Yesterday, Pulitzer-winning author and Obama advisor Samantha Power told reporters:
"We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.
"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.
She added:
"You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."
Now, calling your opponent "a monster" is clearly in poor taste, and showing that sort of disrespect to the (Ohio) electorate is equally unwise. Power rightly issued a public apology, saying:
It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms. I apologize to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics.
The Clinton campaign called for a Power outage, and it looks like they got their wish.
Mark Penn, who think the majority of Democratic voters, and the majority of states which have voted thus far, don't count, retains his job with the Clinton campaign. Whoever pushed the bogus Farrakhan line within the Clinton camp probably got a pay raise. And the chances they'll fire the person going around praising the national security credentials of the Republican nominee is pretty slim, given that it is Hillary herself. Whoever is whispering to her that she should make this campaign about national security should be chained in the dungeons below DNC headquarters. Or conscripted and sent to Iraq.
If Obama wants to win this election, he needs to learn how to turn a situation around, and fast. It can be done in a way that doesn't damage Obama's perception of being above the pettiness of modern politics, but it has to be done. There are lots of signs that the Clinton campaign staff are at one another's throats, and if Obama can't figure out how to exploit that, and turn that into a story, he'll never make it to November. And I want him to succeed.
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"Power outage" Heh. That's a good one. +1 for the Clintonistas.
I would think "She can't run a campaign - how do you expect her to run a country?" would be a productive approach, noting that her staff is at each others' throats and that her inevitability has vanished.
Um... could you kindly point out where the Clinton campaign "called for a Power outage"? All I find in your links are stories that she apologized and resigned, which sounds more like an internal decision to me.
Oh, and your insinuation that such things are rewarded in the Clinton camp is contradicted by this.
Lastly, if Obama is such a stand-up, reach-across-the-aisle kind of guy, then why do his supporters have their pants up in a bunch about the fact that Hillary is commending McCain? He's a bit batshit at times, sure, but he's certainly not evil. It's actually a pretty centrist move on her part, and I fail to see how that's necessarily a bad thing.
Brian, I put in the wrong link for the Power outage (not the Clinton phrasing). Try this: http://www.observer.com/2008/clinton-camp-demands-obama-fire-power
"Firing" a volunteer is rather different than keeping around a senior staffer who trivializes states like Missouri.
Working across the aisle to effect political change is good. Enabling Republican talking points is bad. Whether or not McCain is evil, he is the enemy in this election, and it's irresponsible for Clinton to say that McCain is better than Obama for two reasons. First, it validates McCain's claim that his foreign policy experience is something praiseworthy and that it speaks well of his candidacy (I don't think his insistence on a 100 year war in Iraq is very sensible, nor is his support of torture or illegal wiretapping, to choose a few examples). Second, Obama might be the nominee, and if he is, Hillary's job will be to work for his election, just as Obama's job will be to work for her election should he lose. Anything she does to raise McCain above the potential Democratic nominee is harmful to the cause of long term political change.