Last year Kerry defended Hillary when her patriotism was questioned:
August 6, 2007, 11:25 am
By The New York Times
In his Web column today, Patrick Healy writes about the relationship between Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton:
At first blush they seemed like a surprising couple: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John Kerry, teaming up last month to defend Mrs. Clinton from Pentagon criticism over the Iraq war – criticism that had a Swift-Boat-style ring to it, her campaign believed, of questioning her patriotism.
The two senators are political rivals within the Democratic Party – he its nominee in 2004, she a leading candidate for the nomination next year. What’s more, Mrs. Clinton was among those who hobbled Mr. Kerry politically last year by criticizing him for a botched joke he made about President Bush and Iraq; Kerry friends say the blow-up over the joke was a factor in his not seeking the presidency again in 2008.
As a presidential candidate, too, Mrs. Clinton has pledged to fight back against attacks, to never be “Swift Boated” – implicitly suggesting that her campaign mettle would be different (and stronger) than Mr. Kerry’s. Indeed, her friends say she was no fan of the Kerry campaign, seeing it as feckless and undisciplined at times (two adjectives that people do not use about her or her operation).
moreI guess before Hillary's campaign went broke and she
managed her campaign into a ditch, Hillary thought campaigning would be easy.
Video of Hillary knee-capping Kerry:
Hillary Clinton Joins In Kerry Statement on Cheney's Defense of Pentagon's Smear of Sen. ClintonThen there is this:
Bill Clinton's offensive patriotism remarks (video)
There was a time when Bill Clinton's patriotism was challenged, repeatedly.
CLINTON: Ross gave a good answer but I've got to respond directly to Mr. Bush.
You have questioned my patriotism.BUSH: (Inaudible).
CLINTON: You even brought some right-wing congressman into the White House to plot how to attack me for going to Russia in 1969-70, when over 50,000 other Americans did. Now, I honor your service in World War II, I honor Mr. Perot's service in uniform and the service of every man and woman who ever served, including Admiral Crowe, who was your Chairman of the joint Chiefs and who's supporting me. But when Joe McCarthy went around this country attacking people's patriotism he was wrong. He was wrong. And a senator from Connecticut stood up to him named Prescott Bush.
Your father was right to stand up to Joe McCarthy, you were wrong to attack my patriotism. I was opposed to the war but I loved my country and we need a president who will bring this country together, not divide it. We've had enough division. I want to lead a unified country.linkDespite being labeled
Judas, Richardson defended Bill's Obama comment. Hillary's campaign jumped to use it as their defense of Bill:
Richardson: President Clinton Was Not Questioning Sen. Obama's PatriotismA contradiction: Hillary's camp
pushed the Ayers' story a month earlier:
"Wonder what the Republicans will do with this issue," mused Clinton spokesman Phil Singer in one e-mail to the media, containing a New York Sun article reporting a $200 contribution from William Ayers, a founding member of the 1970s group Weather Underground, to Obama in 2001.
linkRobert Creamer
For the last several weeks we have been inundated with statements from the Clinton Campaign (and some media pundits) arguing that their incessant attacks on Obama's patriotism, their use of McCarthyite "guilt by association", and attempts to make Obama look like a "cultural elitist" are all justified because "the Republicans will do it in the fall".
They justify lifting whole chapters from Karl Rove's Republican playbook as an attempt to demonstrate to Democratic voters and superdelegates that these kinds of charges will make Obama "unelectable" in the general election.
Many Clinton surrogates pick up the refrain with statements like: "Well I know Obama doesn't agree with those video clips of Rev. Wright, but that's what the Republicans will say about him." Or: "I know Obama's not really an elitist, but the Republicans will make him sound that way." Or: "They'll trot out all of his past associations, so it's important that we examine them now."
There are two things to say about this line of argument.
First, Clinton knows that her keyhole-sized chance of winning the nomination hasn't got a prayer if all she can do is make an argument to superdelegates for the "possibility" of what Republicans can say about Obama. The bottom has to fall out of the Obama candidacy. That requires a lot more than showing superdelegates that Obama might be vulnerable to Republican attack. They have to convince the voters that the charges they are raising are true -- that Obama is an unpatriotic elitist.
Clinton needs a stampede of superdelegates in order to win. That requires that Obama loses the final primaries by big numbers, and that his numbers in the national polls tank.
The problem for Clinton, of course, is that Obama is the furthest thing from an unpatriotic elitist, and that by relentlessly making these charges she has been raising her own negatives to dizzying heights.
The next time you hear the old "we're just bringing this up because the Republicans will say it", remember the kids in high school who used to go up to you and say, "I don't believe this about your friend Amy, but I'm telling you what other people are saying for your own good." Neither justification is true. In both cases they want you to believe the content of the personal attack.
Second, the general election will not be decided based on narratives constructed about past associations and old friends of the various candidates. And if it were the Republican slander machine would be equally well supplied by the Clinton's stable of past political and business connections (think pardon recipient Marc Rich).
moreThomas B. Edsall
A high-ranking labor supporter of Hillary Clinton is distributing to union leaders and to Democratic strategists a document detailing the radical activities of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, two former members of the '70s group the Weather Underground, who decades later, in Chicago, crossed paths with Barack Obama.
The document - a three-page emailed essay by Rick Sloan, communications director for the International Association of Machinists as Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) -- takes both literary and political license to outline what Sloan believes would be the thrust of a hypothetical Republican campaign against Obama focusing on his tangential connection to Ayers and Dohrn.
The goal of the essay appears to be to discredit Obama as the prospective Democratic presidential nominee.
The most damaging new material cited by Sloan appears in a link to an FBI Freedom of Information web site -- where a viewer can examine hundreds of pages of a study of the Weather Underground and its leaders, written in 1976 by the Chicago FBI office, just at the group was disintegrating at the end of the Vietnam War.
Sloan contends that the purpose of his document is to outline what he conjectures will be the tactics of Republican operative Karl Rove, an informal adviser to John McCain's campaign, if Obama is the nominee. The title of Sloan's paper is: "What Is Rove Up To?"
moreWhat is Hillary up to? She's compiling an enemies list -- Kerry? Check!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
by Joe Sudbay (DC) · 4/19/2008 05:21:00 PM ET
Another reason Hillary Clinton is losing may be explained in tomorrow's
NY Times. The Clinton campaign seems to spend a lot of time figuring out which disloyal Democrats to hate -- and to what degree they should hate them. The Clinton campaign is on life support and they are busy making an enemies list.
Last year, word was that Team Clinton basically went around to donors and others with a clear message, which I'll paraphrase here:
Get on the bus, NOW. If you don't get on the bus, NOW, you will never get on the bus. This is the winning bus and we're going to remember who didn't get on early because when you try to get on, there won't be any seats left.
Despite the warnings, a lot of people took a different bus.
It does sound like the crew at the Clinton HQ puts a lot of time into tracking who, in their minds, has screwed them over. John Kerry is currently at the top of the hate list (a top Clinton supporter says Kerry is now "dead" to the Clintons):
Mr. Kerry, his top aides and family members have received varying degrees of tongue-lashing from Clinton surrogates, chiefly two top fund-raisers — John Coale and Peter Maroney — with previous close ties to Mr. Kerry.
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