Let’s try a new tactic: Fear. Here is Hillary Clinton’s new ad:
Boo! There are a few things I don’t like about this. First off, the blue tones aren’t doing anything for me. Secondly, it takes six rings for the President to get to the phone? And it’s not like she was sleeping because, Point Three, she’s all dressed and already in make up!
The ad has echoes of a famous “red telephone” spot that Roy Spence, now a Clinton adviser, made in 1984 for former Vice President Walter Mondale when he was seeking the Democratic nomination against Gary Hart.
He’s right. Check it out:
Back to the official response:
Plouffe said dismissively: ‘Senator Clinton has already had her red phone moment, and it was the [2002] decision whether to allow George Bush to invade Iraq. She answered affirmatively. She did not read the National Intelligence Estimate, so she didn’t do her homework either.’
Oh snap. The Obama camp then made their own rebuttal video, playing up this strength:
So of course the obvious questions comes up, this time via Slate’s John Dickerson:
What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary’s career where she’s been tested by crisis?
This one is so easy to debunk, I can’t believe I have to waste precious keystrokes on it. Via Drudge:
With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a “dressed” Barack Obama.
The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya.
The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.
“Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?” questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.
Yes, wouldn’t we? I mean, it’s appalling that the representative of the United States would dress in the traditional garb of the country they are visiting! Surely no other American, and certainly not Mrs. Clinton, would ever have done such a thing! Certainly neither she nor First Lady Laura Bush would ever dress in the head scarves so beloved by Muslim women:
Certainly her husband President Clinton would never have donned any tribal garb!
And as we all know, President Bush is a secret Taoist.
Actually, that last outfit is pretty swank. I wonder where I can get one.
Today, Senator Clinton got a little pissy about a couple of fliers…
There’s something really wrong with this, though. Let’s start with the facts.
Her argument with the health care flier is that it misrepresents her position by claiming she would “force” people to buy insurance. But she would, so that’s not a lie.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., this morning left open the possibility that, if elected, her government would garnish the wages of people who didn’t comply with her health care plan. “We will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it’s that or it’s some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments,” Clinton said in an appearance on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”.
Furthermore, she’s been stumping in Ohio, one of the most economically depressed states and one of the ones hardest hit by NAFTA, by saying she’s going to scrap NAFTA. This is funny, since NAFTA is considered by Bill Clinton to be one of the shining jewels of his Presidency. Let’s see what Tim Russert had to say about it this morning:
No, the problem here is with the completely hypocritical tone. The health care mailer went out weeks ago. Her campaign complained about it then.FactCheck.org wrote about it 20 days ago. The NAFTA mailer is over a week old. Feigning outrage as though you’ve never seen them before is a bit disingenuous.
Since when do Democrats attack one another on Universal Healthcare?
Um, well, there was that time earlier this month when your surrogate pulled a Godwin and compared an Obama ad to a Nazi march. (Predicted by Jackfruit back on December 22. He wins a cookie.) You’ve also personally repeatedly accused him of having a health plan that “leaves 15 million people uninsured.” In that video you even go on to say “Just because Senator Obama chose not to present a Universal Healthcare plan…” which sounds like an attack. There’s also these four items pulled up by the Obama campaign:
2/23/08 — Clinton Attacks Obama on Universal Health Care: Clinton Said Obama Does Not have A Plan To Provide Affordable Health Care To Everyone. “I have a plan to provide affordable health care to everyone. My opponent does not,” she said. “What that means is we will continue to leave people out, the insurance companies will continue to be able to charge outrageous rates, we will not get the prevention that we need by covering everyone.” [Chicago Tribune, 2/23/08]
2/22/08 — Clinton Attacks Obama on Universal Health Care: Clinton: Obama, Unlike Edwards, Refused To Take Political Risk And Cover Everyone. “It is not enough to say, “Let’s come together.” We know we’re going to have to work hard to overcome the opposition of those who do not want the changes to get to universal health care. You know, when I proposed a universal health care plan, as did Senator Edwards, we took a big risk, because we know it’s politically controversial to say we’re going to cover everyone. And you chose not to do that. You chose to put forth a health care plan that will leave out at least 15 million people. That’s a big difference.” [Texas Debate, 2/22/08]
2/20/08 — Clinton Attacks Obama on Universal Health Care: In “Get Real” Speech At Hunter College, Clinton Asks Who Obama Would Choose To Leave Out Of His Health Care Plan. “One of us has a plan to provide health care for every single American with no one left out, no excuses, no exceptions. I believe health care is a moral right, not a privilege and I will not rest until every American has access to quality, affordable health care, and I cannot wait until I can work with the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, our own Charlie Rangel. My opponent leaves out at least 15 million Americans. The question is who would you leave out? Would you leave out he man who called me from Northern New York who had an insurance policy that wouldn’t pay for the operation his son needs. Or the woman who called me from Long Island who couldn’t get bone marrow transplant for her daughter? Or the mom who said, what am I going to do with my son who has congenital heart problems and we don’t have insurance? I don’t want to leave anyone out. I am not running for president to put band-aids on our problems, I’m looking to solve them once and for all.” [Clinton speech at Hunter College, States News Service, 2/20/08]
2/9/08 — Clinton Attacks Obama on Universal Health Care: Obama Says “No We Can’t” On Health Care. “During a rally with nurses in Tacoma — a largely female crowd — Clinton said, “When it comes to health care, my opponent is saying no we can’t. Well, I say yes we can.” Obama has used “yes we can” in campaign speeches to deflect charges his upstart campaign can’t succeed.” [Newsday, 2/9/08]
“He promised change as a compassionate conservative,” she said referring to Bush, “and the American people got shafted.”
The line, delivered with a passion not always seen from the New York senator, brought the hundreds at Cincinnati State College to their feet.
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” she continued.
And in the press screed she compared him to Karl Fucking Rove! And this is two short fucking days after she said:
And — and you know, no matter what happens in this contest — and I am honored. I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored.
Some in the press are wondering if this is her “Dean scream” moment. I’m wondering if she can pick a personality and run with it. Polite and considerate? Must be Thursday. Outraged and angry? Saturday. I liked the warm and caring Hillary Clinton that I saw on Thursday. I wish they’d let her out to play more often.
I didn’t blog about this at first, because it seemed to come and go quickly. But like all things I have a tendency to put off, it always festers in to something horribly awesome.
The big stink this week is that Obama and Deval Patrick both used the same line in some speeches they each gave. Check out the side by side:
But the thing is, Patrick and Obama have been friends for a long time. Patrick is a national co-chair of the Obama campaign. Patrick says he is not upset at all, and the Obama team point to Hillary and McCain both using his “fired up and ready to go” line recently.Pressed on the matter, Obama said that Patrick “suggested that we use these lines…I thought they were good lines. I’m sure I should have [given him credit], I didn’t this time.” Patrick responded by saying he didn’t need credit.
And that should have been the end of that, if Clinton didn’t like to nit-pick in an attempt to get something, anything on Obama. Tonight’s CNN debate:
BROWN: I think one of the points — I think one of the points that John King was alluding to in talking about some of Senator Clinton’s comments is there has been a lot of attention lately on some of your speeches, that they are very similar to some of the speeches by your friend and supporter Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, and Senator Clinton’s campaign has made a big issue of this. To be blunt, they’ve accused you of plagiarism.
OBAMA: Right.
BROWN: How do you respond?
OBAMA: Well, look, the — first of all, it’s not a lot of speeches. There are two lines in speeches that I’ve been giving over the last couple of weeks.
I’ve been campaigning now for the last two years. Deval is a national co-chairman of my campaign, and suggested an argument that I share, that words are important. Words matter. And the implication that they don’t I think diminishes how important it is to speak to the American people directly about making America as good as its promise. Barbara Jordan understood this as well as anybody.
And the notion that I had plagiarized from somebody who was one of my national co-chairs, who gave me the line and suggested that I use it, I think, is silly, and, you know, this is where we start getting into silly season, in politics, and I think people start getting discouraged about it…
…
BROWN: Senator Clinton, is it the silly season?
CLINTON: Well, I think that if your candidacy is going to be about words, then they should be your own words. That’s, I think, a very simple proposition. And, you know, lifting whole passages from someone else’s speeches is not change you can believe in, it’s change you can Xerox. And I just don’t think…
And because she’s so vehement about this, we can assume absolutely that she has never plagiarized, and if she did, certainly no one will be fast enough to find and post it within an hour of the debate ending…
Bill Clinton, 92: “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”
Hillary Clinton, tonight: “You know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.”
Which just goes to show how completely silly and spurious the attack was in the first place.
OK, this might be my new favorite line of attack. I get a new one every week, like Primary Chanukah!
“There’s a big difference between us — speeches versus solutions, talk versus action,” she said.
“Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank or fill your prescription or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.”
Why is this my new favorite? Goon Tensen put it best.
I must say, as mindblowing as Senator Clinton giving a speech about how useless speeches are was, the biggest moment for me was the line “Speeches don’t pay the bills.”
“You talk about big ideas and often with a lack of specificity. And it’s been one of the complaints about your campaign,” Kroft remarked.
“Remember, early on in the campaign, the complaint about me was that I was too professorial. That I would go through these town hall meetings and, you know, go into great detail about this and that and the other. And you know, wondering what ever happened to that inspiring guy who spoke at the Democratic…convention. Yeah. And now that I’m inspiring people and saying, ‘Hey, you know, where is the specifics?’ And so, you know, if there are issues that you want to cover right now, I’m happy to,” Obama said. “So why don’t we work those through?”
You can, in fact, have it both ways. You can enjoy his oratory in one speech and then listen to a different one full of policy. You just have to do your civic duty and pay attention, America.
Obama has advocated easing the Bush-imposed ban on Cuban-Americans visiting the island and sending money to their relatives. He makes a broader case for a new Cuba policy, arguing that capitalism, trade and travel will help break the regime’s stranglehold on the country and help open things up.Clinton immediately disagreed, firmly supporting the current policy. This places her in the strange position of arguing, in effect, that her husband’s Cuba policy was not hard-line enough. But this is really not the best way to understand Clinton’s position. In all probability, she actually agrees with Obama’s stand. She is just calculating that it would anger Cuban-Americans in Florida and New Jersey.
….
This is not naiveté. Obama’s position on Cuba is not all hope. Most of the older generation of Cuban-Americans are hard-line Republicans anyway, so it’s probably pointless courting them. And the younger ones—under 45 or so—are far less wedded to the punitive approach and symbolic battles of the past. So Obama is taking a calculated risk that the time is right.
Can I donate to Obama’s campaign?
Emphatically no. It is illegal to donate if you are not a U. S. citizen. Please do not donate, and please do not ask a U. S. citizen to take money and donate it for you. IT IS VERY ILLEGAL
Can I buy from Obama’s store?
No, that counts as a donation. If you want Obama gear, there’s lots of it on CafePress and all of it perfectly legal for you to buy.
Well then, can I make an avatar and buy it for someone in exchange for them donating?
No, you cannot. Please do not do this, it is very shady.
Can I make avatars just for fun?
Yes, you may.
What else can I do?
You could buy Obama’s books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, but if you really want to give money to someone, please choose a charity (use Charity Navigator to find a good one) and donate money or time to it. The true spirit of this campaign is not just to help Barack get elected, but to help ourselves and each other.
I work for a government contractor? Can I still donate?
Yes you can. You are not a government contractor, your employer is.
Why are so many people donating $xx.01?
In one of Barack’s speeches, he told us a story about an elderly woman who sent him a check for $3.01 and a Bible verse. The addition of an extra cent is symbolic: every little bit counts.
Emphatically no. It is illegal to donate if you are not a U. S. citizen. Please do not donate, and please do not ask a U. S. citizen to take money and donate it for you. IT IS VERY ILLEGAL
Can I buy from Obama’s store?
No, that counts as a donation. If you want Obama gear, there’s lots of it on CafePress and all of it perfectly legal for you to buy.
What else can I do?
You could buy Obama’s books, Dreams from my Father and The Audacity of Hope, but if you really want to give money to someone, please choose a charity (use Charity Navigator to find a good one) and donate money or time to it. The true spirit of this campaign is not just to help Barack get elected, but to help ourselves and each other.
Excellent! When making Obama merchandise, it is essential to keep it respectful and positive. Remember you are a representative of the campaign, and the face you present to the world is what people will remember about Obama. When making flyers, you need to add this DISCLAIMER somewhere on them: “Paid for by _________. Not authorized or paid for by the Obama campaign.” This is a legal requirement.
