Monday, March 24, 2008 - Posts
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Perhaps the most shocking thing about Gordon Fischer’s Monica joke is that it didn’t happen until now.
A key Obama organizer and adviser in Iowa, Fischer posted an item on his blog over the weekend slamming Bill Clinton for his comment late Friday that many interpreted as an attack on Obama’s patriotism.
“Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping—instead he is hurting—his own party,” Fischer wrote. “B. Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress.”
Cue outrage. On a conference call this morning, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer called it the “most personal attack yet” and an indicator of the Obama campaign’s harsh new strategy. Fischer took down the post and replaced it with a two-part apology. The Obama campaign reiterated its line that “comments like this have no place in our political dialogue.”
So far in this campaign, we’ve seen some liberal umbrage-taking. But now it’s official: The Monica scandal is off-limits too. It’s still unclear, though, to what extent the ban applies. The scandal was a defining moment of her husband’s administration, after all. Is any reference to Monica considered unfair? If anything, the Clinton campaign is lucky the blue dress hasn’t resurfaced until now. Be sure that in a general election, Clinton's Republican opponents would not exercise the same restraint.
Also, here’s an idea. For one day, each candidate allows their surrogates to say all the hateful, inappropriate, uncalled-for things they can think of about their opponent. All the hurled insults would instantly cancel one another out. That way, they can get it out of their systems and bring the umbrage war to a stalemate. Or so we hope.
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In the beginning, it was about momentum. When she lost momentum, it was about pledged delegates. When she lost pledged delegates, it was about the popular vote. And now that she’s on her way to losing the popular vote, it’s about the number of electoral votes held by the states in which the candidates have won primary victories.
Sen. Evan Bayh, a Hillary Clinton supporter, proposed the new metric on CNN’s Late Edition Sunday. The logic: Clinton has won states with a total of 219 electoral votes, whereas Obama has won states with only 202 electoral votes. “So who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes," Bayh said, "is an important factor to consider because ultimately, that’s how we choose the president of the United States.”
And that’s not just the cry of a lone surrogate. (Keep in mind that Sunday show appearances by surrogates are always approved by campaigns.) On a conference call today, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer argued that Bayh “makes a compelling point. Senator Clinton has won and performed well in states [like Ohio and Florida] that will be general election battlegrounds.”
First off, let us reiterate a point that apparently can’t be said enough: There is no discernible connection between success in a primary and success in the general. You can argue that Obama wouldn’t be able to match Clinton’s strength in areas like rural Ohio, where she won whites in some counties by as much as 80 percent of the vote. But given the huge disparity in voter turnout between the primaries and the general, the unreliability of exit poll responses (how do you know someone is actually an “independent”?), and Obama’s relative strength in matchups against John McCain, it’s wrongheaded to think that Clinton’s electoral vote lead has any bearing on the “electability” question.
Second, it’s ironic that Bayh chose to push this particular metric. After 2000, he was a strong advocate of overhauling the Electoral College: “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.” Then, in 2006 he said, “I think our president should be chosen by the majority of the American people.” To be fair, his remarks about the new metric take into account the electoral system as it is, not as he wishes it were. But perhaps the Clinton camp could have found a better surrogate to push this particular argument.
Update 5:07 p.m.: A Frayster points out that Clinton herself supported abolishing the Electoral College back in 2000.
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You may remember Fred Thompson from such unmemorable primary films as You’re the GOP’s Only Hope, I Love You, You’re Lazy, Now Change, and his breakthrough role Failure to Launch. After the primary-going public didn’t buy Thompson’s presidential character, he was pushed out of his new career and forced to retire to Tennessee.
But now, Thompson wants back in—to Hollywood. After two months off the trail, he joined a Hollywood casting agency again, assumedly to pursue the law and politics roles he was acting in before he ran for president. But here’s the thing—if America didn’t buy him as a real president, they may not buy him as a fake one anymore, either.
In that case, Thompson will have to look for other roles. Our first thought: Forget showing his face—go 3-D and try voice acting. Thompson’s most memorable feature is his laconic Southern drawl, which echoed around the debate hall (especially compared with Ron Paul’s squeal.) Thompson could corner the market on the wise but gruff grizzly bear. At the least, it will mean Thompson is animated, for once.
And if that doesn’t work, he can always relive the horror film that was his primary run. Working title: Freddy Thomspon: Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Yesterday marked possibly our favorite chapter in possibly our favorite subplot of the 2008 election—the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s 1996 trip to Bosnia. Clinton’s story, in which she describes being hustled off the tarmac because of warnings of sniper fire, had already been pecked to death. The Washington Post’s indispensable “Fact Checker” ripped her version apart, as did Sinbad, who was along for the ride. (I love how news stories identify him as “the comedian Sinbad,” as if to differentiate him from all the other Sinbads out there.)
But yesterday the Jed Report issued the coup de grace, with a mashed-together faux trailer of the hypothetical film “Hillary in Tuzla.” The juxtaposition of Clinton saying "we were basically told to run to our cars" with video of an unhurried greeting ceremony on the runway is fairly withering. If that’s not enough to get Clinton to stop telling her now-thoroughly debunked version of the story, I’m not sure what will.
Update 1:14 p.m.: In a noontime conference call, Howard Wolfson read from "contemporaneous accounts" of Clinton's trip, which confirmed the gist of her story, that Bosnia was a dangerous place at the time. But he doesn't dispute the challenge to her specific anecdote about running off the tarmac: "It is possible in
most recent instance she discussed this that she misspoke with regard to the exit from the plane," he said.
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