SFist: Clinton Campaign Using Black Panic Tactics?

aj

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:38:09 -0800

Disenvoweling, nice. Can we do that to the Clinton attack machine?

soniamariasmith

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:16:21 -0800

Hillary should quit now, before she ruins the democrat's chance to win in november. at this point she's an embarrassment. I think the Limbaugh Effect is real. http://www.clintreilly.com/?p=158

elephanza

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:21:54 -0800

Well I betcha Obama will act swiftly the next time a hrrcn wacks a chclt ct. [disenvoweled by SFist]

manys

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:09:44 -0800

TL;DR They both suck. How is it that there's now a possiblity that McCain could win?

suckafree

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:48:55 -0800

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/declarations.html An overview: From the first voting in Iowa on Jan. 3 she had to prove that Clintons Are Magic. She wound up losing 11 in a row. Meaning Clintons aren't magic. He had to take her out in New Hampshire, on Super Tuesday or Junior Tuesday. He didn't. Meaning Obama isn't magic. Two nonmagical beings are left. What the Democrats lost this week was the chance to paint the '08 campaign as a brilliant Napoleonic twinning of strategy and tactics that left history awed. What they have instead is a ticket to Verdun. Trench warfare, and the daily, wearying life of the soldier under siege. The mud, the cold, the dank water rotting the boots, all of it punctuated by mad cries of "Over the top," bayonets fixed. [Over the Top] M.E. Cohen Do I understate? Not according to the bitter officers debating doomed strategy back in HQ. More on that in a minute. This is slightly good for John McCain. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hemorrhage money, exhaust themselves, bloody each other. He holds barbecues for the press and gets rid of a White House appearance in which the incumbent offers his dread embrace. Do it now, they'll forget by the summer. The president does not understand how unpopular he is and after a year on the trail with the faithful neither does Mr. McCain. Mr. Bush confided to a friend a few months ago, as he predicted a Giuliani win, that he'll eventually come out and campaign for the nominee big time. Talk about throwing the drowning man an anvil. But it is not good for Mr. McCain that when he officially won this week it barely made page three. The lightning is on the Democratic side. Everything else seems old, like something that happened a year ago that you forgot to notice. How did Hillary come back? Her own staff doesn't know. They fight over it because if they don't know how she carried Ohio and Texas they can't repeat the strategy. So they figure backward. She won on Tuesday and did the following things in the weeks before, so . . . it was the kitchen-sink strategy. Or Hispanic outreach. Or the 3 a.m. ad. (The amazing thing was not that they lifted the concept from Walter Mondale's '84 run, but that the answer to the question "Who are you safer with?" was, The Woman. Not that people really view Hillary as a woman, but still: That would not have been the answer even 20 years ago.) Did she come back because Mr. Obama's speech got a little boring? Was he coasting and playing it safe? Or was it that he didn't hit her hard enough? "He hasn't been able to find a way to be tough with a woman opponent," they say on TV. But that's not it, or is only half the truth. The other half is that it has long been agreed in the Democratic Party that one must not, one cannot, ever, refer to the long caravan of scandals that have followed the Clintons for 15 years. "We don't speak of the Clintons that way." But why not? Everyone else does. Yes, the Obama sages will respond, that's the point: Everyone knows about cattle futures, etc. Everyone knows that if you Yahoo "Clintons" and "scandals" you get 4,430,000 hits. But what if they do need to be reminded? What if they need to be told exactly what Mr. Obama means when he speaks of the tired old ways of Washington? But voicing the facts would violate party politesse. So he loses the No. 1 case against her. But by losing the No. 1 case, he loses the No. 2 case: that she is the most divisive figure in the country, and that this is true because people have reason to view her as dark, dissembling, thuggish. * * * One Obama supporter on TheRoot.com apparently didn't get the memo. That is the great threat to the Clintons, the number of young and independent Democrats who haven't received the memo about how Democrats speak of the Clintons. Writer Mark Q. Sawyer: "If Obama won't hit back, I will. Why aren't we talking about impeachment, Whitewater and Osama?" What do I think is the biggest reason Mrs. Clinton came back? She kept her own spirits up to the point of denial and worked it, hard, every day. She is hardy, resilient, tough. She is a train on a track, an Iron Horse. But we must not become carried away with generosity. The very qualities that impress us are the qualities that will make her a painful president. She does not care what you think, she will have what she wants, she will not do the feints, pivots and backoffs that presidents must. She is neither nimble nor agile, and she knows best. She will wear a great nation down. In any case the Clinton campaign, which has always been more vicious than clever, this week did a very clever thing. They pre-empted any criticism of past scandals by pushing a Democratic Party button called . . . the Monica story. Mr. Obama is "imitating Ken Starr" by speaking of Mrs. Clinton's record, said Howard Wolfson. But Ken Starr documented malfeasance. Mr. Obama can't even mention it. * * * Back to Verdun. There a bitter officer corps debated a strategy of pointless carnage—so many deaths, so little seized terrain, all of it barren. In a bark-stripping piece of reportage in the Washington Post, Peter Baker and Anne Kornblut captured "a combustible environment" in Hillary Headquarters. They cannot agree on what to do, or even what has been done in the past. And the dialogue. Blank you. Blank you! No blank you, you blank. Blank all of you. It's like David Mamet rewritten by Joe Pesci. These are the things that make life worth living. As for the Clinton surrogates, they are unappealing when winning. My favorite is named Kiki. When Hillary is losing, Kiki is valiant and persevering on the talk shows, and in a way that appeals to one's sympathies. "Go, Kiki!" I want to say as she parries with Tucker. But when Hillary is winning they're all awful, including Kiki. By memory, from Tucker, this week: Q: Why won't Hillary release her tax returns? A: It's February. Taxes are due April 15, are your taxes done? Q: No, no, we're talking past years, returns that have already been prepared. A: Are your taxes done? Mine aren't. Wicked Kiki! This is my great fear, in a second Clinton era: four, eight years of wicked Kiki. I end with a deadly, deadpan prediction from Christopher Hitchens. Hillary is the next president, he told radio's Hugh Hewitt, because, "there's something horrible and undefeatable about people who have no life except the worship of power . . . people who don't want the meeting to end, the people who just are unstoppable, who only have one focus, no humanity, no character, nothing but the worship of money and power. They win in the end." It was like Claude Rains summing up the meaning of everything in the film "Lawrence of Arabia": "One of them's mad and the other is wholly unscrupulous." It's the moment when you realize you just heard the truth, the meaning underlying all the drama. "They win in the end." Gave me a shudder.

brokenlogin

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:45:20 -0800

Oh my god, we're so doomed. "The worst thing you can call a black man is a black man, the worst thing you can call a homosexual is a homosexual, and the worst thing you can call a woman is a woman." Doesn't anyone understand, here in San Fucking Francisco, that this is stupid and WRONG? That accepting such ugly shit for some tiny perceived gain in the polls for your 'side' is cutting off your nose to spite your face? If you can't even keep your convictions straight enough to realize you're making a joke of them, then you've already lost, and it's not about race, or party, or nation.. You've failed as a human being.

feliceinsf

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:21:09 -0800

Factcheck.org says "unsustained". Analysis here: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/did_clinton_darken_obamas_skin.html Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Generic

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:09:55 -0800

What do you mean "they've never seen a black man" in Rhode Island?

suckafree

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:28:55 -0800

my analysis of the ohio, texas and rhode island loss.... ohio, obama would not lie to the unemployed union masses that their jobs were coming back. guess who did. texas, senior racistzens voted 3 to 1 for hillary. guess where all the civil rights era folks that hung black people from trees moved to get away from the law. rhode island, they've never seen a black man and he probably scared them.

wsanders

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 18:44:35 -0800

I call b.s. No one dares swiftboat Obama in fear of being labeled a racist, they've played the card before and they'll play it again. How do we know the Obama campaign isn't swiftboating themselves for sympathy?. Just turn the "tint" and "hue" knobs, snap the result, and post it to YouTube. That could work in Obama's favor and keep the contest clean, unless his campaign is pulling the same s*** themselves.

rzu

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:20:43 -0800

Am I the only one who is paying attention here? In case you haven't noticed, Hillary is _losing_ to Barack! Unless she pulls some major shenanigans with the superdelegates and/or the Florida and Michigan delegates she is out. I am impressed with her ability to declare victory in the face of defeat, but nonetheless, the Clinton train has been derailed. Obama, on the other hand, has waged an impressive campaign and I fully expect him to defeat tired old McCain come November.

RobInSF

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:44:12 -0800

Hey MDW - explain how he got the majority of votes and delegates in some of the whitest states in the country and currently holds a lead in total delegates. Obama has more brains than the other two combined. I guess you've come to accept thieving ignorant politicians as the norm. Who are you voting for - John "Keating 5" McCain or Hilary "Experience via Penis" Clinton? Plenty of experience in screwing the American people between those two. Deal with it. Obama is going all the way unless Hilary finds a way to steal the Florida and Michigan delegates or one of "minister" Farrakhan's boys gets to him first. (I will give you bonus points for quoting a Bruce Hornsby song as a closing sentence)

yatdave

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:43:28 -0800

mdw0526: The image is no Kospiracy. You'll find the commercial right there on Hillary's website: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/145.aspx It's her newest video, called "True." You write, "When it comes down to it, this country won't elect a black man." That's exactly what she's counting on.

bluecanary

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:37:36 -0800

sadly, I have to agree with mdw0526. There is definitely a bubble out here that people live in, assuming this country is far less racist than it is. It's unfortunate, but it's a fact.

mdw0526

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:20:28 -0800

Um, people, if you saw the latest, that image isn't even from a Clinton commercial. Kos was wrong. People have gotten so infatuated with Obama, it's disgusting. Empty rhetoric, empty words. Young people are so enamoured of change and promise, but as you get older, you realise it's all talk. Obama will never get elected. When it comes down to it, this country won't elect a black man. They just won't. The rest of this country isn't like San Francisco. People are still racist. They'll tell pollsters one thing, and then vote another way. That's just the way it is.

Generic

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:06:19 -0800

I sincerely doubt that it was an attempt to make him appear more "black" in racial terms, but merely an attempt to make him appear more negative in relation to her. How precious. I want you to sit down in front of a mirror with a copy of those words you've just typed, and and read them aloud to yourself. Every time you're able to do so with a straight face, you'll be hit upside the skull with a rubber mallet bearing with the word Naïveté on its side. Eventually, you may develop an aversion to the word, the concept, its pitfalls, etc.

rroseselavy

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:03:18 -0800

Or maybe I just hate those Daily Kos fuckers.

rroseselavy

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:59:27 -0800

urban_angst, I'm with you. They will always use darker, less bright tones when showing the competitor (sort of like how commercials for consumer products never actually name their competitors). And it's not as if all cameras of everyone who filmed this Barack Obama speech had the same RGB settings. Ever notice how video of the same thing looks different on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and FOX?

generati

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:58:24 -0800

Why are they trying so hard to remind us he is black?

RobInSF

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:40:10 -0800

suckafree wins this one - hands down. On a side note, if you get to the bottom of the barrel and can't find any trace of Hilary Clinton, that is only because you have yet to look under the barrel.

urban_angst

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:04:41 -0800

I don't see this as that big of an issue. Many political commercials change the tone to something heavier and darker when representing the opposition and utilize a tone that is lighter and more positive when representing their own side. I sincerely doubt that it was an attempt to make him appear more "black" in racial terms, but merely an attempt to make him appear more negative in relation to her.

bluecanary

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:55:01 -0800

DailyKos said the photo was darkened *and* widened. Wide people are scarier maybe? Only on an airplane, imo. This is the final desperate gasp of a campaign that is heading off a cliff.

Generic

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:46:17 -0800

More scales, more eyes.

yatdave

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:36:12 -0800

Rook and cat: No, you're not imagining things. And it's not the color that's added the weight - the shot appears to have been intentionally widened. The allegations are that widening the shot gives him a wider, more "black-looking" nose. Thanks, Hill, for taking this campaign straight to the gutter.

brokenlogin

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:08:24 -0800

*facepalm* Karl Rove is laughing at you all right now, and most likely touching himself intimately.

cat

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:57:38 -0800

@rook - you're right - not only does he look way darker in clinton's add, but noticably wider too - at least in the photo above. i thought darker colores are supposed to be slimming, right? ;) yeah, well, so it's even more lame, if that's even possible...

Rook

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:48:01 -0800

Is it just me, or did the black camera add like 20 pounds?

cablecarsam

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:28:27 -0800

Hilary is one smart cookie. She deserves to be President. Maybe she can trick Osama instead of Obama. Mayybe she can trick us to think we live in a safe, caring world with Health insurance for all. Vote HillBilly!!!!

sf_bikebike

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:15:13 -0800

they need to photoshop Hillary and make her look more attractive and less like a paperbag.

murphstahoe

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:09:02 -0800

the question is - does any of this ever stick? why can't any of this crap STICK...

suckafree

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:57:39 -0800

i told you she was a shitbag from fucking hell.

Rachel

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:53:43 -0800

Oh, just tweak the color settings on your tv and make him whichever shade you prefer.

cat

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:48:52 -0800

completely disgusting. and i'm not so naive to think that any particular major campaign is above trying to influence our psyches in subtle ways or whatever - but this crap rises to a level that is just gross. i was hanging out in texas this weekend with obama campaign staff and it was heartwarming to hear again and again from them - particularly after this story broke - that this type of gaming and deception would be completely inconceivable in their operation because of their candidate's explicit instructions. gobama. :)

OrangeDrink

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:27:09 -0800

"more blackness means more badass" fixed that for you.

brokenlogin

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:20:37 -0800

Sigh..because you know, more blackness means more badness. One wonders just what exactly the people claiming this are supporting.

harmreduction

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:17:34 -0800

I feel vomit in my mouth....UGH!

harmreduction

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:17:20 -0800

I feel vomit in my mouth....UGH!