The Hillary Clinton campaign from the first dog and pony "debates" set out to paint Obama in a box of "inexperience." They were going to suggest that she and only she had White House "experience" and is the "inevitable" candidate ready to fight the Republicans and be a great President, all the same.
What was the first word Hillary Clinton used to describe a position he took of talking to extreme adversaries? Answer: naive.
Now, that could be a fairly innocuous disagreement about someone touting her superior knowledge of an issue, but her tactical hand was played. She would try to diminish his knowledge of how the "grown up" world works.
This strategy from the Hillary Clinton's camp took a bizarre turn, after Senator Obama severely cut down the Hillary Clinton "inevitability" lead to a statistical dead heat in Iowa, and was gaining very fast in New Hampshire. Bill Clinton (yes THAT elephant in the room) on the Charles Rose Show did everything to delegitimize the candidacy of the good Junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama. Bill Clinton used all sort of appalling (to me) condescending descriptors and tones. Then Bill continued the surrogate support speeches for his wife, the “good” (well, I have to be nice) Junior Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, using the same condescending points he started on the Charlie Rose Show (at least that’s where I first heard Bill's tactic). The Clinton campaign continue the relentless efforts to tarnish (no, scratch that) destroy the halo of Obama, after he won convincingly in Iowa. The bizarre tactic continued up to the unfortunate jocularity (the “give me a break” at the punctuation made it less so) of the biggest fairy tale to describe Obama anti Iraq war position. Hillary may say inspiring words do not get things done, but words do matter and she and her husband do know this quite acutely. After all, what is is if not is or is it? Then Hillary went on another bizarre line after her narrow win (unexpectedly; she had been prepared for a loss) to knock out the so called inspiring leader aire of Obama, by saying MLK got shot, and then the most unsophisticated point of it did take LBJ (a President) to make MLK dream happened, rather than another dream just talked about. This was a point again to make Obama look less presidential and only a person full of rhetoric who she believe had no position to be comparing himself to JFK, RFK, MLK, ALincoln, or any of the pivotal leaders in American history (truth be told he wasn’t doing that at all; they are his inspirations and key references for the historical relevance to his own message of changing the politics of Washington; for Pete sakes he even use Bill Clinton as a person of change (change non the less, but Obama notion of change is quite fundermentally transformational.) Well, her comments were not openly racist, but it did touch a raw nerve with a majority of Black Americans who felt she diminished serious, and courageous efforts by MLK and the millions of folks to force the government to change. Now the big question is why would Hillary use words like shot (many Black people had said they did not want Barack to run, because they were afraid of this possibility), and inspiring words get nothing done, if not to marginalize his strong candidacy framed in racial term (especially since the campaign was heading down South.) Barack Obama did not make race a narrative as a focus of his campaign at all. On the contrary, Obama set out from day one on his campaign to champion the causes of ALL Americans.
Well, the Clintons got called out on their sly strategy. And though they may say otherwise, it was a calculated effort on their parts to DIVIDE the party in some racial framing (we all know this is exactly what the Republican nominee and supporters could very well do, but we did not expect this low blow from another Democrat.) Now, after the Obama camp highlighted all the condescending points from Hillary and Bill, they are a accused as the ones race baiting?… UNBELIEVABLE! It is good that the Clintons had to swallow some crow on this, and Obama has been quite gracious about the flak (as a matter of fact he was trying to use humor to throw it right back at them.)
Needless to say, Hillary and Bill have lost a lot of respect from me, and I suspect quite a few more and many Americans. In the debate last night, she had her moments but she looked quite small to me, and Obama look quite bigger in stature, moving forward.
Bill Clinton, face it my ex President, your style of Southern political games has ran out.
Barack Obama is cleaning the Billary Clinton worn out clock. It is time for change. It is time for a change we can believe in.
