Letters to the Editor
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Maybe if it were true but it obviously isn't.
Actually, my very next paragraph was about how if we are condemning Obama for his relationship with Rezko, we have to condemn Clinton for their relationships and loyalties to business men with equally suspect histories, Mark Rich, being one example.
Is there no end to your lies and Obamateur apologies?
Clinton's history, if you want to call it that, was merely in fundraising from Rich's wife Denise, a long-loyal Democratic fundraiser, not to Mark.
Obama has an long established history with a fraudulant criminal in Rezko and a very uneventful accomplishment record for his constituents at best.
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Clinton's Desperation
SNL and the Daily Show on Monday.
"HEY EVERYONE! I'M HILLARY CLINTON. I'M COOL AND MY CAMPAIGN ISN'T DEAD. LOOK, I'LL BE ON FUNNY TV, THAT MEANS I'M COOL AND RELEVANT TO ALL THE YOUNG HIPSTERS OUT THERE!"
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lord baltimore
while I appreciate the courteous response, I still can't see why you apply such different rules to the Clintons than you wish others to apply to Obama. Your reponse is still full of the kind of generalized charges against both Clintons that were mostly begun and perpetuated until they became "true" by our COMMONE ENEMIES, the right-wing of this country who believed from Day One in 1993 that Clinton was an intruder into their rightfully owned White House and therefore illegitimate. From the start, they began an unending war against both him and his wife and now it saddens me that so many members of their own party insist on following that line of attack. You speak of "many personal and political missteps," of "that testimony that proved him to be a liar", of their "narrowly escaping financial and political scandals that were much much worse" and so on.
You respond to my comments on three of your earlier charges but never mention Kazakhstan again. I hope that is because you took the time to check it out further and have come to realize that it is just one more convoluted and misleading attack on the character of Bill Clinton, in order to savage him and his wife further. Just as you perceive the Rezko story re Obama, the Kazakhstan one is like that for me and others. Yet you believe one is unfair and the other is just fine to keep around as another vague rovian (let's stop giving that assault on justice and honesty a capital letter, shall we?) claim about the Clintons' "personal and political missteps."
In short, I still think you are working with your double standards, dismissing the vague and unproven stuff about Rezko and buying into the right-wing's vague and unproven stuff about the Clintons. I just don't understand why you can't see that blind spot.
I've said in other posts that since 1956 at least, I've worked for Democratic campaigns but have never seen our party turn on itself as we are doing this year. To demonize a person who has served her country and her party well for years, who shows compassion for the least among us, who has never committed any crime or malfeasance in office, who is witty and bright and demonstrably capable of bringing stalwart Republican senators and Democratic senators together, is in my mind absolutely unique in our party's history and is an abomination. I'm very glad you avoid that kind of demonizing but it adds to the flames a bit anyway whenever you repeat the old canards brought into the political stream by our sworn enemies.
Thanks for listening, and good luck on Tuesday.
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Your candidate is EVEN sleazier than mine
@ little lord baltimore
Pretty sad. I agree with Doc that you appear to be one of the more rational Obama supporters, but the problem with comparing the Obama sleaze with the Clinton sleaze is that perception across America is that the Clintons are ALL sleaze and Obama is PURE as the driven snow. While there may be a few who actually study the candidates records, policy positions, history, etc., most of America can't be bothered with such hard work. They vote based on perceptions not facts. And, for good or ill, this campaign has been spun as "Experience" (boring) versus "Hope for Change you can believe in" (Hallelujah).
I don't mean to sound snobbish. I just think that most Americans are too busy with the real problems of their real lives to spend the time necessary to understand all the nuances and implications of the various candidate's positions. Salon readers are the exception, not the rule. And even in these blogs it seems to me that more often than not invective trumps logic.
My perception of many Obama supporters (not you) is that it doesn't bother them that Obama js less of a policy wonk than Clinton because, after all, "I don't know all the issues either and I'm still a good person, so why should I care that Obama doesn't know them either. He'll hire people who do. The main thing is that HE IS NOT THE OLD POLITICS."
The reason Rezco matters is not because it makes Obama any more or less sleazy than Clinton. The reason is that for most supporters (not all) it strips away the underlying basis of his campaign message. If he is no different (not necessarily worse, but not better either) than other politicians, then maybe just maybe people might have to start considering substance, and that could be a danger to the Obama campaign.
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@doc5467
What I was trying to say, I guess ineffectively, was that if we dismiss the vague unproven stuff about Clinton (and I think we should) then we have to also dismiss the vague unproven stuff about Rezko, at least for now. If I understand you correctly, I think that we agree on this point.
I did not know that the information in the NYT about Kazakhstan had been disproved and I appreciate you pointing it out. I haven't had time to read all of the links that you posted, but I now trust that it is not the issue that others are making it out to be.
On a personal note, I was just starting college during the Starr investigation, and I completely bought into Hillary's "vast right-wing conspiracy" theory. Honestly, I still feel like the Clintons have gotten a raw deal. I am disappointed in Bill Clinton's behavior, though. I was an idealistic college student in mid '90's. I came of age believing that Reagan was pure evil. Still, Bill's dishonestly and legal manipulations, were a kind of wake-up call, that even the "good" politicians sometimes do very stupid and very destructive things for very selfish reasons. As I have gotten older, I am even more troubled by the idea that the President of the US could find himself in an extended sexual relationship with a White House intern, who was both 22 and nearly 30 years his junior, and who was (if memory serves) the daughter of a political donor. I believe that he is a liar, not because the right wing tells me so, but because I was watching the news, because I believed him and argued passionately on his behalf to anyone who would listen, and because he proved me wrong.
In a lot of ways I feel like I have come to respect Hillary through this campaign more than I ever did before. I was also kind of disappointed that she didn't throw him out on his ass after she left the White House. And for years afterwards, I thought of her as a scheming and calculating politician. I believed that her bid for the nomination was nothing more than the end game of an entire career of political ambition and narcissism. I am happy to say that she proved me wrong. The Hillary Clinton that I have come to learn about over the last year is incredibly smart, is personable, often funny and jocular, and obviously passionate about making America better. I still believe that Obama is the right candidate for where we are now, but I can't help but think that the real tragedy is that she will always be in Bill's shadow. In a perfect world, she would have been the Governor of Arkansas or Illinois. She would have been elected President in 1992 and the we would be in a very different and probably better place than we are now.