Do-Or-die Hillary Turns Bully As Obama Starts To Pull Away - TimesOnline UK

[WillyT]

Do-or-die Hillary turns bully as Obama starts to pull away

With her rival ahead in the polls and wooing her bedrock Hispanic and female voters, Clinton is trying to force her way back with a risky strategy that could split her party

Sarah Baxter, Columbus, Ohio

<snip>

THERE is an air of desperation in Hillary Clinton’s camp. The New York senator has embarked on a door-die mission to hector and bully her way to victory, putting her on a potential collision course with Democratic party leaders.

It is a risky strategy that could leave her more isolated and unpopular as voters defect to Barack Obama, the new front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama, 46, is being tarred as a cultish, messianic figure who talks big but cannot deliver.

Clinton, 60, is being driven into her last redoubts as white women, blue collar workers and Hispanics – her core supporters – have begun to peel away. In public she is adopting a feistier tone and a more populist message against the Illinois senator in a bid to stem her losses.

“Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night,” she said at a rally in Ohio, a swing state with a heavy component of “rust belt” working-class voters who are already feeling the effects of looming recession.

Privately, her mood has darkened after losing eight primaries and caucuses in a row. The reali-sation that without a series of huge victories in the remaining contests it is impossible for Clinton to win enough “pledged” delegates to clinch the nomination has sent her staff into shock.

Al Gore, the former vice-president, was revealed yesterday to be waiting in the wings to broker a deal should the “superdele-gates”, comprising 796 party figures, end up with a casting vote.

The New York Times reported that he had held talks with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the former presidential candidates John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd over how to avoid a bruising party battle. Tempers have been running high within the Clinton camp.

Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, got into a slanging match with the media consultant Mandy Grunwald at Clinton’s campaign headquarters. “Your ad doesn’t work,” he fumed.

“Oh it’s always the ad, never the message,” Grunwald shot back. Insiders say the atmosphere is dark, even though the fight is not over yet. Loyalty to Clinton remains strong, but there have been too many chiefs and not enough Indians, they complain.

The friends of Bill or “white boys”, as Penn and Terry McAu-liffe, the campaign chairman, are known, have long viewed “Hillaryland” – the closed circle of female friends – with suspicion.

Patti Solis Doyle, who coined the term “Hillaryland” and was axed as Clinton’s campaign manager last week, found herself in the midst of rows. “There was a feeling that nobody was in charge,” said one observer. “She would try to play honest broker and go to Hillary with, ‘Mark says this, Mandy says that, Howard says this’ when what they needed was a general.”

Despite Solis Doyle’s legendary status as a second daughter to Clinton, she did not have the nerve to tell her the campaign was haemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate, a troubling sign of the fear and apprehension that Clinton inspires among staff. Clinton repaid the favour by not telling Solis Doyle she was going to put $5m of her own money into propping up her campaign.

Time that should be spent courting voters is now being devoted to fundraising after staff blew through a mind-boggling $130m and still ended up out-organised by Obama. In Wisconsin, a largely white working-class state that Clinton should be able to win on Tuesday, precious resources are being spent on a blast of negative advertisements challenging Obama’s refusal to debate with Clinton.

The latest polls put Obama ahead by 47% to 43%, but this weekend Clinton was fighting a rearguard action to restore her standing in the hope of pulling off a comeback reminiscent of the first primary in New Hamp-shire, which revived her fortunes after she finished third in the Iowa caucuses. Bill Clinton is also campaigning with begging bowl in hand for funds.

<snip>

More: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3382295.ece

Ouch...

:shrug:

[TexasObserver]

1. "THERE is an air of desperation in Hillary Clinton’s camp."

that says it all

[1awake]

2. jeez...

not umm.. a very good article for Hillary in the least.

[Tarheel_Dem]

3. whoa nelly....

that's gonna leave a mark! :rofl:

[Cha]

4. "The air of desperation in the hilary camp"

has been there since Obama won Iowa or maybe it started in Oct, 2002 when hilary voted for the IWR without reading the 90 page report.

"Why Hillary's war vote excuses do not fly"

"She didn't read the classified 90 page NIE as she was supposed to read. Sen. Bob Graham begged the senators to read it before voting on the IWR. More about the NIE here.

She voted for the IWR/AUMF which was a blank check authorization for war and it's title reads: "A joint resolution to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq." Floor speech (video)
She voted against the Levin amendment (which was a multilateral approach). See: The Senate’s Forgotten Iraq Choice..

She voted against the Durbin amendment whose purpose was: "To amend the authorization for the use of the Armed Forces to cover an imminent threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction rather than the continuing threat posed by Iraq." Saddam was not imminent threat, and hence that amendment would have prevented a war."
http://www.algore-08.com/blog/godhelper/alan_gore_get_your_ass

And she continues to lie..

<snip>

"In Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton lied again about Iraq.

At the forum in Los Angeles, Hillary Clinton declared, “We bombed them for days in 1998 because Saddam Hussein threw out inspectors.”

That statement was totally false. The bombing campaign had been planned for months and the inspectors were not thrown out. They were ordered out by President Bill Clinton in anticipation of the four-day U.S.-led bombing campaign.

<more>
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/02/6802/

[WillyT]

15. Yep !!!

:hi:

[Scurrilous]

5. Good article.

Thanks for posting. :thumbsup:

[John Q. Citizen]

6. That's a very good article. It cover all the happenings with good background.

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. Exhibit "A" for slanted media coverage of Clinton

This a perfect example of a minimally disguised "hit piece". The sympathies of the writer are blatantly against Hillary Clinton. It is easy to write a negative story if that is the goal, and this is one of a long progression of negative stories on Clinton that are rarely balanced out by critical coverage of Obama.

It is hard to find a more obvious tip off than in the headline itself "Hillary turns bully". "Bully" is not a word used in anything resembling objective political journalism - let alone in the headline. "Negative", "Attacking", "hard ball", those are the terms sometimes used when a campaign becomes "Aggressive" - which is another standard term. "Bully"? No. And the text of the story doesn't even provide any case in points to remotely justify the use of "bully". The fact that Hillary is campaigning to energize and turn our her base is not "bullying", it is standard politics. Obama did the same in South Carolina. And I dare anyone to explain what is "bullying" about saying: "“Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.” Critical? Sure. And Obama is just as critical toward Clinton - they are after all competing for the same audience.

"The story is laced with negative adjectives and imagery, such as "a troubling sign of the fear and apprehension that Clinton inspires among staff." Funny, what I usually hear about Hillary Clinton's staff is the fierce loyalty they have for her, how they have stuck with her for years and vice versa.

"THERE is an air of desperation in Hillary Clinton’s camp"

"a door-die mission to hector and bully her way to victory"

"staff blew through a mind-boggling $130m"

"precious resources are being spent on a blast of negative advertisements"

The negative spin is constant in this story, it reads like something that any one of a dozen serial Hillary blasters at DU writers composes twice a day here.

[WillyT]

8. Well... I Thought This Was Telling...

<snip>

Jason Altmire, a Pennsylvania congressman, said he remained on the fence for now – but was wondering whether he had a “moral obligation” to let voters know his preferred candidate.

Obama began calling Altmire in July, when he was 20 points behind in the polls. In November, Altmire had a long chat with Obama’s wife, Michelle, who outlined their strategy for victory and sent him a handwritten follow-up note afterwards.

At that stage there was no indication that the Pennsylvania primary – coming so late in the schedule – or his own vote as a superdelegate would matter, but Obama was already planning for the long game.

“They were really touching all the right bases,” Altmire said.

As yet he has not heard anything from the Clintons. Told of the congressman’s story, a spokesman for Clinton asked which state Altmire was from, expecting it to be an early-voting one.

“Pennsylvania? Oh, that is good,” he replied, looking taken aback. It is an extraordinary verdict on Clinton’s campaign that, this far into the race, the formerly inevitable winner is having to play catchup.

<snip>

Link: same article

:shrug:

[Tom Rinaldo]

10. That passage reads fine, it is what it is

I honestly do not mind negative coverage of Clinton where the situation merrits it. But over the last 5 years I have gotten really sensitive to picking up on the use of emotionally laden adjectives to negatively frame coverage of a political figure, and there was a lot of it in this story.

Assuming this part is accurate reporting, and I have no reason to think it isn't (although it has been known to happen from time to time - not just to Hillary) it is a snap shot of one part of Clinton's campaign dropping the ball, and it is valid to report on. From the outside it sure seems to me there was a valid reason for a staff shake up there.

[hayu_lol]

9. No big surprise that Hillary would RESORT to politics...

thats what politicians do in a political contest. Nothing more and nothing less.

Remember Axelrod?

Politics? Of course politics.

[publicatlarge]

11. No examples given of 'hectoring or bullying'

Consider the source. Agree with most of the rest of the article.

[WillyT]

12. And Many Times The Reporter Doesn't Get To Pick The Headline...

The editors that wanna sell papers usually do that.

:shrug:

[nomorewhopper]

13. "troubling sign of the fear and apprehension that Clinton inspires among staff" - YIKES

[WillyT]

14. Yeah... That Bothered Me Too

:wow:

[TexasObserver]

16. Hillary = Mother Superior in nun's habit, sternly slapping knuckles with a ruler

Or Nurse Ratchett, plotting to lobotomize anyone with a brain.

[WillyT]

17. *shudder* Damn...

:hide::scared::hide:

[TexasObserver]

18. Nice!! Blues Brothers and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest!!

thanks for the photo essay!!