I find it curious that amid all the blog and newspaper coverage I’ve read on this event, not one person managed to wonder whether assassination was on Clinton’s mind because she is concerned that she is also a target.
Apparently it is only fashionable to distress over the threats against the first potential black president, not over the first potential woman president. One might answer “Well, but Obama has had numerous threats and Clinton hasn’t.” I don’t doubt Obama’s word that he has been threatened. What I do doubt is that Clinton would publicize it if she has also been threatened. The reason being that she has to prove herself strong in a way that is assumed of men. Thus, she wouldn’t publicize any threats because admitting threats would be taken as a sign of weakness in a woman.
Yes, I find it curious that not one commentator, to my knowledge, has imagined that Clinton could ever take to heart all the epithets and assumptions of deliberate evil ascribed to her, and have concerns about her own mortality.
I saw the headlines this morning and could not bring myself to read the story until a little later. Then, when I read the story itself, I thought, “Give me a break.” This is another attempt to twist Hillary Clinton’s words way beyond anything that a reasonable person could imagine on their own. Unfortunately, a lot of people will not read beyond the headline.
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p>I certainly did not think about the slant you have given it, which certainly is spot on. I am sure that HRC has gotten many death threats and other vicious threats, probably more than Obama given the tenor of alot of the public comments about her by some people have been particulary vicious. It would certainly explain the overly aggressiveness of the Secret Service that I witnessed at a rally in PA. (An incident that showed to me the true character of HRC and why we may miss out on having an incredible person as president. She really does believe that the little people matter.)
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her comments are hard to swallow. First of all, there is no relevance of 1968 to today because in 1968 none of the primaries were binding and today California (with the most votes) is in February, not in June. Second, one struggles to figure out how exactly her comments couldn’t be perceived as being about the assassination of the frontrunner. Ridiculous as it is so say this (after her ridiculous comments), the Democrats would have a nominee (in fact, they have one now in Mr. Obama) if either of them were killed. She may be thinking about death, but it was Mr. Obama’s death that she was pointing to, intentionally or not and she should have stayed far away from such an ugly and volatile topic.
This is just too much. Your attempt and the Obama campaign’s attempt to twist Hillary Clinton’s comment into something it was not are offensive and, quite frankly, self-serving. I actually had a similar conversation with a friend of mine a few weeks back about how we all seem to have forgotten that the primaries went on well into June in the past and we both recalled it in the context of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. That is what Hillary Clinton did when she made the statement about the assassination that the Obama campaign has twisted with the help of their friends in the media. She was not pointing to Obama’s death or whatever other crazy things the Obama campaign can twist about this.
Hmmm, let’s see:
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p>Bill Clinton’s comments after South Carolina that Jesse had won there too;
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p>Hillary’s claim that she had dodged sniper fire in Bosnia;
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p>Jeanne Shaheen’s husband hinting at drug use by Obama;
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p>Hillary’s statements about “hardworking, white voters”;
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p>The Clinton campaign’s incredible and bold flip-flop on party rules regarding states that hold their primaries too early;
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p>Hillary saying that Obama is not a Muslim “as far as I know”;
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p>Hillary twice raising the spectre of assassination when it’s one of the only ways she can get the nomination;
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p>Hey, BMGers — add your favorite verbal outrage by Hillary and the rest of Team Clinton!
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p>I have admired Hillary Clinton for a long time. I think she would make a fine President. I am a feminist. But folks, get real: there are lots of reasons other than sexism why her campaign is circling the drain, and why so many of us liberals will not be sorry to see her go.
I’ll just pick one:
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p>Despite Kroft’s badgering, Clinton did everything short of shaking him by the shoulders to make clear that she doesn’t think Obama is a Muslim. To think otherwise is to be rather dense, either naturally or consciously.
You are supposed to be ignoring fact and reality. It is now your job to perpetuate the correct and BHO(tm) approved talking points in the name of party unity. Obama is a winner. Hillary is a loser. You must be one of those white uneducated people from Appalachia who likes guns and religion. Eeew. Get with it, what’s wrong with you? Are you a Republican? There is no longer any room in the party for people who question the BHO(tm) conventional wisdom.
At this time, the “Obama is a Muslim” email smear had just passed it’s peak and there was a lot of talk about the debunking of this myth. When I watched it, I really got the impression that Hillary was playing coy, using the ambiguity of her response to keep the idea alive. For me, I was uncomfortable with her not explicitly saying “I know Obama is a Christian” and the “I take him on the basis of what he says” and “As far as I know” are kind of weasel words.
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p>Even if she is not to be criticized for what she did say, she missed an opportunity to be a class act and really knock this pitch out of the park.
I also think the tone of her voice helped form my opinion:
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p>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
I got a “4: Needs work” rating on my comment, so let me add a little bit.
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p>I think sabutai’s reading of Clinton’s comments are valid even if I don’t agree – we can’t read Clinton’s mind. My comment was made not so much to argue the validity of my point of view, it was more to report my reaction while watching that interview at the time it was shown (right before Ohio, iirc). It is possible the sentiment expressed was truly genuine, but it is also possible, and in my opinion more likely, that she was prepped to give the answer with ambiguity because a forceful, unequivocal statement about the well-known fact of Obama’s Christianity could earn Obama some votes.
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p>It’s no secret that, for good or for bad, politicians are master manipulators of language, indirect speech and semantics. One downside of a politician’s mastery (and the Clintons are masters) is that literate audiences need to pay attention and vet much of what they say with an eye of skepticism, in other words ask “what are they really saying?” Chris Matthews recently pointed out a brilliant Bush admin language strategy of renaming chemical weapons “WMDs”, which is not totally dishonest, but it conflates mustard gas with nuclear warheads and made the case for Iraq seem stronger than it really was. If more smart people would have called BS, we might be in a better place.
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p>I use that example not to compare Hillary with Bush’s manipulations, but to explain why language scrutiny is a fast growing hobby. I think because we are over-inundated with dual meanings, dog whistles, and political wink wink nudge nudges, that we react in a fashion that may be hyper-analytical with political language. “We won’t get fooled again”, we tell ourselves. “We’re more savvy than the average observer”, we say. And sometimes we uncover hidden truths and true meanings, but we often find meaning that isn’t there.
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p>I’ve been wrong plenty of times, and could be wrong with this. But right now the evidence of what she said, the temporal context of the conversation, her tone, her tone towards Obama since February, her record of misusing speech, and the absence of what she could have said – remember, these candidates are supremely prepped and this issue had plenty of media play at the time – leads me to the conclusion stated above.
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p>I accept that people don’t agree with me, but given that politicians are master manipulators of language, and, accounting for the items mentioned above, I think it is difficult to say that it is irrational to be suspicious of what Hillary said to Steve Kroft and the manner in which she delivered her opinion. I think both readings, an ernest reading and a sinister reading, are rational and supportable positions.
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p>I’ll close with the caveat that I think that some people ignore the evidence and adopt a position that is politically convenient for them and will use anything for an attack, no matter how half-hearted or asinine.
for being mean spirited.
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p>Seriously, people, we have a common enemy. That enemy isn’t Barack or Hillary – it’s JOHN MCCAIN! Let’s all get a grip (that sentence goes for a big chunk of all the posters on this thread).
I think Clinton’s comments were sloppy, but have been blown way out of proportion. That said, I do want to clarify something that keeps getting repeated:
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p>In 1968, the NH primary was on March 12 and in 1992 it was February 20th. This year, it was on January 8th. You’re talking apples-to-oranges.
We should unify, as people have said below. The Obama campaign didn’t smear Hillary, although people like myself are angry with her. Mark Shields, the calm commentator on PBS’s Lehrer Newshour was angry. Try as I might, I feel like Senator Clinton was the divider, not the victim here. Plus, her argument about the timing the primaries just doesn’t hold water. The primaries were NOT binding in 1968, unlike today and California was in June (the biggest of the non-binding primaries) and was decisive, unlike Super Tuesday today, back in February.
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p>Clinton ensured her marginalization with her comments yesterday, and excuse or not, she will not be Vice President and people in the future will recall this bizarre episode if she tries to run again. It’s getting harder for those of us who voted for Mr. Obama to respect her, but don’t blame Obama and his campaign for that. Blame the Clinton campaign.
Ever since you registered here, your input has consisted entirely of lionization of Obama and attacks on Clinton. Exclusively.
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p>Clinton apologized, RFK Jr accepted it, and aside from one shot by Axelrod, the Obama campaign is moving on.
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p>And if Obama is interested in moving this January, he’d be smart to at least offer Clinton the vice presidency.
I think that Clinton first has to show that she is willing to play ball. For a start, that means that she has to drop the claim that she is more electable and that she has the popular vote. Ultimately she needs to be able to convincingly deliver the message that Obama is the best candidate and will make a great president (whether she personally believes it or not). If she is not willing or able to do that, then I really doubt that she should expect be offered anything. I would expect the same if their positions were reversed. We cannot have the VP undermining the President in this election if we want to win and Obama knows that.
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p>So Clinton now has a choice, she can continue to run for the nomination full bore despite the almost impossible odds (she now needs 84% of the remaining delegates when she hasn’t won a single district by that kind of margin), or she can run a strictly anti-McCain campaign and work to unite her supporters with Obamas. We shall see what she chooses.
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She’s chosen to run against McCain, even though the press is always trying to bait her to go after Obama. And the VP’s job is to win the vote, which may or may not sell the candidate. Kennedy-Johnson and Reagan-Bush are two examples are successful tickets that didn’t merge greatly.
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p>What did happen was that the VP delivered. As in got key electoral votes into the column. That’s what Hillary does.
She has continued to claim a bogus popular vote lead and continues to undermine Obama’s claim to the nomination. While she is well within her rights to do so, it most definitely does not help Obama. Let me put it this way: she has done Obama no favors and should expect none in return.
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p>Obviously, Clinton is a strong candidate, an excellent debater, and still has many enthusiastic supporters, but she also has very strong negatives and it is not at all clear that she would deliver more votes than someone like Bill Richardson.
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p>I agree that there is historic precedent for uncomfortable President/VP combinations, but it just does not seem to me that Obama is the kind of person who would choose a running mate who risks undermining his message. That is why I think she will need to prove she can work well with Obama before she can even be considered. So far, I don’t think she has done so.
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p>I am pretty sure of one thing: ultimatums are not going to work in her favor.
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I don’t think I should have to defend my post, even though I have not “lionized” Barack Obama “exclusively.”
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p>My first post on BMG (I have all very few to begin with), in fact, criticized Obama for caving to industry pressure on the farm bill.
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p>Either way, I have a soft spot for RFK and was genuinely stunned by Clinton’s remarks. I think that many people were. Please try to be a bit more understanding that she touched a nerve with many of us who have a genuine admiration of RFK.
…Hillary is the only candidate who has actually dodged sniper fire.
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p>Who the hell knows what she meant? She did use almost exactly the same words several months ago before anyone knew about Ted’s cancer.
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p>It has been the case for weeks now that, other than Obama being somehow unable to run in November, there is pretty much no way that Hillary will be the nominee. The Clinton campaign, quite understandably, has been looking for something to halt Obama’s roll toward the nomination. I don’t believe for a second that Hillary Clinton truly wishes Obama harm. But it is one of the only scenarios that might make her President someday.
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p>Another on that small list, of course, would be to win the Vice Presidency as Barack’s running mate, then ascend to the presidency. I bet that scenario, already unlikely, became more so yesterday. Team Obama had lots of reasons not to choose Hillary for the ticket. Now they have another one.
He just needed to find an excuse. The reference to the Kennedy assassination has been made before by a lot of other people in the context of the timing of the primaries. It has only become a news story now because the Obama campaign needed an excuse not to offer HRC the vice presidency. People are so naive and the media is so gullible.
The winner gets to pick the Vice President. Clinton has been graceless in defeat and has kept herself off the ticket.
Why would any commentator jump to the conclusion that Clinton was concerned about her own assassination? Is there any evidence to suggest that? It seems far, far more likely that the assassination was on her mind because of the connection between Ted Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis and past tribulations suffered by the Kennedy family and was even mentioned in several recent news stories about Ted.
…was simply making the argument that she is resisting calls to drop out of the race because in past years, several Democratic Presidential nominations (in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running and in 1968, the year Bobby Kennedy was runnning) hadn’t been decided by mid June.
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p>There was certainly no malice toward the Kennedy family. And as Anthony cited on another diary, Bobby Kennedy’s son said that no one should be offended by what Hillary said.
I think this will doom any chance she had of being on the ticket — which I don’t think is a bad thing.
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p>Good grief! What was she thinking?
Keith Olbermann mentioned it in his special comment Friday.
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p>I’m not outraged like Olbermann – if you’re not outraged, you’ll find Keith over the top – but this statement by Clinton is poor, poor, form. I’m not sure if Clinton is consciously trying to tacitly imply that it would be a good idea for her to stick around “just in case” Obama can’t continue his campaign, but it seems that some strategist has been pushing Clinton to use the Obama assassination angle, either implicitly or explicitly, for a while now; she made similar June/RFK references on March 6 and May 7. Irrespective of Senator Clinton’s personal intent, her remarks Friday indicate a poorly thought-out and tasteless strategy developed by campaign staff.
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p>This is just the latest in a long line of Clinton verbal gaffes and misfires stretching back at least to her infamous racial joke about Gandhi running a gas station. This says to me that Hillary sucks at hiring people. Seriously. Whoever wrote that Gandhi joke is an asshat. Mark Penn famously didn’t know that California was not “winner take all”. No one told her until after she needed the state’s delegates that the Michigan and Florida primaries should count. She was out-prepared in the caucus states, especially ones filled with the now-famous “hard working White voters”. I don’t know what genius told her to praise McCain and Karl Rove, but it doesn’t look good to loyal Democrats and doesn’t strengthen her “party unity” angle for her VP argument.
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p>Obama has outshined Hillary with a superior campaign – better message discipline, fewer verbal “gaffes”, less negativity, created a new model for fundraising, smarter campaign spending, etc. If Hillary ran her campaign the way the Obama camp ran its campaign, I think Hillary would be the nominee. I think Hillary’s tragic flaw was that she is an excellent candidate who made poor staffing choices; Senator Clinton was better than her campaign and she will now live with the consequence of not being the Dem nominee.
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p>As a voter, one argument I use in favor of Obama is that I believe Obama’s superior campaign management, high standards, and leadership will transfer to the way he performs as an executive. Conversely, the more I see of Hillary’s campaign, the more I suspect that her poor staffing choices and her management of said staff will spill over to the White House. A fair question has been posed about Senator Obama: Can we afford to elect a president who may require a learning curve?” – in that same vain, the question now becomes of Hillary: Do we want a president who is going to surround herself with an under-performing, under-prepared people who don’t have the tact to see how low it is to play the Bobby Kennedy assassination angle, especially 2008 of all years?”
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p>Hillary is policy-gifted and and quite skilled in governance. She’s been a great Presidential candidate and, despite criticisms above, her campaign has hit many brilliant notes. She has a lot of outstanding service to the country left in her. But now, as we look to reasons as to why Barack Obama is the probable nominee and as we examine the so-called “dream ticket”, we can’t ignore her fatally bad choices in campaign staff as well as her failure to manage the staff and pro-actively correct the mistakes instead of always being in a reactive mode.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Thanks.
There is a huge difference. Whenever I hear people support Obama, especially in contrast to Clinton, it is about the campaign. Superdelegates endorse on the basis of what a great campaign Obama has run. Many who seem to be looking for the last-straw excuse to not support Clinton will cite some random remark she made or a surrogate made which has no bearing on ability to be President. I see this as the decisive difference between Clinton and Obama supporters. Obama supporters are looking at the best campaign; Clinton supporters are looking for the best President.
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p>In 2004 the same phenomenon happened with Dean in Obama’s role and Kerry in Clinton’s. Dean supporters fell in love with his campaign while Kerry supporters thought he was best prepared to be President. I can certainly understand it. For a long time I was indecisive as to whether I wanted an Obama-Clinton ticket or a Clinton-Obama ticket. I figured the former would be better for campaigning in the general while the latter would be better for governing. I ultimately decided that this was really about governing and so threw my support behind Clinton. None of the supposedly outrageous statements people have cited over the months can change that.
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p>It’s unfortunate in a democratic system that campaigning and governing are very different skills. Just as examples I believe Bob Dole would have been a more competent President than his campaign suggests while Deval Patrick was very good at campaigning, but has endured a few rough patches governing. Not that I can think of how to solve this dilemma.
It doesn’t persuade me, but nonetheless.
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p>One critical distinction for me on your Patrick campaign not translating to equally good governance analogy is this: whatever challenges Patrick faced are miniscule in the context of a (so far) 1 year 4 month national campaign against a field that included the excellent Senator Clinton, John Edwards, 5-6 others, a zillion nationally televised debates, Jeremiah Wright, the Muslim smear, unprecedented media coverage, and 50+ actual elections to 50+ different constituent bases.
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p>Obama has had a lot more opportunity to shine and his campaign has produced far more meat to chew over and analyze then any governor’s race, let alone our own; the current Dem race makes gubernatorial races look superficial by comparison. I think there is significantly more evidence embedded in the Obama campaign and the candidate himself that can be used to construct a reasoned expectation on how he will manage his own staff, how he’ll approach nominations, and how he will approach problem solving compared with what we had with any gubernatorial candidate. And I think the converse is true about Hillary when examining the negatives I examined above.
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p>Let me be clear, there has never been for me a “last straw” moment with Hillary and her media over-exposed “gaffes”. And I don’t think individually any one of the gaffes on the list is a smart reason to argue against her being president. For me, I see a sum of “random remarks” that form a bothersome total and establish a pattern. This body of work is not the reason I support Obama, it’s just one item I use to evaluate who I think will make the best president.
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p> I do respect that some don’t find it as important as I do. And am not arguing that any one remark or the sum of all the bothersome remarks should be the one reason to vote against Hillary; I think, despite the examples you have cited, more often than not it is fair to examine the evidence of a campaign and a candidate’s campaign leadership for insight into the standards the candidate will apply to her/his staff, what style of management and leadership they will bring into running the White House, and how they will handle crisis management.
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p>And just to strengthen your argument, there has to be a better argument than believing Bob Dole would have been better than his campaign suggested. We can think of great campaigns that produced less-than-satisfying results, but are there any good examples of executives achieved office from a badly managed campaign and became top-notch Presidents or Governors? What’s the ratio of examples of solid campaign/solid job performance vs poor campaign/solid job performance? It may be an impossible question to answer, but I get the feeling that excellent campaigns produce executives that perform well far more often then sub-par campaigns do. I wish I had some data to know for sure, but I know Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton ran great campaigns, and, love ’em or hate em, were strong presidents.
with your perception that Obama supporters are not looking for the best president. The reason that you can claim so is that it is pretty clear that Obama did run the better campaign (although Clinton ran a good one), and can point to that as evidence of some of the kind of skills and judgement required in a good president. Do you not think that it is reasonable to ask how Clinton’s decision to throw tons of money at people like Mark Penn might reflect how she might run the White House?
I was mostly talking about the complaints about various comments she has made. I am looking for a President that knows the issues, knows the players, knows the process, etc. Not that Obama is completely lacking in those areas of course, but eight years as the kind of First Lady she was can’t be beat in terms of being prepared, “ready on day one” as she likes to put it. It’s great that Obama is inspiring a lot of people, but frankly I’m looking for competence and I could take or leave the inspiration. A key reason I ultimately want them on the same ticket is because I think they can stylistically balance each other. Many countries look to a monarch to inspire while leaving the governing to a Prime Minister and elected Parliament. I believe that Obama makes the better King and Clinton the better Prime Minister, and both roles have their purpose.
Very helpful.
Every post written on this site to do with Obama and Clinton is just a means for a massive pile on. It really does make me wonder about whether blogging is actually a good thing, encouraging activism or just the venting ground for lunatics and junkies with nothing else to do. Heck, the long primary is not the reason we may struggle to come together. We are the reason we may struggle together. Our words and deeds are a tad problematic. I know its fun to argue and to do it anonymously so we don’t actually start beating the crap out of each other, but we are quite a site to behold as we rip into each other at every opportunity as this race goes on. Incredible.
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p>That said, I’m just as crazy as any of you, so here goes:
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p>As an Obama supporter, here is what I think:
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p>1) Clinton didn’t mean anything here about her opponent being assasinated. It was solely a reference to time, even though probably not particularly well thought out after the fact. This is not the horror show people are making of it. She apologized let’s move on.
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p>2) The Obama campaign made a few critical statements but David Axelrod said she gave Hillary the benefit of the doubt. Case closed. Hillary folks, don’t attribute every blog rant to something that the Obama campaign is behind.
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p>3) This post was a real nice effort to try and spin the subject in a new direction. Mind reading par excellence. It assumes that Hillary is getting death threats, which is probably fair to assume, but still an assumption. It then further assumes that she has never talked about these threats, even though we have no clue whether she has or has not. It then further assumes that she is purposely not talking about these assumed threats because she is a woman and does not want to look weak. Four major assumptions there. Fine to want all those four assumptions to be true, but assumptions they are
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p>And I am also sick of the seeming competition people are having over whose candidate is the bigger victim here in this race. Hillary folks want it to be all about sexism that led to her pending defeat. Obama folks write off states that he does poorly in as racist. It is fuckin painful to watch this — when instead we should be getting together and seeing a common interest in kicking ass and winning in 2008. People, our Party picked two incredible people to be its lead dogs – a woman and a black man, unprecedented. The race was tight till the end. Let’s start looking ahead to winning in November.
How we got from racism/sexism to some comments about Obama’s minister to something Hillary said about RFK. Mind you I don’t follow the propaganda ministry mockinbird media so please enlighten me. I am a busy guy playing with my grandson, delighted at him saying another word, rock. Do I really have to follow the junior high school debating points about the next Manchurian Candidates of the Davos Set.