Guardian UK: Stirring up apathy (Clinton campaign)

[marmar]

Stirring up apathy
US elections 2008: Hillary Clinton's tactics in Saturday night's debate were a calculated attempt to encourage cynicism and discourage those who desire real change
Niall Stanage

January 6, 2008 4:00 PM | Printable version

Hillary Clinton is trying to knife Barack Obama - that is the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from her performance at last night's televised debate in New Hampshire. The former First Lady, never likely to be mistaken for a shrinking violet, mounted the most aggressive assault yet by one credible Democratic candidate on another.

Clinton's attack took both direct and sly means. In the early stages, she asserted that her chief rival for the party nomination "could have a pretty good debate with himself" because of alleged inconsistencies in his record. (Obama responded that she was distorting his past positions.)

Clinton also denigrated the power of the oratory for which Obama is renowned, and tried to confect a parallel between the Illinois senator and President George Bush.

Asked about Obama's apparent advantage over her in terms of likeability, she warned of the dangers of electing a president who "people said they wanted to have a beer with, who said he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider, who said that he had his intuition and he was going to, you know, really come into the White House and transform the country."

With the New Hampshire primary looming and the aftershocks from her third-place finish in Iowa still being felt, Clinton has in effect given up on persuading voters to like her. Her aim now, it appears, is to get them to distrust Obama even more than they distrust her.

The debate performance was far from an isolated incident. The Associated Press reported on Saturday that the Clinton campaign had responded to Obama's Iowa victory by assailing him in a mass mailing of New Hampshire voters.

The mail-out accused Obama of being "unwilling to take a stand" on reproductive rights while a member of the Illinois State Senate. Inconveniently for Clinton, the AP story also noted that Obama received a 100% rating from the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council for his stance on reproductive and family planning issues during his time in the legislature. His record included a politically courageous vote against mandating medical care for foetuses that survive abortion procedures. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/niall_stanage/2008/01/stirring_up_apathy.html

[Hieronymus]

1. Way to go, Guardian.

[FrenchieCat]

2. apathy will give us more of the same and what we might truly deserve.....

“Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.”-Arnold Toynbee

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”-Plato


“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion”-Jung

“The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy” - Charles de Montesquieu


"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”- Robert M. Hutchins


“So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect.”- Eleanor Roosevelt

“Hope is not a dream but a way of making dreams become reality.”

[silverweb]

3. Scathing!

From near the end:

Obama is fond of decrying "textbook Washington campaigns" in his appearances on the campaign trail. A chapter of that figurative textbook is surely devoted to how an 'establishment' candidate like Clinton can vanquish an 'insurgent' like him.

One well-known method is by depressing turnout. Insurgents, so the theory goes, need to attract new voters into the system in order to win, and those new voters tend to be attracted by idealism. That being so, if one can muddy the sense of hope that surrounds the insurgent and instead provoke a general sense of ennui and apathy, those new voters will not turn out.

Clinton is following that strategy to the letter.

<snip>

So maybe it's no surprise that Clinton seeks to dampen hopes, deride vision and mock idealism. Who knows: the scorched earth approach might even work for her, enabling her to grind her way to the nomination.

But what a dismal victory it would be.

[K Gardner]

4. Ouch ! Why do the Europeans always get it right?