NPR did a story this morning on his campaigning for Hillary in rural America (or the "country," as he and the reporter called it). Now, we all know that rural folks are Hillary's folks, as everything about Hillary is pure country. This is apparently the entire focus of the Clinton campaign. So in the piece, Bill is speaking to some crowd and says,
If it had been up to the experts and the party elites and the wealthiest Americans who are Democrats, she'd be toast.And then I remember what I didn't like about Bill -- the non-stop lying.
Nothing in the above statement is true. The experts all had Hillary winning until about January/February this year, which was just three months ago. Until then, Hillary had been the front runner for at least a year.
I don't recall the party elite (DLC, DNC) rushing to embrace the first-term Senator for Illinois. I mean, I recall that it was thought to be nice that Obama was running to get some experience under his belt, but that he was really running for 2016. Are the party elite embracing Obama now? Seems to me that if Hillary's sole chance of winning is convincing the party elite to vote for her at convention and they are already against her, then maybe it is time for her to step aside.
If I am not mistaken (too busy to look it up), the vast majority of Obama donations come from small donors. This is his huge advantage, because they can still give. Whereas, Hillary is out of money and running out of donors, as most of her contributions come from the wealthiest members of the Democratic party.
The most troubling thing about Clinton's lying is that it always seems to be for self-interested reasons. The "I need to lie to these rubes if my wife has any chance" kind of lying. Not saying it's worse than the Bush lying, but I really wish we weren't reduced to making the argument that the other guy's lies are worse than our guy's lies.
5 comments:
Thank the lord that BO never has uttered a falshood. especially when it was politically convenient (like on the gas tax)
When is his beatification ceremony?...
I'll just ignore your implied assertion that he needs to be killed.
:)
Yes, it's true: Obama has lied. I've lied, Dave's lied. We all have lied and probably will lie again. Some are "good" lies for the "right" reasons, some are "bad" lies with unfortunate consequences--no difference, they're all lies, which is more or less problematic no matter what value system you subscribe to.
What Dave is calling attention to is a consistent and sustained pattern of lies. Lying regularly, seemingly effortlessly, as a habit. You can possibly explain away each individual "misstatement" or whatever you want to call it. But over time it becomes a problem, and at the very least it makes it difficult to trust either Clinton. That's the difference.
Ok I meant to imply he was being made a "living" saint... I apologize if it seemed otherwise.
I will not go into all of the obama camp's "lies" which by the way I think is not a constructive frame for characterizing either sides arguments.
BUt I think it is the BO campaign that is being the most destructive by constantly running down the Clinton years. Implying that they were no better than GHWB and insulting the only successful democratic president in generations. Furthermore dismissing the Democratic party as politics as usual will not be productive once he is the nominee, and the party begins to realize that he isn't a true democrat...
Also, since Clinton has put forward SPECIFIC policy proposals, it will be much much more likely that she would be held accountable to those positions were she to win.
BO has vague promises to transcend politics as usual, but very few specifics (except those positions taken after Hill) If Barack wins it will be much harder to hold him accountable. He will dismiss popular concern as special interest pressure and more politics as usual, meanwhile he will cut deals.
just my opinion...
To add to the scrum...
I don't think it's fair to say that BO has no specific policy proposals. A quick breeze through the issues section of his web site demonstrates to me that he has plenty of specific proposals. Granted, his campaign has made a strategic decision not to run on policies but rather on a vision of a "transformational politics" (which I don't necessarily buy), but that's different than not having any sort of policy proposals, like you imply.
And speaking of non-constructive memes, can we drop the "not a true Democrat" one? The Obama campaign has dumped plenty of resources into the campaigns of people running down-ticket, and both campaigns have dramatically increased D registration. It's going to be tough to walk that one back into the shed if/when your or anyone else's preferred candidate doesn't win the nomination.
Let's quit sniping with the "elite" meme as well, shall we? If a body's made it to this stage in presidential politics in this day and age, they're by definition in the "elite." Besides, whoever gets the D nomination is going to be tagged as an elitist, so let's stop doing the GOP's work for them.
$.02
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