Handy Guide to how trying to link Ayers to Obama could blow up the Clinton campaign

zulchzulu

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Apr-10-08 07:24 PM
Original message

Handy Guide to how trying to link Ayers to Obama could blow up the Clinton campaign

There is an obvious rumor that the Clinton campaign is going to try to hit the Obama campaign a week before the Pennsylvania primary. It should be expected as part of the last of the Kitchen Sink strategy. I'm certain that the Obama campaign has a response ad just in case.

Larry Johnson has been trying to work up the story as though it has validity:

"William Ayers, in the age of terrorism, will be Barack Obama's Willie Horton."
--Former counterterrorism official Larry C. Johnson, The Huffington Post, Feb. 16, 2008.

That's darkly wishful thinking on Johnson's part. To the point, FactCheck has an analysis of this:

There has been a sudden spate of blog items and newspaper articles, mainly in the British press, linking Barack Obama to a former member of the radical Weather Underground Organization that claimed responsibility for a dozen bombings between 1970 and 1974. The former Weatherman, William Ayers, now holds the position of distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although never convicted of any crime, he told the New York Times in September 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs...I feel we didn't do enough."

Both Obama and Ayers were members of the board of an anti-poverty group, the Woods Fund of Chicago, between 1999 and 2002. In addition, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's re-election fund to the Illinois State Senate in April 2001, as reported here. They lived within a few blocks of each other in the trendy Hyde Park section of Chicago, and moved in the same liberal-progressive circles.

http://www.billayers.org/index.php
http://www.elections.il.gov/CampaignDisclosure/ContribListSearches.aspx?NavLink=1
http://www.woodsfund.org/Folder_1042751691717/Folder_1063313904706/File_1063313710297
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html

The Woods Fund of Chicago, where Obama and Ayers were members on the board up to 2002, has a mission statement:

Building Power from Within Communities - Woods Fund of Chicago Invests in Building Resident Participation in the South Side�s Renaissance

Through our South Side Community Organizing Initiative, the Woods Fund focuses its resources on less-advantaged residents who have historically been left out of the democratic process. Our foundation is committed to building a more robust community organizing infrastructure in this part of the city. We hope the valuable lessons we have learned will help inform and advance the continued development and impact of �people power� in all under-resourced communities.

http://www.woodsfund.org/File_1204077272242

Christopher Hitchen's brother, Peter, wrote about the possible Ayers connection:

His list of contributions shows one for $200 from a certain William Ayers. Can this possibly be the same William Ayers, now a Chicago professor, who used to plant bombs in the Seventies and has said: "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough"? His partner, Bernardine Dohrn, once "declared war" on the US government.

It wouldn't be surprising. Those (like me) who know the Left-wing codes notice things about Obama that suggest he is far more radical than he would like us to know.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=511901&in_page_id=1811

That would be the spin that Penn (yes, he's still on the Clinton campaign) would try to paint to scare the "white vote": "he is far more radical than he would like us to know".

What is tethered in intellectual dishonesty are the facts:

The only hard facts that have come out so far are the $200 contribution by Ayers to the Obama re-election fund, and their joint membership of the eight-person Woods Fund Board. Ayers did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls requesting clarification of the relationship. Obama spokesman Bill Burton noted in a statement that Ayers was a professor of education at the University of Illinois and a former aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, and continued:

"Senator Obama strongly condemns the violent actions of the Weathermen group, as he does all acts of violence. But he was an eight-year-old child when Ayers and the Weathermen were active, and any attempt to connect Obama with events of almost forty years ago is ridiculous."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html

If the Clinton machine wants to attack Obama with issue, well it would almost literally blow up in their face. As is evidently stated:

But the Obama-Ayers link is a tenuous one. As Newsday pointed out, Clinton has her own, also tenuous, Weatherman connection. Her husband commuted the sentences of a couple of convicted Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Sue Evans, shortly before leaving office in January 2001.

Which is worse: pardoning a convicted terrorist or accepting a campaign contribution from a former Weatherman who was never convicted?

Whatever his past, Ayers is now a respected member of the Chicago intelligentsia, and still a member of the Woods Fund Board. The president of the Woods Fund, Deborah Harrington, said he had been selected for the board because of his solid academic credentials and "passion for social justice."

"This whole connection is a stretch," Harrington told me. "Barack was very well known in Chicago, and a highly respected legislator. It would be difficult to find people round here who never volunteered or contributed money to one of his campaigns."

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obamas_weatherman_connection.html

As for McCain possibly trying to bring up this "issue", he was asked by Sean Hannity about the subject:

Hannity brought up �one other emerging controversy we�ve dealt with a lot on Hannity & Colmes and my Sunday show,� meaning of course Obama�s �association� with William Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground 40 years ago and now an upstanding member of society. (Sort of like another Hannity pal, admitted traitor David Horowitz. Funny how Hannity never seems to care a fig about that history!) �Should that be an issue in the campaign?� Hannity asked hopefully.

McCain was obviously not interested in going down that road. �My life has been one of reconciliation,� he said. �If people want to put their past behind them, to apologize, to say look we�ve made mistakes in the past but we want to move forward, I respect that and embrace it. Because all of us have made serious mistakes in our lives and I certainly am one of them.�

http://www.newshounds.us/2008/03/14/mccain_reaches_over_hannity_and_limbaugh_to_reach_out_to_conservatives.php

In summation:

"...there�s no evidence their relationship is more than the casual friendship of two men who occupy overlapping Chicago political circles and who served together on the board of a Chicago foundation."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8630.html