The Thaw that Started Five Months Ago
The press is agog that Hillary Clinton sat down with–and wooed–her long time personal vast right-wing conspiracy funder, Richard Mellon Scaife.
NYT:
But in a striking about-face, Mr. Scaife now says he has changed his mind — at least about one half of the duo.
Fox:
Scaife, who unnerves some conservatives with countervailing positions on abortion and the war in Iraq, said he still wants to hear from Barack Obama before his newspaper endorses a candidate in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary.
ABC:
Richard Mellon Scaife, a major funder of the 90s-era Vast Right Wing Conspiracy — specifically, The American Spectator and its "Arkansas Project" — today reconsiders his former nemesis in an op-ed in his newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
JMM:
This alone has to amount to some sort cosmic encounter like something out of a Wagner opera. Remember, this is the guy who spent millions of dollars puffing up wingnut fantasies about Hillary’s having Vince Foster whacked and lots of other curdled and ugly nonsense.
Aside from the fact that it is quite common for the poobahs of newspapers to meet with political candidates leading up to an election in their community (and Scaife suggests he’ll meet with Obama, too), I think the meeting ought to be put in context with Bill Clinton’s earlier meeting with Scaife, back in November (a meeting only ABC’s Tapper notes in his coverage), one carefully stage-managed by Scaife’s vast right wing conspirators of the 1990s, Christopher Ruddy and Michael Isikoff. Scaife’s revisionary history of his involvement in the Clintons’ woes started when, in November, Ruddy called Bubba "part Merlin and part Midas."
Bill Clinton now finds himself the unlikeliest of Scaife heroes. Last month Ruddy posted a softball interview with Clinton on the Newsmax site (sample question: "What is the best thing about being an ex-president?"). A worshipful cover story followed in the current edition of the magazine. Clinton, it gushed, is "a political and cultural powerhouse" who is "part Merlin and part Midas—a politician with a magical touch."
The earlier Clinton-Scaife thaw was brokered, according to Ruddy, by Ed Koch. And as happened on Friday with Hillary, Bubba reportedly wowed Scaife. In other words, Hillary’s schmoozing of Scaife comes after he already developed a crush on her husband.
I assume the Clintons have reached out to Scaife for no other reason than they would love his support–and barring that, they would love for him and his wingnut bloodhounds to stay out of their underwear drawers. But what is Scaife looking for?
I think Fox may offer the key: foreign policy. Scaife has soured on Bush’s little war. As he says, in his own op-ed on Clinton:
Particularly regarding foreign policy, she identified what we consider to be the most important challenges and dangers that the next president must confront and resolve in order to guarantee our nation’s security. Those include an increasingly hostile Russia, an increasingly powerful China and increasing instability in Pakistan and South America.
Like me, she believes we must pull our troops out of Iraq, because it is time for Iraqis to handle their own destiny — and, more important, because it is past time to end the toll on our soldiers there, to begin rebuilding our military, and to refocus our attention on other threats, starting with Afghanistan. [my emphasis]
It’s a sentiment expressed, too, about the meeting with Bubba.
What is going on here? Scaife declined to comment, but Ruddy tells NEWSWEEK he and Scaife believe Clinton’s life since leaving office has been "very laudable," and that he is doing "very important work representing the country when the U.S. is widely resented in the world." [my emphasis]
Which suggests that, as early as November (when only Ron Paul and, to a lesser degree, Mitt, advocated for a pull-out on the Republican side), Scaife may have realized he cannot blindly support the Republican brand this year. And currently, faced with a 100-year war McCain presidency, Scaife is stuck siding with Democrats, at least on foreign policy.
There’s probably more–which we’ll see after his interview with Obama (not least since, on all these issues, Obama is actually stronger than Hillary). But for the moment, it’s worth noting that even the godfather of vast right-wing conspiracy cannot abide by the damage Republicans are doing to America’s place in the world. Perhaps, in the face of the Iraq catastrophe and the abdication of America’s moral authority, panty-sniffing no longer seems so important.
I am probably going to catch hell for this, but sometimes I wonder if Democrats are not some of the more petty dumb bunnies running around the cotton patch. Maybe it can be chalked up to all the Obamamania in the blogosphere, but who cares if Scaife has had a change of heart and now says, after 7 plus years of the chosen Republican poster boy nightmare, that Clinton looks pretty good and was worthy? For whatever the reason, shouldn’t that be a good thing, at least a little bit?
I’m concerned about it for the same reason I’m concerned about Hillary’s schmoozing with Murdoch.
Murdoch, at least, proved a certain ideological flexibility in the UK with Tony Blair. And then, he owned Blair. I don’t want our pols to be the property of a newspaper magnate any more than I want the Republicans to be. (Nor should it be possible, but such relationships only lead to a spiraling circle of consolidation and worsening press in this country.)
Otherwise, as I said, if Scaife has determined that foreign policy trumps panty-sniffing, all the better.
Oh, I grant that; but that kind of inbreeding has come to be a constant to some extent as we have been discussing already. I guess my thought was somewhat apart from that (not sure how or why, but I’m sticking with that story!). Or, put another way, your point is valid, but it is not the “Lordy oh my! How could they!?” that has characterized the stark reaction in the blogosphere.
Thanks for this perspective that I had not heard of before.
Why can’t the MSM put the “balance” to reporting like you do.
I’m still pissed at Olbermann for bashing Hillary every fucking
night. As I said before I am for Hillary, but will vote for Obama
cuz he’s a great candidate too.
What I object to is the constant haranguing on every word that
Hillary says. I’m not saying Hillary doesn’t deserve some of it, but
why the fuck are they going overboard?
Also, we are missing out with leads like the war, torture, DOJ, etc.
I guess I could shut the TV off, but I do like Countdown and Hardnuts.
As stated many times, I like em both, would be thrilled with either one compared to the past 8 years and current GOP alternative. Other than my sense of fairness (admittedly sometimes warped) I really have no passionate dog in the fight. That said, I cannot watch Olbamaermann lately. And I have loved him all the way back to ESPN. It is almost pathetic what he is doing. By the way, he may not be the greatest spokesman, but Conte is exactly right about Novitsky.
I don’t see it as Olberhmann “bashing Hillary every night.” And without even beginning to instigate a my candidate your candidate, it’s simply this. The woman has run on her experience superiority. That’s a fucking facade. She has no particular experience. They both passed 2 bills while in the Senate, and had legislation though neither of their faults that did not progress–it’s the frigging US Senate and it’s closely devided since both of them were in it.
But it’s not flogging her or hanging on every word when she tried to conflate sniper fire to experience. There are people that get taken into the local hospitals everynight who have been struck by sniper fire, and none of them has the experience any where near requisite to be President.
So the concept that if she had actually been fired upon, at Tuzla and her husband had sent the only child and the wife into sniper fire, which is stupid on its face, that she had garnered experience is frigging insane to begin with.
She lied about it. She lied not once, not twice, but four or five deliberate times where each lie was fully vetted by the liars on her staff. And it tripped her up. It did her damage, and I don’t know how much but it was fortunate because it revealed a liar who has continued to lie all her life and would damage this nation considerably. She won’t be standing soon, and that’s a great thing.
How can a Six foot, six inch IRS Agent be dirty, and Conte is going to save sports?
Btw, one half of the Bash Brothers is in San Francisco peddling
his new book. Apparently, Novitsky wanted to chat with Canseco…
The best clip of Jose that I’ve ever seen is when a liner hit
his noggin and went over the fence…
Clemens was at the party and was flirting with danger. If Jose says he wasn’t at the shindig, you know he was…
and Rusty knows too…
How sure are we that the Clintons are above laundering dirt on Obama through Scaife?
Yeah, cause the Clintons are the paradigm of all evil and Obama is the freaking messiah. Give it a rest please.
No, I don’t think “The Clintons are the paradigm of all evil”. It’s that Big Bill and HRC show a willingness to make a deal with anyone, and that this moral plasticity led to a “third way” that grew increasingly meaningless as the right polarized.
I don’t HRC, but her and Bubba’s willingness to resort to any means, any ally, in their effort to promote themselves brings back many memories of destructive “compromises” in the 90’s.
Scaife is just the latest. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we don’t start hearing whispers that Obama is an anti-semite, etc.
The Obama is an anti-semite story has already been circulating, via email through certain organizations, for some time. I have no reason to believe that story is tied to the Clintons–there’s no reason to suspect it does.
But if the Clintons DID want to circulate that rumor (and I’m not saying they do), as I’ve already suggested, there are much more effective ways to do so than through Scaife.
In other words, even if you think the worst of the Clintons (and I don’t), Scaife has little short term use to them aside from an endorsement in Pittsburgh.
You don’t have to take anything like the oversimplistic position that the Clintons are the paradigm of all Evil and Obama is the messiah to support Obama and be
1) Repulsed by her gutter attacks on Obama. It is beyond the pale for a candidate from one party to say the other party’s candidate,particular when Bush has been so reprehensible, is more qualified than her primary opponent–and she would jump at the fantasy of having his as VP–she won’t be making that choice though; he will (and yeah I know what the Republican 327s can do and I also know how figging vulnerable McCain and the rest of their slime are so I say bring it the hell on and the sooner the better). November will be here and gone before we all know it.
2) Repullsed by her no stop lying about her experience. A no IQ moron could inteview Hillary in 15 minutes (so I volunteer for that job) and show what a farce her experience for solushuns from day 1 (spelled for emphasis. Hillary’s solushun is to keep using the word solushun interspersed with sniper fire.
Let me address that in a more nuanced way.
What good would it do to “launder dirt on Obama through Scaife”?
First of all, Scaife has ready access to a bunch of media outlets that really aren’t going to affect a Democratic primary (save the Pittsburgh Gazette, for a primary in Pittsburgh). So except for the PA primary (for which Scaife has pointedly said he’s waiting to hear from Obama before endorsing), laundering through Scaife wouldn’t do much good, not for the primary.
Further, for the media lines the Clinton campaign wants to launch against Obama, they’ve been pretty upfront about sending them directly. The issue isn’t so much that the Clinton campaign felt the need to hide behind a Scaife to launch a ridiculous claim that Obama was consorting with Weater UNderground terrorists–they sent those attacks directly and publicly. The problem is that the media–partisan and not–will happily print this “anonymous source” material and do the hiding themselves (and this is true whether the smear is coming from or directed to Obama, Clinton, or McCain). In other words, with the press as insipid as it is, NO ONE needs to launder through Scaife.
Finally, say what you will about Clinton’s bid to stay in the race. But if Obama wins the nomination, she is NOT going to undermine him in the general or after Obama is elected, which is when Scaife (if he resorted to his old ways) would become useful.
So I wouldn’t worry about it.
The attempt to launder dirt on Obama has been made and failed by the conservative Chicago Tribune and Sun Times. The much advertise Rezko blog by the Sun Times has been a collosal disappointment as to revelations and it has revealed a criminal trial by DOJ as usual, going after a Democratic governor as usual.
Those two newspapers have used scores of reporters for two years in an effort to flay Obama with dirt that has gone nowhere. Absent from the pages have been an analytical analysis of White Water, Clinton’s secret failed Health Care plan, the Clinton library contributions that are secret, the income tax filings that remain secret, etc.
Thanks for the more nuanced answer, wheel; it would have been difficult to be less nuanced. My only quibble with your comment is I believe Clinton is already undermining Obama in the general. But I’ll give it a rest even though I’ve never commented about Obama and Clinton in my life, and I have no idea what bmaz is talking about.
Note Pa Gov Rendell praising FOX news as the most balanced news network on primary coverage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..smemo.com/
I have no objection to HRC staying in the campaign. But when she lends legitimacy to the wingnut noise machine, she’s not advancing the interests that most of us on this site, and most in the Dem party, care about.
I’m a lot more bothered by the Fox stuff than this one interview with Scaife (since, once again, Scaife is considering a newspaper endorsement in the lead-up to the PA primary). But then see Atrios’ points on Rendell being Rendell.
Where do they go to get on TV? MSNBC? As much as I truly loathe Fox, and I do, MSNBC has been ridiculous and CNN only marginally better as to treatment of the Clintons. I dunno maybe I am just out past left field on some of this campaign fairness stuff and it is I who should give it a rest, because it is what it is….
And on that note, Saltinwound, I was a bit harsh and I apologize. I have long had a bug in my butt about the way the intra-party horserace was being played out in the blogosphere. It was a more general frustration that should not necessarily have been aimed squarely at you. I still believe the frustration is soundly based (and my concern is truly more about the process than it is either candidate), but I am sorry I pointed it directly at you.
I appreciate the spirit of your comment. We all must try to not let the BO/HRC divide fragment a very vital and valuable political movement.
I’ve supported HRC in all her NY campaigns, but she’s lost me in her attacks on BO.
I gave Bubba a walk thruogh the nineties, with his pandering executing a mentally retarded guy in the run-up to the ‘92 election, his opening the door to big pharma on tv ads, even his tepid support for the ’space shield’ missile defense system and PNAC the resolution for ‘regime change’ in Iraq. I figured he had to do it to survive.
But where did it all lead?
I am going to stay in my retreat from the precipice with one exception. The door opening on drug ads probably is not valid as a beef against Clinton. It was inevitable as a result of a series of events that were probably long in process, but that were accelerated by – wait for it – lawyers. Ones I know too. See here. The Bates decision was, itself, based in part on a decision just before it that opened up advertising of prescription prices. That case, combined with Bates, is the real culprit to the expansion of the commercial purpose doctrine and, subsequently, drug and liquor advertising. Bates’ lawyer, Bill Canby, I know quite well and is the father of my best friend from law school. He is now a senior judge on the 9th Circuit.
Hey, where did the rest of my comment go? There should have been another sentence to the effect That even the principals in Bates were leery of where the decision might ultimately lead, and we have seen some of those thought comes to be; legally, probably a correct ruling, but maybe not a helpful one in many regards.
It sounds like you know alot about the drug ad issue. I wish you’d post about it. It has been a plague, as was the bill the same year that re-wrote the rules on health claims for “food supplements”, opening the gates for fraud on a scale not seen since the food & drug act of 1910.
I really don’t know that much to tell you the truth. I just know about the Bates case because I knew the lawyers. Both the one I mentioned and the guy who argued on behalf of the State Bar of Arizona, who I did part of my seminar thesis in law school under. They were both Constitutional scholars of the highest order and good friends to boot. So I just kind of know that case and how it has led to many different, but predictable, effects; the drug and liquor advertising being, at least partially, two of them. Truth be told, there never really was “law” preventing a lot of these different types of advertising, it was more regulatory policing, trade practices and agreements. For instance on lawyers advertising, it wasn’t a law per se, so much as state bar regulations. Here is another example, most folks probably think that there is a law preventing television advertising of tobacco; but there is not, only an agreement resulting from the tobacco settlement some years back. Quite frankly, under Bates and it’s progeny, that agreement is likely unenforceable if a tobacco producer decided to challenge it.
I have mixed emotions about pharamceutical advertising to the public. It’s a question that gets posed to docs all the time, and people also have the internet where web sites are often a hybrid of useful information and sales. I have never been bothered by advertising pharamceuticals, but have been bothered by quack ads for things that are phony, don’t work, and haven’t proved to work anywhere and haven’t darkened the door of any credible medical literature.
Our governement’s and the F.D.A.’s and H.H.S.’s completely hypocritical facade over cheaper pharmaceuticals that they have tried to deter from Canada is another issue that burns me. H.H.S. is run by a political hack with no medical experience.
Many but not all people have access to the information on the internet both excellent and horrendous. If they bring up questions about what they’ve seen, then that’s what the doctor is supposed to be there for. I also can’t pick up most major newspapers without seeing absolute quackery in print advertisements anyway, some considerably more flagrant and egregious than others.
I don’t see any obejctive evidence that either CNN which is banal, repetitive, and appeals to the lowest common denominator of viewer possible, or MSNBC has done anything biased against Hillary Clinton. They only have to report her statements–she attacks herself by making up phony stories that have nothing to do with experience period.
Her positions in the primary have been a case study in schizophrenia.
They are reporting her own words.
Give it a rest please.
I’m familiar with anyone’s reflex attack after pissing on Obama to say “give it a rest.” What I say is true, and the visciousness and the hypocrisy pushed by Clinton, Williams, Penn, and Wolfson and the surrogates like Rendell whose statements remind me of Lindsay Graham’s phony statements that the surge is splendid will yield the correct result very soon and I won’t have to look at Hillary, Chelsea, Bubbah or Rendell.
Sounds as if you’ve not had to operate in a ‘political’ environment.
There are ways to do biz with people that you despise and detest. I have no idea what the Clintons think of Scaife, nor am I advocating for the Clintons here.
I’m merely pointing out that they’re being pragmatic, and as far as we know they didn’t offer Scaife any ‘deals’. If he’s finally coming around to noticing that Bu$hCo is a criminal outfit then why kick sand in his face?
They aren’t going to change Scaife, and he isn’t going to change them.
But would you have the Clintons be as intransigent and unreasonable as GWBush?
I certainly hope that I’m reading you incorrectly.
The critical question, in my view, is at what point does one NOT compromise. With both Clintons, I think that point doesn’t exist. This is a great strength, but also a great weakness – especially now, when we’re confronted by a extremist right wing, many of whom have open contempt for the American democratic tradition.
When HRC ‘compromises’ with Sam Brownback, or Rupert Murdoch and his minions, or Scaife, I am aware one could see it as a sign of political wiliness. As I said above, in my own personal journey with the Clintons, I came to see it as a sign of emptiness.
This is where we are in the Democratic party, and why the race between BO and HRC is in fact one of such political substance. HRC is closely tied to the old democratic machine, as exemplified by Murtha and Rendell. She is tied to small groups of high-rolling donors, as exmplified by the cabal that threatened to withdraw their support from the Dem party if she’s not the nominee.
This is the democratic party that “compromised” on Iran Contra and Regime Change.
It’s reasonable to say ‘this is reality’ and that BO’s promise of ‘Change’ is merely empty rhetoric. I agree with EW, that it’s really important to have that conversation civilly.
But look what BO has done. He has inspired millions of ‘little people’ to donate, setting up a huge revenue stream that’s outside K street.
That for me is a sign that change IS possible.
The simplistic reflex, and I buy into it this time, and I could powerpoint it until the cows come home, but I’m trying to stay well beyond the perimeter of my candidate vs. this candidate here, is that almost every Republican with power and influence and money has been translated in our society as a chief vehicle of power and influence although it’s not the most important one, wants to run against Hillary Clinton because they feel they can do much better against her.
That is surely the motive of Scaife, and it’s the wish of every Republican who draws a breath and has vital signs enough to show up on your TV or in any other availab le media. They want her to win the nomination because she is much easier to run against and is a more powerful vote draw for them than McCain. Hands down.
Hillary and Scaife…pretty amazing. Next, Monica Lewinsky signs on as a Hillary campaign worker.
It looks like her statement that he is not qualified and McCain and she are (based on nothing whatsoever) has been her best attempt to undermine him in the general and it will fail.
The Republicans are doing anything they can to run against her. They are considerably more afraid to run against him. And all these Cuppa Joe Mornin’ clones that think the Republican attack machine will beat Obama to a pulp have a surprise coming. He is plenty capable of going after McCain.
The Democrats would have to be incompetent beyond belief if they can’t shread McCain in the general.
BTW I suppose KO’s attack on Fox’s attitude toward Hillary Clinton that he just delivered as an end of the show statement,and Rendell’s stupid pandering is Hillary Bashing?
No it wasn’t.
My take on the first part of Keith’s show is that the MSM want Hillary to concede victory, and throw in the towel. She won’t and they get all pissy…
Although I’d like on some levels to see her quit, from her standpoint, I don’t blame her for running through Puerto Rico. Mathematically that will be difficult for her, but she’s going to do it whatever. I don’t see that as an admirable trait–because she takes away money people could contribute for the general even though her contributions are markedly limping now.
I have to say as strongly as I have been for Obama, I think she has every right to keep running. It’s the things she has said praising McCain to bash Obama that I think are over the line. As far as Presidential campaigns being tough, if she wants to go after his posistions, that’s fair game. But when she has her surrogates say that Obama held no hearings in a committee on Afghanistan troops and his sub-committee oversees European affairs, and Afghanistan isn’t in Europe but her three sub-committees on Senate Armed Forces are directly concerned with troop allocations and supplies in Afghanistan, that’s patently absurd. I have clip after clip of Wolfson mouthing off in this vein, and he’s as stupid and as much of a liar as the multimillion dollar fees he’s taking from her campaign. Why doesn’t she ever mention her tenure on Senate Armed Forces. I never hear her do it ever. And that’s for a damn good reason.
It’s the pumping up of her resume to the point of submitting one that doesn’t exist that bothers me. If a job applicant has published papers in journals, and characterizes meeting presentations as more than they are, that’s not so bothersome. If a job applicant says they are experienced neurosurgeons and they haven’t opened a head or done any neurosurgery, then that’s a problem. And that’s what she seems to have done to me.
I do think if she let the health insurance premiums of her campaign workers lag, then that’s a disigenuousness that speaks for itself like the Tuzla sniper fire that she lied about four times being extrapolated as Commander in Chief Red Phone experience if it had been true.
Ducking is not the same as insightful clinical decision making on the ground unless you’re patently stupid and she must think a great number of people are. When I first heard the sniper story, I wondered–I keep up with the media fairly well, so why was it absent from the pages of WaPo, NYT, LA Times, and other papers I monitor and absent from the internet until now?
Them Snipers was a firin’ at me and little Chelsea
and the penetrating chest wound that just missed mah heart still hurts
and if ah did mispeak ah was jist tired X4 times with mah staff vetting mah speeches, but I will take No-Doz and uppers for 3AM calls in the future
It’s not the length of the primary and the way the Democrats have structured it ( (I believe wrongly since I’m strongly for rotating primaries) and I mean the Republicans have winner take all states–Dems don’t. Let’s see what Dean and all the Dems do for 2012 as to the byzantine math major delegate assignments and ridiculously compressed primary schedule that takes mainly all white homogenous states’ small voting percentages relative to their population despite increased voter turnout and distorts them to put out all but two candidates long before February 5.
BTW in Penn where Obama will strongly take Philly and its surrounding burbs–delegates will be awarded much like Texas. The delegate count will go to Obama strongly there because 50% of the delegates are there and he will be rewarded because that area voted more strongly in the 2006 midterms. He won the Texas delegates the same way although the media stupidly reported she “won Texas.”
Although some of her statements IMHO have been vicious as well as those of her surrogates (the worst to me was floating this experience facade that is not supported with anything objective and seems to amount to the fact she married a President (surely she couldn’t think people are dumb enough to extrapolate her seven years in the Senate over his 4 as superior experience–both of them sponsered two bills that passed in total).
Pete
You may believe those things–strongly. But this is not the blog for those rants. Please consider this a warning.
That’s fine EW, but it does seem that it’s Okay for some people to opin as Bmaz did, and not for others to ever respond. I responded specifically to two things–the claim that MSNBC and CNN were bashing HRC, and that Obama was being characterized by his supporters as a messiah and HRC as the paradigm of evil @6, and the definition of response is that I didn’t open those comments up–I responded to them.
1) The first were complaints that MSNBC is bashing HRC. I don’t know how in the world you characterize those as different from what you’re calling my rants. My “rants” have been raised by a number of very responsible people. And I have commented here frequently and valued the threads when I don’t have time to comment or frankly at times to do the research that the threads stimulate a lot of us to do before commenting–and make us better informed for doing the research.
1) In several comments the point was raised that MSNBC and other TV networks were bashing Hillary. That seems okay for you. But responding that they aren’t seems not to be okay.
2) Bmaz has repeatedly characterized this paradigm as “Yeah, cause the Clintons are the paradigm of all evil and Obama is the freaking messiah.”
I think things are much more nuanced than that, and Bmaz knows it.
I also notice that on FDL or Jerilyn’s blog the weight is heavily for Hillary. Jerilyn’s blog has become an unabashed Hillary shill and that’s disappointing because she’s better than that.
I think what you’re trying to say is that on this blog issues of which candidate is better are to be avoided (that is probably until there is a general election and then McCain will be dissected and at the level this blog operates that will be welcome and interesting for me) or that what you try to do is stimulate people to comment on issues you raise and avoid the primary.
I object to two things. First, the string of posts, one piling on top of another. And two, the tone.
I’m frankly more of an Obama supporter than a Hillary supporter, and am sympathetic to the charge that her scorched earth approach will hurt us in the general. (Still, that is her prerogative, and I think it is now hemmhoraging her support among supers). But I also agree that MSNBC has been out of line with Hillary (and then, after she kicked Shuster’s ass, overboard in the other direction save Olbermann).
Still, I can express those opinions in one post, not eight. And I don’t particularly think that expressing it AT ALL contributes to the conversation here. I just stopped subscribing to two of my favorite blogs (one pro Hillary, one pro Obama) because I don’t find bloggers’ scorched earth comments any more productive than Hillary’s. And I’m happy to do that to commenters here, too.
Thanks, bmaz, no problem. And thanks, Pete, for showing what earning a “give it a rest please” looks like.
Points taken on the multiple comments which could have replied and been condensed into one.
I have the most difficulty with tone (mine) since it doesn’t seem to be different from the tone that others have used though. I can make substantive criticisms when I need to, but I don’t know how you can respond accurately to things that have been said by a candidate when they have been personal attacks on another one and not butressed by facts.
Everyone is concerned about the tone Senator Clinton’s and surrogates (whose mind must be conflicted at the difficult decisions that face anyone when the stakes are as high as as a Presidential primary campaign) and how they will impact the general election.
I am a bit amused at all these “Man lookout for what the Republican attack machine will do using a clip of A or B.” I’m ambivalent about that. I’d like to think that a large percent of Americans who will vote would be able to see through the cheap petty shots and repulsive Swiftboating, but “pros” claim that they won’t.
Polls are frightening when they indicate that the Swiftboating of absurd proportions “works” and when they reflect that the cheap attacks are effective and a substantial percentage of voters actually believe them.
Well, as to tone, yeah bmaz got out of hand.
But then he apologized. On his own.
That’s a tremendous difference, and one that is critical to maintaining the civility of this blog.
More importantly, the point is this blog doesn’t blog on primary, per se (except for my rants on the clusterfuck, which thanks to the unworkability of any solution, I can continue). So the long threads dedicated to it are really uncalled for.
I actually wasn’t referring to Bmaz’s tone which is always congenial in my perception. I knew he was being sarcastic there, but it wasn’t an uncivil sarcasm if that makes sense. I was trying to express my difficult in responding to comments on the primary, and I think what you’re saying is “better not to hit the submit comment button.”
I just was reacting to this huge volume of outrage, that you see reems of at FDL and all over the web about how Clinton has been beaten up, victimized, and mysoginized from Day 15 years ago and Day One f this campaign, that I have never thought was warranted. You could call me perpetually blind to mysoginy, but I really doubt that.
The outrage manifests itself at FDL but the repetitive, excessive, and frankly childish ranting that KO and several other on the air personalities are reprehensible worthless “sonofabitches” and what it gets down to is they wouldn’t be if they didn’t criticize Clinton for tangible scorched earth attacks that are often false that she could have avoided but believes will defeat her opponent.
And what’s funny to me is that the reams of comments that KO is excrement because he dared to point out something that might be true about someone and show clips that underscores the truth about what he says that CBS first showed, is tolerated, even welcomed. But any comment there that says “hey wait a minute” the comments about Bosnia and their extrapolation as experience that’s substantive are just not true is deemed over the line or not tolerated.
I didn’t even see an apology for Bmaz or didn’t even think one was necessary. If you say one is up there in the comments it is. Bmaz has used that line before, but I think he was using it to simply emphasize a bit sarcastically but in no way that really would offend anyone, that in his mind a lot of people who support Obama worship the ground he walks on–not true and demonize Hillary. A lot of people prefer him over her for their own reasons, and you hardly need me to point that out.
What I meant though is that I understand that
1) You correctly don’t want the pissing contests about candidates here
2) There is frankly a lot of junk that FDL has deteriorated into as to the proportion of comments that you never see here (and I think everyone understands the content I refer to–it was the subject of many commenters the day that you switched from the old format to this one here but I’d have to look it up–)and I know you don’t want that.
But what’s difficult for me is that while I understand you don’t want the primary discussed here in terms of specifics on the candidates (I think) or possibly period a thread like this one opens up.
Someone starts saying that KO is trashing Clinton and it seems to someone else (me) that he’s merely underscoring what she said and did for what it’s worth, and butressing it with clips that one could consider evidence.
So I was trying to point out that (and yes I admire KO more for what he’s done with that show than all his sports work)it just seems to me that the problem is not with KO but with Senator Clinton who did the things that KO is merely reporting with clips rather than slanting to bash one candidate or another.
I do understand this Marcy, and always welcome your comments on any aspect of the primary. Michigan is special coming from you because you have been deeply involved there and are such a prescient observer.
I’m sorry about the situation in Michigan, and I’m sorry that so many people like you who are in Michigan and are so well informed and invested in electing a candidate have been put in this unusual position. I do believe that there was an agreement, and that’s the end of it as far as delegates before a candidate is named for the general. I also believe that people like Dingell, the union leader, Granholm, Levin and others who have been named as principles early on in moving Michigan up are supremely disingenuous having been explicitly told what happened, dissing it and showcasing their dissing, and now wailing to the rooftops that it isn’t fair for their voters after they screwed the voters and no one else did. Obama isn’t and didn’t screw the voters in Michigan and Florida. Democratic politicians who are very prominent did in both states–elected and non-elected personalities.
I think that after the candidate is named, Michigan and Florida delegates will be able to be seated. I don’t think that Clinton’s going to the credentials committee with her argument that she is now concerned for Florida and Michigan when she was a party to the 4 state proferred agreement is going to change this, and of course I could be completely all wet, have been, and will be many times.
I must say I find Granholm and her group’s going to the credentials committe as they say they will do the most blatant form of crybabying in that they knew what they were doing to all the voters in Michigan, and were told explicitly that they were taking their ability to vote away, and they said “screw it” thinking they could come back later and put the toothpaste in the tube or “unscrewing it.”
I too saw it as a mutual benefit situation.
S giving HRC props will certainly mean something to those that read
his paper. If she were the Dem candidate in the GE he would then put the chalk outline of Vince Foster’s body under the bold headline
“NEVER FORGET”
came across this in Pitt’s other paper..large numbers of Republicans switching to Dem Party..maybe Rush”chaos” or ????
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg…..15-457.stm
Scaife’s paper yesterday…
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/…..59720.html