaded at the bottom of this SSRN page.
. . .
I also think it's interesting that Obama has not made an issue of Clinton's baggage. Just another reason why he's a much better human being than she is.
* gays in the military
* mismanaged health care initiative
One of those was directly her fault.
while I think the Wright thing hurts Obama in the general, he has to get through the primaries--he still leads in delegates and, I think, it behooves him to keep the (relatively) high road to get to the convention.
Now, were I Barack Obama I would be "looping" Brad deLong's devastating critique of her managerial ability (along with that of Ira Magaziner) of the health care initiative of 1993. But thats just me.
As we show in Fig. 1 of our article, the loss in governorships from election year (immediately prior to winning control) to election year 8 years later was less severe for Clinton than for any other postwar regime except Reagan.
In Congress, however, Clinton's losses were more severe than usual.
You're forgetting one more that I think played a big role:
* the 1994 Clinton gun ban
On the other hand, Rev. Wright represents an association of ideology. His view of what the US is like and how the US should be run is significantly different than what most Americans are comfortable with. The fear is that Obama buys into Wright's ideology and will take steps based on this ideology should he be elected president.
Now it is true that Clinton has met with Al Sharpton and probably quite a few other people who either share Wright's ideologies or fall into similar categories in other parts of the political spectrum, but there is a big difference between meeting with someone, and maybe using them to raise campaign contributions or to raise political support, and having someone be your Reverend for 20 years or so. Generally people's spiritual leaders are relatively important in how they devise their own personal philosophy. Campaign contributors are not.
Perhaps another possibility is with some States still left and the superdelegates uncertain, he may not want to risk an escalation of conflict with the Clinton camp. Most of the Clinton scandals are relatively old news and at some level, most of her supporters and the undecided delegates have probably taken them into account in deciding whether to support her.
But each Obama scandal is new and causes voters to freshly reevaluate their expectations of him. They do far more damage to him at this critical time then rehashing Clinton’s older scandals do to her. If Obama can win the nomination without a further escalation, he’s got a better shot in the general election as McCain won’t use such tactics. But if it escalates further, it may cost him the nomination (depending on what further skeletons come out of the closet) and may cripple him utterly in the general election.
May that terrible affair finally receive the thorough investigation it needs so that all the relevant facts can be brought to light.
Yeah, you mean to tell me you haven’t heard this one:
I’m sure there’s another good joke that can be built off the punch line but I’d like to keep Volokh relatively family friendly.
Your comments are disgusting. I hope I'm not the only one offended.
The question that people who have this fear should be asking is: Is there any other evidence that Obama buys into Wright's ideology other than his association with Wright? Has Obama said said, written, or done anything other than attend Trinity UCC that would indicate that Obama believes that American is still defined by racism of whites against blacks, that Obama is sympathetic or believes in antisemitism, that Obama believes in off the wall conspiracy theories about Aids etc., or that Obama believes that the US deserved to have 9/11 happen? Now absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but when you consider everything else Obama has said, done, etc., it's a rather tough case to actually make. Now this won't stop Obama's competing candidates from inflating these fears for their own gain, but without real independent evidence that Obama sympathizes with or agrees with Wright, it eventually will backfire.
If you think the people hyping those fears have any interest in the answer to that question, I've got a church I'd like to sell you.
Is there any other evidence that Obama buys into Wright's ideology other than his association with Wright?
Read Obama's book "The Audacity of Hope". Obama indicates in there that he finds Wrights Black Nationalist message perfectly acceptable and the only criticism he offers is based on how effective it is. Michelle Obama seems to have views that are not incompatible with Wrights teachings.
1. to maintain his "brand", which is bringing people together. To many, this erroneously seems inconsistent with rough politics;
2. to defend himself and counter-attack Hillary, proving he's got, as Gaius Marius so delicately put it, "the cajones," without which he won't get much of the centrist and cross-over vote he's counting on in the general; and
3. to avoid bloodying Hillary to John McCain's benefit in case Hillary gets the nomination.
The piece reflects the frustration of many Obama supporters that #1 and #3 are preventing him from doing an adequate job of #2. Hillary's apparent lack of concern for the principle in #3, and her absence of any pretense of a #1 put her at a marked advantage when it comes to slinging mud.
It's not that Hillary doesn't have a brand, it's that her "brand", such as it is, is that she's a tough campaigner. Not only does mudslinging not hurt this brand much, the brand practically requires it.
Oh, and I agree, HRC is much more the gutter fighter than Barack Obama--one of the reasons I initially had high hopes for Obama as a candidate.
Yes, a few posts were removed.
I think the superdelegates understand this and will not fault Obama for taking a few hits now. Unfortunately (at least for me as an Obama supporter), I think that Clinton is succeeding in poisoning the well by turning a large part of the Democratic electorate against him. It remains to be seen how well he can recover.
Also Norman Hsu and Peter Paul.
This sums up the ironic character of Senator Obama's campaign: a politician whose campaign is a cult of personality is seeking to transcend the personality-obsessed brand of combat that has dominated Washington.
As for the desire to counterattack Senator Clinton, Senator Obama's recent wounds are largely self-inflicted. Senator Clinton is merely piling on.
Thanks, I figured that was the case. I didn't think I was losing my mind. I do find EV and OK's method better, though. The offending post is removed but there is a comment as to why, at least for context.
Agreed.
Of the three contenders, Obama's my last choice, but this is lame. It was mildly amusing the first time. The 60th time? Tired.