After Obama Victory, Clinton’s Camp Seeks Gentler Role for Ex-President (NYT)

[jefferson_dem]

January 28, 2008
After Obama Victory, Clinton’s Camp Seeks Gentler Role for Ex-President
By PATRICK HEALY

Democrats inside and outside the Clinton campaign on Sunday debated and in some cases bemoaned the degree to which former President Bill Clinton’s criticism of Senator Barack Obama last week had inflicted lasting damage on his wife’s presidential candidacy.

“I think his harsh style hurt Senator Clinton — it polarized the campaign and polarized the electorate, and it also made it harder for Senator Clinton’s positive message to break through,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster who is not affiliated with any of the candidates.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team, seeking to readjust after her lopsided defeat in South Carolina and amid a sense among many Democrats that Mr. Clinton had injected himself clumsily into the race, will try to shift the former president back into the sunnier, supportive-spouse role that he played before Mrs. Clinton’s loss in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton advisers said.

But Democrats said it was not clear whether the effects of Mr. Clinton’s high profile could be brushed away by having him modulate his campaign style. They said Mr. Clinton had upset some of the central themes of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, including her appeal to women and her assertions that her time in the White House during the 1990s amounted to vital experience rather than a link to a presidency defined as much by scandal and partisan divisions as by its successes on fronts like the economy.

Despite Mrs. Clinton’s months-long efforts to build a base of support among women, Clinton advisers said they were concerned that her husband’s recent prominence may have dampened her appeal as a strong female leader. Some advisers said they feared as much after Mr. Obama won 54 percent of the vote from women in South Carolina, including 22 percent of white women and 78 percent of black women, according to polls.

Echoing private remarks by some Clinton advisers, Linda L. Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, said in an interview that she believed Mr. Clinton’s attacks on Mr. Obama had hurt Mrs. Clinton.

“Voters don’t like the idea of a co-presidency, and he became so high profile that he made people begin to see this as a possible co-presidency,” Ms. Fowler said. “It’s even more problematic because she’s a woman. It looks like she either needs him to fight the big battles for her, or she can’t keep the big dog on the porch.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/us/politics/28dems.html?pagewanted=print

[babylonsister]

1. Reinvention #493. Stand by! But something needs to give, or not. nt

[neutron]

4. The NYT always encourages our candidates to screw themselves

by not responding to smears in kind.

That damned newspaper has probably cost more democratic candidates
elections by scolding our candidates to "tone it down" while they are getting their
throats cut.

BLAST AWAY, BILL. They have been smearing you in the blogs for MONTHS.
You've earned criticizing rights.

[sandnsea]

2. Hey, we're having some fun now!!

It's not just Bill, that's the problem. She surrounds herself with men who are scummy so it must be because that's what she thinks she needs to compete in life. Nothing is going to change.

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. It's what she needed to compete in life. Re-invention is the mother of

personas.

[babylonsister]

5. Very perceptive, and I hadn't even considered that. Then, there are

some who thinks that's the price she's had to pay. :eyes:

[DJ13]

6. Aw crap!

I predict more well timed tears.
:eyes:

[Adelante]

7. Oh, too bad

He was doing such a good job for us :D