Cross-posted at One Million Strong
The increasingly strident tones of the Hillary campaign have wound up slowly in past weeks like an air-raid siren and is now reaching a climactic shrill register. Time to head to the shelters until the all-clear sounds, I guess. I never expected to read this from the campaign trail:
...Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) mounted a new, more aggressive attack against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Sunday, raising direct questions about his character, challenging his integrity and forecasting a sharp debate over those subjects in the days ahead.
Clinton has hammered Obama recently over his health-care proposal, arguing that he is misleading voters because it omits millions of people and would not lower costs. But Sunday, in a dramatic shift, she made it clear that her goal is to challenge Obama not just on policy but also on one of his strongest selling points: his reputation for honesty.
Anne E Kornblut - Washington Post 2 Dec 07
"There's a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we're willing to fight for," Clinton told reporters here. She said voters in Iowa will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk."
Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama's character, she replied: "It's beginning to look a lot like that."
Anne E Kornblut - Washington Post 2 Dec 07
Well, it was only a matter of time, one supposes, before adversity lifted the veil from the micro-managed messaging and contrived, controlling media manipulation from which her campaign has gained an apparently ill-deserved reputation for professionalism and skill. And it seems to me that this is the real Hillary, angry, entitled and combative, accusing her opponent of things she knows she is perceived negatively about herself. What the heck?:
Clinton, campaigning across Iowa on Sunday, appeared to be spoiling for a fight with her chief Democratic rival in national polls -- even at one point describing the battle as "fun."
"I have said for months that I would much rather be attacking Republicans, and attacking the problems of our country, because ultimately that's what I want to do as president. But I have been, for months, on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks. Well, now the fun part starts. We're into the last month, and we're going to start drawing the contrasts," she said.
I guess so. Or start throwing everything from mud-pies to the contents of the cutlery drawer and hope something sticks. Is this how the much-vaunted Hillary Clinton campaign stands and fights for what they believe in? On principle? Let's see what the charming Howard Wolfson's view might be:
"There's a lot that voters don't know about Barack Obama," Wolfson said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Good Lord, that's a sinister comment, or is it just him, busily preparing for the next batch of mud like a pug-mill? He'll be channelling Karl Rove next. So now we can see what many of us long suspected, the 'no-holds-barred' and 'winner-take-all' aggressiveness revealed by a campaign in crisis. A campaign that has spent nine months comfortably in front of their nearest competition, intoxicated by their own narrative of 'inevitability,' and now when internal polling is no doubt reporting Iowa, and destiny, slipping from their grasp the carefully crafted and nuanced character assasination of her opponents gives way to a more brassy and desperate approach. And the response from an obviously concerned but amused Obama?:
That drew a swift rebuke from Obama. "This presidential campaign isn't about attacking people for fun, it's about solving people's problems, like ending this war and creating a universal health care system," he said in a statement. "Washington insiders might think throwing mud is fun, but the American people are looking for leadership that can unite this country around a common purpose."
Obama advisers described the strategy as foolhardy, and reminiscent of the approach perfected by former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove: going after a front-runner on his strengths and challenging his sincerity.
I'll say. What can they be thinking of? Two days after her august and sincere 'handling' of the crisis in Rochester she is flinging the knife rack at her nearest opponent. I can't imagine this is going to succeed in bouncing her our of her home stretch slump, in fact I think it will have the opposite effect. One thing is clear, there is a front-runner in the race for Iowa and it isn't Hillary Clinton. And that was never going to be a pretty sight.