Because a bunch of people sit around computers parsing every word that Hillary says trying to tease out a lie, untruth or distortion so that they can avoid talking about the issues. This is called
gotcha politics. It got W. elected in 2000 and some people at DU are hoping it will get their man elected this time.
This BBC documentary from 2000 has an accompanying transcript of how the RNC operates. I changed the names and few words to make it more up to date. The words in bold are those I changed. Notice how much I did not have to change. This is strictly for laughs, to lighten the mood around here, because we are all getting too serious.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/archive/981759.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/audio_video/programmes/panorama/transcripts/transcript_22_10_00.txtArtist's Dramatization:
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR (du nick-name)
If there's something really good that we should attack then we'll attack it.
MARSHALL
In the DU war room, attack headquarters for the Obama campaign they're waiting for the
candidates to appear on screen.
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Everybody make sure you've got a pen and paper. You see anything that you think is a potential
exaggeration, hit or whatever, just email it around.
MARSHALL
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR and his colleagues do oppo - opposition research. It means they look for any slip by the enemy
- Hillary Clinton .
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Research is a fundamental point. We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war.
Research digs up the ammunition.
MARSHALL
You make the bullets.
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
That's right, we make the bullets.
ODAMA-MAMA
I'm ready to just respond to anything that Hillary says.
MARSHALL
And they feed their anti- Hillary research to the American press and TV.
OBAMA-MAMA
It's an amazing thing when you have top line producers and reporters calling you and saying "We trust you,
we need your stuff."
PRESENTER
Good evening from the the University....
MARSHALL
Right at the start Hillary presents BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR with his first chance to attack.
PRESENTER
Senator Clinton what is your favorite food?
HILLARY CLINTON
That would have to be ice cream.
MARSHALL
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR spots the opening. It's small but to them it's a gift, a Hillary untruth.
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Hey, she wrote about what she liked to eat when she was pregnant, right?
Obama-Mama
Yes she did.
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Alright, okay. Hey, Monica-cigar, how're we looking on that? Where's the stuff on that?
MARSHALL
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR is eager to get a story to the Associated Press Newswire - A.P. - the link with all the media.
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Here it is. "My favorite thing to eat was peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I couldn't get enough of them. That's exactly what Hillary said, it directly
contradicts what she just said in the debate. She just lied. A.P.s already on there.
OBAMA-MAMA
OPPOSITION RESEARCHER, DU
The woman can't tell the truth. She uses legalisms and she passes words just like her lord and master, Bill Clinton, to get
out of trouble.
HILLARY CLINTON
And when the conflict came up in Bosnia I saw a genocide in the heart of Europe. I think...
MARSHALL
Having tasted blood the attack dogs want more.
HILLARY CLINTON
Look, that's where World War One started, in the Balkans.
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Hey yeah, let's check this out! Maybe that is another Hillary whopper!
MARSHALL
This time the trail runs cold.
COLLEAUGE
Okay, so that is not a lie. Okay. Alright.
MARSHALL
What, you thought it was a lie there?
BIN-A-DEM-4-EVR
Well you never know with this gal-she shaves the truth.
But Oppo is not all fun and games. Here are some of the harsh realities about using oppo research driven campaigns.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406/green "Presidential campaigns are not won or lost on paid TV," says Josh Lahey, a Democratic strategist and researcher. "They're all about free media, so there's even more of a priority." The payoff for a successfully placed item is the effect of the story itself in influencing media coverage. This accounts for the intricate methods of story-laundering by which campaigns avoid the taint of open negativity while gaining legitimacy from a seemingly impartial media outlet.
snip
Opposition research will be the key, and hidden, factor in the campaign. But it can burn campaigns that are too eager to deploy it. Gray Davis was such a hardened exponent, even against opponents in his own party, that when he desperately needed allies during the campaign to recall him, hardly any remained. Wesley Clark's campaign succeeded in its effort to hurt Dean, but its smear tactics hurt Clark as well, who found little favor with the press corps. And when the Republican case against Bill Clinton during his impeachment proved too heavy-handed for the public, it was not Clinton who paid the price—it was those who most recklessly pursued him.
Some oppo is
just plain stupid like the Obama camps "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)"
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/19/news/obama.php The Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said his campaign made a "dumb mistake" when it circulated a memo criticizing Hillary Rodham Clinton's financial ties to India.
Obama on Monday disavowed the memo, which was headlined, "Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)," a play on the standard reference to a candidate's party and constituency. The memo referred to investments in India by former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton; her fund-raising among Indian-Americans; and the former president's $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company that has moved U.S. jobs to India.
snip
Obama's campaign sent the memo to some reporters Thursday, demanding that it not be attributed to the campaign. The Clinton campaign got a copy and made it public.
"It is not reflective of the longstanding relationship I have had with the Indian-American community," Obama said.
I had forgotten about this episode when I decided that the "Race Memo" had come from outside the Obama Camp. Now I understand why some people believe that this bit of oppo was also internally generated and was also meant to for journalists as a "but you didn't hear it from us" message--a status that is usually only accorded to Republican oppo.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/12/obama-camps-memo-on-clin_n_81205.html Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has prepared a detailed memo listing various instances in which it perceived Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to have deliberately played the race card in the Democratic primary.
The memo, which was obtained by the Huffington Post and has been made public elsewhere, is believed to have been given to an activist and contains mostly excerpts from different media reports. It lists the contact info and name of Obama's South Carolina press secretary, Amaya Smith, and is broken down into five incidents in which either Clinton, her husband Bill, or campaign surrogates made comments that could be interpreted as racially insensitive.
The document provides an indication that, in private, the Obama campaign is seeking to capitalize on the view - and push the narrative - that the Clintons are using race-related issues for political leverage. In public, the Obama campaign has denied that they are trying to propagate such a perception, noting that the document never was sent to the press.
Everyone uses negative oppo, right? Not necessarily. And it is not just a matter of ethics. Some opponents are not good choices for oppo based strategies. Oppo of the type that focuses on a candidate's character is used to define a candidate who is a clean slate in the public eye.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406/green The legendary—and legendarily ruthless—Republican political consultant Lee Atwater hewed to the adage that a campaign should frame its opponent before the opponent can frame himself.
All newbies start out with a low negativity rating because no one knows anything bad about the person. Once a candidacy is announced, it is a race against the clock. Will the candidate create his image or will the opposition create his image? The corporate media rushed to define John Edwards as a phony, electing to assign the task to John Solomon of the Washington Post the very moment that the presidential race was starting over a year ago. That is because John Edwards would most likely be our nominee right now had the press not intervened and Obama would be his most likely VP choice and the Democrats would be on their way to an easy victory this fall. John Edwards was still largely neutral so he was easy to smear.
However, Hillary already has a well defined public persona. She started the election with the high name recognition expected of a first lady. She has always had high negatives--also to be expected since she represents all that conservative America hated about the 1960s and 1970s, what Bob Novak called "abortion, acid and amnesty" when referring to the George McGovern campaign, for which she worked. She has a fanatic group of supporters who believe--with good reason--that she will never back down in her fight against the right wing. For Hillary the 60s have never ended. They just got put on hold during the Reagan era.
These are hardly qualities that a fellow Democrat can emphasize in a primary to political advantage. Therefore, the Obama camp at DU has been reduced to copying the RNC's self proclaimed anti-Hillary strategy of calling her 1. a liar, 2, sleazy 3, polarizing, the three negatives that everyone already knows.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/26/hillary/Ok, so what do those mean to Democrats? Polarizing? Not much. No one expects to win a lot of Republican votes. Sleazy? Does anyone admit that they vote for the best looking or the trendiest candidate. I know that a lot of people base their vote on frivolous criteria like this, but no one actually comes out and
says it.
That leaves truthfulness. If the only thing that the Republican oppo in the 1990s managed to do was to get a bunch of people to believe that Hillary was a liar, then the Obama camp at DU will go along with the corporate media as it plays
Hillary is a liar round two.
There is just one problem with this strategy. Which people believed/believe the Big Lies
The Clintons are habitual liars that the corporate media spun in the 1990s? Sure the press seemed to buy it. And a few Dems expressed outrage over the sex. But did rank and file Democrats turn on the Clintons? I don't think so.
Some people shake their heads and ask why are Hillary's numbers going up and Obama's number going down (except for his negatives which are slowly rising). I predicted this. The day after Easter, when Hillary hit rock bottom, the general wisdom here and on TV was that the Bosnia effect had sunk Hillary's campaign and given Obama the win. This was silly. These are the same Democrats who stayed true to Bill Clinton during Monica-gate. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" was a much bigger deal than sniper fire in a war zone. The drop in Hillary's polls were the Judas effect on Easter. I predicted that the use of the right wing tactic---so familiar to Democrats from 2000 and from the 1990s---would rebound on Obama and tar his campaign even though he was not the only one propelling the story. McCain and the RNC were getting their licks in too.
Now, look at their numbers in the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/us/politics/04campaign.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are now effectively tied among Democratic voters, with 46 percent saying they want the party to nominate Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent for Mrs. Clinton. In late February, 54 percent of Democrats said they wanted Mr. Obama to win the nomination, compared with 38 percent for Mrs. Clinton.
Look at that. Obama not only survived Wright. He got teflon from Wright and convinced Democrats who were afraid that he was not serious about fighting the right wing conspiracy that he had some serious left wing ideology. And now his camp has pissed away his lead with Republican style oppo politics that remind Democratic voters of the one thing that they hate almost as much as Geoege W. Bush.
Ken Starr.
And today there is a new oppo attack in all the Obama leaning blogs. Within two weeks, Hillary should be ahead of Obama among Democrats.
In the end, after all the "Hillary is a liar" stories, Hillary will be exactly where she was when this all started. Her political opponents will hate her. Her political friends will love her even more. Her image will not have changed at all. The one who is being transformed is Obama. He is slowly being stripped of the image he worked so hard to fashion, that of the candidate who is above the mud slinging. And she is not doing it to him.
He is doing it to himself.With the help of a lot of people who claim to support him. He is the new one, the candidate with the fresh image that is still being formed.
He is the one that the RNC and the corporate media are really attacking when they play this game of "Let's call Hillary a liar". Because if they attacked Obama directly, that would only make him a victim.
It still is not too late for the Democratic candidates to make up. A unity ticket will combine the two halves of the party---the half that believes that we must always be ready to confront the ever present right wing conspiracy and the half that believes in being optimistic and conciliatory in order to win friends. There will be a time and a place for both strategies.
Advance noogies for the first person who suggests that Hillary is running around dropping falsehood bombs in order to "entrap" Obama supporters into using Republican style oppo attacks.You can lead a horse to water but you can not make him act like Lee Atwater.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
