From Bubba to Flubba: Slew of gaffes makes pals wonder why Bill is losing it

[tabasco]

"What you hear from adoring rich guys in Davos is very different from what you hear in the living rooms of Iowa," said one.

Others theorize he's frustrated that Obama has co-opted the same "change message" that got Clinton elected in 1992.

Many think he's just older, and perhaps his heart bypass surgery in 2004 took more of a toll than people realize.

"It is possible that Bill Clinton's recent gaffes are a result of his bypass operation," said Dr. Marc Siegel, an NYU associate professor who has interviewed Clinton's heart surgeon.

Siegel was referring to a personality-change phenomenon sometimes seen in bypass patients.

Whatever the cause, the 42nd President has become a chronic headache for Hillary.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/04/26/2008-04-26_from_bubba_to_flubba_slew_of_gaffes_make.html

[QC]

1. Telediagnosis: It's Not Just for Bill Frist Anymore! n/t

[dkf]

2. Maybe we are just deluding ourselves into thinking that's not the same

Bill Clinton that we invested the Presidency in.

[QC]

3. This just reminds me too much of Frist and his video exam of Schiavo,

and Charles Krauthammer telediagnosing Al Gore as a psycho.

It's very freeperish, but since DU now seems to be the branch campus of Free Republic, perhaps that's not surprising.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

7. Oh no you didn't just accuse DU as being a branch of Free Republic

but you did. Disgusting.

[RaleighNCDUer]

19. A couple points of difference.

Frist was diagnosing a person he never met based on one viewing of one video.

It is well known that in the Krauthammer/Gore thing, it is Krauthammer who is the psycho - a couple years of reading his column makes that obvious.

Bill Clinton is one of the most televised persons in the world. Every American alive has seen hundreds of hours of tape of Bill Clinton. Anyone with any degree of perception can see that he is not the same as he was even just a few years ago, when he was doing recovery work for the tsunami victims. The effects of bypass surgery are well known - and for persons of a certain age, who have friends who have been through it, the signs may be more apparent than to others.

So yeah, the comments of a few old men watching TV just might have some basis in reality.

[BlueIdaho]

5. You need a new punchline

this one is getting old.

[QC]

8. Why waste original material on lame bullshit? n/t

[BlueIdaho]

10. I guess when you are out of ideas...

your just plain out of ideas - huh?

[Ichingcarpenter]

12. He's no John Edwards or Bobby Kennedy

I hope you really start looking into his history
that many here have researched over the years on DU with
cross referenced history and links.


This guy is no Kennedy democrat or even close to Edwards.

He is though, very close to the Bush Crime Family.

[Cheap_Trick]

17. notice he said POSSIBLE

damn, you cherry pick like a pro. must be a prerequisite to be a hillary supporter.

[QC]

18. Not a Hillary supporter here.

I know it's hard for simpleminded binary thinkers to imagine, but the world is not divided into only two types of people.

[Name removed]

24. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

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[FrenchieCat]

4. Maybe he is the same. Maybe we are now paying close attention

and because the opponent doesn't fight dirty like he does, it has become apparent of who has a problem, and it ain't Sen. Obama!

[graycem]

6. Sadly, I agree..

classic case of the ole' scales falling off. Bummer.

[BlueIdaho]

9. It may just be age

But its hard to not see just how much he's lost. Not much speed on that old curve ball anymore.

It would be sad if he wasn't busy being such a mean spirited old shit.

[question everything]

20. Oh great. He was the first Democratic President to be re-elected

since FDR, gave hope to Democrats everywhere, took a budget deficit that, by then, was larger than all previous years combined and turned into surplus, left with highest approval rating of any other president, raised the income level across the economic spectrum.. and now he is being trashed because he decided not to spend the rest of his life playing golf.

How ungrateful people can be. But then, we, Democrats, are known to eat our own. This is why no one can ever get all of us united behind him/her, no one.

[hollowdweller]

22. Pres Clinton was great

I thought he was the best president in my adult lifetime.

But he's really tarnished his image for me.

Both he and Hillary. They were relentlessly assaulted by the right wing. Yet they never sunk to their level.

Now the tactics they are using are exactly like the ones used against them. It's sad because I thought Bill showed you could be positive and win. Heck he even said good things about the GOP that attacked him.

Big Dog? What happened. What became of your "Return not evil with evil" old campaigning style??

[tabasco]

26. And now he's standing in the way in a desperate power grab

to install his wife as the next President.

People do become corrupted with wealth and power. It's a story as old as civilization.

It happened to the Clintons.







http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/P/Philanthropy&pagewanted=all

[dansolo]

27. It goes both ways

People criticize Bill Clinton now because it has become more and more obvious that he cares more about himself and Hillary than he does about the party or the country. That, combined with their recent schmoozing with the most vile Republicans, makes people look at him a completely different light.

[stillcool]

21. I think so...

what you don't look for you don't find, and what you don't see isn't real.

[sandnsea]

11. Hillary claimed she was shot at

Who's losing it again?

[charlie]

15. Lol

There's just an embarassment of riches to draw from, isn't there?

[murray hill farm]

13. A few weeks ago, I was in Little Rock for a day...

and went to tour the President Clinton Library there. It is a wonderous place...where you get to go through the whole career of Bill..up through the Presidency. As I watched movies of his speeches, I was almost choked up by it....remembering how it felt when he was President. Then I returned home ot Georgia, saw one of his appearances on tv....He most certainly is not the same man. No more of that great smile and ability to connect with us in that great, just gotta love him way from the past. It is not just age. It is an anger..and maybe it was always there to some degree, but you never saw it, but it is sad....whatever the cause.

[BenDavid]

14. It is a shame the print media will not look into the allegations that

Bill said the obama campaign did. But then again the new york daily news has not be a bastion of truth journalism. The truth is Bill is right about the whoremedia. Hell, it was not many moons ago you all were critical of the same print media you now post as truth tellers during the clinton presidency.

What Bill sees is what really happened and it is hard to grasp that of all the work he did to help people of color, a person of color running for the presidency is using tactics he fought against during the 70's 80's and 90's.....obama and his campaign has used the race card and with the help of the willing whoremedia has done a damn good job in blaming it on both Clintons....

[jeanruss]

16. his surgery

I read that people who have the type of heart surgery that he had, often develop dementia at much higher rates because of poor oxygen flow to the brain as a residual effect.

[Hardrada]

23. I'M developing some fucking dementia because of the type of

campaign we're suffering!

[TheDoorbellRang]

25. Interesting comment after the article

People. Whether Bill's told Hillary or not, we don't know. But has it occurred to anyone that Bill's sweating bullets because he maybe he's promised a lot of things to many of those yet-to-be-disclosed donors to his Presidential Library. Former Sen. Bill Bradley put it this way back in early March: "I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library. And the reason that is important -- you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted; investigations that are squelched; contracts that are awarded; regulations that are delayed. These are important questions. The people deserve to know. And we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected, because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain."

[tabasco]

28. Really. Why the secrecy?

Why are the Clintons refusing to release the contributor list?

Do they think the republicans would give them a free ride on this?

Bill Clinton has appeared downrightr desperate to install his wife in the White House.

It has become a curious and sad spectacle.
__________________________________________

On a related note, why has Hillary refused to release her Senate earmark (pork) requests?

Why won't Hillary show us, rather than tell us who she's been fighting for.

Again, why the secrecy?

[BeyondGeography]

29. She'd still be lost without him

He's out there campaigning his ass off and the people who go to see him are not grading his presentation. They like him and they want it to be the 90's again.

Without Bill, there's no Hill.

[nichomachus]

30. Calling it Frist-like is just nonsense -- it's fair to speculate on these things

These people are not making a life-affecting medical diagnosis of a person they have never even seen.

Bill Clinton is a very public person and has been in the public eye for almost 20 years. When his public behavior varies wildly from what people have seen in the past, observers are going to ask why.

It would be the same as if Grover Norquist came out and initiated a petition for a tax increase to provide free medical care for illegal immigrants. You would be right in asking what the hell happened to the traitor we've come to know and hate and in speculating on the cause.

I'm not too keen on the people who say "definitely" that one thing or the other is going on with Bill, but it is fair to speculate on the possibilities.

Richard Clarke, a former close associate of the Clintons, was on Bill Maher a couple of weeks ago. Maher asked him about Bill's performance on the campaign trail, and Clarke responded along the lines of: I want to know what happened to Bill Clinton and who is this guy they replaced him with. The Bill Clinton I know just doesn't make these kinds of mistakes.

That was my take too. Clinton is the consummate politician. He knows just what to say and when. He doesn't make "gaffes," at least not of the quantity and magnitude of what he's been doing. So, political observers are left with trying to figure out why.

Is it physical? That's a possibility. Is he under some kind of political pressure? Could be. My own take is that there's a distinct possibility that he doesn't want Hillary to win -- and may not even realize that himself. He may be subconsciously sabotaging her campaign.

If she gets in, they will always be mentioned in the history books together. If her presidency is a failure, he goes down with her -- the failed president and the impeached one. If it's so-so, she will always get top billing, because she was the first woman and he was impeached. It will always be "First Woman President Hillary Clinton and her impeached husband. If her presidency is a rousing success, he becomes just a footnote. None of those is palatable to someone with as big an ego as Bill's.