How low will the Clinton campaign go to stop Barack Obama from gaining the Democratic nomination for president of the United States?
Well, let’s see…
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn reports in his blog, Change of Subject, that Hillary Clinton made a statement to the press last Tuesday–and has repeated it almost word-for-word to the media since–that Zorn described as “one of the lowest and most destructive things I’ve ever heard one candidate say about a rival candidate in the same party.”
Zorn reports on his blog that Clinton said to the press: “I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he’d bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”
Then, Zorn added, in his own words, this comment on his blog about Sen. Clinton: “Her insulting, gratuitous trivialization of Obama’s life and work (he has more years in elected office than she has and more foreign-policy experience than her husband had when he ran for president in 1992 on his record as governor of a state with half the population of Cook County) won’t easily be forgiven, even by those who conclude, in the end, that she has better credentials to become president.”
If Mr. Zorn’s reporting is accurate (and I have zero reason to believe it is not), then I agree with this columnist/blogger’s conclusion, pithily and beautifully stated above. What is going on in the Clinton camp, anyway? Do they not understand that such a statement will be used over and over again in Sen.McCain’s campaign against the Democratic nominee, should that nominee be Barack Obama? I mean, if the Democrats wants to regain the White House, how can this be smart politics? And is there no way Hillary Clinton can make her way into the nomination without scratching her opponent’s eyes out with her fingernails?
From the point of view of the New Spirituality, this is exactly how not to run a national political campaign. I have to tell you, I was flabbergasted when I read Mr. Zorn’s blog and found this piece. Is it too much to expect of our political candidates these days to conduct themselves with even a modicum of decorum, and even the tiniest bit of respect for their opponents?
Tomorrow is the day of Mississippi’s primary and I hope that the people there, and in Pennsylvania a few more days from now, repudiate the kind of slash-and-burn politics that Sen. Clinton’s campaign has been employing since three days before the Texas and Ohio votes.
What is wrong with our species? Are we simply incapable of decency when winning or losing is at stake? Must we. absolutely must we, stoop to the lowest kind of rhetoric to pick up a few votes? And what of those people in this country who find nothing wrong with this kind of behavior on the campaign trail? What does it say about us as an electorate that such tactics actually seem to work?
(There are those who say that it was Hillary Clinton’s harsh questioning of Barack Obama’s personal integrity in the final days before the Texas/Ohio primary that turned enough of the Undecideds toward her camp when they went to the polls to give her a three percentage point margin in Texas.)
And then there is the opinion that Hillary did not really “win” the heart of Texas Democrats at all, but merely benefited from a stealth campaign by Texas GOP conservatives, thousands of whom are said to have crossed party lines and voted for her last week — to make sure that she was the opponent in the Fall, and not Mr. Obama.
Rush Limbaugh and other far right talk show folks are said to have been urging Texas Republicans to do just that, telling them that it was pointless to waste their vote on the Republican side, since Sen. McCain was already their party’s nominee, and urging them to play spoiler in the Democratic primary by crossing over and voting for Ms. Clinton in her race against Mr. Obama, to make sure that Sen. McCain had a weaker opponent (every poll shows that Mr. Obama would run harder against him than Ms. Clinton) in November.
My, my, my…that could explain that slim 3% margin, now, couldn’t it…..
Hmmmm.