Day: May 30, 2008

Cheer Up, Democrats – Turns Out Obama Can Fight Down and Dirty

Jon Ponder

The Obama campaign is treating this new expose about Barack’s early career campaign tactics like it is bad news. But for millions of Democrats who are disheartened that the party is sending a chess club president into a shank fight with Beelzebub for the third time in a row, it may be the first glimmer of hope since the Clinton attack machine began to implode.
“Politics ain’t beanbag, as they say in Chicago. You play with your elbows up, and you’re pretty tough and ruthless when you have to be.”
It turns out that at the start of his political career, Obama was not afraid to inflict sharp elbows and bloody noses — on fellow liberal Democrats:

In his first race for office, seeking a state Senate seat on Chicago’s gritty South Side in 1996, Obama effectively used election rules to eliminate his Democratic competition.

As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.

The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district.

“That was Chicago politics,” said John Kass, a veteran Chicago Tribune columnist. “Knock out your opposition, challenge their petitions, destroy your enemy, right? It is how Barack Obama destroyed his enemies back in 1996 that conflicts with his message today. He may have gotten his start registering thousands of voters. But in that first race, he made sure voters had just one choice.”

Obama’s challenge was perfectly legal, said Jay Stewart of the Chicago’s Better Government Association… “Politics ain’t beanbag, as they say in Chicago. You play with your elbows up, and you’re pretty tough and ruthless when you have to be. Sen. Obama felt that’s what was necessary at the time, that’s what he did. Does it fit in with the rhetoric now? Perhaps not.”

The Obama campaign called this report “a hit job.”

So far, it appears that Obama plans to run his campaign with the same Marquis of Queensbury, “above the fray” rules of engagement waged by the Gore and Kerry campaigns. Let’s hope not. For one thing, that ain’t “change” — for another, it doesn’t work.

It’s good to know Obama played by Chicago street-fighting rules when he had to. That — and John McCain’s gaffe-a-day campaign — are the best signs lately that the Democrats could pull out a win in November, even though the race remains the Republicans’ to lose.

Help Larry “Wide Stance” Craig Come Up with a Title for His Book

Jon Ponder

Steven Reynolds at All Spin Zone has a bit of Friday fun going:

Larry Craig is writing a book about energy, but he’s going to discuss those little adventures in airport restrooms as well. I’m thinking this guy needs a catchy title for his book. Maybe our readers can come up with good ones.

My suggestion was “Out of the Stall And into the Closet!” — or maybe it should be the other way around.

I’m sure you can do better. Go over to ASZ and help Larry out.

McClellan Might Support Obama

Trish

If he wins the White House, I know where Barack Obama can find a press secretary.

That these guys are not jumping on the Straight Talk Express might explain the vehemence of GOP partisans, particularly directed at McClellan

In several interviews with media organizations Thursday night, the former White House press secretary hinted that he was strongly leaning toward the Illinois senator’s White House bid over his own party’s presumptive nominee.

McClellan, a former White House official who has angered several Republicans this week for his scathing critique of the Bush Administration, said he hasn’t made an official decision on which candidate he will back, but offered that he is “intrigued by Sen. Obama’s message.”

“It’s a message that is very similar to the one that Gov. Bush ran on in 2000,” McClellan told CBS News.

One difference, Scotty. Bush didn’t know what he was saying in 2000 and, as he would many times in the years since, he mangled his words. He meant to say he was a divider, not a uniter. And he believed in dispassionate conservatism.

Former Bush pollster and strategist Matt Dowd, who left the White House in 2004, is also rumored to be backing Obama, not McCain.

That these guys are not jumping on the Straight Talk Express might explain the vehemence of GOP partisans, particularly directed at McClellan. But I suspect McCain calls up too much deja vu all over again for the people who once believed and followed a sociopathic liar before painfully discovering the truth.

Flashback 1999: Former White House Flack Takes Flak For Tell-All Book about Sitting President

Jon Ponder

As has been widely noted, critics of Scott McClellan’s new memoir, “What Happened,” are trashing the book’s author, not his writing, because they can’t dispute his accuracy. Karl Rove hurled a particularly nasty epithet at Scott. He compared him to a “liberal blogger.” Harsh.
After his book was released, Stephanopoulos was called “turncoat,” “backstabber,” “ingrate,” “a self-absorbed opportunist” and even “shorty.”
This was predictable. Bush supporters can’t refute McClellan’s claims about the propaganda campaign before the Iraq invasion, the conspiracy to leak information about a covert CIA anti-WMD program and the rest, so all they’ve got left is killing the messenger.

There is a deja vu aspect to this story. In 1999, a former senior White House official was lambasted for publishing a tell-all while his former boss was still in office.The book was “All Too Human: A Political Education,” and the official was George Stephanopoulos, a former campaign adviser, spokesman and aide to Bill Clinton, and who is now the host of ABC News’ Sunday political hour. The external circumstances are so similar the names of the writers and their bosses are practically interchangeable.
Writing then for Time Magazine, Margaret Carlson (now at Bloomberg) described the criticism Stephanopoulos was encountering:

In a nonstop round of interviews, George has been hit with scathing criticism. On NBC, Katie Couric asked him how it felt to be called a “turncoat” whose take on the President was “kind of creepy.” Over at CBS, Mark McEwen said the author was being called a “backstabber” and an “ingrate.” On CNN former Clinton adviser Mandy Grunwald noted that if the President hadn’t given George the “opportunity of a lifetime,” George might still be a Capitol Hill aide, not a “multimillion-dollar book writer and commentator” (inside the White House make that “commentraitor”). And James Carville says Washington has become The Truman Show, broadcasting Clinton’s private life in something approaching real time.

Even George, at one time, wouldn’t have approved of George. Commenting on Dick Morris’ memoirs, George said, “You have a responsibility not to embarrass the President. It hurts the country. It’s just stupidity and weakness.”

From the book, Carlson mentioned this interesting insight into the Clintons’ relationship:

We get a behind-the-scenes look at Hillary feeding Clinton honey-soaked lemon wedges but then the usual, albeit accurate, picture of a paranoid First Lady, responsible for many of the early mistakes. George doesn’t like it that she didn’t trust him. Of course, she may have had good reason, since George goes on to disclose that Whitewater made her cry. Ouch.

Here’s a snippet that has probably come back to bite Jake Tapper on the ass. He was then a freshly minted young writer at Salon.com but is now Stephanopoulos’ colleague at ABC News:

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