The Clinton campaign probably thought they were being clever with the Friday afternoon document dump of Hillary’s IRS returns, but all they have done is give the media a taste and 48 hours to sift through them. Expect this story to still be active and raging on Monday. Not to mention, this juxtaposition of stories at the NY Times is exceptionally unfortunate:
Those are the kind of side by side comparisons that simply can not help Hillary with the blue-collar vote she so desperately needs. Did no one check the web to see whether today was really the day they wanted to release the returns? At any rate, while the clinton campaign seems to suffer from chronic bad timing, at least portions of the campaign have no problem two-timing the Senator from New York:
Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s top political strategist, apologized yesterday for meeting with Colombian officials to advocate for a trade agreement that Clinton opposes.
“The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it,” Penn said in a statement released by the campaign. “The senator’s well-known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed.”
Penn met with Colombia’s ambassador as recently as Monday to discuss how to get a bilateral free-trade agreement passed between the South American nation and the United States. Campaign officials said the meeting was done as part of Penn’s separate job as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, an international communications and lobbying firm.
The incompetence of it all is staggering, as if they had a checklist for pissing off blue collar voters. The fact that Penn is still with the campaign is simply inexplicable, as Marc Armbinder notes:
One of the toughest tasks for a political journalist these days is to try and find someone in Clinton world who is willing to defend Mr. Penn or his sense of political optics.
Incidentally, Penn has said that he has time for only two clients: Clinton and Microsoft. Now, perhaps, he has three.
Obama aides had nothing to say. (Indeed — can you blame them for wanting to allow this story to unfurl without any help?)
Meanwhile, as if all of this was not enough, Clinton’s credibility problem is going to re-emerge next week as a full-time story with this example of truthiness:
Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.
The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.
“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.
Linda M. Weiss, a spokeswoman for the not-for-profit hospital, said the Clinton campaign had never contacted the hospital to check the accuracy of the story, which Mrs. Clinton had first heard from a Meigs County, Ohio, sheriff’s deputy in late February.
A Clinton spokesman, Mo Elleithee, said candidates would frequently retell stories relayed to them, vetting them when possible. “In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it,” Mr. Elleithee said. “If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that.”
It seems like calling the hospital would have been an easy first step, and in fact, let’s compare and contrast. When your average right-wing blogger wants to prove or disprove something, generally the first thing they do is CONTACT the people in the middle of the situation. Think about that. Either the Clinton campaign didn’t care if the story was true or not, and just wanted to keep telling it, or they are less equipped to get at the truth than your average citizen journalist.
What this all boils down to is a question of competence. It has become increasingly clear that despite their claims about passing the CinC threshold and despite their claims of superior judement, the Clinton crew cares little about actually getting things right. Loyalty, however, is a cherished value. Competence, not so much.
Where have I seen that poisonous combination over the past eight years? Does the country need four more years of rule from an arrogant and incompetent administration that places a priority on loyalty and secrecy?
I think not.
dslak
CDS! CDS! All of this is irrelevant, because John suffers from CDS.
bootlegger
Last night Papa Bear O’Reily praised the Clintons for paying a good share of taxes and giving 10% to charity. Then he coyly dropped a hint that most of Bill’s $50mil is from Arabia and the House of Saud. Methinks this will be the stickiest wicket.
And Bill-o is still a turd.
dslak
O’Reilly doesn’t seem to care so much about Bush’s connections with the Saudis. Then again, IOKIYAR.
Ugh
Are the returns posted somewhere? And did they not post their returns from last year (2007 tax year)?
zzyzx
I could see the $109 million not being a big deal. People might react with a, “Good for them!”
The one potentially bad spin I could see is people wondering why she doesn’t lend more money to her campaign if she could repay herself out of her general funds if she wants to.
zzyzx
Oh, I missed the point there. That could only happen if she wins the nomination. Apparently she doesn’t think it’s likely either.
I don’t care that much about her money. What I care is that she really IS threatening a floor fight. Her surrogates are talking about the credentials committee and who could control it. Is that a winning message?
bootlegger
You can’t expect him to know everything just because he’s omniscient. Oh, wait….
Patrick
Golly, Jed, sounds like they done paid Bill ‘n Hill with them new kinda dollars.
bootlegger
I think that committee is composed of representatives from each state. Since Obama won the most states he would dominate the committee.
zzyzx
bootlegger – there’s actually a chance that she could control it, but it would come down to a floor vote that she’d lose anyway. That’s not the point. The point is that her side is actively pushing the concept of a floor fight. Who wants that other than people who REALLY want Clinton to win?
If she doesn’t drop out before the convention (assuming she DOESN’T start winning every state by 20 points), she better hope that McCain doesn’t win the White House or she’s going to be more hated than Nader.
Dug Jay
On the other hand, it’s beginning to appear that Obama may have his own “Whitewater” problem as this excerpt from The Bench suggests:
Dug Jay
Corrected Link here.
ParagonPark
I’d venture she’s already considerably more hated– both in terms of the number of people who hate her and the depth of the hatred– than Nader. It’s just that the greater animosity for her is counter balanced by the fact she also has considerably more support than Nader as well.
Clinton’s problem in electoral terms is that having a lot of people who like you a lot does not translate into victory as easily does having the greatest number of people who merely find you marginally more acceptable than the opponent.
It’s fair to say that approximately 1/3 of likely Democratic voters “love” Clinton. At least another 1/3 would vote for her without hesitation in a general election and probably half or so of the remaining 1/3 of Democratic voters would ultimately, if reluctantly, vote for her.
That’s 5/6 (about 83%) of Democratic votes she would likely get. Obama likely would not do significantly better among Democrats in November.
The question is — since we know that a candidate cannot possibly win if the only votes they get are 83% of the Democratic vote as that would represent less than 40% of all votes cast and there is no conceivable allocation across the states where that translates into an electoral college victory— which candidate is more likely to garner enough votes from among the other 60+% of the people who will vote in the general election to win.
I think we can safely assume that there are more independents and Republicans who would never under any circumstances vote for Clinton than is the case with Obama. But, probably at least 40% of all voters who would not vote for Obama– meaning that out of the subset of 60% remaining he would need to get about 83% to run approximately even nationally (no one is going to win the electoral college unless the popular vote is very even at worse).
Let’s say Clinton faces a reality that 45% of all voters would not vote her under any circumstances (only 5% higher than Obama’s hypothesized unattainables. That means she would have to get approximately 90% of the votes from people who are not unalterably opposed to her.
While the numbers, I use are basically just “guesstimates,” the point to illustrate is that there is a larger than 1:1 ratio between between candidates’ firm opposition numbers and the percentage of votes needed from the undecided or swing voters.
It’s hard to make any argument that Clinton is not the one candidate in either party with the highest number of unalterably opposed voters to overcome.
Raenelle
Re supposed working-class resentment of the Clinton’s millions, I was surprised to see that sentiment coming from a conservative. Conservatives usually leap to explain that workers don’t begrudge someone making millions; they want to do it themselves. Look, it’s not rich people that annoy us working-class types. It’s rich people as ruling class assholes, with extra privileges, tax breaks, rules rigged in their favor, their phobia of unions, “socialized” any-fucking thing, and lobbying treacherously for all of that–that’s what pisses us off. And, BTW, the Clinton’s don’t really fall into that latter category.
Dennis - SGMM
That Clinton’s chief strategist and long time adviser is lobbying for the free trade deal with Colombia while (she says) she’s publicly opposing it does call the depth of her opposition to the deal into question. Is this the obverse of NAFTA where she (she says) she privately opposed it while publicly supporting it?
Honesty and the truth both seem very conditional with Clinton.
shortstop
Look, yesterday wasn’t the only Friday afternoon they could’ve dumped those returns (the Clinton campaign said earlier this week that they’d be doing it in–what?–two or three weeks). This wasn’t the best Friday, given that it’s still far enough from Pennsylvania to allow plenty of detail digging, yet short enough that this story will still be fresh in voters’ minds. So the fact that they chose to do it yesterday indicates that they really wanted to get Mr. Penn and the Colombians off the front page.
Any other rationale would suggest massive campaign incompete…okay, yeah, I see what you mean.
Rarely Posts
I hadn’t realized that the other candidates were considered working class.
The Moar You Know
Dug Jay: I love it.
You manifest THE trait that keeps America the greatest nation on Earth; a willingness to keep trying, no matter how many or how spectacular your failures.
You’re my inspiration, baby. Keep fighting the good fight.
Soylent Green
To be fair, the average right-wing blogger makes little or no effort to prove anything they are saying. They just keep saying it as though repetition makes it true.
But for Clinton to speechify using unverified hearsay from some sheriff’s deputy, that’s — what’s the word I’m looking for — oh yeah, incompetent.
Dennis - SGMM
It fit the narrative. just like the Tuzla airport bit fit the narrative. As did the oppose/support NAFTA story fit the narrative. A person can still be a great president by creating a narrative and stubbornly sticking with it in defiance of the facts – can’t they?
p.a.
Don’t know if (or how thoroughly) the Clinton campaign tried to check the medical facts, but there are privacy laws in effect that could make this problematic. Does doctor-patient privilege persist after death? er-of the patient…
Helena Montana
Regarding the two NYT headlines–I fear the irony will be lost on the blue collar voters because most of them do not read the New York Times. However, possibly the fact that the Clinton campaign has been sytematically stiffing small business vendors might resound–if the Obama campaign is smart enough to keep pointing it out.
Rick Taylor
You know the same thing occurred to me when the Clinton campaign pushed the line that Obama was lying about being a professor. Why didn’t they, you know, call the law department of the University of Chicago and ask them? Or even look at the web-page for the school where, gosh, Obam is listed under “professors” along with the other senior lecturers. They had that newspaper article, and I guess it was good enough for them, because they know from experience, whatever is in the press is true.
I tried to point out on Taylor Marsh blog that the law school had a website saying “Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track,” but they informed me that being regarded as a professor was different than being a professor and my boy lied! Deal with it.
What can you do?
Dennis - SGMM
From the post:
As long as they don’t reveal the specifics of the treatment they’re on solid ground.
dslak
So they’re saying there’s some other way to be a professor other than to be regarded as one by an institution which determines who is a professor and who isn’t? Perhaps Obama did not have the essential quailty of professor-ness?
Rick Taylor
zzyzx said:
Seeing as I doubt she could possibly win without those delegates, I guess so. In the card game bridge there’s a principle that if you can only make your contract if the cards have broken in a certain unlikely way, than you play assuming they’ve broken that way, because if they haven’t, you’ve lost anyway.
The trouble is she will presumably have a career after the nomination is over, and I don’t see how what she’s doing now helps her. Perhaps they believe their own propoganda? They’re just fighting to enfranchise the voters. Obama didn’t have to take his name off the ballot in Michigan, so the results are fair. Both campaigns were on an even footing in Florida, in fact Obama even got some advertising in via his national cable buy, so the results are perfectly fair and should stand. The race is very close, and if they’re positions were reversed, no one would dare dream of pressuring Obama to pull out.
It’s a frightening thought.
By the way, I discovered your online journal; it’s nice finding someone writing about the primaries who actually has some idea what they’re talking about.
Rick Taylor
dslak said:
Well his specific title is “Senior Lecturer.” The Clinton campaign, just using the article they had and doing no fact checking of their own, said that was very different from being a professor. Every school is different about how they use titles. At the University of Chicago Law School, a senior lecturer is distinct form so called “adjunct faculty.” A senior lecture is for people who have commitments outside the university perhaps to public service, and who only carry a part time load and aren’t up for tenure. Obama was actually offered a profesorship. Their status is similar to that of professors, and they’re even grouped with professors on their web page. The bottom line is, you could nit pick, but if the University of Chicago doesn’t any problem with Obama referring to himself that way in his communications, no one else should. Even BTD and Talk Left has said as much. And regardless it’s clear the Clinton campaign ran with the accusation from a newspaper article without doing any fact checking themselves.
dslak
Rick, I got your point. I just think it’s funny to see people get metaphysical about a question such as what it means to be a professor, as if it means something other than being assigned a title by a institution of higher education.
Rick Taylor
Gosh, you know that reminds me of someone? *scratches head* I can’t think who. . . Never mind, it’ll come to me.
Rick Taylor
dslak:
[works on spoofing skills]
But whole point dlsak, is that Obama *wasn’t* assigned that title. Face it, you’re boy was a liar. I can’t understand why Obamabots are so blinded they can’t see that, I guess they think he walks on water.
dslak
I think you’re giving them too much credit, because that point is easily refuted by simply pointing out that Chicago in fact said that he was considered to be a professor. A truly clever hack would go the metaphysical route, so as to be ridiculous rather than obviously wrong.
John Cole
According to the institution, Obama was a professor:
Unless you intend to call the University of Chicago Law School a bunch of lying liars, you need to retract your statement.
This may be the dumbest line of attack from the Clinton camp to date.
tBone
You snagged John, Rick. Not a bad start.
dslak
John, he was spoofing. He even gave it away at the beginning of his post.
John Cole
I voted for Bush. I am an easy mark.
Rick Taylor
John, read the “[works on spoofing skills]” disclaimer and my previous posts. Yeah I quoted the passage you gave above on Taylor Marsh, and I was duly informed that being “regarded as a professor” was different than being a professor, so my boy Obama was a liar and I should just deal with it.
Rick Taylor
I think I’ve been spending too much time on Taylor Marsh. I’m starting to pick up the rhythms. Standing in Taylor Marshes blog, Talk Left looks quite moderate and even handed.
tBone
I know Jeralyn is off-limits, but can we talk about how crazy Taylor is?
Rex
Agreed with Soylent Green. The average right wing blogger conducts a cursory google hunt, spouts off whatever they wanted to say in the first place with whatever tenuous ‘evidence’ they’ve uncovered cited for reference, exalts themselves as light years ahead of the MSM, locates their target’s home address and circles the block where they live, liveblogging the movements of the residents of the house for that unmistakable air of citizen journalism that their wild-eyed adherents have come to expect.
Rick Taylor
Oh yeah, and I forgot,
Being regarded as a professor is not the same thing as being a professor. Serving as a professor is not the same thing as being a professor, is that so hard to understand?
What really gets me is that Obama can lie like this and his fans don’t bat an eye. But then when Hillary has an understandable lapse of memory that could happen to anyone about something that happened fourteen years ago, and mistakenly insists she was under sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia, everyone just goes nuts.
shortstop
Hilarious. The Colombian government, miffed at being referred to by Penn as an “error in judgment,” has fired his ass.
Jay McDonough
from swimming freestyle:
“Senator Clinton, in voting to authorize the war, displayed a tragic recklessness. A more complete picture, in fact the “real” truth was available, and the Senator didn’t make the effort to seek it out. The logical question given the gravity and ramifications of that vote: Was it just carelessness or a willingness to select the data set that provided an advantageous political position?
And so we come to Trina Brachtel, her baby boy, and O’Bleness Memorial Hospital.”
http://swimmingfreestyle.typepad.com
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Makes sense to me.
He never crossed the professorship threshold.
While his words were passing across the threshold to serve (that is what a mere lecturer does), his body never followed through (it takes hard work to fight your way across that threshold at 3 AM), so the net result is he didn’t actually cross the threshold, he merely gave the impression of having done so. All you MUPpets are so naive – a few pretty words and you just swoon and can’t see the reality of it.
Rick Taylor
That is hilarious. You know even before this latest incident, I’ve never found anyone on either Taylor Marsh or Talk Left who will defend Penn? Both blogs have posted entries calling for him to be fired? Even the most devoted fans of Hillary recognize Penn isn’t doing her any favors. Considering how severe the reality distortion field is there otherwise, that’s remarkable.
Rick Taylor
John wrote:
I think the worst line of attack from the Clinton camp was the attack on Samantha Powers. After the monster remark, they came down hard on her for saying that of course Obama wouldn’t blindly implement any plan for Iraq withdrawal, but would respond to events and to reality when he became President. Samantha Power’s remarks were intelligent, made complete sense, and are undoubtedly Clinton’s position too. Yet they methodically took the time to trash her. It’s bad enough trashing Obama, but she’s a respected academic, not a politician, who at that time had already apologized and stepped down for the monster remark. That was dumb, and it was also disgusting.
Kevin Hayden
Anecdotes that are false and making lots of money worked wonders on blue collar voters for Reagan. Especially racist blue collar voters.
And the term ‘Clinton Derangement Syndrome’ being tossed about today at Talk Left… wasn’t that lifted from ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’, a dismissive term used by rightists to lump all Bush critics together as invalid, because they’re motivated by hatred instead of a regard for the truth?
I submit that it’s entirely possible to attack a candidate or officeholder on their words and policies without a speck of hate involved. It’s also possible to limit the critique to the candidate or officeholder without personally attacking their supporters directly.
Indirectly and non-personally, I think it’s safe to say that supporters who volunteer to do damage control for their object of adulation and have to resort to logic contortionism to achieve that, often tend to be blind to the distinction between well-founded reasoning and the contortionism they utilize. It makes for sloppy and confusing discourse, muddying the waters for all but the most observant audience members.
Remember the old bumper sticker: ‘If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.’ It certainly applies here.
There’s an hysterical tone to it with some supporters on either side, and it’s hard to take seriously the claim that such contortionism is being advanced by any real progressive. They rest on the shaky foundation that rightists have advanced for the past quarter century: all that matters is winning.
Oh really? A key part of that is the evil twin that accompanies that reasoning: if you try to win by disregarding the truth and you lose anyway, then the winner must have disregarded the truth even better.
Which might be true, except when it isn’t. It’s also possible that the winner simply told the truth.
My point is, the people projecting messiah-hood on their candidates aren’t doing any favors to anyone by getting enmeshed in labyrinths of lies or badly flawed logic. As a mutual exercise, voters are suppposed to be seeking the best interests of the country they reside in, not developing infatuations based on the belief that their candidates are capable of superhuman feats and errorless performances.
Ultimately, such excessive enthusiasm is built on emotionalism that permits no compromise. When Clinton fans view Obama as a real enemy, or vice-versa for Obama fans, one of those groups will have to be disappointed eventually. And some will find themselves unable to support the candidate that bested theirs. They may then vote for McCain, a third-party candidate, or – most likely – simply not vote in November.
And why? What are they advancing progressively then?
It’s entirely logical to determine that one candidate is pursuing an agenda that offers little or no progressivism and oppose them for that. But if they simply defeat someone you consider to be more progressive (or someone you relate to better) then that hardly means they’ll advance policies that will hurt the country or hurt your personal interests.
The risk of this contentious primary is not that the candidates will destroy party unity. It’s that their supporters may make the conscious choice to abandon the pursuit of a better government and a better country because they didn’t get the candidate they wanted.
And that type of spoiled baby, insolent brat decisionmaking is not done for the sake of ‘us’. It’s done for the sake of selfishness and self-centeredness.
It’s not impressive. And it’s not at all progressive. If you think like that, no-one’s likely to reach you through the self-constructed walls around your delusion.
TenguPhule
Shorter Dug Jay: My Lips are glued to McCoward’s ass so tightly that we are one symbiotic organism.
p.a.
They say millions of people claimed they were there to see Babe Ruth’s ‘called shot’. In less than ten years there won’t be enough people admitting to have voted for Bush to elect a school board member.
Adam
awesome: myiq is carrying the torch over there, warning people of the evils of balloon juice. fight teh power!!1!
Adam
Sadly, I am apparently not allowed to link to myiq’s profile :( That’s probably for the best, i suppose, but that comment where Armando actually told myiq to stop posting off-topic comments about Balloon Juice was pretty classic.
I mean — CENSORSIHP!111!!!OMGone
Rick Taylor
I voted for Clinton. If Obama hadn’t had the temerity to win all those caucuses and force her to use extreme measures to win, I’d still be supporting her.
Conservatively Liberal
I noticed that when I mentioned that I was changing the pie filter so noiq replies that they love hot goat sex, noiq decided to leave. Hmmmm, could I have been on to something and noiq left to keep from being outed? ;)
I find it interesting that the Penn/Columbia trade deal is getting so little air time, and I am not reading tirade after tirade about it anywhere. I can’t help but think that if this had been one of Obama’s campaign people who had done this, the Clintonistas would be spamming the crap out of it. As it is, her people mostly give Penn a pass on this.
Plain and simple, Penn was double-dealing and got caught. IMO, if Hillary had one ethical bone in her body she would have canned him immediately. She did not, and that speaks volumes about her character.
Bedlam
Hi all, put here as I didn’t know where, but seemed relevant as a question of Clintons ‘fact’s. As a brit totally engrossed in all this I visited Hillary is 44 (years old?) and saw the poll list they have down the right hand side, pretty much showing her winning everything.
What is that info, as it seems to show here winning popularity everywhere?
Please excuse my ignorance. and thanks for any info.