Republicans use Clintons to attack Obama
Published by punkass marc June 4th, 2008 in ObamaramaCalling McCain better suited than Barack Obama to lead the nation is one of the umpteen million things the Clinton campaign did that left me shocked. I mean, sure, Clinton could claim she was better suited, but to name McCain in such a quotable way as superior? Well, now it’s fucking the party pretty hard:
Surely, we can’t have a VP candidate who has publicly shown such a total lack of faith in the presidential candidate. Not that it really matters, though — whether he chooses Clinton or not, her uniquely divisive primary campaign strategy has really improved McCain’s odds. Boooo.
Any Democrat who believes the nation’s 2nd-most-hawkish ghoul behind CheneyBush is better suited than Barack Obama (who, by the way, actually has a lot of progressive foreign policy positions) to lead is flat-out kidding themselves.
Oh, now, Marc, I’m disappointed in you. Clinton is clearly not saying that McCain is better suited to leading the country than Obama is; she is saying that SHE is better suited to leading the country than Obama is, and that Obama’s lack of experience will compare poorly to McCain’s in terms of resume for the job if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee running against McCain. There’s enough real stuff about Clinton to complain about without needing to resort to basically making shit up based on out-of-context quotes.
Did you watch the video? Did you see the quote? The only person who should disappoint you is Clinton. Both of them.
What sucks is that everything people predicted about the way Clinton’s campaign tactics would be used to help a Republican win is coming true immediately, and it’s a doggone shame. And if she’s the VP candidate, it’ll make those quotes even juicier.
I did indeed watch the video…I hope I wouldn’t comment on something on a public forum without watching it! Why should I be disappointed in her for that? As I said, she obviously wasn’t promoting John McCain over Obama. The only people who would listen to that quote and come away with that impression are, I’m afraid, the people who have a reason the predates the video for wanting to believe that.
As I said in my blog post earlier, until very recently I wouldn’t have ever expected her to be chosen as Obama’s running mate, and even though I now think it is a possibility due to a desire to appease the rather enormous number of vigorously voting Dems that went for Clinton during the primaries, I still think it’s only a possibility. I wouldn’t put it at even close to a 50% possibility, so if I were you, I’d wait to worry til it becomes more of a real deal.
She said McCain would be more experienced than Obama. As soon as she said it, we all knew that the McCain campaign would run with that. She fucked up. And I think it should cost her the VP slot. The party needs some internal discipline to be competitive with Republicans who have it. The first rule is never cross fellow party members. That was just sloppy and the message needs to be sent that you cannot win by crossing the party that way.
“The party needs some internal discipline to be competitive with Republicans who have it.”
That sounds rather pro-Republican, Amanda. Or it certainly could if somebody quoted you out of context and framed it that way. And then should we punish you for it by taking an action that is in no way comparable to a punishment inflicted upon one person by another group of people, but an action that is instead a very important policy decision that should hinge on double-digits’ worth of factors, not a single desire to punish someone?
I have no objection that this be proposed as one reason to not consider Clinton for VP. However, I cannot respect a decision of this magnitude made based upon on a YouTube video of cobbled-together sound bytes.
It’s an official Republican video. It’s the message their party will be showing as often as possible this year. And yeah, she does clearly impy McCain is better via experience, no editing required.
And why is the idea of a party exercising internal discipline, ie requiring its members to stick to helping the party, so Republican? To say Democrats shouldn’t hold party members accountable for party sabotage makes no sense.
Lisa, the Republicans may be evil, but they understand politics. How else would they win while having uniformly unpopular policy ideas? We would do well to see what works for them and doesn’t work for us, and learn from them. One thing Republicans do well is maintain internal party discipline. And I’m sure as shit none of them are dumb enough to suggest that members of the other party would be better at running the country.
As for your clever insinuations, I’m not actually contending that I should be rewarded with a VP slot, which is huge. I’m not playing politician. Closer, actually, to campaign consultant, which rewards giving advice like that, and why I actually had a job briefly in that area.
Also, remember: I never said that McCain was better than Clinton. For our “sins” to even be close to equal, I would have had to. Unlike Clinton, I’ve always had my head about me, and know who the real enemy is. And it’s not a fellow Democrat.
An official Republican YouTube video of cobbled-together sound bytes…wow, that does make it more respectable…not really (sigh). I don’t disagree with the notion that there will be some people out there that are impressed by it but I doubt it would be anyone who normally bases their decisions on reasoned input, which means they probably weren’t going to vote for Obama no matter what. If you’re worried about how those who are big Hillary fans will respond to this, do you really think an Official Republican YouTube Video of Cobbled-Together Sound Bytes misrepresenting what she has to say is going to have more impact on that group than an impassioned plea BY HER to vote for Obama, which not only has she ALREADY MADE but will guarantee make AGAIN, likely as soon as this Friday, in spite of the massive hatestink aimed at her by some Democrats right now?
I didn’t say that Republicans were the party of internal discipline; Amanda did. I don’t think they necessarily are. And I have no problem with holding party members accountable for stupid shit that they say, though I haven’t heard anyone around here doing so when Obama says such shit, like claiming his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz or repeatedly referring to professional women as “sweetie” on national television, so it is a little aggravating that this sudden obsession with accountability is so lopsidedly presented. On a more coolheaded front, I do think it’s a poor idea to base the decision for who should be veep solely on something like this, and worse, to frame it as some kind of chastisement. The decision for veep should be so much more nuanced and important than that.
Oops. Amanda, for some reason you were stuck in moderation, so I saw Marc’s response first, so that’s what my last post was responding to. So now I’m out of chronological order, dammit!
“Lisa, the Republicans may be evil, but they understand politics. How else would they win while having uniformly unpopular policy ideas?”
Ooh, DON’T get me started!!
Oh well, too late. I don’t think Republicans en masse are evil. And I think they win because their policy ideas aren’t actually unpopular. The results of the policies upset people enough to run to the Dems to get shit fixed, but then as soon as it IS fixed, they pour back like lemmings into the arms of the Repubs–because those are the IDEAS they prefer. I flatly refuse to speculate as to WHY that is right now, it’s too darn late at night and I won’t be able to sleep if I start pondering anything that may start me down the road to misanthropy.
If Repubs maintained internal party discipline so well, they wouldn’t be incessantly plagued with resignations from their own people constantly and flagrantly violating their own trumpeted moral stances. Saying that the resignations occur BECAUSE of their party discipline is like saying that America is the most well disciplined country in the First World because our prisons are the fullest, kwim?
LOL, I was definitely not trying to insinuate that you should be veep, cleverly or otherwise!! I have no idea where you got that from my post. Really I don’t. I don’t actually think you’ve committed any “sins,” either, which was my point; everyone says things that can be misrepresented or weren’t the brightest remark they could have made at some particular time, place and/or situation–it would be stupid to start crying out for you or anyone else to be punished for doing so to the equivalent degree of spanking a child with an axe for playing with matches. No doubt the child would never play with those matches again, but there really are more appropriate, if not as terminally effective, ways to present to the child that that’s really a bad, stupid idea. My other point, which I think really is the much more important point, is that the decision for veep really should be based on a lot more cogitation and calculation than one YouTube video of cobbled-together sound bytes.
On a side note, I’m not really pushing for Hillary as veep. I think I’ve made that pretty obvious. It’d be nice, but so would a foot massage. I can live without both and neither will affect my intention of voting for Obama in November.
Oh. It just occurred to me that by “clever insinuations” maybe you meant you thought I was referring to the whole Edwards campaign thing?
Ouch. No, I wasn’t. I never thought you said anything stupid that you shouldn’t have said that got you pushed off the campaign team; I thought it was a nasty smear, first to last, and I am pretty sure I said so more than once at Pandagon. So I wasn’t comparing you saying something stupid and losing a prominent political position to Hillary doing the same thing.