I was reading a diary recently about attacks on then-candidate Barack Obama during the 2008 Primary where his supporters were called “Obama Boys.” I searched for mentions of this phrase on this site from a period between September 2007 and June 2008. Nothing came up. What DID come up, however, was pretty interesting…
First off, we have this comment from December, 2007:
Worse than that
Actually, it is a lot worse than that. Obama has been giving himself airs as "above politics". All the other people running for president? They are all ambtious, corrupt, compromised. Not pure as a driven snow Obama. He is doing it for others.
As I said there are a lot of suckers who buy this bs, including many kossaks. But all scam artists eventually get exposed. So will Obama. I just hope it happens before the general election. Because the GOP and their handmaidens in the press, including the Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd types, will shred him to pieces. They are fawning over him now becaus of their Hillary hate but if he becomes the nominee they will go after him and expose him as a fraud.
We are starting off with a whopper! Does this sound familiar to anyone else? This comment claims “just wait until the GOP start attacking him!” and mocks our President for “purity.” I think these same comments are being used against a different Democratic candidate this year…
The comment came from this diary, which highlighted a humorous “attack” that the Clinton campaign levied against Obama.
The Clinton campaign, not content with their risible attempt to make Obama's legal donations to fellow Democrats a campaign issue (Johnny Chung and Norman Hsu were unavailable for comment), has now exposed Barack Obama's diabolical plan to become President.
A plan hatched when Obama was five years old.
The scandalous details, and the Obama campaign's response, below the fold.
The ironically-labeled "Fact Hub" lays out the explosive revelations.
Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for president. Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality." —Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer
This needs some context. You’ll love this!
At an event in Boston this evening, Senator Obama claimed for the second time today that he is "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President, contradicting statements his friends, family, staff and teachers have all made about him.
Obama said he didn’t have “long held plans” to become President, so the Clinton campaign tried to attack this statement by digging up essays from kindergarten and grade school.
I had another “deja vu” moment after reading this diary from January, 2008:
Yeah, she went there.
In her efforts to take a leak on the idea of hope--because it benefits Barack Obama--Hillary Clinton decided that she needed to minimize the role that Martin Luther King Jr., and by extension African-Americans, played in securing their own civil rights.
The audacity of her cynicism below the fold.
The context, of course, lies in Clinton's regrettable statement from last Saturday's debate:
"We don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."
Here it is, yet again. Hillary is attacking Bernie Sanders’ policy ideas in 2016 in the same way that she attacked Obama’s policy ideas in 2008. What were “false hopes” are now plans that will “never, ever” happen.
The diary continues:
"If anything crystallized what this campaign is about, it was that right there," Obama said of Clinton's comment in the debate. "Some are thinking in terms of our constraints, and some are thinking about our limitless possibilities."
Well, Clinton had her chance to respond, and oh boy did she deliver up a doozy:
"Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act. It took a president to get it done. The power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president capable of action."
Once again Hillary talks to us “in terms of our constraints” as our soon-to-be President said. The next time people call Bernie’s plans “unicorns” or things that will “never, ever” happen, remember that the same things were said about electing the first African American POTUS.
Look who is on top of that comments section:
What is going on with that operation?
I'm curious Geek...what do you think is up with these people?
Take a guess as to which DailyKos regular, who now posts plenty of Pro-Hillary/Anti-Bernie diaries, made this comment.
Now I’m looking at a diary from March 2008. Things really started to heat up at this point:
Of course, the Clinton campaign has denied pushing the Obama=Muslim plant smear.
Despite the words of Clinton endorser Bob "Secular Madrassa" Kerrey.
Despite the fact that multiple Clinton volunteer coordinators in Iowa were busted spreading it via email.
Despite "As far as I know."
Despite the fact that somehow the email traffic of this rumor tracks very closely with the primary schedule.
There's smoke, and then there's fire.
Now, I find it entirely plausible that the Clinton campaign doesn't willfully push the madrassa rumor (as opposed to Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Jeremiah Wright, terrorist sympathizer, Rezko, etc etc). But, there is no doubt that there is an organic movement within Clinton's own supporter base to push these racist smears and to use the campaign-funded website to do it.
The diary continues by posting examples from what was supposedly an official Hillary blog where posters insinuated Obama was secretly a Muslim. Bernie Sanders has obviously been spared from this line of criticism, but if these attacks follow the same pattern we can expect a lot of insinuations about supposed “Communist” ties in the coming months.
But the diary itself isn’t the best part:
You mean like Obama's Pastor
Jeremiah Wright, the man who Obama has prayed with for 20 years, brought his kids to hear him every week. Pretty disgusting, huh?
This kind of Diary has been the typical Diary that you see from this sick bunch of Obama believers here. The man has done ZERO and you need a way to cover that up because it's embarrassing that you want a guy for the toughest job in the world, who has done nothing that would prepare him for it. It makes you all look like utter fools but you found a way to convince the same people Nader convinced, the little smiling innocent children who don’t know any better. You’ve convinced them that Obama will change everything just the way they like it, while the only thing this guy has changed was his underwear. So Geekesque instead of attacking what Hillary has said, reaches into the 25 million Hillary supporters where he surely he will find racial comments but nothing compared to the slime, the lies and the made up stories of the drama queens on this site.
Clinton doesn't need to reach very far. All she has to do is come here to find disgusting lies by some disgusting people. One of the most disgusting Obama supporters called Hillary a cunt. And many others cheered her on.
Clinton supporters demand explanations for what Obama has done and all we hear is ethics reform. You ask about Foreign Relations and he talks about ethics reform. How do I know that, simple, due to the title of this disgusting diary, I went to www.hillaryclinton.com to find out if the diarist is a liar and in fact there were charges that Obama was a Muslim on Hillary’s site. To my surprise there was nothing about it, nothing about Hussein, nothing about Madrassas and no pictures of Obama in turbans.
I have to tell you all, you are creating an untenable situation that will only end up in disaster. If Obama gets the nomination because of all this race bating a lies by most of you here and the entire Obama team, he will be so hated by other Democrats that people will flip that switch for McCain because other than being a Democrat they will have no other reason to vote for a guy with a deep voice and no accomplishments. He has trashed everything but Blacks, students, Ronald Reagan, the ideas of Republicans, John Kennedy (because he wanted Ted Kennedy's support) and his racist pig of a pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
LOL!
We hit a triple with this comment:
1. A character attack based not on the candidate, but someone connected to the candidate. In 2008 it was Jeremiah Wright. This year its Cornel West and the nebulous “Bernie Bros.”
2. Play the “victim card” against Obama’s supporters as a group. We see the exact same comments taking place today. Is there an actual logical fallacy associated with this tactic?
3. Claim that Obama will be un-electable in the general because of his mean supporters. Both sides make this claim… but we saw how that turned out for Obama in 2008.
Last but not least, from a diary in May 2008:
In her latest rampage, Geraldine Ferraro states, Obama has lost women 'with sexist campaign'
Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major party presidential ticket and a supporter of Hillary Clinton, has accused Barack Obama of conducting a "terribly sexist" campaign.
Yeah, Hillary supporters accused Obama and his voters of sexism.
So what did I learn from this dive into Daily Kos’ past? I looked for “Obama boys”, found plenty of “Obama” and plenty of “boys”, but not any mentions of “Obama boys.” What I did find was a pattern of attacks and smears from the Clinton campaign and supporters that mirrors what Bernie Sanders is facing today.
Its looking like 2008 all over again.
Happy #throwbackthursday!