Clinton Campaign Continues War of Distortion in Blogosphere

Taylor Marsh says “this is a first” but it is not. The email sent to pro-Clinton bloggers by Peter Daou is just one more part of the Clinton campaign’s efforts to distort the record and attempt to distract attention from how dirty and dishonest their campaign has been.

The email makes a bogus argument that it has been the Obama campaign which has been attacking Clinton. As the Clinton campaign has done many times in the past, they make a false equivalence between dirty attacks from their campaign and responses from the Obama campaign. This has gone on for quite a while. Before Clinton’s campaign went way over the line, causing me to use this blog largely to oppose her candidacy, I often received email and invitations to conference calls from Peter. They were often based upon outright lies about Obama. More than once I pointed out to Peter that pursuing such a dirty campaign would only harm Clinton and play to Obama’s strengths. Time has proven me right.

There is a considerable difference between Clinton lying about Obama’s position and Obama criticizing Clinton over a policy disagreement. Peter’s email treats all these the same. To disagree with Clinton over matters of principle is dismissed as “Republican framing,” the implication being that disagreement is not allowed.

I’ve reviewed many of Clinton’s dishonest statements in multiple previous posts. For example, Clinton has sent out mailers which were totally misleading regarding Obama’s positions on issues such as Social Security, abortion rights, Iraq, and health care. Clinton’s distortions on abortion rights led Lorna Brett Howard, the former President of Chicago NOW, to drop her support for Clinton and back Obama. Clinton has also raised bogus charges such on plagiarism, distorted the meaning of voting present in the Illinois legislature, and distorting Obama’s references to Ronald Reagan in an interview. Lawrence Lessig made an excellent video summarizing the reasons to oppose Clinton due to her character. I have previously posted both the video and a transcript here. Bill Bradley has also commented on Clinton’s dishonesty recently as as noted here. A review of any of the sites which concentrate on fact checking the campaign should make it clear which candidate has been concentrating on the use of such distortions in their campaign, and I’ve linked to many such items in previous post.

Among the many bogus attacks has been the claim that Clinton is more prepared than Obama to be Commander-in-Chief. In reality, as I’ve noted many times before such as here, Clinton has no special qualifications on handling a foreign policy crisis. She did not have security clearance when her husband was president, she made no significant decisions, and her accounts of her role in foreign policy have been exposed as being greatly exaggerated. The major difference between the two is that on the most important foreign policy question of recent years, the war in Iraq, Obama got it right and Clinton got it wrong, despite all of the attempts of the Clinton campaign to distort this fact.

Peter even mentions Samantha Power referring to Clinton as a monster. He leaves out the important facts that she immediately attempted to retract the statement, she apologized for the statement, and she quickly left the campaign. The fact of the matter is that Clinton has run a dirty campaign and, while campaign aides should not say so in interviews, she has behaved like a monster.

There is nothing wrong with exposing Clinton’s dishonesty and Rove-style campaign tactics, and it is perfectly legitimate for the Obama campaign to point out these issues. Clinton cannot complain about people saying she will say anything to win when she has repeatedly demonstrated that this is the case. Liberal bloggers have repeatedly complained about such tactics coming from Republicans. Such tactics are no more excusable coming from a Democratic candidate.

Related Post: Hillary Clinton and the Liberal Blogosphere

Obama Nets Ten More Delegates in Iowa County Conventions

Barack Obama increased his lead over Hillary Clinton by ten delegates this weekend following the county Democratic conventions in Iowa. There were a number of reports with different numbers over the weekend, but this report appears to represent the final changes at the county level. Obama picked up the Edwards delegates who did not stick with him, helping Obama net more delegates today than Clinton’s margin over Obama in her victory in Ohio. Some reports speculated that the delegates did not like the negative manner in which Clinton was campaigning, or perhaps they just did not like the fact that Clinton was discounting the value of caucus states. Chuck Todd calculated a new delegate total based upon these changes:

Pledged Count: Obama leads 1,409-1,250
Superdelegates: Clinton leads 253-217
OVERALL TOTAL: Obama leads 1,626-1,503