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Edited on Tue Feb-26-08 04:42 PM by Occam Bandage
Your model of politics includes three discrete actors: The Clinton, The Obama, and The Drudge. You're saying, "hey, The Drudge published something, and The Obama and The Clinton started fighting, so obviously The Drudge is playing The Clinton and The Obama off one another." In simplistic models, things only happen because someone makes them happen.
In reality, campaigns take advantage of unexpected events, and things happen because individual people make individual decisions that may or may not be advantageous to them. I think it's pretty apparent what actually happened: Clinton staffers were kicking around that picture, considering if it might possibly be used as part of an argument to the effect that Obama's past and ethnicity make him too weak for the general election. Somehow, some idiot forwards it to someone outside the campaign, and it gets into Drudge's inbox. Perhaps some idiot on the Clinton campaign thought they'd float it and see what kind of reaction it got; perhaps they sent it to someone with dubious loyalties who sent it to drudge. Who knows?
Regardless, Drudge saw an opportunity and went with it. He doesn't exist to take down Democrats; he exists to drive traffic to his site. He's anti-Democrat because you have to align yourself with someone in order to get the juicy inside stuff; he has no compunctions about running pieces damaging to Republicans if he thinks it'll be a net gain for him, nor about running pieces favorable to individual Democrats. So anyway, he gets this nice picture and email. He laughs and posts it. He makes sure to play up that it came from the Clintons. This will drive traffic. He likes that.
Now, reaction time:
Obama's camp, predictably, bashes the Clintons. This is done purely to get a response; the story here will not be the picture, but rather the civil war that erupts, and they want to make sure the Clintons look bad.
Clinton's camp, stupidly, does not deny the charge and attack Drudge, but rather defends the notion of distributing such a picture, and attacks Obama for mentioning it. That's fucking retarded; it makes them look guilty as hell, especially since nobody really thinks that a picture of Barack Hussein Obama in a turban and robe would be sent out by an opposition camp with benign intent.
Obama says "oh, I'm very disappointed in this kind of politics. This kind of nasty politics. Oh, these nasty bad Clinton politics are very politically nasty politics Clinton cynical politics Clinton politics."
By noon, the Clinton camp has found its fucking head again, and denies knowingly sending out such a picture. They decide the best tactic is to change the subject; Clinton takes the opportunity to deny knowledge and talk instead about how Obama's health care and job plans are worse than hers. Okay move, but still miscalculated.
Today, they've decided they can make hay with it. They're still pushing the same line that got Bob Kerrey in trouble: "Gee, what's wrong with this? I would think that Obama would be proud of his black African Muslim heritage as a black man from Africa who is Muslim black black Africa black Muslim." They think it might help them with the only constituency that they're still holding: uneducated white voters.
Obama, on the other hand, is aware that Clinton's biggest handicap is her negativity; he therefore wants to push the line that Clinton is playing cynical, nasty politics.
All parties were always aware of what the other parties were doing, and were always acting in what they believed was in their self interest. No parties were acting in the interest of John McCain. Not even Drudge.
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