The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.
Bob Herbert of the NY Times wrote that in the middle of his column today, after having explored the remarks of both former federal legislators on behalf of the Clintons. Most know the Kerrey remark, about a "secular madrassa". IF you don't know Young's remarks, he said
"Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack."
This diary will explore Herbert's column.
First let me remind people that I am not supporting Barack Obama, having announced earlier this week that I am supporting John Edwards. But I have also explained why I cannot support Hillary Clinton in the primary in a diary exploring Monday's debate. I want to be sure that as you read this diary you have any information you deem necessary to determine if my motive in posting it is other than what I state now: the column is an opinion by an important writer for the nation's "newspaper of record" and it raises a real concern, one which should not be considered an isolated concern - after all a number here (including me) have raised similar concerns in recent weeks.
Now to Herbert.
He begins his column discussing the long-term mayor of Charleston SC. Joseph Riley has worked hard at healing racial divides in his city, speaks highly of a number of candidates, considers the Clintons his friends, and has endorsed Barack Obama in today's primary. Herbert notes
The mayor’s thoughtful, respectful, generous assessment of the field echoed the tone that had prevailed until recently in the Democratic primary campaign. That welcome tone has been lost, undermined by a deliberate injection of ugliness, and it would be very difficult to make the case that the Clintons have not been primarily to blame.
Let me repeat that last clause" it would be very difficult to make the case that the Clintons have not been primarily to blame.
The words that follow that paragraph are brief, and to the point:
Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible.
Again, note the force of language used: sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication and flat-out reprehensible
After exploring the reprehensible statements of Clinton surrogates Kerrey and Young, he offers a quotation from a mainstream news blog which I will not quote, then acknowledges that Obama's pursuit of the nomination was always going to be difficult, but given his experience as a Chicago politician one need not feel sorry for him.
I want to go through three paragraphs just before Herbert's one line warning that the questions he raises in these paragraphs need to be answered and asking the readers to "stay tuned." Let's examine the paragraphs one at a time.
Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that atmosphere.
whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive and have seemed positively gleeful It may be extreme to wonder if the Clintons can be other than divisive, but it is clear that they started with a substantial portion of the American electorate and many opinion makers who viewed them negatively, sometimes with outright hostility. One might have expected that their actions would not feed into that paranoia. Earlier this campaign cycle I used to argue that the caricature of Hillary was so over the top that when people would encounter her the expectation would be so low that she would easily exceed them and thus win a substantial number over to supporting her. I no longer think that. Watching her the past few weeks she seems to have decided that she is justified in using a scorched earth policy straight out of Carville, Penn, Atwater and Rove. While it would be expected that she would take advice from Democratic consultants who had helped her husband, that one can clearly see evidence of the approach of the consultants who elected the two presidents Bush is disturbing to many. And the rationalizations offered for some of the tactics, while they will be cheered by partisans of Mrs. Clinton, serve onloy to further alienate many others. They may lead to success in achieving the nomination, but one has to ask at what cost.
It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.
I no longer wonder. It seems obvious that there has been a calculation made that Sen. Clinton can win the nomination by this process and that the zeitgeist is such that any Democrat will have the ability to defeat any Republican. Without arguing the merits of the first part of that approach (the nomination) I think it may represent a misreading of the mood of the public with repect to the general election. And while general election victory would still be possible, it would occur at the end of an extended period of extreme and divisive partisanship that would serve only to further divide the country. It also might be very expensive for those Democrats down ballot from the presidential contest, something about which it seems clear to me matters little to the Clintons in comparison to the goal of regaining the White House for themselves. Here I can look at the use of Dick Morris and triangulation in 1996 during Bill's reelection run as a model.
So far I have been inferring questions in the two paragraphs just quoted from Herbert. Im his penultimate paragraph he turns to direct questions:
What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying?
What kind of people are the Clintons?Must we not look at what they are willing to do to achieve victory? Can we help but consider the kinds of things said and done during this campaign and then begin to worry about the possible answer to this question?
What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House? n 1992 Hillary said that if they voted for her husband they would get two for the price of one. Afer the debacle of health care reform it was not clear that the American people wanted such an approach. ANd for all the fondness towards Bill among Democrats at the start of the campaign, thinking that translated into wanting him in an active role within the White House is a misinterpretation. After all, part of the fondness is that his presidency compared so favorably to what we have been experiencing in the past two terms. And if we needed any reminder of some of the unstated concerns even many Democrats have, Mitt Romney found a way to insert them into the Republican debate.
Can they look beyond winning to a wounded nation’s need for healing and unifying? As important as this is, I think it is the wrong question. I believe the evidence before us is that they are certainly astute enough to recognize the need of the nation for healing. But they have chosen something else as more important, that need for winning, and all else is subservient to that goal.
Were the candidacy of Hillary Clinton the only possibility for removing control of the White House from the Republican party there might be some small justification for arguing that any tactic or strategy that advanced her candidacy was appropriate: one could make the case that it would be the lesser of two evils. It would, however, even in that case still be evil.
But one need only look at generic ballots before the recent nastiness began to see that Clinton was not the only possibility to achieve a Democratic victory. Thus it becomes increasingly difficult to accept the idea that the nastiness being employed on behalf of her candidacy has any rationalization beyond being the only way she and her brain trust think she can achieve victory in the primary contest.
They may believe that once they achieve the nomination they can pivot, and that Democrats will support her because the alternative would be unthinkable. But I see evidence that increasing numbers of Democrats are of a different opinion, a fear that I explored in this diary Thursday.
Perhaps the questions offered by Herbert are answerable, as are the concerns expressed by others. Perhaps the kind of campaign we have seen since shortly before Iowa will be replaced by something else, and quickly. I certainly hope so, because the longer it continues, the stronger will be the impression of increasing numbers that the Clintons care about enough except power for themselves, and the consequences of that attitude becoming firm is disastrous to consider.
Peace.