--Denny Green
So as to build the anticipation for Joshua Green's piece on the Clinton campaign, here are a few nuggets:
The Penn memo suggesting that the campaign target Obama's "lack of American roots" said in part: "All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light.I'm not particularly outraged by this. Let Mark be Mark. The fact is, if anything, it looks like Clinton ultimately held back, no? I was pretty pissed about that hard-working white voters remark, but for some reason, I've come to think of it as a slip. Let me expound on that. Not a slip, like Clinton didn't mean it. But a slip like, it's exactly what she meant. It just wasn't supposed to be a dog-whistle. It was the un-pc truth. At least from her twisted perspective.
"Save it for 2050. ... Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America American to the middle class in the middle of the last century. And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back
"Let's explicitly own 'American' in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn't. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let's use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let's add flag symbols to the backgrounds."
Also let me make a preemptive strike against any snark about me getting news about the magazine I write for from Politico...
Ok, so I don't actually have a clever line that qualifies. Oh well. Snark away.
UPDATE: Seeing as how I stole TPM's headline, I guess could at least give them a hat-tip.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
This is not exactly news actually. It had been reported before although anonymously. I was sort of hoping for a nicer smoking gun to be honest.
But oh well. We knew Mark Penn was a scumbag anyway. And if it helps highlight that this strategy is one of the ones the Republicans are gonna try, all the better
Like a Freudian slip you mean? I didn't like the oft-repeated implication that black voters were not included among the party's base, when pundits said things like "what about the party's backbone...white, blue-collar workers..." which guys like Chris Matthews always said.
I love this article it makes a great point. I was wondering if anyone has seen the video of McCain falling? Its so grainy. I havnt heard anything on the news so IM figuring it must be old or something. the video is at http://www.mccanes.com I was thinking if McCain takes many more falls he might break his hip. Though It wouldnt slow him down much though because he doesnt do much on the campaign trail as it is. Its not on the home page, but on one of the links there. I have to say that video is almost as good as the vidoe of Obama smoking a cigar on his europe trip, News hasnt showed it though. I guess its a victory cigar. LOL, IF you want to see the video its at http://www.hotpres.com I also wanted to post something I feel very passionate about. There is a new petition started to stop LawEnforcement from shooting dogs during warrants executions and during arresting people. They need to find another way to deal with dogs. The petition is at http://dontshootdog.blogspot.com/ This petition was started in response to the mayor and his wife whos dogs were killed by the local sherriff dept
I love the idea that, in 2008, Hawaii is not "American."
The fact is, if anything, it looks like Clinton ultimately held back, no?
No. Clinton chose to hire and retain as her chief strategist a guy who was telling her to run a xenophobic campaign. Even if she didn't choose to take all and only his advice, she also chose not to stop paying him for his xenophobic advice, and she chose to have it seep into her campaign at least some of time.
I think the reality is that while the "she'll say anything and do anything to be elected" line was appealing to the anti-Clinton folks, the truth was anything but.
While the Clinton campaign was hardly a light unto the world, it's obvious that she pulled her punches on any number of topics, the most notable being the decision not to publicize the Wright tapes earlier. They were already in the public domain, Hannity has been ranting about them for ages, they were well-known on the blogs. It would have been trivially easy to mainstream those tapes much easier in the process, before Obama had a chance to define himself positively, and it looks like Penn wanted to do exactly that.
As an aside, while it's fashionable to suggest that Hillary accidentally let slip her inner racist, I thought it was obvious from the video that "hard-working white people" was just an attempt to rephrase "working-class whites" that ended up coming out really badly. Something that even good progressives seem to have internalized from the Republican hate campaign of the 1990s is that the Clintons are uniquely devious people such that every single word and action is carefully calculated for maximum effect. Sometimes people just misspeak and it's not really worth of five levels of deconstruction.
"If you wanna crown 'em, then crown their ass! But they are who we thought they were!"
But a slip like, it's exactly what she meant.
I think that's Kinsley's definition of a gaffe. Although a "gaffe" might mean accidentally saying something that's actually true, as opposed to accidentally saying something that you actually think (which may or may not be true).
I bet there's a memo in there that says something close to "crown his ass".
This is fascinating, because it really highlights why Clinton lost the black vote so dramatically.
The SC primary in 2004 (Sharpton coming in 3rd behind Edwards & Kerry) and the recent Memphis election show the total falsity of the Sean Hannity argument, that black voters are hopelessly racist and vote for the black candidate over the white one.
Since it wasn't race, it's clear that HRC lost black voters (and, I expect, a lot of progressive white ones) when this McCarthyite nonsense started seeping out of her campaign. What's interesting is that race-baiting has come almost full circle at this point, where many black voters react extremely strongly to a political argument of "us vs the enemies within" argument that was used in the 1950's to go after all kinds of progressive people including Civil Rights advocates. And, interestingly, the majority of black voters react against it whether it comes from a Democrat or a Republican, black or white.
I wonder how effective McCain's embrace of McCarthyist rhetoric will be. I think it will ultimately fare very poorly. Sure, the 40% of voters who were going to support him in any case will parrot the "we hate Obama because he's unAmerican" talking points, but its hypocrisy, nastiness and general "we've heard this before from Bush" quality will turn off the independents who want a break from the past.
And it really misses the point. What people liked about the 1950's wasn't McCarthyism but that there were jobs that paid well and an improving standard of living for them and their kids. McCain is appealing to the political culture of the 1950's (which 95% of people didn't care about) while explicitly saying we will NOT have the economic climate of the 1950's, but we should elect him anyway because Obama will make the economy even worse by doing all the things they warned us Bill Clinton would do in 1992 and 1996.
This ain't a winning message.
Ta-Nehisi, loving the blog in the new location, but please please spell-check the titles of your posts. I think someone else said this too, but just thought I'd issue a friendly reminder. Keep up the good work!
The argument that lots of black folks voted for Obama because they were excited about electing a black President is not, I think, an argument that black folks are "hopelessly racist." It's pretty self-evident that Obama is not Al Sharpton or, for the love of God, Nikki Tinker.
As I recall, the polling was pretty conclusive that the moment when Obama started claiming an overwhelming share of black support was when he won Iowa, i.e. established himself as having a real chance to win. The narrative that it was some kind of rejection of Clinton tactics is belied by, among other things, the fact that Edwards went from 37% black support in the 2004 SC primary to 2% in 2008. It was a pro-Obama shift, not an anti-Clinton one.
I think the reality is that while the "she'll say anything and do anything to be elected" line was appealing to the anti-Clinton folks, the truth was anything but.
I'm with you, Steve, though I think it was more of a case where she started down that road with those West Virginia remarks, and didn't like 1) where it was leading and 2) the backlash that ensued, and so decided to back off it a bit.
Since it wasn't race, it's clear that HRC lost black voters (and, I expect, a lot of progressive white ones) when this McCarthyite nonsense started seeping out of her campaign.
I feel this is a major distortion. I believe that the polls showed that blacks started supporting Obama about the time he started looking like he might actually be able to win. When he won in Iowa, to be specific.
Furthermore, I think he probably represents the views of black voters much better than Sharpton did. He's a much better candidate than Sharpton.
I do not particularly object to black voters choosing a black candidate when everything else seems pretty equal, which is how I saw Obama vs. Hillary. But if you're Bill and/or Hillary Clinton, it's got to be painful to see that support, which you've spent years cultivating, just slipping away.
I don't want to be some big defender of Mark Penn, who I see as largely responsible for Hillary's loss. But ask yourself whether Mark Penn would have tried those themes against someone who had Obama's childhood abroad, but was lily white. You know, French or something. We can't know, but I can totally see someone trying that.
I'm not saying I like that argument, it's xenophobic and kind of stupid, but it's an oversimplification to call it racist.
Hmmm. I'm starting to credit Al Giordano's theory that the Obama campaign is leaving Hillary to fill up the news and provide cover while Obama is on vacation, with the caveat that they may not have asked her to do so, just worked with what they had. I do think a grand reliving of the Clinton Greek drama, as Hillary terms it, is guaranteed to drive anything McCain tries to do off the cover. Just in time to remind everyone why they would rather not have anymore Clinton drama per the veepship or overwrought convention eulogies, too.
As for learning stuff from Politico--the whole Atlantic blog team appears to be getting everything on this story from other news outlets; shouldn't you guys stage a raid on the secret office files or something? Bring some donuts for the copyeditor?
Make this a new American Century
Wow. Just...wow.
I admit it. I'm white, and have voted for the white guy in every Presidential election my whole life. I'll come along quietly. Curse your infernal logic, Sean Hannity.
"New American Century." This from the guy who brags that he "devised" the slogan "Forward, Not Back" for Tony Blair. (It's in Mark Penn's official Burson-Marsteller bio.):
"I have won about 70 major elections around the world, including many presidents, and I devised the simple message for Tony Blair in his last successful campaign: ‘Forward, Not Back.’"
Problem is, that slogan was used by Kang, the extraterrestial who ran for President in a 1996 episode of The Simpsons.
(http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/02/27/i-voted-for-kodos.aspx}:
"We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom."
Was funny on The Simpsons, maybe would be funny spewing out of Mark Penn's sweaty jowls. But it doesn't disguise the fact that Penn is the world's biggest idiot. Any remaining doubts? Read the trash published between two covers called "Microtrends." Or better yet, just read this:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3320/trending_towards_inanity/
Penn's rhetoric reminds me of another person in politics, with an eerily similar name. Jean-Marie Le Pen? French fascist politician who ran on xenophobia and got scarily far. He wrote a book titled "les francais d'abord" "French First"... When he was running a couple years ago, someone told me that his platform was "France for the French" (I tried to find a source for this, but I couldn't). But Penn's similarity to Le Pen is too close for comfort, seeing as how valid presidential candidates seek the former's advice in the first place.
That's great, really great of Hilary attempting to unify the Democratic convention by hurling her own name into nomination. It's just "cathartis" for her followers. The Clintons will never reach a limit in perfidy. And her reckless spending in the primary is an indication of the way she would spend the public's money if ever she was elected. The Clintons are some pair.