He backed the lousy coal-to-liquid bill, until he didn’t. His campaign’s general counsel thinks Scooter Libby should be pardoned. And now Barack Obama’s campaign has been embarrassed yet again, this time by an unseemly opposition research memo that was leaked to the NY Daily News. [UPDATE: there’s even more — see update below.] Basically, the Obama camp tries to paint Hillary Clinton as too cozy with India, and resorts to rather Limbaugh-esque tactics to do it. The memo begins:
HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S
PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA
The Clintons have reaped significant financial rewards from their relationship with the Indian community, both in their personal finances and Hillary’s campaign fundraising. Hillary Clinton, who is the co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, has drawn criticism from anti-offshoring groups for her vocal support of Indian business and unwillingness to protect American jobs. Bill Clinton has invested tens of thousands of dollars in an Indian bill payment company, while Hillary Clinton has taken tens of thousands from companies that outsource jobs to India. Workers who have been laid off in upstate New York might not think that her recent joke that she could be elected to the Senate seat in Punjab is that funny.
“D-Punjab”? Nice. You can read the whole thing at the NYDN link above. There are good commentaries on the memo — none of them favorable to Obama — at Americablog and at Sepia Mutiny (a blog focusing on Indian issues). Here’s a bit of John at Americablog:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Limbaugh)
I never thought I’d have to be calling out Barack Obama for race-baiting, but here we are. And he’s not race-baiting whites, or Asians, or even Latinos. No, the African-American Senator from Illinois is race-baiting dark-skinned people….
I thought Obama was simply going after Hillary for supporting outsourcing of jobs, or for Hillary being supported by people who are in favor of outsourcing…. But I still wasn’t sure that we had moved from outsourcing to racism until we hit the paragraph about all the money and support that Hillary has received from “Indian-Americans.” Sure, the rest of the memo deals with how one of Hillary’s top Indian-American supporters is allegedly a bit shady, and that’s fair game, but the memo is about more than that. The memo is clearly trying to make the point that Hillary gets lots and lots of support from Indian-Americans, and apparently there’s some kind of problem with that. I guess because their kin back home are stealing all of our good white jobs. (No word on whether they’re sleeping with our women too.)
Tough words. Read the memo yourself and decide if John’s right, or if he’s overreacting.
Now, here’s John’s really interesting final point:
I’d have asked the Obama campaign for comment on this story, but since they never bother to communicate with us, ever, I really wouldn’t know who to call.
Look, if that’s true, Obama has a massive problem. Americablog is a big national progressive blog (around 65,000 uniques a day), which means that its many readers are exactly who Obama is supposed to be trying to reach. If John’s feeling shut out by the Obama campaign, something’s really wrong.
One more thing. Obama is supposed to be this new kind of politician, rather in the style of Deval Patrick. But let’s recall the Patrick campaign — one of the best this state has ever seen. Even when Patrick’s family was being dragged through the mud, even when the Healey campaign was slinging the most vile advertising his way, and even when the oh-so-wise purveyors of conventional wisdom were practically begging Patrick to strike back in kind, Patrick never, ever, resorted to the kinds of attacks on Kerry Healey that the Obama camp launched against the Clintons in this India memo. So one now has to ask: is Obama really what he claims? Or is he more of the same, in a younger, nicer-looking package?
UPDATE: Turns out the NYDN memo isn’t the only anti-Clinton crap the Obama campaign has been slinging lately. Check out this gem at TPM Cafe: the Obama camp circulates a nasty, and false, story about Bill Clinton — who, you may recall, is not running for president. WTF??
$250 each – but I don’t know that I’ll be giving more to Obama. He’s got some splainin’ to do…
a resonating attack?
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haha, it’s not like his camp is highlighing being in the backpocket of Hamas, or even China.
There’s plenty of room to attack Hillary on a number of fronts without resorting to a weak smear like this – you have to wonder who’s giving him this advice.
this cycle. just got my thank you today. and it was a timely thank you, which is a good sign of a well-run campaign!
He already knows the lay of the land in Congress – he knows which bills he will support, and why – ask any of the other candidates about that and what will you get? I’ll tell you this – you won’t get a straight answer like you’ll get from Jamie. He’s the real deal…
The memo raises a legitimate issue, and presents lots of verifiable facts. If the Punjab joke was Clinton’s — and was made after returning from a trip to India in which she assured leaders there that nothing would be done to slow outsourcing — that mitigates its distastefulness, doesn’t it?
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It might have been dumb of the Obama campaign to put it out with fingerprints, putting at risk the candidate’s “new kind of politics” message (as this post proves). If it was leaked intentionally, it seems like some kind of clumsy half-measure between public attack and the usual back channel stuff.
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But if the memo is all true, and they’re willing to take responsibility for it, it is exactly what negative campaigning should be, if you want to raise the integrity of political campaigning.
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Deval was great at maintaining an above-the-fray public persona. But is it really the case that his campaign never put out negative stuff on the q.t.? I’m not sure anyone who wasn’t high up on his team is in a position to make that claim. And besides, this memo is substantive enough to be more analogous to the public criticism Deval made of the Romney-Healey administration.
…and then insinuate that Deval is just another dirty politician anyhow? Nice, real nice – if I were you, I’d be thinking about why my candidate would make me jump through such hypocrticial hoops in order to continue supporting him.
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Seeing Obama denigrate Indian-Americans put me in mind of this essay, penned by a diarist at Dkos calling out George Allen for his racism after the macaca incident – specifically, what he had to say about Dr. Chandra:
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Racism sucks wherever you encounter it – don’t make excuses for it.
…outsourcing of jobs by companies headquartered in America to India, with the insourcing of an Indian to a job in America. At least the insourced Indian will be paying taxes in the US; the outsourced job holders and companies will not be.
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On the subject matter of the post, I’m sure that John Aravosis–being a “political consultant”–has an ax to grind, but I find it a bit silly for him or the poster to ascribe the Obama campaign’s comments to racism. A complaint against support for job outsourcing, yes. But attributing the complaint to racism is more than a bit of a stretch.
to try to make a big deal out of the Clintons’ stock in an Indian bill-paying company (EasyBill), presumably trying to insinuate that the company is somehow involved in outsourcing (which, after all, is supposed to be the substance of the memo), while in fact EasyBill provides bill-paying services for Indians in India (excerpt from the company’s website: “The Easy Bill Limited has been promoted by the Hero Group to serve the needs of the Indian middle class.”). It simply has nothing to do with outsourcing, yet it’s the first item in the memo. Why?
Why?
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If you are seriously interested in knowing why, why don’t you email them and ask them why. Instead, of course, of engaging in inuendo. That you haven’t, more than suggests to me that you really aren’t interested in the answer, but are merely interested in casting aspersions on the Obama campaign. I would ask why, you would do that, but I’ll refrain.
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And, I’ll merely point out that Billary’s investment could have been made in American headquartered businesses that provided jobs for Americans. But it wasn’t. Racism? No. American businesses employ Indians–even in America. I’ve worked with more than a few.
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I notice that you did not address any of issues that I raised in the comment. So, I’ll otherwise let it ride.
I have emailed the campaign on precisely the issue you raise. So far, radio silence. I’ll happily eat my hat if they respond. Don’t make assumptions you can’t back up. As a lawyer, you should know better.
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If you say you’re going to refrain, then refrain, instead of saying you will and then not doing so.
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Yes, the investment could have been in an American company. It wasn’t. And that is connected to outsourcing of American jobs to India how, precisely? No doubt the Clintons have invested some of their money in American companies too. Those investments just aren’t mentioned in the memo.
There are three issues raised in the brouhaha over the Obama campaign’s memo, a fact that you apparently wish to ignore.
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The first issue is the Clintons’ investment in a foreign-headquartered company that hired foreigners, which investment could have been made in a company that hired US workers.
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Two, the issue of the support given to sHillary by American-based companies that are actively off-shoring of jobs that Americans could perform.
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And the third, and most important, is the assigning by you and by Avarosis, is that the Obama campaign’s memo is racist.
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Regardless of the first two (as far as I’m concerned, the Clintons can invest whereever they want, but I despised them long ago, and never will vote for them), but as to the last, the idea that the Obama campaign’s memo is racist is idiotic.
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Is that succinct enough for you?
I don’t accept your premise that the memo is racist, and you didn’t address my point that Hillary’s use of the Senator-for-Punjab joke kind of makes it fair game, albeit dangerous territory for a feel-good candidate.
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The bit about great Indian-Americans is lovely, but beside the point. Though George Allen might have needed the grade-school multiculturalism lesson, using it to squelch debate on outsourcing is silly. This is an important issue to many workers (of all ethnic and national backgrounds), as evidenced by the references to union anger at Hillary in the memo. Granted, making an outsourcing debate about a single country makes no sense and invites nativism, but again, Hillary seems to have tied her good will toward India to a particular position on outsourcing.
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Also, Obama is not my candidate, at least not yet. And Hillary might be too. I’m not even stridently anti-outsourcing. I was just making observations, based on one of my pet peeves, which is over-sensitivity to negative campaigning.
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Finally, I don’t think Deval is a dirty politician — I think a big reason he won was that people responded to a sincerity in his positive message — but I think it’s naive to assume that his campaign didn’t put out factual negative stuff through indirect channels.
…and you’re certainly entitled to your opinion that the memo wasn’t overtly racist. It uses race to cast a whole class of people (Indian-Americans) in a negative light, so how you construe that to be not racist is beyond me, but there you have it. In my opinion, the “grade-school multiculturalism lesson” does apply here, since IMO the memo is race-baiting at the very least, if not overtly racist. I was not employing that to “squelch debate on outsourcing”, I was using it to point out just how silly and stupid racism is.
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Sorry about your pet peeve, but shouldn’t we be overly sensitive to negative campaigning from a candidate who sells himself as a “different kind of candidate”? Deval Patrick was that candidate, Obama clearly is not – and why on earth would the Patrick campaign need to put out “factual negative stuff” indirectly? Facts are easily disseminated directly, there’s no need to be indirect when you have the facts on your side.
David accuses the Obama campaign of a “misstep” citing a purported Obama campaign memo leaked to the NY Daily News. In fact, according to the story cited, the memo was provided to the NY Daily News by… why imagine that, it was provided to the paper by the Clinton campaign.
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That doesn’t sound like an Obama campaign misstep to me – it sounds like the Clinton campaign is engaging in the fine art of political attack and deflection – an art the Clintons certainly had to perfect in their eight scandal-ridden years in Washington. A substantive debate about globalization and the long term consequences of the wholesale offshoring of American jobs might get uncomfortable, particularly as the memo raises legitimate questions about how the Clintons and Hilary’s campaign have benefited financially from investments in and campaign contributions from that industry. Why not get the blogosphere stirred up instead about the Obama (or is that the Obambi?) campaign’s opposition research into those connections and, for spice, toss in some accusations of racism?
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I saw a lot of good-paying IT and operations positions outsourced in my tenure at two major U.S. financial services companies. Those jobs were the underpinning of comfortable middle-class lifestyles for a lot of my colleagues. Some managed to find new positions – without matching their previous salaries, benefits and pension packages – or have resorted to contract work, with no benefits at all. I’d certainly rather see BMG debate the substantive issues with globalization here, rather than indulge in innuendo, entertaining it as it can be.
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Of course it was provided by the Clinton campaign (we don’t know how they got it, but they did). The Clinton campaign saw it, immediately realized what a screw-up it was, and handed it off to the press. No campaign in their right mind would have done otherwise. If the Obama campaign is going to be handing out oppo right and left, they need to do a MUCH better job of it than this kind of crap.
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It’s not a “purported” Obama campaign memo. They’ve acknowledged that it’s authentic. Here’s their weak-kneed comment on it, issued by Obama’s campaign manager:
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Now, is outsourcing a legit issue? Of course it is. (This is also a partial response to Cannoneo and others upthread.) So why not just talk about outsourcing, instead of sullying it with nasty insinuations and pathetic jokes? (And no, the fact that Clinton herself made a “Punjab” comment doesn’t do much to mitigate the memo’s title — context matters a lot.)
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Re the Deval Patrick campaign, I’d respond to Cannoneo this way: I don’t know exactly what the Patrick campaign was handing out on the qt to Frank Phillips et al., but I would be stunned if it looked anything like this memo. Why? Because, in addition to the facts that it would have been at odds with everything the candidate was saying, and that there’s no evidence whatsoever that they ever departed from that strategy, we surely would have heard about it sooner or later, one way or another. It would have leaked out, just like the India memo did.
I agree the tone of the memo is stupidly at odds with the candidate’s message, as the Obama campaign acknowledged. This is a mistake the Patrick campaign would not have made. But if, say, an opponent had invested in controversial for-profit schools, I think the Patrick campaign would have made sure that got out somehow, without requiring the candidate to deviate from his positive message. (No, I have no proof they did that.) And that’s a legit strategy, in my view.
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“So why not just talk about outsourcing, instead of sullying it with nasty insinuations and pathetic jokes?”
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Hillary is beyond an abstract policy position when she goes to India and assures leaders there that the jobs will continue to flow. At the very least that is insensitive to her constituents who lost jobs to that flow. Did she go to them and explain why they had to lose their jobs? The first thought I would have in that situation is, “who’s she working for, anyway?”
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Anytime a campaign can illustrate a policy difference (if there is one — I don’t even know) with something so concrete, it’d be nuts not to, and I think it’s being too prim to scold it for doing so.
The one time I don’t use preview.
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Corrected:
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Handing out info to Frank Phillips??? ROTFLMAO. Up until almost the very end, Phillips was nothing but negative towards Deval. Most of the Globe so-called “reporters” were; the Herald often ran more objective news stories than the Globe.
If the media and campaigns continue in the same way, Al Gore should have no problem stepping in.
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In the meantime, I continue to support Mike Gravel because you will never see this underhanded crap coming from him. His attacks are lobbied on the stage in debates and there is nothing held back. He brings up the real issues that the media is intent on ignoring.
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It all makes me laugh. The battle to the bottom has begun. Anyone who compares Barack Obama to Deval Patrick didn’t pay attention. For that matter, I think Obama’s campaign staff missed the whole point as well.
without the main attraction. For me, it’s been strange to see how packaged and marketed this sort of campaign is just as I suppose all campaigns are. I know, I’m naive, but with Deval’s campaign, it felt like a movement…like there was this energy that was just spontaniously developing because Deval Patrick was this unique leader. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know alot of people have been disappointed with Deval, I am not one of those people. I love the guy. But seeing his campaign all over again with Obama, I end up comparing the two candidates, and Obama doesn’t fare very well for me.
Deval Patrick did not encourage this behavior in his campaign. He was above this type of thing. Obama is trying to write the same play without the meaning or involvement of those who made the difference. If he doesn’t get it, it ain’t gonna happen. Every similarity is at surface level only, not in substance.
The complete and utter train wreck of a campaign Barrack has run has made me feel he is as yet completely incompetent for the office.
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I don’t know if Obama’s campaign did was racist or not, but it certainly was stupid.
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And you can add it to a growing list.
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I was planning to write about my thoughts on the POTUS race for a few days now – and I finally had time this morning. This item did make my blog, but as one of many things.
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Sadly, none of the present candidates thrill me and I hope that changes. I’d support Gore if he ran.
And these so-called “pros” can’t control themselves–it’s in their DNA to attack. (Yes, this coming from me, the Kitchen Sink guy.)
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It should be basic commonsense to understand that if your overall poliitcal message is to be positive and above the fry (like Deval and Ombama’s were/are) then don’t go writing indepth attack memo’s (and a variety of other conventional political whacks Obama’s people have gotten into). It reeks of insincerity.
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Deval could control is political people who were begging him to attack Healy–there are only so many people involved in a statewide MA race. But in a Presidental campaign–there are way to many “pros” that they can’t be controlled.
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Yes, I was once afflicted with serious Obama fever and if the election were held today, I’d still vote for him. But he really has not done much right lately and seems stuck, with no momemtum.
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Note to self–don’t let your candidate ever be compared to RFK. You can NEVER live up to a legend. People only experience legends in quick video bits and never see the real person. We see Obama in total–and he can’t live up to the legend status.
that everyone getting themselves all worked up about Obama’s “racism” is acting rediculous. C’mon, do any of you REALLY believe that America’s only black senator, the guy who wrote dreams of my father, is a latter-day KKKer? Get serious!
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The tone of the memo was stupid, and it was a mistake, obviosly. So instead of crucifying Obama and all his helpers for it, why not try and give them some feedback? Obama is trying to run a campaign that is responsive to the people, so instead of griping, why not let him know he made himself look like an ass, and to be more careful next time?
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But, whatever you think of Obama, or the Clintons for that matter, the outsourcing of US jobs, particularly in manufacturing and high-tech, to Asia is a HUGE political issue, and rightfully so- it is a bread-and-butter issue for millions of Americans. Personally, I’m torn on the free trade issue; I support it in principle, but I wonder what might be done to tweak how we do it to get better results for America, without resorting to outright protectionism. THAT is the issue that the Obama campaign was awkwardly attempting to speak too.
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Oh, and by the way, before you start branding me as a racist and/or an apoplogist, please read my whole post, and try and think about it for a couple minutes.
Modern campaigns engage in back channel negative attacks all the time, did anyone think that maybe this is a response to the Clinton camps allegations that Obama was trained in a madras? Was that not equally offensive? I think this leak was likely from an overzealous Obama supporter saddened by the attacks from the Clinton camp who released it without the campaigns permission. But that theory like all the other theories presented so far is mere speculation.
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Now what is not speculation is that Obama has made some missteps and frankly in my view has too many advisors and consultants he brought along that are embarassing him. All of his inner circle is based in Chicago hence the coal-liquid pork barrel play to the coal mining regions of Illinois and its neighborhind states. The Scooter Libby pardon remark was from a lawyer who advises Barack and once worked in the same firm as Scooter Libby who foolishly spoke off the record. And this latest remark was likely from a foolish staffer. Obama needs to get some “outside the inner circle” advisors to help him through this and possible tell some of those in the inner circle to take a hike.
He needs to stop running like its the general election, the coal to liquid was clearly a play for votes in crucial swing states and alienating the base by sponsoring it was a really dumb move. Obama needs the Edwards campaign to die so he can become the Anti-Hillary and by remaining stuck in the center he is allowing Edwards to out manuever him on the left.
because he is not to the left of Edwards. I’m sorry, I am NOT going to support Obama just because he isn’t Hillary Clinton. I mean, what’s that about? What really bothers me about this stuff is not that Obama is making the same rhetorical argument Patrick did (“new kind of politics”, “above the fray”, yada yada yada) and then employing negative campaigning. What bothers me is that Obama has not articulated a position on trade dissimilar from Hillary’s, so why go there? Also, the liquid to coal was because illinois is a big coal state.
That was a made up story, pushed by Fox News and the rest of the right-wing noise machine – saying that it came from Clinton was an attempt to smear both campaigns with one brush. Please get your facts straight…
The Clinton campaign of course.
Listen, I am no fan of Hillary’s, I wish she wasn’t running – of all the Democrats running, I think she could actually lose the general election. But facts are facts, and Fox News did not get the story from her campaign.
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Read the timeline of the “madrassa smear” here:
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http://mediamatters….
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And quit spouting right-wing lies…
last time I checked, Indians are caucasians. What’s this racism nonsense?