Category: The Dish

The Clintons’ South Carolina Jujitsu

Hillary Clinton’s old hire, Dick Morris, explains:

If she loses blacks and wins whites by attacking Obama, it will look dirty and underhanded to blacks. She’ll develop a real problem in the minority community. But if she is seen as being rejected by minority voters in favor of Obama after going hat in hand to them and trying to out-civil rights Obama, blacks will even likely feel guilty about rejecting Hillary and will be more than willing to support her in the general election.

Where Has Bill Clinton Been?

A Democrat vents:

Where the hell has this red-faced, angry, combative Bill Clinton been for the last eight years?

Did Bill get angry and demand that wrongs be righted after the Florida miscount? After Bush v. Gore? After Bush, Cheney, and Rice blew off his concerns about terrorism for 8 months? After Bush’s unpreparedness for, inadequate and incomplete response to, and unconscionable exploitation of 9/11? After the unfair media and GOP attacks on Al Gore, Howard Dean, and John Kerry? After Katrina? Plame? The US Attorneys? The "lost" emails? The countless other mistakes and malfeasances of the Bush administration?

Sorry, Bill — by remaining silent in the face of so many grave catastrophes, you forfeited your right to attack Obama…

But Bush didn’t really challenge the Clintons’ power, did he? In fact, it was vital for the Clintons that Kerry be defeated in 2004 in order for the Restoration Project to continue. If you want to find a red-faced Democrat who actually cares about the country, the Constitution and the world, Al Gore has been your man for the last eight years. The Clintons only care about themselves. True now as it has always been.

A Poisoned Chalice

A blogger calls for Clinton to withdraw from the race. Heh. But here’s one reason:

If Hillary Clinton wins, her success will become a lesson in how women should achieve power: marry well; put up with any humiliations your husband throws at you, and then, maybe, if you fight dirty, and ask your husband to run your campaign, you might be able to ride his coattails to your “own” political success.

The damage she has done to feminism endures.

Hillary’s Final Self-Betrayal

The saddest thing about this campaign in some ways is how it has exposed the fallacy of the idea that Hillary Clinton had emerged from her husband’s shadow and was presenting herself as an individual candidate, fighting on her own merits and for her own self. Gail Collins had a must-read this morning. Money quote:

The implicit promise of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy was that she had learned from Clinton I. In her, Americans would have a candidate who had been in the very center of White House decision-making. And the very fact that so much had gone wrong was added value. She is nothing if not a good learner, and — the story went — she had discovered at great price where all the landmines lay, both in the presidency and her own character. And she had forged a separate political identity in seven years in the Senate. During an era when the challenges to a new president could be sudden and overwhelming — and here Hillary isn’t ashamed to play the terror card — she was uniquely prepared to hit the ground running and achieve the greatest do-over in American history.

Now, Bill’s role as Chief Attack Dog undermines all that. If he’s all over her campaign, he’s going to be all over her administration. Instead of the original promise of the thoroughly educated Hillary, we’re being offered the worst-case scenario — that the pair of them are going to return to Pennsylvania Avenue and recreate the old Clinton chaos.

Dynasties and psycho-dramas go together. And the times are too dangerous to roll the dice on this dysfunctional couple as the world’s joint leaders again. With 300 million Americans, we really have to reward someone who has already had eight years in the White House with eight more years? To replicate the same patterns?