Month: March 2008

Don’t Mess with Sinbad…or Greg Craig.

“I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.‘” As you may recall, Sen. Clinton’s recent touting of her commanding foreign policy bona fides hit a snag when it turned out not only that she was lying about the particulars on several trips, but that her big Kosovo excursion was taken with those wily diplomatic veterans, Sheryl Crow and Sinbad. (If you frequent Talking Points Memo, one wag (no, not idiotic, although he’s funny too) has been having a good deal of fun with this over the past week or so.)

Well, now the real Sinbad has gotten involved, and his critique of Clinton’s account of that trip is pretty devastating. ““I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril…In her Iowa stump speech, Clinton also said, ‘We used to say in the White House that if a place is too dangerous, too small or too poor, send the First Lady.’ Say what? As Sinbad put it: ‘What kind of president would say, ‘Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife…oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.“‘”

Update: If you don’t want to take Sinbad’s word for it, how about Greg Craig, the director of Policy Planning for the State Dept. during the Clinton years? He completely eviscerates Clinton’s claims to foreign policy experience in a memo this morning: “There is no reason to believe…that [Sen. Clinton] was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue – not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.” (He then goes on to refute her claims country by country. Pretty damning stuff.)

Pelosi: No Effin Way.

“I think that the Clinton administration (sic) has fairly ruled that out by proclaiming that Senator McCain would be a better Commander in Chief than Obama. I think that either way is impossible.’” Sinbad aside, you really don’t want to tick off Speaker Pelosi. Calling a joint Obama-Clinton ticket “impossible” in an interview with New England Cable News today, Speaker Pelosi makes her displeasure obvious with the Clinton campaign for hyping McCain over the Senator from Illinois. “I wanted to be sure I didn’t leave any ambiguity.” Play with matches, Sen. Clinton, you were due to get burned. Update: Lest anyone missed the import, Pelosi says it again: “I do think we will have a dream team, it just won’t be those two names…Take it from me, that won’t be the ticket.”

Return to Sender.

“The (pro-Clinton) Florida Democratic Party leadership has floated a mail-in primary as the best-case-scenario for its candidate (after all, senior voters are less transient will receive mailed ballots in higher numbers than student, youth and minority voters), and the Obama campaign seemed even willing to go along with that proposal to allow Floridians a legitimate say. But, alas, there is the sticky wicket of The Law.“

Rural Votes‘ Al Giordano explains why the mail-in plan for a Florida revote is illegal. “At this late date, time is running out. The continued gaming of the system demonstrates that they don’t really want a solution, mainly because the results would certainly be different than those of the January 29 beauty contest. But scratch the surface, and this is really about some Democrats now using GOP style voter-suppression tactics…That’s not only ethically indefensible. It’s stupid politically, as it takes away the state party’s moral standing to contest the inevitable GOP voter-supression tactics coming to a Sunshine State near you next November.” Update: Florida’s House Dems nix a do-over.

Where there’s smoke?

“‘What is the holdup?’ said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks the role of money in politics. ‘She hasn’t exactly made it clear as to what process is making it so cumbersome to just release them.” Campaign finance watchdogs wonder aloud why Sen. Clinton still hasn’t released her tax returns for the past seven years. “‘This is a level of disclosure the American people have come to expect and deserve from those in the White House, or those who aspire to the White House,’ said Mary Boyle of Common Cause, a government reform advocacy group.” And let’s remember, we’re not talking about her 2007 returns, which may not yet be complete. We’re also talking about the previous six years, which should just be sitting on file, and would take all of five minutes to release to the public. That is, unless there’s something shady therein…

Sex, Race, and Videotape.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” I saw this yesterday and was going to leave it well enough alone, but since it’s growing into a full-fledged dustup today, and since Team Clinton recently made a point of calling for Samantha Power’s scalp: former veep candidate and Crossfire host Geraldine Ferraro makes some rather unfortunate remarks about Sen. Obama. To quote Ambinder (whom I generally find irritating, but he pegged this one): “Because running as a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama is soooo easy.” At any rate, if the door is now open to playing this ridiculous identity game, I think it’s rather obvious to all that if Ferraro herself was a white man, we’d never have heard of her, since her gender was basically the sole reason for her inclusion on that historically terrible ’84 ticket. Similarly, if Sen. Clinton wasn’t the spouse of a former president, it’s hard to imagine her still in this race, particularly given her virtual mathematical elimination and all.

Perhaps, before Ferraro makes any more dubious claims about an easy road for black males in our society, she should read Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson’s editorial today in the NYT, where he examines the old-school racial fears stoked by Clinton’s infamous 3am ad: “I have spent my life studying the pictures and symbols of racism and slavery, and when I saw the Clinton ad’s central image — innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger — it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn’t help but think of D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,” the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society.” Some pundits argue that Patterson is over the top here, but I actually think he’s on to something (and, note, I’ve recently defended the Clinton ad people on charges of intentional racism.)

As Chris Orr notes, this wasn’t just a warmed-over Mondale/LBJ Cold War leadership spot. Team Clinton explicitly turned it into an old-school home invasion ad, the kind that’s so passé that even Slomin’s Shield has moved on. The Clinton campaign still could’ve forestalled any possible racial subtext by changing the race of the family, but, as it is, you’d have to be willfully naive not to see a problem with the Clinton version of “Barack Obama is a menace that will harm your sleeping (white) children in their beds” as it came out. At the very least, the ad gurus at Camp Clinton are guilty of willful ignorance about racist cultural tropes in American history, and perhaps a good deal more. Update: In response, the Clinton campaign points to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her African-American child in the ad, although, given the lighting, that wasn’t immediately obvious, to say the least.)

Update 2: Ferraro blows a gasket, now claiming: “I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?” Well, if it’s any consolation, Rep. Ferraro, I’m sure your fellow national embarrassment, Sean Wilentz, agrees with you. (Patterson rebuts Wilentz here.) Update 3: Ferraro’s done this before, back in ’88: “If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.“

Update 4: “It wasn’t a racist comment, it was a statement of fact.” Ferraro can’t seem to stop digging herself deeper. At this point she’s either dogwhistling to Pennsyltucky or just completely off the rails. Either way, Keith Olbermann’s disbelief about Ferrarogate last night is worth watching. Update 5: She’s gone, and not very gracefully.

We are hope despite the times.

“The band’s revitalization is most evident in Michael Stipe. Wearing an Obama shirt that he prevalently displayed amidst the sea of flashing camera lights, he sang with the passion of a 24 year old.” Probably not a huge surprise, but R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe has boarded the Obama train. “Stipe said that he was voting for a candidate that provided hope rather than one that tells him what he already fears.” And, also in musical endorsement news, Rolling Stone also backs Obama: “Obama has emerged by displaying precisely the kind of character and judgment we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles. He recognizes that running for president is an opportunity to inspire an entire nation.“

So that explains it…

“Despite the attention blogs can get, the poll said 56 percent of Americans say they never read blogs that discuss politics. Another 23 percent read them several times a year, the survey showed. While blogs are largely considered the realm of young people who are most Internet-savvy, only 19 percent of people ages 18 to 31, and 17 percent of those ages 32 to 43, regularly read a political blog, the poll said.” A new Harris Interactive poll finds that most people don’t read political blogs. Believe me, I’ve noticed. :s

Spitzer Self-Destructs.

How about a good, old-fashioned Democratic sex scandal? In a political shocker today, New York Governor, rising Dem star, and purported ethics champion Eliot Spitzer appears to have an affinity for prostitutes. More to come after Spitzer’s press conference, but, really, what was he thinking? Spitzer was no Jimmy Walker — He’s cultivated his squeaky-clean public persona as a moral crusader since day one. That was his whole cachet. And given the enemies he’s made, there was no way on God’s green earth he was going to be able to keep that sort of thing quiet. It’s sheer idiocy on his part. Update: “I am disappointed that I failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.” Spitzer makes a brief statement, and word comes out of a wiretap. Stick a fork in him, he’s done.

Update 2: Within an hour of the story’s leak, Gov. Spitzer gets unpersoned by Team Clinton, with all traces of his existence removed from Clinton’s website. (He endorsed her back in May.) Which makes it as good a time as any to note that, if he resigns this evening as some expect, Sen. Clinton loses a superdelegate. His likely successor, Lt. Gov David Paterson, would be the Empire State’s first (and America’s third) black governor, as well as New York’s first blind one. He is already a Clinton superdelegate (although, according to some reports, potentially a wavering one.) While on the subject, Obama picked up two more supers today regardless. Update 3: It doesn’t seem Spitzer is resigning tonight.