Clinton Camp: "Sen. Obama is turning the Audacity of Hope into the audacity of nope"

[sabra]

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/03/clinton_camp_tags_obama_for_th.html#more

The Clinton campaign will not let go of the discounted Democratic primary votes in Michigan, where Sen. Hillary Clinton “won’’ as the only major candidate on the Jballot, and in Florida, which Clinton “won’’ in an uncontested election.

The argument seems somewhat moot, now that the Michigan legislature has given up on the idea of a “re-do’’ of the Jan. 15 primary that the Democratic National Committee refuses to recognize because it violated party rules in going so early, and with Florida’s Republican governor uninterested in financing a replay of the Sunshine State’s Jan. 29 primary vote, which has drawn the same penalty by the DNC.

...

“Sen. Obama is turning the Audacity of Hope into the audacity of nope,’’ said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, with a reference to Obama's campaign book in a conference call with reporters this morning.

...

“It’s interesting that the Obama campaign often gets its back up when we say that their campaign is just words,’’ Singer said. “But I think few things illustrate this point better than what Sen. Obama is doing with regard to Florida and Michigan.’’

Obama is campaigning with ads in Pennsylvania that speak of his record as a young civil rights worker, Singer says, but “now he only wants to count some of the votes.’’

[SoonerPride]

1. If it were possible, I'd put Hillary Clinton herself on ignore

She is embarrassing herself.

Her campaign has devolved into the worst kind of parody of itself, it is very sad to see.

[SoxFan]

13. Best line of the day!

:yourock:

[DevonRex]

31. I already can't stand to listen to her.

I change the channel when she's on TV, just like I change it when Dubya is on.

How the heck could I vote for someone I can't stand to listen to? If she manages to steal the nomination, I'm in deep doodoo.

[roguevalley]

33. isn't this just too puerile for words?

Hillary, get some dignity. She has the stupidest most idiotic staffers.

[Bonobo]

2. She still thinks it's all about one-liners. She is clueless. nt

[slinkerwink]

3. the state parties disenfranchised their own voters, not Obama

if the state parties hadn't moved up their primaries, they would have gotten 30% more delegates added to their total by the DNC.

[VenusRising]

4. Aren't they just so clever?!

:eyes:

It's not about the sound bites anymore. We have real problems in this country and this cutesy bullshit is tiresome and disgusting.

[NightWatcher]

5. is Hillary's new advisor, Nipsey Russell? What's next Dr. Seuss?

Hope is Nope, I need Soap on a Rope.....

[Bonobo]

7. LOL! Nipsey Russel!!!

I fucking love it!

Where's Brett "Boobs" Sommers?

[book_worm]

6. tell me, does she ever criticize Sen. McCain?

[futureliveshere]

8. That is a GREAT question

I am seriously wondering if she is running as McCain's Veep candidate rather than a fellow democratic.

[SoonerPride]

16. This deserves its own thread.

I'd like to see some quotes from HRC supporters showing where she has - ever - criticized mcCain.

Very telling.

[1776Forever]

30. McCain and Hillary are old drinking buddies.............

July 29, 2006
2008 May Test Clinton’s Bond With McCain
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/washington/29rivals.html?pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON, July 28 — Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest.

Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. “One of the guys” was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to some Republican colleagues.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain went on to develop an amiable if professionally calculated relationship. They took more official trips together, including to Iraq. They worked together on the Senate Armed Services Committee and on the issue of global warming. They made a joint appearance last year on “Meet the Press,” interacting so congenially that the moderator, Tim Russert, joked about their forming a “fusion ticket.”

(snip)

It was during their joint trip to Iraq in late February 2005 that Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton appeared via satellite on “Meet the Press,” an appearance that put their civility on display. When Mr. Russert asked Mr. McCain at the end of the interview whether he thought Mrs. Clinton would make a good president, Mrs. Clinton came to his rescue, saying: “Oh, we can’t hear you, Tim!”

“Yeah, you’re breaking up,” Mr. McCain added, laughing. But then he said: “I happen to be a Republican and would support, obviously, a Republican nominee, but I have no doubt that Senator Clinton would make a good president.”

Asked the same question about him, Mrs. Clinton replied without skipping a beat: “Absolutely.”

Mr. McCain’s advisers played down their relationship, saying he was friendly with a number of Democrats. “They underscore their differences every day,” John Weaver, a political adviser to the senator, said of Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton. “That doesn’t mean you treat each other less civilly.”

Philippe Reines, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said: “They are colleagues who have worked and traveled together on issues of interest to both, such as support for our military and global warming, and they agree to disagree on issues such as requiring greater scrutiny of foreign government ownership of our ports.”

But Mr. Reines said Mrs. Clinton’s advisers had not noticed any recent changes in her relationship with Mr. McCain, and he declined to elaborate on the rounds of vodka.

“What happens in Estonia stays in Estonia,” Mr. Reines said.

...........

:hide:

[Shae]

20. Well she did criticize McCain

about his relationship with that pastor. Oh wait, that was O... nevermind

[DemzRock]

9. Audacity of nope! I like that one. Since Obama was part of blocking the revote it's very true. n/t

[IndependentDem]

21. can you explain to me exactly how Obama blocked the re-vote?

i may have missed something but it is my understating that the Obama camp would be fine with a re-vote-- if it was fair and not "paid for."

[MADem]

10. Obama was on that ballot in FL. Uncontested? I don't think so. NT

[peoli]

11. I am so fucking sick of them trying to BLAME Obama for Florida and MI. FUCK OFF!

[loveangelc]

12. OMG Zinger!!!111

wow they are so clueless.

[FlyingSquirrel]

34. I can hardly wait for the Daily Show tonight.

[Saturday]

14. I heard on the NBC nightly news last night that polls asked

Democratic primary voters in FL if they would vote for the Democratic nominee in the GE. 24% said they would not if their delegates were not seated at the convention. Good bye FL.

[SoonerPride]

15. Oh, we were gonna lose that state anyway. Diebold or dirty tricks, either way.

It should just go ahead and sink into the ocean.

I'm only slightly kidding.

[olkaz]

17. I like this game, let's all play, I'll go first!

Hillary Clinton's campaign is turning "Yes, we will" into "Yes, we shrill"!

[Shae]

18. If Obama is "just words"

Hillary's words now aren't worth the breath it took to utter them.

[alcibiades_mystery]

19. JOEMENTUM

:rofl:

[democrattotheend]

22. I'm an Obama supporter, but I have to say, I agree with this

I don't know if Obama's campaign actually blocked the Michigan revote (I have heard conflicting accounts), but if so, I think that's a mistake. Obama could win Michigan or at least come close in a revote, and if they don't do something about it, it could hurt him in the general. I am sure Clinton would be doing the same thing if the tables were turned, but I do think that a Michigan revote is in Obama's best interests and he ought to agree to it, if some of the legitimate concerns can be worked out.

[otohara]

24. The Michigan Party Leaders Said NOPE

nope to the money it would cost, nope to the 10 corporate sugar-daddies Hillary lined up to pay for it. Obama said he would comply with the rules.

[azmouse]

23. Looks like there is no low too low for HRC.

Pathetic.

[JTFrog]

25. Hyperbole Hillary strikes again! n/t

[whatchamacallit]

26. "Nope" as in NO to Clinton/Bush Dynasties?

Very audacious, and democratic, concept!

[Adelante]

27. They've been saying that since last year

In one form or another. They need some new lines.

[Voice for Peace]

28. The audacity of hope vs the proliferation of poop. nt

[ElsewheresDaughter]

29. The kinds of attacks Clinton can't use against Obama -- but that the GOP will use

But GOP strategists can't wait to tell all the independents and Republicans who have been voting for Obama this year how he is, well, basically another John Kerry. Or maybe Michael Dukakis. Take your pick.

<snip>
March 20, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The Republican playbook for running against Barack Obama got a handy dry run this week. All of the outrage on right-wing talk radio, Fox News and conservative blogs over past incendiary comments from Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, fit perfectly into the plan the GOP and its allies are incubating for how to attack Obama if he wins the Democratic nomination for president. (The attack plan for demonizing Hillary Clinton, of course, is already well drawn, and many Republicans say they'd still rather face her.)

The emerging strategy -- at least according to leading Republican operatives who spoke on the record -- doesn't depend on reminding Americans of Obama's middle name, or on clumsy rhetoric from Clinton supporters such as Geraldine Ferraro who have helped to make race a divisive issue. Republicans say they'll try, first and foremost, to paint Obama as dangerously inexperienced -- a characterization of him that Clinton's own polling has found to resonate with many voters, and an attack that Clinton has already been using. Republicans say they'll also portray Obama as unacceptably liberal, using his record as a state and U.S. senator.

But there can be little doubt party operatives will also pick up on -- and let the Republican noise machine make controversies out of -- things like Wright's comments, which can raise uncomfortable questions about race or patriotism in voters' minds. Judging by past campaigns, the party will look for ways to benefit from the dirty work of unaffiliated operators while keeping its hands officially clean of it.

<snip>

"He's tried to give voters the impression that he transcends partisan politics, but his record is extremely liberal and overtly partisan," said Alex Conant, an RNC spokesman. "I think when you talk about wanting to reject old politics, is the definition of old politics." For a candidate whose message is about moving the country past divisive political battles, that could be an effective line of attack. Even more than depicting him as a true liberal, Republicans want to turn Obama into just another politician, to blunt his charisma and post-partisan appeal.

Republicans' best chance to counter Obama's appeal to voters may come when gifts like Wright's incendiary rhetoric surface. Following a report on "Good Morning America" about Wright's past sermons, the reverend's comments became a fixture on Rush Limbaugh's show and on "Hannity & Colmes." Polling already shows Wright's most inflammatory remarks offend a lot of voters. Just imagine if Wright showed up again in an ad on television in October. "Those film clips are pretty devastating," Wadhams said with some relish. And Limbaugh, naturally, has already gone ballistic. "No country wants a president who is a member of a church with this kind of radicalism as its mainstream," he fumed on Monday.

Obama acknowledged, again, in his speech on race on Tuesday how close the two men have been for two decades; there's no question that Wright has been influential enough in Obama's life to merit some scrutiny. And talking about Wright means Republicans don't have to talk about race directly. Instead, they can just remind voters -- over and over again -- that Obama's minister sometimes strays onto radical rhetorical ground. If doing that makes people less comfortable with electing the first black president, so be it.

"Instead of distancing himself and moving past this moment, he sort of owns it now," Republican strategist Kevin Madden argued after Obama's speech. (Madden worked for Mitt Romney's campaign, which went through equally thorny contortions over religion.) "Barack Obama, before all this, was at a point where his appeal transcended race. He was somebody that voters -- white and black both -- looked at as a candidate not viewed through the prism of white or black. he has become that."

These kinds of attacks might be even more pernicious than obvious lies about Obama's religious background, which made their way around the country by e-mail last year (naturally, without a named source). But unlike refuting the charges in those e-mails that he attended madrassas as a child, Obama can't just shrug off the more sophisticated tactics as false.

Instead, he has to get voters to move past them -- a problem Obama has recognized. "We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day, and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words," he said Tuesday. "We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change."

But it's one thing to know what's coming and to condemn it. It's another to beat it back. Hillary Clinton has insisted all through the campaign that her own battles with the GOP in the 1990s taught her how to survive -- even thrive on -- nasty attacks. For Obama to secure the Democratic nomination, he may have to persuade party insiders that he can do the same thing.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/20/obama_attacks/index1.html

[Moochy]

32. Good to see their new Neener Neener Strategy is working

Devised by Mrs Everett's 3rd grade class during recess.