Team Clinton: Down, and Out of Touch (Dana Milbank)

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"They are in the last throes, if you will.

As Vice President Cheney knows, such predictions can be perilous. Still, there was no mistaking a certain flailing, a lashing-out, as two Clinton advisers sat down for a bacon-and-eggs session yesterday at the St. Regis Hotel.

The Christian Science Monitor had assembled the éminences grises of the Washington press corps -- among them David Broder of The Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and columnist Mark Shields -- for what turned out to be a fascinating tour of an alternate universe.

First came Harold Ickes, who gave a presentation about Hillary Rodham Clinton's prospects that severed all ties with reality. "We're on the way to locking this nomination down," he said of a candidate who appears, if anything, headed in the other direction.

But before the breakfast crowd had a chance to digest that, they were served another, stranger course by Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer. Asked about an accusation on the Drudge Report that Clinton staffers had circulated a photo of Barack Obama wearing Somali tribal dress, Singer let 'er rip.

"I find it interesting that in a room of such esteemed journalists that Mr. Drudge has become your respected assignment editor," he lectured. "I find it to be a reflection of one of the problems that's gone on with the overall coverage of this campaign." He went on to chide the journalists for their "woefully inadequate" coverage of Obama, "a point that has been certainly backed up by the 'Saturday Night Live' skit that opened the show this past Saturday evening, which I would refer you all to."

The brief moment explained everything about the bitter relations between Clinton's campaign and the media: Singer taunting the likes of Broder, who began covering presidential politics two decades before Singer was born, with a comedy sketch that showed debate moderators fawning over Obama.

"That's your assignment editor?" responded Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

"That's my assignment editor," Singer affirmed."

more

[alphafemale]

1. He referenced the SNL skit....in a chiding, scolding way...to a roomful of journalists?

Oh...thud.

[K Gardner]

2. Wow.. this is almost scary to read.. I feel like

[cali]

3. Whoa. Not a Milbank fan but that's quite

an eye opening piece. thanks for posting it.

[K Gardner]

4. I have to post this snippet, in case people don't actually read

the entire.. very disturbing.. article. This is a flood light showing us the path they mean to walk down and proves what I and others said yesterday: This is still a fight for the Nomination. The Clintons are trying to damage Obama so badly that he'll be seen as unelectable at the Convention and the Supers will throw the nod to Hillary. It is not about 2012, IMO.

At one point, he warned of "a bitter and potentially very divisive credentials fight" at the Democratic convention. At another point, he compared the race to 1972, when a strong front-runner, Ed Muskie (now played by Clinton), was upended by an antiwar candidate, George McGovern (now played by Obama), who lost to the Republicans. "The fact is, he could not carry his weight in the general election," Ickes argued.

But Ickes could suspend reality for only so long. He referred to Clinton's opponent at one point as "Senator Barack," swapped 1992 for 1972 and Michigan for Vermont, and said of the Pennsylvania primary: "Um, what month is it?" Eventually, Carl Leubsdorf of the Dallas Morning News drew a confession out of Ickes: "I think if we lose in Texas and Ohio, Mrs. Clinton will have to make her decisions as to whether she goes forward or not."

Ickes's return to Earth seemed only to further outrage Singer.

When Amy Chozick of the Wall Street Journal asked about how combative Clinton would be in tonight's debate with Obama, Singer informed her that it was an "absurd" question. "I don't think . . . any of our senior people have the ESP skills that you all ascribe to us," he said.

When Time's Jay Newton-Small inquired about the Obama photo on Drudge, Singer used the occasion to complain about the press's failure to examine Obama's ties to violent radicals who were part of the Weathermen of the 1960s. "As far as I can tell, there was absolutely no follow-up on the part of the Obama traveling press corps," he said.

[saltpoint]

5. My first question would be who was on hand to feed David Broder?

The whole knife-and-fork thing has always been far past his ability to master. His columns have been as consistently shallow for several decades.

MoDo is wickedly witty but I don't care much for her assaults on Democrats. I'm surprised she was even at the table and not back in the restaurant kitchen sharpening the knives. With her teeth.

The Clinton camp representatives' comments struck me as sardonic as opposed to precient or substantive. We heard no nutrition offered, only the promise of dessert from Ickes, Singer, etc.

[theHandpuppet]

6. Wow -- now dredging up support from Dana Milbank?

Folks around here really have had the wool pulled over their eyes and one day the Obama cheerleaders will actually wake up to find they voted for a Republican after all. Well, that's one way for the GOP to extricate itself from Iraq but still retain control.

[K Gardner]

9. This article is not an opinion piece. Its a REPORT from a meeting of

Clinton advisors and the Press.

[saltpoint]

10. Exactly. And the accounts can be verified by others in attendance.

[City Lights]

7. This Ickes quote jumped out at me:

"I think if we lose in Texas and Ohio, Mrs. Clinton will have to make her decisions as to whether she goes forward or not."

It used to be that they had to win both. That sounds like a moving-the-goalpost-again quote. Sounds like they're gonna take a win in either state as a reason to continue.

Anyone else read it that way?

[HeraldSquare212]

19. Yes, that's been happening for a few days now.

I think they've written off Texas. Gov. Corzine of NJ said she can't lose both yesterday. Bill Clinton said if she won both she would be President - he didn't say she had to win both to keep going in the campaign. So, if they win Ohio and lose Texas, I think she'll try to stay in. It will get hard, however - they're going to have to say to people, Well, you thought we had to win both, but we never said that, and then run through all the quotes to show them that. I think the headlines would make a lot of the fact that they failed and are now changing the definition of what failure is. I also think a lot of the superdelegates would try to tell her to drop out and, if she didn't, they'd start to publically abandon her en masse.

[izzie]

8. I am sort of at wits end in all this. I try to read all

It seems to me that Obama has been pretty open but not so the Clinton's. Also she takes credit for what he did as President unless it looks bad like NAFTA. Is what a wife does like being in office or not? It was not a co-Pres. Bush did much of his father's business and look at the type President he is. Plus he has hid half of what his father has done with his endless signing papers to keep them out of reach of people. Clinton also put off WH papers and tax? I also seem to see the place where the win goes to one or the other keeps getting moved back. If it was Clinton where Obama is now she would say she is the winner and so would every one else yet we plod along trying to cut this guy down to being as mean as he can be. Is it, that Clinton can not give in when others have had to? I think the Clinton's will take down the party to win this. I am sort of sad about that. And re-read that it has to be some bad English. Sorry. Plus I can not hear about this 'poor women' with a cheating husband one more time' She wears it like a Purple Heart. Give me a brake and I am a women.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

11. "Sixteen months into this," [Singer] said, "I'm just angry."

Yep. That pretty much sums up the Clinton campaign at this point.

[Peace Patriot]

12. Please give source and date in the OP! I hate to add even a little bit of traffic

at that putrid, warmongering rag's web site.

And, speaking of that, figure that nothing you read there is straightforward. Nothing. Read between the lines. Try to figure out what these fuckwad "journalists" are up to. But never take them at their word.

[Kaylee]

15. Ummm, this is the Washington Post..........

[Peace Patriot]

13. What's really going on in this chat at the St. Regis Hotel?

And, more importantly, why was it published? I'm still analyzing it, so let me just explore some thoughts about it.

Ickes doesn't understand why George McGovern lost in 1972. It wasn't his anti-Vietnam War stance. Bobby Kennedy would have won on that stance, back in 1968. The country was utterly revolted by the Vietnam War, by 1972. McGovern lost for three reasons: 1) He made the mistake of proposing a cap on American wealth of $50,000 (enough to live well on, in those days--but it smacked of the "C" word). 2) He didn't project well on TV--just a fact. He doesn't have the gift. 3) Nixon White House "dirty tricks"! They were bugging the DNC headquarters, for godssakes! And it was not exposed until well after the election. God knows what advantage this gave them, but they weren't doing it for laughs.

People were sick to death of that war--just as they are now, with the Iraq War. And, in that war, by 1972, we were well into the final slaughter toll of TWO MILLION PEOPLE and over 55,000 U.S. soldiers! That's how the phrase "body bag" entered the lexicon. Nixon had clearly broken his promise of "peace with honor." He had been in office four years. No end in sight.

Nope, I am quite sure of this. And I lived through it, so I have at least that as my creds.

So Ickes he doesn't understand that campaign, how can he understand this one? And, sick as the American people were of the Vietnam War, anti-war sentiment in that era never reached the whopping level of today--70% of the American people opposed to the Iraq War and wanting it ended. Congress, which hasn't ended it, has a 22% approval rating. Bush, who hasn't ended it, has a 19% approval rating. Do the math!

And Obama, a) has made no such mistake as to presume to cap Americans' lottery dreams, and b) has the gift--projection of his personality and intelligence, and his impressive cool-headedness, in the media.

I think Ickes remarks about this reflect the overall determination of our corrupt political establishment to PREVENT this election from being about the war. They did it in 2004, and they are doing it again. And we are the "enemy"--this whopping American majority that hates this war and wants it ended.

Sentiment against the Vietnam War never got much above 55% levels--by comparison. And it is very arguable that, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on the night he won the California primary, and then two months later, LBJ's vice president Hubert Humphrey was nominated at the bloody 1968 Democratic Convention, Nixon won the election on ANTI-WAR sentiment. Humphrey was complicit. That was WHY there was such a fracas between antiwar protesters and the Chicago police outside the convention. Fair or not, Humphrey was tagged with it. He'd gone along. And if Hillary Clinton resembles anyone it's Hubert Humphrey. Nixon came along with this smooth "peace with honor" message to "Middle America"--which, at that point, was frightened by this rebellion of the young against the war, and was experiencing it every night at the dinner table, with arguments between fathers and sons (fueled by the Draft), and they wanted somebody like Eisenhower, with the skills to bring this conflict to a close, and bring back peace and harmony. I think most Nixon voters didn't know that he was lying. They were thinking "Ike" not "Dick." (Nixon had been Eisenhower's VP.)

Although there are certainly parallels to the Vietnam era, there are also differences. And one of them is that, because of the Vietnam War, 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb 03, NYT; other polls, 54-55%). 54-56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me, it was). That's what our political establishment was thinking about when they passed the $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, Oct 02. How to control and stop the antiwar movement, which was starting at 54-56%, and would surely grow when the injustice of the Iraq War became apparent?

So, a lot of Ickes' blather, and that of these other Clinton advisers and "pundits," is just hot air, possibly designed for some purpose, but I haven't sussed it out yet. Is Obama Nixon--that is, the stealth candidate of our war profiteer government, soothing people with platitudes, but with a secret plan to escalate the war, maybe hit Iran as well (like Nixon did in Cambodia and Laos)? Hard to read people these days through the fog and lies of this corrupt media cauldron. I think not, but I really don't know for sure. Is this all just a charade, to make us FEEL LIKE this is really a contest, but it's been fixed all along for Clinton (or McCain)--to keep us--we, the American people--off kilter, and lulled into believing that democracy is "working"?

Really, with all the vote counting run on electronic machines, with trade secret, proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, and with virtually no audit/recount controls, ANYTHING is possible. Anything. Even their Diebolding another blatant Bushite into the White House in November. We really need to realize what a tremendous and devious effort has been mounted to KEEP THIS WAR GOING and to expand it. If Obama is relatively clean and sincere, do we even have a chance of putting him in the White House? I don't know. I think it is possible to outvote the machines, but there are many factors to an election. In the 1960s, they just shot leaders who were in the way of the next war. Today, they have a subtler weapon--trade secret vote counting--and also the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Back then, the news media was much more open. Today, it acts like the "Iron Curtain" in the Soviet Union. It can make any absurd narrative seem plausible enough to keep the population confused. Can they do it--steal another election? Of course they can. The election system was DESIGNED for election fraud. Will they be able to? And will the American people put up with it? That's "x = the unknown." The People. I think not. I think rebellion is very much in the air.

---------------------

(Journal refs)

Discussion:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4775777

Referenced article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/25/AR2008022502501.html

[Scurrilous]

14. Thanks for your analysis Peace Patriot.

:thumbsup:

[K Gardner]

18. This is excellent.. please consider making it an OP when you're done

shussing it out ! Highly recommended reading, this one.

[Tatiana]

23. Outstanding post. I agree that there is a comparison to be made between Clinton and Humphrey. n/t

[Enrique]

16. the media whores hate it when they get called out

[HeraldSquare212]

17. But again, no denial re: Drudge.

[TexasObserver]

20. Hillary's campaign has lost its contact with the rational world.

They've literally gone temporarily insane.

[ginnyinWI]

21. K&R

[ElsewheresDaughter]

22. The Skull&Bones Dana Milbank?..The New Republic & WSJ Milbank? Yale Bones Connect Kerry/Milbanks?

[ProSense]

24. Wow! This beats Obama is Somalian

link

[TheWraith]

25. Good God, it's like a parody of a political campaign going down in flames.

They're literally doing everything that you shouldn't do, right up to and including attacking the press for not giving them more positively slanted coverage.