The spat between David Geffen and Hillary Clinton. This only became an Obama issue because Geffen held a fundraiser for Obama around the time the remarks were published. What remarks, you ask?
In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Geffen said that Clinton is “the easiest to beat” of the Democratic field and skewered her unwillingness to apologize for her 2002 vote to use force in Iraq. “It’s not a very big thing to say ‘I made a mistake’ on the war, and typical of Hillary Clinton that she can’t,” Geffen said.
Geffen … saved even sharper criticism for former president Bill Clinton, to whom he was close before a falling-out over the pardoning of financier Marc Rich at the end of Clinton’s second term. “I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person,” Geffen said in an oblique reference to questions surrounding the former president’s private life.
Oh snap! Clinton immediately went on the offensive, demanding an apology from Obama.
“A day after Barack Obama goes out and eschews the politics of slash-and-burn, his campaign embraces the politics of trash,” said Phil Singer, Clinton’s deputy communications director, referring to a speech Obama made Tuesday in Las Vegas.
Per Goon Fistgrrl: Calling Hillary “ambitious” and “polarizing” is NOT dirty politics. Dirty politics is “McCain has a black child,” “Kerry’s wasn’t REALLY a war hero” and “Hillary killed Vince Foster.” If she or anyone else calls Obama “inexperienced” or “shallow,” that’s not dirty politics either. Saying he went to a terrorist school is. For fuck’s sake you have to differentiate yourself from your opponent. It’s not going to be all handholding and squaredancing.
Obama’s most awesome answer:
“It’s not clear to me why I would be apologizing for someone else’s remarks. My sense is that Mr. Geffen may have differences with the Clintons, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with our campaign.”
Owned.
