In Defense of Clinton and her Surrogates

[barking_iguana]

(Note: This is copied from elsewhere. Here, I should note that I do think Clinton has stepped over the line several times, though the details invariable turn out to be less damning than the way I first see them presented.)

I'm an Obama supporter. I also think that Obama, until very recently, has received media coverage uncharacteristically positive for a Democrat. And I think that's largely because the media is happy to find a Black candidate who is so 'friendly', for the lack of a better term.

Since exploiting that is a tool available to Obama, he should use it, so long as he doesn't do so in clearly harmful ways. (And I see no reason to believe he has used it badly.) But I also think it's legitimate for the Clinton campaign to point out that he's gotten unusually favorable treatment, and that that treatment may not last, leaving Obama with a tougher job getting elected than many of his supporters assume.

It's true that any mention of Obama's blackness can serve as dog-whistle politics. But when it's also a real factor, both directly and indirectly, in electability, it's not reasonable to declare it completely off limits. Especially in a Democratic primary fight, where the vast majority of the actual bigots will not participate.

Sometimes, the attitude of my fellow Obama supporters seems to be that Clinton has no right to run a campaign at all, which is as incorrect and obnoxious as Clinton's former attitude of inevitability and how everyone should just get out of her way.

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I also think it's legitimate for the Clinton campaign to point out that he's gotten unusually favorable treatment, and that that treatment may not last, leaving Obama with a tougher job getting elected than many of his supporters assume.

True, but it comes across as more whining from the Clintons, and the combination of self-pity and ruthlessness, together, is extremely irritating.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

But I also think it's legitimate for the Clinton campaign to point out that he's gotten unusually favorable treatment, and that that treatment may not last, leaving Obama with a tougher job getting elected than many of his supporters assume.

I don’t have a mansion and a safe full of gold bars, but if I go into public and say that I can’t do all the things I want to do, because Bill Gates or whoever has all my gold bars, who will the public consider pitiful, Bill Gates or me? And is making yourself pitiable a ‘legitimate’ campaign technique when running for president?

I mean, seriously, she’s really making herself unlikable. It reminds me of one of Rabbi Blumenthal’s truly useful lessons, which was holding the whole class after school if someone threw a spitball or whatever; he would hold us all until someone squealed, demanding that someone squeal, and when someone did then the rabbi would let everyone go except the spitballer and the squealer; this is what you get for squealing, he would tell us. People don’t like people who squeal in an attempt to gain favor (and with the rabbi they would try it more than once, the urge was so strong), and people won’t like Hillary Clinton for squealing on the press in an attempt to gain favor.

Besides, if the press dislike Hillary Clinton so much, that’s just one of her drawbacks as a candidate. The American people are looking for a president, not maximum fairness for Hillary Clinton.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

BTW when Dennis Kucinich ‘squealed’ on the pompous Ted Koppel at a debate in 2004, for asking why Kucinich wouldn’t just drop out of the race already, it was not to gain favor. Dennis Kucinich didn’t even make it about himself, but a general observation on how the MSM were hurting our politics; but after that the MSM actually stepped up its efforts to get rid of him. So that was likable, because Dennis wasn’t doing it to gain favor; he did it because it was the right to do it.

Hillary Clinton isn’t trying to do the right thing, she’s just trying to gain favor for herself.