Clinton Now Engaging In Personal Attacks

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 08:27:07 PM EST
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Speaking for me only.

This is not only disappointing and shameful, it is stupid:

I believe I have the right kind of experience to be the next President. With a war and a tough economy, we need a President ready on Day One to bring our troops home from Iraq and to handle all of our other tough challenges. Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face.

Hillary supporters will defend this by saying it was a response to this statement from Obama:

Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in southeast Asia."

That does not wash for me. Now it is a supremely stupid statement from Obama but that does not excuse Hillary's use of it to attack Obama personally. Never more comofrtable than in the mud, John Edwards jumps in:

Now we know what Senator Clinton meant when she talked about ‘throwing mud’ in the last debate. Like so many other things, when it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another.

The Edwards campaign is pathetic AND shameful. But this entire campaign is now one of the worst in history. Dems cover themselves in shame. Again.

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Clinton Now Engaging In Personal Attacks | 28 comments (28 topical)

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Um its a campaign (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by Jgarza on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 08:47:38 PM EST

Does this really disgust you? I mean jeez its about as dirty as a student council race.

What amazes me is how destructive it is to her, for several reasons.
1 as JE pointed out, this meets her definition of mudslinging.
2 what is her great foreign policy experience, she wasn't secretary of state in Bills admin.? She cant balance out her criticism with any concrete experience she has.
3 Barack gets to bring up her vote on Iraq.
4 It is just not an effective attack because she isn't tying it to any thing he has proposed as far as policy goes, and since she isn't doing that, it look like he got under her skin and she is lashing out. In fact i think it plays into the narrative of her candidacy in decline, because she look like she is desperately trying to make something stick.

Politics as usual? (none / 0) (#2)
by Big Tent Democrat on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 08:50:33 PM EST

These are the candidates who are going to change DC?

You condemn them worse than I could.


Differences (none / 0) (#3)
by Jgarza on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 08:57:16 PM EST

I think she is trying to point out a difference between her and Obama, which is that she has a longer resume. There are multiple reasons i think this wasn't effective, i don't think it was "mudslinging" though.(unless you go by her definition)
I will say that i would expect someone who is republican to misunderstand his comments the way she did, but i would also expect a republican to vote to authorize war in Iraq.


: Shakes head (none / 0) (#5)
by Big Tent Democrat on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 09:05:52 PM EST

Sorry, I can't say anything nice about you so I am off.
What a comment.

Differences part 2 (none / 0) (#4)
by Jgarza on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 09:01:03 PM EST

I think its a mistake for her to point out differences though. it was really smart for her to say they were all the same in the first debates. She should say "we are all the same except i have been doing this longer." She is pushing too hard now, and playing into the idea that there are choices.


Excellent analysis Jgarza (none / 0) (#14)
by SFHawkguy on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:31:20 PM EST

And I concur that this is pretty tepid "mudslinging". The histrionics by all three campaigns is depressing. It's depressing because the only thing that exercises these candidates is when they perceive some personal slight. It's like Maureen Dowd is calling each of the candidates at night to gossip about the others and they take the bait and get all junior high school on each other.

. . . . Meanwhile the United States foreign policy continues down the path to Hell.

It's pathetic that the Democratic campaigns are not fighting mad over the actual policy issues. They all should be slinging mud at Hillary for her right-wing foreign policy positions. What's infuriating is that HIllary is dissing Obama when, in fact, her foreign policy experience consists of listening to the likes of Lieberman, Biden, Cheney and AIPAC. She's a right-wing War Hawk through and through.

So, Big Tent, what's shameful is not the little temper tantrums the three leading candidates are indulging in, it's the lack of righteous outrage at the current course of our foreign policy. We don't want docile candidates--in fact the Democrats need a fighter more than ever right now. Let's just get them to be outraged at the right things.

All the advice we can give these candidates is futile, however. The Democrats will get the candidate they deserve. A right-wing, Joe Lieberman admiring, Joe Biden listening, card-carrying AIPAC wignnut. C'est la vie.


Determined to shoot herself in the foot (5.00 / 1) (#6)
by Edger on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 09:11:36 PM EST

and blow the elections for Democrats?

With a war and a tough economy, we need a Presidential candidate ready now to call for defunding the Iraq occupation and to bringing troops home from Iraq and to handle all of our other tough challenges... before the 2008 elections.

If she wants to attack any Democrats it should be the ones in Congress who have the power to end the occupation, and any Democratic presidential candidates, including herself, who won't take the lead on doing it, instead of promising to do it.

mud and circuses (5.00 / 1) (#8)
by tnthorpe on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 09:57:52 PM EST

what is there to be surprised about?

It's not like the party actually has a progressive political vision. They're just not as loonily far-right as your garden variety Repub, and that's basically the collective vision coming out of the front runners as far as I'm concerned.

Big Deal.

If they can't lead now on FISA, Iraq, etc, just why am I supposed to believe that they will later? There were 44 votes against Mukasey, but they couldn't be bothered to show up to filibuster the nomination. Yeah, that's real vision from real leaders.

rude (5.00 / 1) (#15)
by RalphB on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:54:04 PM EST

Frankly, it wasn't even a very rude comeback to a very stupid statement from Obama. Some of you seem as if you don't want a campaign at all. You just want everyone to roll over for Obama. Ain't gonna happen.

Come on people, it was so irresistible that Joe Biden took a whack at him.

Biden said "I agree with him, that is his best foreign policy experience". Now that's funny and very effective.

: Umm (none / 0) (#21)
by Jgarza on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 01:35:28 AM EST

if you bother to read the entire quote he is making a good point. He even goes on to talk about the ridiculousness congressional junkets, which is of course Hills experience.
Per MoDo:

Though he did not mention the quick "color me experienced" trip Hillary took with some Senate colleagues to Iraq and Afghanistan just before she started running, Obama might have been thinking of it when he mocked Kabuki Congressional junkets:
"You get picked up at the airport by a state convoy and a security detail. They drive you over to the ambassador's house and you get lunch. Then you go take a tour of some factory or some school. Children do a native dance."

: Biden Time (none / 0) (#26)
by hindsight2040 on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 08:43:08 AM EST

I'd sure like to know what experience any of the dems have in foreign relations. Senators are by far the worst possible people to lead. They are mostly a bunch of do nothings.

I've been wishing she'd attack that (5.00 / 1) (#25)
by Edgar08 on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 03:35:41 AM EST

For a long time now.

I lived in Ireland for two years. If Bill sent me over there instead of George Mitchell, I'd have had him impeached.

Call me mean for saying so, too. So what? It's a primary. It's how I feel about the situation.

In the end, it's not like she called him a flip flopper or attacked his integrity.

What an idiotic comment (none / 0) (#7)
by DA in LA on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 09:19:02 PM EST

She has zero foreign policy experience.

I don't really think this is anything other than ordinary. And BTD, I am not exactly where you got the idea that these people would be any different than previous politicians. They are or were Senators, they are not going to shake things up much, especially not Hillary. When one of them wins, it will be status quo.

Gavel, Kucinich, those guys would shake things up, which is why no one will vote for them.

It Takes a Village (none / 0) (#11)
by joejoejoe on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:08:21 PM EST

Is it just me or is Sen. Clinton's current line on Sen. Obama's childhood experiences the exact opposite message she was preaching in her book 'It Takes a Village'?

Overblown controversy (none / 0) (#12)
by mtj on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:10:08 PM EST

Obama tried to say that his life in a foreign country at the age of 10 is valuable experience for a presidential candidate. Hillary said no it isn't. Where's the personal attack? Hillary's reply is a little snarky, but certainly not over the top. Seriously, where's the personal attack? Where's the mud? Obama can win this race but he has emphasize that experience doesn't trump good judgment.

: I don't think it was out of bounds (none / 0) (#22)
by Jgarza on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 01:39:25 AM EST

except by Hillarys own standards of what is out of bounds.
per MoDo:

Hillary pounced, knowing that her chief rival's foreign policy résumé is as slender as his physique, once more conjuring a childish Obama. She brazenly borrowed Republican talking points, even though she accused John Edwards of "throwing mud" that was "right out of the Republican playbook."

Yes, I agree. It was a bit rude. (none / 0) (#13)
by masslib on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:11:24 PM EST

Between (none / 0) (#16)
by Alien Abductee on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:56:04 PM EST

first the Reagan21 initiative and then the mild, bland approach Rove took in his Newsweek column, I'm wondering if the Republicans are planning to try to take the high road for this election and at least try to distance themselves from their eliminationist rhetoric just about the time everyone in the country is sick to death of the sniping and ready for some positivity. Leaving the Dems, ever apparently the slow learners, flinging mud at one another in the primaries and looking like a bunch of ill-bred, badly behaved children.

But that was a very boneheaded thing for Obama to say. It would have taken a superhuman amount of self-restraint on the part of the Clinton and Edwards campaigns to resist using it against him, imo.

Have Dem prez primaries actually been civil in the past? This is the first I've followed in any greater detail than the msm's conventional narratives.

: re:between (none / 0) (#18)
by RalphB on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 11:01:06 PM EST

Apparently people have forgotten Bradley savaging Al Gore in 2000. Some of Obama's best sound bites are almost identical to those used by Dollar Bill in 2000. Hope they work the same way this cycle.

I Agree (none / 0) (#17)
by squeaky on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 10:58:42 PM EST

All Clinton had to do was talk about her foreign policy experience. Commenting negatively on Obama's statement was counterproductive and wholly unnecessary. What was she thinking?

: Wesley Clark becomes endorses (none / 0) (#20)
by oculus on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 12:18:09 AM EST

Hillary; Clinton votes for Kyl-Lieberman.
Sidney Shamberg becomes consultant to Hillary Clinton campaign; she engages in "mudslinging" and states she was a policy advisor during Bill Clinton's presidency and is personal friends with many leaders of other nations as a result of being First Lady and all those trips she took.

Edwards jumping in on Obama's side... (none / 0) (#19)
by magster on Tue Nov 20, 2007 at 11:24:07 PM EST

...to attack Clinton, eventhough Obama now ahead in Iowa. Commenters on TPMuckraker think there's some collusion going on. Seems like Edwards is not getting anything out of it if that is true.

: Why wouldn't he reply (none / 0) (#23)
by Jgarza on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 01:43:55 AM EST

Her claim that he was attacking her like a republican was damaging, he has to reposnd by pointing out that she is in fact the one using republican talking points.
How is this surprising, she attacked Edwards and Obama.. and OMG they are both attacking her back.

hillary (none / 0) (#24)
by thorthemigthy on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 02:46:32 AM EST

i,ll just say one thing, if clinton wins WE LOSE!! if obama wins WE LOSE!!. any questions.

: HA (none / 0) (#28)
by squeaky on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 12:55:15 PM EST

And if Giuliani wins..... Bork, Wolfowitz, Bolton (John) on the SC?
nuke Iran, martial law, etc....

per modo? yeah, that's an insightful broad, (none / 0) (#27)
by cpinva on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 10:55:25 AM EST

and i use the term "broad" in its rudest possible sense, with respect to ms. dowd.

myself, i thought her comment quite amusing; again, obama kicked himself in the ass, she merely helped hold his leg up. it was rather a rather mild chiding, compared to what might have been.

8 years as bill clinton's advisor (and don't think for a moment he didn't seek her counsel), on all matters domestic and foreign, vs a few years, as a child, living in a foreign country. hmmmmmmmmmmm, tough call there!

alex, i'll take the "8 years" for $100, please.

tell you what, if obama living in a foreign country, as a child, for a few years, lends him some special insight into foreign relations at the gov't-to-gov't level, then my being raised as a military dependent, living on or near bases most of my youth, should certainly qualify me to be the chairman of the JCS. ..................probably not.

thorthemigthy, you don't count as a "we". just thought i'd clear that up for you, 'cause i'm that kind of guy. :)

Being nice and sticking to the issues (none / 0) (#29)
by Lora on Wed Nov 21, 2007 at 09:29:35 PM EST

...is not gonna win a nomination or an election. Just my opinion.

Clinton (none / 0) (#30)
by TruthHurtzIndeed on Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 03:48:53 PM EST

To win, you have to play not to lose. Clinton will play nice until it's time to not play nice. When the gloves are off, she will get dirty with the rest of them as she is no better.