We need people like H Ickes attacking McCain for Obama

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

I know many of you have a low opionion of this guy after the RBC thing, but I think we need guys like him helping us in the fall.

I'd never really heard of him before last weekend. And when I listened to him, I'm thinking, "This guy is kind of a douchebag, but he speaks well and is good at convincing people." If I didn't know anything about the Michigan situation, I would've thought, "wow, maybe Hillary is getting screwed here." Of course, knowing the details it's different. He's making you think 4 delegates is a huge injustice because it's different than the vote counts, but of course he's leaving out that Obama took his name off, and that the election was totally garbage, and that Obama didn't get to campaign in the state, which always raises his numbers. But if you don't know it, you might think he's making this clear case of injustice, and you might agree with him. You might think he's this realistic guy who has no obvious bias, even though he's really totally biased and paid to advocate for Hillary.

This is the kind of guy we need attacking McCain or responding to McCain attacks. McCain tries to attack Obama's patriotism and wrap himself in the flag. Then Ickes talks to a reporter and he says "I'm outraged here. Can you believe that John McCain is trying to pull this typical republican lying smear AT THE SAME TIME as he voted against the new GI bill?!! And he's throwing out 100 years for Iraq when 20 year old kids are dying from cowardly attacks from insurgents? Are you kidding me? He keeps talking about attacking Iran when military families keep losing their kids and they want them to come home? This is ridiculous! That's patriotism?! Can you believe the nerve of this?"

Then McCain's on the defensive, and Obama himself didn't attack anybody directly, and might even be able to say that Ickes is not part of his campaign, but his concerns merit some discussion. And McCain is scrambling to not look like an insensitive dick, and not look like he's "flip-flopping" on recent statements. And Obama looks better by comparison, not engaged in petty sniping but concerned about McCain's "shocking" comments. And some media person that night talks about how Ickes was a Clinton guy who was on her side in the primary, he's no Obama lapdog, and this must be important enough to talk about. And maybe some independents think to themselves, "Wow, McCain's kind of a hypocrit here. Obama looks like he has a better take on this."

What do you think?

[NanceGreggs]

1. You should have stopped at ...

... "this guy is a douchebag". EOD.

[thunder rising]

2. 2nded

[VolcanoJen]

3. 3rd-ed

:dem:

[NanceGreggs]

6. Hey, dontcha know ...

... "he speaks well and is good at convincing people."

I guess that's why Hillary got everything she wanted last Saturday!

:rofl:

[VolcanoJen]

9. And he was the second after McAuliffe today to debunk the AP "concession" story

Ickes said on MSNBC that neither Obama nor Clinton would reach the magic number tonight.

He's going to eat those words. :-)

[NanceGreggs]

14. If being delusional was a political asset ...

... Obama wouldn't even consider Hill as a VP choice - he'd go directly to Ickes and beg him to share the ticket.

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

11. Oh, he's definitely a douchebag, but

I'm sick of the Warren Christopher high minded talking points that middle americans and "intelligence-challenged" people think is soft and weak. We know there are going to be all kinds of unbelievable cheap shots that infuriate anyone who knows the details, so we need to be proactive in fighting this, even if it toes the line of being a bit disingenuous or dirty.

The whole time I was watching him on Saturday, I was thinking "Who the fuck does this guy think he's fooling wit these retard arguments?" But putting myself in the shoes of a swing voter or a 2004 Bush voter who might vote Obama, I thought that this guy is great for the kind of stuff I described in the OP. Obama fans and campaign people can be like "Do you remember this guy's weird love for another democrat in the primary. We hated this guy, and we think he doesn't like Obama at all, and might be a McCain supporter. So if McCain says something that makes him speak out, it is a big deal. Guys who aren't partisan to Obama in the least are outraged by John McCain's comments. Wow, this is big.

And Obama's campaign manager is doing Tiger Woods fist pumps in his office. This could be worthwhile.

[Shae]

26. Can your logic get any twistier? nt

[gcomeau]

4. No we do NOT.

We need people like Biden attacking McCain for Obama. People who do it with substance and conviction, not slime and stagecraft.

[Orsino]

5. Will he be allowed as much air time to attack McCain?

The MSM won't permit much in-depth discussion of St. McCain's record.

[spanone]

7. nobody needs ickes...

[clevbot]

8. Democrats shouldnt act like Rethugs like Ickes, Sorry, But we need to move beyond that way of

campaining

[kenny blankenship]

10. Being a hypocritical asshole is not really a qualification for anything

except for being a hypocritical asshole.

Pass.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

12. we need Ickes like we need

hemorrhoids, glaucoma, cataracts, high BP, skin cancer, bad breath, gum disease, excessive arm pit odor, myopia, degenerative disc disease, eczema, hang nails, urinary tract diease, STDs, and small pox.

seriously.

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

13. Think about it if he worked for Obama

You might think he's worthless because he's such an obvious Hillary shill who stretched arguments too much. But he didn't totally make anything up, he just excluded important info and got all indignant over something that Hillary was really getting a break on.

But he has the cover of not being part of Obama's campaign, he has a sharp tongue, and some people will believe what he says. We know there are going to be 137 smears and dirty tricks. Several people like this are needed to repond in a way that resonates with people for whom Warren Christopher does not resonate at all.

Just a thought.

[VolcanoJen]

15. I'll take Axelrod and Plouffe over Ickes and Christopher and Penn and their kind...

... any day.

It's not 1968, it's not 1988, it's not even 2004. Times change and the times require a new direction in political thought which the Obama team appears to have already mastered.

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

17. This went over like a lead ballon

Can those guys adequately respond when GOP jerks say "Obama is a Muslim! His church wants to kill all white people!" or crap like that? It looks bad somewhat bad if his main campaign people jump all over that without being friendly, but there will be many times when we all are furious at the gall of the latest ridiculous negative, false attack abd need a forceful merciless response. Kerry did a shit job, we need to be 5 times better this year.

[VolcanoJen]

28. Yep, they sucked so bad, they won the election.

You're being sarcastic, right? :shrug:

As soon as GOP jackholes get all up in Obama's face with their "His former Christian Church wants to kill all white people and he's a Muslim" TV ads and rhetoric, Obama's team will be all over it. Remember Obama's "Race" speech? It told everybody to STFU, and it worked.

While we're on the "rapid-response" topic, how many days it take Hillary to kinda-sorta cop to that Bosnia sniper-fire whopper??

Honestly, Team Clinton will be doing Obama a huge favor if they stay far, far away. The problem with the Clintons and Hillary's supporters is that you all give far too much respect to the "GOP Attack Machine" that had its last hurrah in 2004 before President 25% and the 2006 Midterms.

[stevedeshazer]

19. That was 20th-Century politics

The Clinton campaign impaled itself using the tactics of late 20th-Century politics.

Personal attacks, smears and dirty tricks are so 1990's.

You sound/read like a smart person. Why don't you understand that this politic of scorched-Earth has failed?

Smear and fear politics doesn't work anymore. It's over.

That ship has sailed. That train has left the station.

You're just in time to turn around, and head your buggy back to town.

Voters are sick of being lied to.

Why the hell would Obama's campaign want to take on a living fossil like Harold Ickes, a guy who refuses to see reality?

[Cosmocat]

23. A bad thought ...

the first paragraph read like an except from Scott McClelland's book ...

the grey stuff is where it starts, and once you start gaming the truth you are on the slope ... The pratfall of 95 percent of our elected officials ...

[Elidor]

16. Obama has taken an approach that Ickes ('scuse me!) is not well suited for

An he's already shown that he's willing and able to go toe-to-toe with Grumpy McSame. He has his own team, and while he'll probably add to it with some of the Clinton people, there's no particular need for random hatchet men and creeps. No need to stink the place up.

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

21. But you could say the same thing to the swiftboating in 2004

We needed people to say "Are you kidding me? Bush DODGED VIETNAM like a coward and a pussy, and his people are really going to sit here and try to impugn Kerry's service and Purple Hearts in Viet Nam? Can you believe the hypocrisy? Can believe the lies they will put out there to try to win an election. This shows you exactly the kind of people Bush surrounds himself with, and we all should be disgusted!"

Instead we got "We actually, I think the record shows their statements to be on the whole based on false evidence"

I know I heard people say that Kerry was a draft dodger and Bush was a war hero in 2004. It made me want to stab myself. They will absolutely try this shit again, because it works and there is no consequences for them, year after year.

[Elidor]

24. Both Obama and Clinton have learned some lessons from 2004

(In Hillary's case, the wrong lessons, but I digress.) Obama has a rapid-response team (I'd even call it a very-rapid-response team), and I have no doubt he will have surrogates out there fighting. He has shown he will call out the bullshit in public, forcefully when required.

Kerry didn't handle the swiftboaters very well, but everyone who was watching was warned. It was a master class in deviousness, and Kerry didn't pass. In the final analysis, I think that's a pretty good reflection on Kerry, but I trust Obama to have been taking notes on the whole thing, to defend against it later.

And yes, the whole Swift Boat thing made me ill. And the news media DID. NOT. HELP.

[TeamsterDem]

18. No, we need people with an approximate relationship to the truth

Ickes and Lanny Davis have shown this not to be the case. G'bye fellas.

[Honeycombe8]

20. No, he wasn't very effective. He came across petty, mean, unreasonable, unlikeable.

That's not being very effective. There are better choices.

[DogPoundPup]

22. Ickes will be busy, attacking Hillary's

campaign debt and begging people for money to bring it out of the serious RED

Clinton ran her campaign pretty Icky and Ickes helped. He's no asset!

[Political Heretic]

25. Not in any way, shape or form.

[Donkey_Punch_Dubya]

27. Okay well I'm sorry for bringing this up, just trying to

think of ways to counter the world of shit the repugs will try to fling. Almost everyone thinks this is a bad idea. I hope Axelrod and co. are up to the challenge, because we really need them to be.