For progressives, the gutter politics of the Clintons are no laughing matter.
No sooner than Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama for president than the Clintons loosed their attack dogs on him. “Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” snarled James Carville — the ultimate Clinton attack dog; in doing so, Carville used the week holy to Christians to implicitly compare Hillary Clinton to Jesus Christ, but he is hardly unique among Hillary’s supporters, who seem to view her campaign as a kind of Second Coming. Famous for having produced the theme of Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid,” Carville is the archetypal Clinton operative for whom public policy is only the subject of campaign sloganeering and gaining power is the only thing.
“I’m not going to get in the gutter like that,” Richardson responded on “Fox News Sunday” when asked about Carville’s characterization as a Judas. “And you know, that’s typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency,” the governor of New Mexico added. “I am very loyal to the Clintons,” said Richardson, but he said he wanted something beyond “Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton,” referring to the pattern of dynastic condominium that the Bush/Clinton presidencies represent. “You know, what about the rest of us?” Richardson asked. Obama is the first viable African American presidential candidate and Richardson is the only sitting Latino governor, and the latter’s endorsement was eagerly sought by both the Clinton and Obama campaigns.
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Sure, James Carville is brilliant . . . so brilliant that even on the one-in-a-million chance that Queen Hillary secures the nomination he's ensured that no Obama supporter will vote for her in the general election. That Carville sure is genius, sheer genius.
You got love James Carville, he's brillant! Via his metaphor, he gave you the clue to why Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama.
Richardson left the race with a large campaign debt. I wonder how long it's going to take for that to debt miraculously gets paid off?
After all Barack Obama's campaign has given the most money to the super delegates, almost a million bucks.
Hillary has also never addressed homophobia or transgenderphobia with a non-LGBT audience, unlike Obama, who spoke passionately about the need to combat homophobia in the African American community in the speech that he made -- in a black church -- on Martin Luther King Day.
So I agree with you that we should judge these candidates on how they've treated the LGBT community. Hillary has treated the LGBT community shabbily at best (and I'm being charitable in that characterization), and so LGBT voters should most definitely take that into account in deciding who to support for president.
Look at how Obama's national communications director Robert Gibbs treated the reporter at the Gay People's Chronicle - an Ohio gay newspaper:
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/03/the_story_behind_the_reporting.php
Excerpt:
"In my 12 years as a reporter, I have never experienced anything quite like Obama's national communication director Robert Gibbs, either.
I wasn't biting on the crap he tried to feed me, and he got offended. When I stood there not writing any of it down, Gibbs said to me, "Let me tell you how this works. I talk and you write down what I say. I'll write down what you say when you answer the question," I responded, adding that "I'm no campaign's stenographer."
Gibbs actually took the pen and pad out of my hands and wrote his own answer! He also asked for the Donnie McClurkin letter to be e-mailed to him, claiming he didn't remember what it said. It was. He didn't comment further.
Would Gibbs treat a New York Times reporter this way? How about a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter?
"Asking the campaign to explain the difference between McClurkin and Farrakhan is a fair question. The Obama campaign, however, treated the question with indignation, claimed that the reporter mischaracterized events, and erroneously claimed that "Senator Obama spoke out against the hateful views of both Donnie McClurkin and Louis Farrakhan. Obama spokespeople pivot to the MLK Day speech as though it settles every debt to the LGBT community, past and future."
The Obamas are as guilty as any other campaign when it comes to attacking but the only difference is they like to portray themselves as somehow above the fray and better than other politicians (Remember, "The Audacity of Hope"). In one breath the Obamas will decry "old style gutter politics" and then in the next breath go on to excoriate anyone who dares disagree with them. It's hypocritical and offensive.
We worked hard to be sure Obama didn't win Ohio, and I encourage other LGBT brothers and sisters to work hard in other states to expose the hypocrisy of the Obamas. We'll be there to help!
@ Jose and Maria: For those who call this an affront to the Hispanic community, who call him a snitch and a backstabber...I'd ask: where the hell were you when this man was running for President?
The reality is that Richardson had very little in the way of institutional support from the Latino community during his run (sans, perhaps, Jimmy Smits). His decision to drop out of the presidential race before Nevada is proof positive of that fact.
Why should Bill Richardson show loyalty to a group that, for the most part, showed absolutely no loyalty to him?
That's crazy.
As for 'the will of Hispanics,' if your argument is that politicians and elected officials have an obligation to support the candidate who has won the overwhelming majority of votes from the community from which they come, by that logic, the fact that Obama has won close to 90% of the African American vote obligates all black elected officials and superdelegates to support Obama for president; isn't that the logical conclusion of your argument...?
Obama promised a new style of politics. Yet, since January, he has been tossing one insult or accusation after another at Bill Clinton. Obama has suggested Clinton achieved nothing of importance during his tenure and that the Republicans were the party of ideas. Obama gave tacit approval to let his surrogates accuse Bill Clinton of racism. And now Obama stands by silently while a top military adviser accuses the former President of acting like Josephy McCarthy.
The lowest form of life in almost any segment of American society is a snitch or a back stabber.
Bill Richardson's actions proved that he can be on your side one day and on the other side the next. "Typical" politican.
Endorsement of Senator Clinton would have proven Bill Richardson to have at least have a semblance of loyalty. Besides, what good is his endorsement now?
Endorsement of Barak Obama shows that Bill Richardson will turn on anyone if he thinks it will benefit Bill Richardson.
More change we can believe in...
I think what Aaron is talking about is the new developments that came to light over the weekend.
Here is the News:
What do William Ayers, former Weather Underground, and Rashid Khalidi, the professor at Columbia University who arranged the Ahmedinejad visit and has direct ties to the PLO, and Barack Obama have in common? According to well placed sources, Barak Obama and William Ayers directed money to Rashid Khalidi, the Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi has long been at the center of controversy for his anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian statements. In 2005, Khalidi was barred from participating in a teacher training program in the New York City public school system for his extremist statements.
Allison Davis, who hired Obama into his small, Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill, in 1993, left the firm in late 1999 or early 2000 and became a housing developer. Davis then went into business with Tony Rezko, who he met when Rezko was a client of the firm. Rezko is presently under indictment for demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. In October 2006, Rezko was indicted for extortion of businesses seeking to do business with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System Board and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. He was also charged with wire fraud for staging false transactions of his pizza stores in order to secure $10 million in loans from GE Capital. Rezko is a fundraiser for Obama.
Obama has been identified as one of the politicians cited in the indictment as receiving political contributions from Rezko out of the kickback funds. Tony Rezko hosted fundraising events for Obama in his home and was on Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign finance committee which mobilized $14 million for him. Obama has already returned $85,000 that Rezko and family had personally donated to him.
Connections continued:
While a state senator in early 2000, Obama served on the board of the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based foundation focused on making grants to increase opportunities for less advantaged people and communities. The chairman of the Woods Fund board in 2000 was Howard Stanback, who, like Obama, also had connections to Davis. Davis submitted a grant request to the Woods Foundation for a $1 million investment in his development partnership, Neighborhood Rejuvenation LP that would be used to build low-income senior housing. By policy, a board member is supposed to recuse themselves from decisions where they have a business or personal relationship. Obama, however, did not. In fact, Obama voted to approve Davis’ grant request. Stanback, on the other hand, abstained from voting. The housing project, which also received a $5.7 million loan from the city, added almost $70,000 in political campaigns, including his presidential bid. Rezko gave Obama his first two political contributions in 1995, $1,000 each from two of his companies. In 1998, State Senator Obama wrote letters to city and state officials urging them to fund a Davis-Rezko housing project.
The fundraisers continue:
Another significant fundraiser for Obama is William Ayers, who sat on the board of the Woods fund with Obama and is also a professor at the University of Chicago. Bill Ayers, along with his wife Bernadine Dohrn, was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical extremist group that conducted a series of direct actions against the US government throughout the early to mid-1970s. Ayers and Dohrn went underground in 1970 after others in the group accidentally exploded a bomb in a Greenwich Village townhouse, which killed three of them including Ayers’ girlfriend at the time. During the period Ayers and Dohrn were in hiding, the Weather Underground participated in the bombings of the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and a State Department building. In 1981 Ayers and Dohrn turned themselves in, but all charges were dropped as a result of the government legal misconduct. In his 2001 memoir, Ayers wrote, “I don’t regret setting the bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers and Dohrn held at least one fundraiser for Barack Obama in their home in Chicago.
During Obama’s last year on the board of The Woods Fund (2002), he participated in awarding grants, including a $70,000, two-year grant to the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago-based group founded by Rashid and Mona Khalidi. Like Ayers and Rezko, Rashid Khalidi also held a fundraising event in his home for Obama. From 1972-83, Khalidi was the director in Beirut of the official Palestinian press agency, FAFA. His wife worked there as well. When the Khalidis left Chicago for Columbia University where Rashid had been given the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies, their leave-taking party included testimonials from Bill Ayers and Barack Obama.
Could you investigate and report on this issue?
There is a far-reaching scandal brewing for presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, thanks to a radio talk show host based in Oregon. Syndicated talk host Laurie Roth's revelations make the news story about Obama's relationship with a racist, anti-American pastor look like child's play.
A former top official at the Pentagon and a former CIA intelligence officer maintain that Barack Obama and former Weather Underground master honcho William Ayers funneled money to Professor Rashid Khalidi, a known terrorist sympathizer.
The Democrat was surging ahead but now revelations about the men who helped shape him are putting voters off.
Long before Barack Obama launched his campaign for the White House, when he was considering a run for the US Senate in 2003, he paid an intriguing visit to a former Chicago sewers inspector who had risen to become one of the most influential African-American politicians in Illinois.
“You have the power to elect a US senator,” Obama told Emil Jones, Democratic leader of the Illinois state senate. Jones looked at the ambitious young man smiling before him and asked, teasingly: “Do you know anybody I could make a US senator?”
According to Jones, Obama replied: “Me.” It was his first, audacious step in a spectacular rise from the murky political backwaters of Springfield, the Illinois capital.
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The exchange also sealed an intimate personal and political relationship that is likely to attract intense scrutiny amid the furore over Obama’s links to some of Chicago’s most controversial political and religious power brokers.
Obama has often described Jones as a key political mentor whose patronage was crucial to his early success in a state long dominated by near-feudal party political machines. Jones, 71, describes himself as Obama’s “godfather” and once said: “He feels like a son to me.”
Like the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the outspoken pastor of Obama’s Chicago church, and like Tony Rezko, the millionaire fundraiser and former friend of Obama who is on trial for corruption, Jones is in danger of becoming a hindrance to his protégé’s presidential ambitions.
For almost a year Jones has used his position as leader of the state senate to block anticorruption legislation passed unanimously by the state’s lower house. He has also become embroiled in ethical controversies concerning his wife’s job and his stepson’s business.
None of them is linked to Obama, but the Democratic contender can ill afford another scandal related to his former Chicago allies. Despite his electrifying speech on race last week, the opinion polls make worrying reading for the senator and his aides. Hillary Clinton appears to be regaining lost ground and John McCain, the Arizona senator who has sewn up the Republican nomination, has edged ahead of his warring rivals.
When Obama stood before a row of American flags in Philadelphia on Tuesday, he faced the greatest challenge of his candidacy. His campaign was reeling from the potentially fatal fallout of Wright’s rabid videotaped sermons, in which the Chicago preacher exclaimed, “God damn America,” and said that the US government had invented Aids to infect black people.
Obama’s response was hailed as one of the bravest and most eloquent speeches on race delivered by an American politician. Even conservative commentators such as Charles Murray of National Review called it “flat-out brilliant”; Michael Gerson, former speechwriter to president George W Bush, called it “one of the finest political performances under pressure” since John F Kennedy addressed concerns about his Catholicism in 1960.
Other analysts, Democrat and Republican, took a different view of Obama’s refusal to turn his back on Wright – whom he portrayed as part of an embittered legacy of discrimination.
Some saw it as a potential gift both to Clinton, who has been surging in opinion polls since videos of Wright were posted on the internet, and to McCain, whose aides have begun to wonder whether Obama might prove an easier target than Clinton in November.
“Nothing could be more dangerous to Mr Obama’s aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday – for 20 years – in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable,” said Shelby Steele, a Stanford University historian and author of a book on Obama.
Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk-show foghorn, expressed the popular view more succinctly: “No country wants a president who is a member of a church with this kind of radicalism as its mainstream.”
The latest polls confirm that, for all the acclaim heaped on Obama’s speech by political insiders, voters seemed to be taking a sharp step back from the charismatic candidate who built his campaign on the promise of a break from “old politics”. One of Obama’s best-known slogans – and the title of his bestselling book – is “the audacity of hope”, a phrase that originally came from one of Wright’s sermons.
In Pennsylvania, the next big state to hold a primary, on April 22, Clinton has doubled her lead in the past two weeks and is now 26 points ahead. In North Carolina, which votes on May 6, Obama has been leading comfortably all year but is now only one point ahead. A national Gallup poll on Friday put Clinton ahead of Obama by two points for the first time since January.
Unfortunately for Democrats, their nomination battle seems to be helping McCain. The Republican rose to a eight-point lead over Obama and a 10-point lead over Clinton in Rasmussen tracking polls released on Friday.
Obama retains an almost insurmountable lead in the crucial count of convention delegates who will pick the Democratic nominee, and on Friday he picked up a useful endorsement from one of those delegates – Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, one of America’s leading Hispanic politicians. Richardson had been close to the Clintons and was regarded as a possible vice-presidential choice for Hillary. His first task will be to rally Hispanic voters in the hope of averting late primary losses that would damage Obama’s chances of picking up uncommitted party officials – the so-called superdelegates likely to decide the contest.
Other Democrats are worried that Obama may have given his Republican rivals the ammunition needed to undermine his campaign. McCain insists he will not engage in dirty tricks, and his aides distributed a memo last week warning Republicans to stay away from “overheated rhetoric and personal attacks”.
Yet Republican surrogates are drooling at the prospect of linking Obama to Wright’s rants.
They intend to ask why he has stopped wearing an American flag badge on his lapel, and why his wife, Michelle, said at a rally: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.”
The Clinton camp is treading carefully, aware that overt attacks on Obama might alienate black voters. Yet the New York senator’s aides are quietly pleased by what they regard as an overdue scrutiny of Obama’s past. They believe he will come to be seen not as some Messiah but as an unusually gifted political hack who has made compromises with dodgy associates, just like most other American politicians.
That intensifying scrutiny may soon lead to Jones’s Illinois door, and to further uncomfortable insights into the unflattering political realities that accompanied Obama’s climb from obscurity.
At one point during Obama’s 2003 Senate campaign, Jones set out to woo two African-American politicians miffed by Obama’s presumption and ambition. One of them, Rickey “Hollywood” Hendon, a state senator, had scoffed that Obama was so ambitious he would run for “king of the world” if the position were vacant.
When Jones secured the two men’s support, Obama asked his mentor how he had pulled it off. “I made them an offer,” Jones said in mock-mafioso style. “And you don’t want to know.”
Jones is now at the centre of a long row over his attempt to block proposed laws cracking down on his state’s “pay-to-play” tradition – whereby companies hoping to win government contracts have to contribute to the campaign funds of officials.
Jones’s staff say he blocked the bill because he intends to produce something tougher. No proposals have appeared.
Cynthia Canary, an activist against corruption who is fighting to have the laws passed, says Obama had little choice as an Illinois politician but to deal with an ethically dubious regime. “You hold your nose and work through the system,” she said.
Yet she also thinks America is being done a disservice by those who portray Obama as somehow above the uglier wheeler-dealing of politics. “He’s a pragmatic politician, and in the end if you think that he’s superman, your heart is going to get broken.”