Letters to the Editor
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Recent is the key word
The quote refers to a "her recent determination to use a positive message." That was about a week, right, where she backed of her kitchen-sink, scorched-earth, 3-a.m. strategy.
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I don't think he is referring to timing
I think it is her way of being "presidential" by declaring reality is what she and her people say it is. I mean, it's worked the last 7 years, hasn't it?
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Fooling themselves
"Our strategy will look a fair amount like the one that Hillary is running against him now," the [Republican] official said.
This comment plays into Democrats' insecurities and wishful thinking. Once the election campaign is seriously underway, the garbage the Republican machine will spew into the public discourse will beggar belief and stagger those who previously thought they had a handle on what the American right wing was capable of.
It will be unrelenting, vicious and slanderous. They'll lie about any and everything they can. No aspect of the Democratic nominee will go unassailed. And who that eventual nominee is will make absolutely no difference in the intensity and toxicity of the attacks. Remember, these are people who routinely — and successfully — portray decorated war heroes as unpatriotic traitors.
Anyone — in Clinton's camp or otherwise — who thinks that Clinton has been hitting hard in any objective sense is fooling themselves. So is anyone who thinks that either candidate will somehow be less of a target than the other.
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Mr. Benen
Joan/Salon - Are you currently in negotiations with Mr. Steve Benen to have him come on board permanently and to turn the responsibility of the War Room over to him? If not, you are missing an important opportunity to return it to it's previous stature. And with all due respect, your readers are in for a disappointment once Alex returns. Please take note. Thanks.
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Obfuscate Obfuscate
Or the Clintonistas have the media discussing whether or not Hillary is running a negative campaign thereby giving the impression that it is an question rather than a fact.
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Pathetic parody?
When I first read Schoen's hilarious essay in the Washington Post this morning, I assumed it was a rather inept satire, given how far from the truth it was.
Sen. Clinton's campaign (led by Schoen's partner in pandering, Mark Penn) has been relentlessly and ineffectually negative since at least South Carolina. The result has been that her negative ratings have sky-rocketed and she has fallen behind Sen. Obama in all measurably areas including popular vote, number of pledged delegates, and number of states won.
National polls in the Washington Post, LA Times, and Gallup support the conclusion that the American public is getting fed up with Sen. Clinton's negative campaign and turned off by her dishonesty. The Clinton approach has been to act as a free trial run for the scurrilous attacks against Sen. Obama the Republicans will uncoil in the fall campaign. She is recklessly burning the Democratic party with these short-sighted attacks. Any victory Sen. Clinton now wins in Pennsylvania next week will be a Phyrric one at best.
In the face of her endless brow-beating and pandering, Sen. Obama has remained graceful, balanced, funny, and sharp. Ironically, the unrelenting pressure of the campaign has made him stronger while utterly undoing her.
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We Ain't Seen Nothing yet?
I've been voting age for sixteen years now, and I've never seen a primary season drag out this long. Is there not a point in time at which people will just get fed up with the Kitchen Sink Strategy? It seems as though folks in PA are already sick of it. As a resident of NC, I am not looking forward to the attention. I'm sick of my party looking like a reality TV show.
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If I Was In Charge
I'd dump the kitchen sink and grab an aluminum baseball bat.
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He could be correct
Pretty much any time Clinton launches a negative campaign ad, or any negative comment, about Obama we here about it here on Salon. (Unfortunately we normally here about it in terms of how it's "true") This, however, does not mean that the majority of her ads, or what she says in general, have been negative.
She, or any politician, can always go MORE negative, and that's what I'm assuming Schoen is argueing for. I don't have any statistics on what percentage of her TV adds are attack ads (does anyone?) but I'd guess it's probably a small percentage.
BTW I am in no way argueing for Clinton to go more negative, I'm just saying it could be done.
Mike
PS. Thanks in general for your awesome work Mr. Benen. You're a great addition to Salon.
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Notorious WES
showing the true colors of a Clinton supporter.
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rip van schoen
i read the schoen article and i think he had a two month case of the rip van winkle and just woke up. he seems to be outlining the strategy she's taken for the last two months and is promoting it as his fresh new idea.
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barack's campaign has been so *positive*
anyone who's spent any time watching this campaign from the hillary side of the fence is painfully aware that the negativity goes both ways here.
the obama campaign and its supporters have utterly trashed the clintons, belittling them both at every turn, more or less accusing them of being racists, dismissing bill clinton's legacy in sentences that lump the bush and clinton presidencies together and more or less using the standard republican attack points against hillary since the campaign began.
why isn't that negative? because people are so completely used to seeing hillary trashed that they don't even notice it for what it is anymore. obama has gotten off so very easily thus far, and when the republicans and the 527s start in on him it will become clear that hillary has been quite restrained.
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baseball bat?
Good Lord! Whatever happened to the ol' itching powder in the underwear trick?
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To Amity
Amity says that the Republicans will go relentlessly negative, with an overwhelming assault of slime. I'm sure that the third-party Republican groups will do that, but McCain himself is at grave risk as he does it.
McCain's problem is that while his policies are identical to George Bush's, his poll standings are far better than Bush's because much of the public and media like him. If he goes strongly on the attack, crossing the line into slime territory, that will evaporate, and his approval ratings will drop to Bush levels as he exposes himself as John McSame, running with the Bush policies and the Rove playbook.
So McCain will have to keep the attack dogs at arms' length, and denounce them occasionally. Meanwhile, Obama has proven to be much better at handling attacks than Kerry ever was; despite the "bitter" alleged-gaffe his numbers in PA have not dropped one bit. Certainly the Republicans will land some blows that will stick, but the same is true in the other direction; McCain's halo will be gone by the general election.
Certainly Clinton has the right to stay in the race, but she would serve the party better by attacking Obama from the left, as those are attacks that the Republicans cannot use. She can correctly claim to have the better health reform plan, for example (I grant this, but I prefer Obama because of a host of other issues, starting with Iraq, and John Conyers has a better health reform plan than either one of them).