Bill and Hillary Clinton are in a tough spot.
After years of weathering attacks from a vast right wing conspiracy, the Clinton brand has been irretrievably damaged by the only agent with the power and credibility to tarnish the luster of the family name, the Clintons themselves.
If Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina and Indiana, as she may well yet do, it will be because she treated Democratic primary voters to one more round of Mark Penn inspired right-wing pandering on guns, the gas tax, NAFTA revisionism and obliterating Iran.
That may win her North Carolina and Indiana but in the process Bill and Hillary Clinton have lost their souls, if not what little moral authority they had to ask our party to extend this process till Denver.
If, as a Democratic candidate for the nomination, you counter-factually choose to brand your opponent with the Republican frame "he's an out of touch elitist", but then play up your own insider experience as a way to get you off the hook on NAFTA it is more than having it both ways...it's gross hypocrisy.
(h/t Aravosis):
What Clinton is saying here is simple. "George, you can back me up, in private, we both opposed NAFTA." In public, of course, they stood with the President and passed the bill and then defended it:
I'd love for anyone still on the fence about Hillary Clinton's hypocrisy on NAFTA to ask themselves where she was going with this line:
CLINTON: But in the 20th century and until relatively late in the 20th century, we dominated the world economy. And we had an...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, what...
CLINTON: ... opportunity to really see our jobs grow here by being smart about how we traded.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But Senator...
CLINTON: But then we've got to make changes.
So, Clinton goes on ABC and plays the "we hired you, George" card on Stephanopoulos and in the process trashes what little shred of integrity ABC News has in fronting George Stephanopoulos as a credible moderator. Clinton then tries to say, NAFTA looked good in 1992, but now it doesn't, so, in fact, I opposed it in 1992, right George?
That's not simply having it both ways on the elitism and the NAFTA fronts, it's a move so hypocritical that it's the equivalent of taking a match to the Clinton reputation.
If Bill and Hillary Clinton win North Carolina and Indiana with an appeal to guns, a gas tax pander, obliterating Iran and a "don't blame me for NAFTA" line, they will have turned the Democratic Party into something none of us considered possible at the outset of this nomination process.
In 2008, at a crucial moment in our primaries, we will have moved our party closer to George Bush and the Republicans instead of further away from them.
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There are many in the Democratic Party who are wary of telling the truth about the cumulative damage the Clintons have done to our party and to their own reputation.
My response to that is simple. The Clintons, in large part, did it to themselves.
It's time to stop blaming ourselves or a hostile press for the Clinton m.o. of putting themselves before our party and our nation.
$109 million dollars is a great deal of money. You don't make that by accident. That's called cashing in. I'm a small businessperson. I know how hard it is to cut a deal with someone where you end up personally making $10,000, or even $1,000 profit.
In effect, the Clintons made 109,000 of those $1,000 deals in eight short years after the Presidency. I'm sorry, but that's excessive. Sure they are entitled to it...in their minds.
But to make all that money and turn around and call your opponent an out-of-touch elitist?
Give us a break.
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Here's the deal with Bill and Hillary Clinton, you are completely fine with them so long as you don't do to them what they do to everybody else.
You know that I'm telling the truth here. It's our dirty little secret in the Democratic Party.
Bill Clinton can come to California and tell us all to "chill out" and then turn around and go on the attack in Pennsylvania.
Bill Clinton can spin some malarky about all the great leaders he's known, including Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin, and then say "My wife Hillary is the best out of all of them and I'm not saying that just because I'm her husband" and we are supposed to take that bull with a straight face.
I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm sorry, but Hillary Clinton is currently not even close to the equivalent of Nelson Mandela or Yitzhak Rabin, and we should be able to say that to Bill's face, even if he wags his finger in ours.
And, yes, I think opposing Hillary Clinton for the nomination of our party simply because we are sick and tired of Bill Clinton wagging his finger in front of our faces is a perfectly acceptable reason to oppose returning Bill and Hillary to the White House.
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Some will say that I've crossed a line here, that I should respect our former President and his wife. That we should all play by Marquess of Queensbury rules.
James Carville hasn't played that way. Howard Wolfson hasn't played that way. Terry McAuliffe hasn't played that way. Mark Penn hasn't played that way.
We all know that Bill Clinton has not played that way.
Heck, for Hillary Clinton to complain about unfair mailers and then to put this image in front of the voters this weekend is more than hypocritical, it's enough to make you say "enough of the hypocrisy, already!"
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This nomination process has dragged on and on. It's damaged our party. It's damaged the most promising young Democratic leader of his generation and pigeonholed him based on right-wing frames. With time and effort we can overcome that damage. However, this process has also damaged, more than anything else, the reputation of the Clintons themselves, the Clinton brand.
Sure, it is Hillary Clinton's right and prerogative to motor on in pursuit of the narrow, destructive and divisive path to the nomination she has crafted for herself.
But it is also our right and prerogative as Democrats to treat the Clinton brand for what it has become, a tarnished, hypocritical shell of what was once, long ago, a campaign based on an appeal to come together around hope and the possibility of what we can do when we are united not divided.
Telling it like it is is not easy. But, to be frank, Hillary Clinton is not selling hope.
Far from it.
If she wins North Carolina and Indiana with the divisive politics she's espoused these last months, it will be because her cynical, poll-driven, Rovian assessment of American politics will have ruled the day.
That's not something to be proud of. That's not who we are as Democrats.
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