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the Clintons know what they were doing? I believe that they were unaware
what they're doing to themselves by their vicious negative campaign against
Sen. Barack Obama. They and their colleagues set out to destroy him by
innuendo, distortion and smear. His brilliant victory in South Carolina over
the weekend was too late. There is not enough time for him before next
Tuesday to erase the images they have created -- a teller of fairy tales, a
racial candidate, a friend of crooks. Sen. Hillary Clinton shouted him down
in the debates, the former president exploded in temper tantrums. Obama never really had a chance to fall back on his wit, his only possible defense to their waves of attack. What does a candidate say when the former president compares him to the Rev. Jesse Jackson? |
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Can anyone tell me why they resorted to an
attack strategy? Why, in an election in which the public has made clear that
they are fed up with partisan negativity, did they strive to wipe out Obama
at the very beginning by treating him like they were Republicans? Did no one
on their staff warn them that their tactics would only emphasize the old
charges that Hillary Clinton is a polarizer? How did they think that those who supported Obama because he offered a new kind of politics would react if their candidate was destroyed by the old politics? How did they think African-American voters, without whom they cannot hope to win an election, would feel after they had watched an African-American candidate ripped apart? How did they think the young people who had rallied to Obama (half of the white males under 30 in South Carolina) would vote in the presidential election? Were they not aware that the public might not be able endure another Clinton White House? |
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The attacks on Obama might have
destroyed the Democratic coalition on which the Clintons are
counting for an election victory. Did not they perceive that such a
strategy was not only something that will defeat Obama next Tuesday,
but also, to use President Clinton's phrase, "a roll of the dice"?
Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said that Democrats will rally around the winner of the primaries, no matter how rough the campaigns may have been. Democrats will kiss and make up. Maybe, but that is really a roll of the dice, a whistle in the dark as they walk by the cemetery in which they have buried the Democrats' hopes. Why take the chance? Most states were solid for Hillary Clinton and probably still are. Why not be nice in the primaries? Hillary Clinton's tears (authentic, I believe) in New Hampshire give us a hint. She was sad because, as she said, she feared the loss of 30 years of work. She and her husband were not only heirs of the Democratic legacy, they were the only heirs, the only ones who could save it. Obama's victory in Iowa and the media babble about "a historic event" scared them. He had to be stopped because Hillary Clinton had a right to the nomination. Obama ought to have known better. He had to go. If Hillary Clinton is nominated (as I still think is very likely), Sen. John McCain will be sitting pretty. Every straw poll matching him against Hillary Clinton shows him winning, even before this self-destructive primary. The Republicans will regain congressional control. There will be eight more years of Republican misrule, and the war will continue. The Clintons will have snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. |
 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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