McCain says he will not engage in negative campaigning.
Then he brings up Jeremiah Wright.
When reporters challenge him on why he did this when he said he wasn't going to go negative, he basically said Obama had given him permission to do so when Obama said on FOX News that he understood his relationship with his pastor was relevant.
Then McCain tells reporters that Hamas endorses Obama and that the endorsement is relevant.
Then Cindy McCain tells Ann Curry that her husband will not engage in negative campaigning.
Then McCain brings up Hamas again and Brian Williams asks Obama about it.
Obama, rightfully indignant that McCain would bring up this ridiculous assertion with its highly inflammatory innuendo, especially after insisting he will run a positive campaign, says perhaps McCain has "lost his bearings" in this race.
The McCain campaign sends out a letter of outrage, saying that Obama is playing the "age card."
I think I get it.
Cindy and John will continue to say they will not go negative, and then the McCain campaign will find some excuse for why they have to - Obama gave them permission, or he is using the age card and they simply have to defend themselves.
This will be a negative campaign all right, at least from the Republicans. They don't know how to win any other way and they know it. So there will be many letters like this one, jumping on innocent comments made by Obama, twisting them into something they are not so that McCain will be forgiven for flip-flopping on his promise, just as he has flip-flopped on taxes, on the "agents of intolerance" he now embraces, and on his feelings about George W. Bush.
And by the end of the campaign you can bet they will be playing the race card, especially if it is all they have left.
Showing posts with label negative campaigning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label negative campaigning. Show all posts
Friday, May 9, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Hillary's real fire wall strategy
These past four days the media have finally decided to give Hillary Clinton what she has been whining about and begging for: total negative coverage of every tiny little issue that could slow down Barack Obama's momentum.
They have fallen for her 3 a.m. phone call add wherein a phone rings five or more times at 3 a.m., supposedly in the White House, and a be-jeweled Hillary apparently answers it and saves the country from Muslims or Maritans, it's impossible to tell which. Then they piled on about some memo from the Canadian embassy about NAFTA. Then Hillary compared her experience and John McCain's experience to Barack's "one speech in 2002." Now her negative ads and speeches, many of them completely trivial as well as dishonest, seem to have finally slowed his momentum and may enable her to win Texas and Ohio.
However, even if her disgusting tactics work, she may still not be able to secure enough delegates to win the nomination. Obama may pull it out with his combination of pledged and super delegates no matter what Clinton does to try to take it from him.
So if the math does not favor her, and no matter what happens today she still loses the nomination, what has this tirade of accusations and smears done for her? It certainly doesn't help her party and the down ticket races on the Dem side. It certainly doesn't help Obama. In fact it gives ammunition to John McCain and might possibly help him defeat Obama, just as her husband's unconscionable behavior helped Bush Jr. defeat Gore in 2000.
However, the up side for Hillary is this simple: if she knows she will lose the nomination, but her attacks can wound Obama enough to allow McCain to defeat him in 2008, Hillary can come back in 2012, say "I told you so" and get the nomination for herself.
When will the Democratic Party, and those who vote in the primaries, realize how toxic the Clintons are for the Party? When we finally be able to bury the two-headed Clinton monster?
They have fallen for her 3 a.m. phone call add wherein a phone rings five or more times at 3 a.m., supposedly in the White House, and a be-jeweled Hillary apparently answers it and saves the country from Muslims or Maritans, it's impossible to tell which. Then they piled on about some memo from the Canadian embassy about NAFTA. Then Hillary compared her experience and John McCain's experience to Barack's "one speech in 2002." Now her negative ads and speeches, many of them completely trivial as well as dishonest, seem to have finally slowed his momentum and may enable her to win Texas and Ohio.
However, even if her disgusting tactics work, she may still not be able to secure enough delegates to win the nomination. Obama may pull it out with his combination of pledged and super delegates no matter what Clinton does to try to take it from him.
So if the math does not favor her, and no matter what happens today she still loses the nomination, what has this tirade of accusations and smears done for her? It certainly doesn't help her party and the down ticket races on the Dem side. It certainly doesn't help Obama. In fact it gives ammunition to John McCain and might possibly help him defeat Obama, just as her husband's unconscionable behavior helped Bush Jr. defeat Gore in 2000.
However, the up side for Hillary is this simple: if she knows she will lose the nomination, but her attacks can wound Obama enough to allow McCain to defeat him in 2008, Hillary can come back in 2012, say "I told you so" and get the nomination for herself.
When will the Democratic Party, and those who vote in the primaries, realize how toxic the Clintons are for the Party? When we finally be able to bury the two-headed Clinton monster?
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Shrillary will never be president, and she may ruin Barack's chances as well
As I predicted, Hillary Clinton was not going to maintain the soft and gentle persona she showed at the end of Thursday night's CNN debate.
Over the weekend, she both scolded ("Shame on you Barack Obama") and mocked ("The heavens will open up") her rival for the nomination. Yesterday, the Clinton camp was accused of circulating a two year old photo of Obama in tribal dress, obviously released to offer visual confirmation of the rumor (lie) that Obama is a Muslim.
I don't know if these were calculated political decisions or just Hillary's personality showing through. Either way, it was ugly and does no favors to women who aspire to the presidency of the United States.
There are several reasons women have not, until this year, made a serious run at the White House and not all of them are related to Hillary's glass ceiling excuse.
Sure, there has been real discrimination against women in this and many other countries. And yes, it has to do with patriarchy, and male chauvinism, etc. etc.
But women have been or are currently the leaders of many other countries including India, Pakistan, Ireland, England, Germany, Chile and Israel. How is it that women have succeeded in becoming top elected officials in these countries, which surely have their share of patriarchy and male chauvinism? Is the United States less democratic or less enlightened? Do these countries produce many more brilliant female politicians than the United States? Or is something else going on?
The reasons why this is the first year in which a woman is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States mostly have to do with our particular culture. The United States is the world's oldest democracy, and men have been running the show for over 225 years. They have a lot more experience than women at running for the presidency. Not only do they know how to approach the electorate, but the electorate knows how to evaluate them as candidates. Voters tend to favor characteristics that are traditionally thought of – at least in this country – as male characteristics: strength, sense of humor, self-confidence, toughness, resilience, and what could be called "unflappableness," the ability to roll with the punches and not be knocked off message by emotion.
We know that voters don't like too much emotion in their male candidates. Edmund Muskie was condemned for tearing up over an attack on his wife, and remember what happened to Howard Dean when the press and the public saw him as too emotional in what became known as "the scream?"
Women candidates have a slightly different problem. While voters seem willing to accept a tearful woman, they are not as comfortable with a woman who comes off as a scold, as too sarcastic, or as emotionally volatile, which Hillary has been recently. While voters may be ready for a female candidate and even a female president, that female would have to fit into a very specific persona, and unfortunately for Hillary (but fortunately for the United States) Hillary does not have that persona.
To be fair, she has part of what she needs to be a viable candidate. She is smart, tough, and knowledgeable about all the important issues. She has a certain amount of experience and she can string sentences together and sound intelligent. With those qualities, and a husband who is a former president and has a formidable political machine surrounding him, she thought she was a shoe-in. Bush (and Republican) fatique had set in, the Democrats would be the logical choice this November, and thus this was the perfect year for a woman to win. However, Hillary hadn't counted on it being a year when a charismatic, intelligent male candidate would run, and especially not one who did have the exact temperament and persona the voters want.
What Hillary is missing is the cool, even temperament voters want in a president, either male or female. And because women are often seen as emotional, Americans want a woman who can show she is cool under fire, and doesn’t come unhinged when the chips are down. Being the underdog is, after all, a test of how a president would do when facing a crisis.
Lately, Hillary has responded to her desperate circumstances by becoming unhinged. She has been both attacking Obama with shrill and caustic language, and trying to bait him into making an emotional response to her attacks. It hasn't worked. Obama remains cool and composed and has not been knocked off his message, while Hillary sounds increasingly shrill and desperate.
I have noted for a while that in her speeches, she sounds like she is continually yelling at the audience and at her opponent, while in his speeches, he moves from calm rhetoric to soaring oratory and finally to loud proclamations. But now Hillary's speeches are worse. Now she sounds like a school teacher or principal with her "shame on you Barack Obama," and while that might work to energize some of her supporters who hate Obama, it sends the rest of us running away.
Like nails on the chalkboard, it reminds all of us of at least one female teacher whom we couldn't stand for her prudish discipline, her humorless personality, and her domineering manner. In addition to that, she mocks Obama and his supporters. The last time I remember a politician mocking someone, it was George W. Bush mocking the woman whom, as governor of Texas, he had condemned to death. It was ugly then, and it's ugly now.
In the past week, Hillary has gone from soft and sappy praise of Obama to her "shame on you" comments to her mocking sarcasm to her release of a photo to swift boat her rival. This is not the sign of a woman who has the emotional stability to lead the country. It is the sign of desperation.
Hillary seems not to understand one huge psychological fact about the realities of gender in this country. Every single man and woman who is born experiences a woman as the first authority over him or her. During most of childhood, authority figures are women. Eventually, girls begin to identify with those female authority figures, while boys learn to dominate them in order to overcome the fear and often the humiliation they sometimes experienced at the hands of woman.
For a man to then accept a female as the top authority figure in the country it is not just important that he see her as competent. In fact, it is far more important that he see her as calm and balanced emotionally, not somoene who evokes memories of an authoritarian and angry teacher who took out her frustration by humiliating and chastising her students. Hillary's recent schoolmarm antics as well as her sarcasm and overt contempt for Obama (just a few days after she said how proud she was to share the stage with him) prove that she is somewhat emotionally unhinged and that is why she is doing so poorly against Obama, and why she would lose in a general election against McCain.
I don't care what it does to her donors, the Clinton legacy, or even her marriage. Hillary needs to get out now before she does more damage to herself and her future, the chances of the eventual Democratic nominee beating McCain, and possibly sets the cause of electing a woman president back for decades.
Over the weekend, she both scolded ("Shame on you Barack Obama") and mocked ("The heavens will open up") her rival for the nomination. Yesterday, the Clinton camp was accused of circulating a two year old photo of Obama in tribal dress, obviously released to offer visual confirmation of the rumor (lie) that Obama is a Muslim.
I don't know if these were calculated political decisions or just Hillary's personality showing through. Either way, it was ugly and does no favors to women who aspire to the presidency of the United States.
There are several reasons women have not, until this year, made a serious run at the White House and not all of them are related to Hillary's glass ceiling excuse.
Sure, there has been real discrimination against women in this and many other countries. And yes, it has to do with patriarchy, and male chauvinism, etc. etc.
But women have been or are currently the leaders of many other countries including India, Pakistan, Ireland, England, Germany, Chile and Israel. How is it that women have succeeded in becoming top elected officials in these countries, which surely have their share of patriarchy and male chauvinism? Is the United States less democratic or less enlightened? Do these countries produce many more brilliant female politicians than the United States? Or is something else going on?
The reasons why this is the first year in which a woman is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States mostly have to do with our particular culture. The United States is the world's oldest democracy, and men have been running the show for over 225 years. They have a lot more experience than women at running for the presidency. Not only do they know how to approach the electorate, but the electorate knows how to evaluate them as candidates. Voters tend to favor characteristics that are traditionally thought of – at least in this country – as male characteristics: strength, sense of humor, self-confidence, toughness, resilience, and what could be called "unflappableness," the ability to roll with the punches and not be knocked off message by emotion.
We know that voters don't like too much emotion in their male candidates. Edmund Muskie was condemned for tearing up over an attack on his wife, and remember what happened to Howard Dean when the press and the public saw him as too emotional in what became known as "the scream?"
Women candidates have a slightly different problem. While voters seem willing to accept a tearful woman, they are not as comfortable with a woman who comes off as a scold, as too sarcastic, or as emotionally volatile, which Hillary has been recently. While voters may be ready for a female candidate and even a female president, that female would have to fit into a very specific persona, and unfortunately for Hillary (but fortunately for the United States) Hillary does not have that persona.
To be fair, she has part of what she needs to be a viable candidate. She is smart, tough, and knowledgeable about all the important issues. She has a certain amount of experience and she can string sentences together and sound intelligent. With those qualities, and a husband who is a former president and has a formidable political machine surrounding him, she thought she was a shoe-in. Bush (and Republican) fatique had set in, the Democrats would be the logical choice this November, and thus this was the perfect year for a woman to win. However, Hillary hadn't counted on it being a year when a charismatic, intelligent male candidate would run, and especially not one who did have the exact temperament and persona the voters want.
What Hillary is missing is the cool, even temperament voters want in a president, either male or female. And because women are often seen as emotional, Americans want a woman who can show she is cool under fire, and doesn’t come unhinged when the chips are down. Being the underdog is, after all, a test of how a president would do when facing a crisis.
Lately, Hillary has responded to her desperate circumstances by becoming unhinged. She has been both attacking Obama with shrill and caustic language, and trying to bait him into making an emotional response to her attacks. It hasn't worked. Obama remains cool and composed and has not been knocked off his message, while Hillary sounds increasingly shrill and desperate.
I have noted for a while that in her speeches, she sounds like she is continually yelling at the audience and at her opponent, while in his speeches, he moves from calm rhetoric to soaring oratory and finally to loud proclamations. But now Hillary's speeches are worse. Now she sounds like a school teacher or principal with her "shame on you Barack Obama," and while that might work to energize some of her supporters who hate Obama, it sends the rest of us running away.
Like nails on the chalkboard, it reminds all of us of at least one female teacher whom we couldn't stand for her prudish discipline, her humorless personality, and her domineering manner. In addition to that, she mocks Obama and his supporters. The last time I remember a politician mocking someone, it was George W. Bush mocking the woman whom, as governor of Texas, he had condemned to death. It was ugly then, and it's ugly now.
In the past week, Hillary has gone from soft and sappy praise of Obama to her "shame on you" comments to her mocking sarcasm to her release of a photo to swift boat her rival. This is not the sign of a woman who has the emotional stability to lead the country. It is the sign of desperation.
Hillary seems not to understand one huge psychological fact about the realities of gender in this country. Every single man and woman who is born experiences a woman as the first authority over him or her. During most of childhood, authority figures are women. Eventually, girls begin to identify with those female authority figures, while boys learn to dominate them in order to overcome the fear and often the humiliation they sometimes experienced at the hands of woman.
For a man to then accept a female as the top authority figure in the country it is not just important that he see her as competent. In fact, it is far more important that he see her as calm and balanced emotionally, not somoene who evokes memories of an authoritarian and angry teacher who took out her frustration by humiliating and chastising her students. Hillary's recent schoolmarm antics as well as her sarcasm and overt contempt for Obama (just a few days after she said how proud she was to share the stage with him) prove that she is somewhat emotionally unhinged and that is why she is doing so poorly against Obama, and why she would lose in a general election against McCain.
I don't care what it does to her donors, the Clinton legacy, or even her marriage. Hillary needs to get out now before she does more damage to herself and her future, the chances of the eventual Democratic nominee beating McCain, and possibly sets the cause of electing a woman president back for decades.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Getting our country back
The Democratic primaries and caucuses have brought out huge numbers of voters. In some races, the winner of the Democratic primary received more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. It's true that Republicans and Independents are making up some of that huge number in states where they are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary, but these voters alone aren't enough to account for the huge numbers.
Certainly the presence of the first viable woman candidate is bringing out many voters, especially women, but the candidate who is accounting for most of the excitement, according to the media and reports from the voters themselves, is Barack Obama. Obama is almost single-handledly creating a new generation of excited and involved Democratic voters and because of this the Democratic Party and indeed all loyal Democrats must be forever in his debt. No candidate in decades has created this much excitement and given so many young people the desire to participate in the democratic process.
Hillary Clinton is currently attacking Obama because he gives good speeches, while she offers "solutions." Of course, Obama offers solutions, too, but Clinton must draw a false contrast because she can't offer inspiring speeches.
The job of a good candidate, it seems to me, is to offer solutions as well as speeches, to offer ideas as well inspiration. Hillary is limited in how much she inspires. In fact, she depresses almost as much as she inspires. Part of that is her fault and part isn't, but it doesn't matter. She is who she is and the danger in having her as the nominee is that all the inspiration that has been infused into the young electorate is liable to vanish.
One thing that I look for in a candidate is what they do when they are losing, when they are no longer the frontrunner. Are they gracious, while they continue on with their campaign, or do they get desperate and turn ugly? When Obama was behind, which has been for much of the race, he did not go negative. He did not refer to Clinton's gender, as her husband referred to his race, and he did not play "gotcha." There are so many things Obama could bring up if he wanted to go negative on Hillary, including her husband's impeachment, but he has never gone there. He talks about policy differences, and brings up her vote for the war, but he doesn't hammer her over the head with them or attack her character.
This week, Hillary went after Obama because he wouldn't agree to a debate before the Wisconsin primary, even though there have already been eighteen debates. Her husband attacked Obama's health care plan (I don't recall Michelle Obama attacking Hillary's plan) for not being "universal" while Hillary had to admit that to achieve universality her plan might have to garnish wages of indivduals.
Besides going negative, Hillary's team is trying to overturn the rule that everyone agreed to - that the Michigan and Florida contests would not count. And her campaign is openly admitting that even if she loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate vote, she will attempt to overturn the will of the people by appealing to superdelegates.
This reminds me so much of the tactics of Bush that it discredits Hillary in the eyes of many voters. She may be smart, wonkish, organized, and "ready to lead" on day one, but she is also ready to do anything to win. And we have had enough of that with Bush.
This time around, we not only want to win, we want to win with dignity. This time around, we want to be able to trust our president, as well as be inspired by him.
We want our country back. Not the country that the Clintons or the Bushes create for their own aggrandizement, but our country, that country that is of the people, by the people and for the people. For the first time in many campaigns, we have a candidate who can give us back our country, and move us past Bill Clinton's misbehavior and George Bush's criminality, and that is why so many people are voting for Barack Obama.
Certainly the presence of the first viable woman candidate is bringing out many voters, especially women, but the candidate who is accounting for most of the excitement, according to the media and reports from the voters themselves, is Barack Obama. Obama is almost single-handledly creating a new generation of excited and involved Democratic voters and because of this the Democratic Party and indeed all loyal Democrats must be forever in his debt. No candidate in decades has created this much excitement and given so many young people the desire to participate in the democratic process.
Hillary Clinton is currently attacking Obama because he gives good speeches, while she offers "solutions." Of course, Obama offers solutions, too, but Clinton must draw a false contrast because she can't offer inspiring speeches.
The job of a good candidate, it seems to me, is to offer solutions as well as speeches, to offer ideas as well inspiration. Hillary is limited in how much she inspires. In fact, she depresses almost as much as she inspires. Part of that is her fault and part isn't, but it doesn't matter. She is who she is and the danger in having her as the nominee is that all the inspiration that has been infused into the young electorate is liable to vanish.
One thing that I look for in a candidate is what they do when they are losing, when they are no longer the frontrunner. Are they gracious, while they continue on with their campaign, or do they get desperate and turn ugly? When Obama was behind, which has been for much of the race, he did not go negative. He did not refer to Clinton's gender, as her husband referred to his race, and he did not play "gotcha." There are so many things Obama could bring up if he wanted to go negative on Hillary, including her husband's impeachment, but he has never gone there. He talks about policy differences, and brings up her vote for the war, but he doesn't hammer her over the head with them or attack her character.
This week, Hillary went after Obama because he wouldn't agree to a debate before the Wisconsin primary, even though there have already been eighteen debates. Her husband attacked Obama's health care plan (I don't recall Michelle Obama attacking Hillary's plan) for not being "universal" while Hillary had to admit that to achieve universality her plan might have to garnish wages of indivduals.
Besides going negative, Hillary's team is trying to overturn the rule that everyone agreed to - that the Michigan and Florida contests would not count. And her campaign is openly admitting that even if she loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate vote, she will attempt to overturn the will of the people by appealing to superdelegates.
This reminds me so much of the tactics of Bush that it discredits Hillary in the eyes of many voters. She may be smart, wonkish, organized, and "ready to lead" on day one, but she is also ready to do anything to win. And we have had enough of that with Bush.
This time around, we not only want to win, we want to win with dignity. This time around, we want to be able to trust our president, as well as be inspired by him.
We want our country back. Not the country that the Clintons or the Bushes create for their own aggrandizement, but our country, that country that is of the people, by the people and for the people. For the first time in many campaigns, we have a candidate who can give us back our country, and move us past Bill Clinton's misbehavior and George Bush's criminality, and that is why so many people are voting for Barack Obama.
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