In another installment of how badly Hillary is losing the Progressive Liberal media, her one-on-one interview last week with Rachel Maddow revealed just how desperate her campaign has become already. On full display again was the the embrace of the disgusting Rove tactics of attempting to hit your opponent hard with a lie on his biggest strength.
First Maddow directly challenged the Clinton camp’s assertion that Bernie was “the first to go negative.” Quite simply, Hillary’s defense is contemptible and weak — and it shows. In it, she tries to proclaim, “we don't do that on our side of the debate," when asked about negative ads and personal attacks. But we all know the record says otherwise; even a casual observer could not be fooled by the end run she’s trying that her campaign is above mounting such attacks.
That’s because hardly anyone who’s been paying attention believes the “Me Too!” candidate because of her incessantly flip-flopping positions. Now this bogus attempt to paint herself alongside Bernie’s honorable (and verifiable) legacy not to use negative advertising. I was waiting for Maddow to challenge her on it. Her Obama attacks in 2008, surrogates and herself, were the lowest of the low. She damaged a lot of folks with those sinister racial dog whistles. For me personally it was the Bobby Kennedy reference that was the end of my rope for her, forever.
After the faux piety of “we don’t do that” in my campaign Hillary again quickly tried to deflect and align herself with Obama, by saying the criticism in his ad was an indictment of the president, “who as you might recall took a lot of money from the financial industry.” It was a Triangulation Master Class. This latest strategy, which we saw very clearly in the debate that they’re putting all the marbles on, is another attempt to distract from more scrutiny on her relationships and devious past. “Look over there” she seems always to be saying.
But it gets worse.
The Clinton camp already tried unsuccessfully to conflate an internal problem of the DNC with the Sanders campaign, an attempt to do what Hilary could never do in a million years, impugn Bernie Sanders’ integrity. Fail again. But just keep groping.
Here’s the kicker: Maddow then says that her aides’ claim that Sanders “can't level with the American people,” “has not done what he has promised,” and “shifting answers,” all of which flies in the face of the integrity with which he is received with unilaterally. Nobody is even remotely close with the kind of favorable/unfavorable numbers that he has.
That led Maddow to levy this beauty on HRC, after she flailed away with her Fox News-style “well, some people are saying...” excuse:
"Senator Sanders doesn't have an enemy in the world in the Democratic Party, and doesn’t have an enemy in the world in his home State...he's a very well-respected figure.”
Then she calls out the whole campaign’s ruse directly, “Your campaign is essentially fighting with him in a way that is casting aspersions on his character.”
Maddow was basically telling her she’s barking up the wrong tree. She told her flat out that his bonafides are pretty much unassailable in this regard.
Hillary doesn’t react well to bad news, and comes off again as petty and vindictive, complete with her orchestrated, pandering head bop affirmation tic. Take a closer look at her eyes. She looks like she's steaming; the nightmare keeps re-playing over and over again in real time. And in the back of her mind it's sheer queasy desperation that is bubbling up and over as she realizes she’s in the same spot again and causing her to react like this.
As I outlined in a previous diary, venerable Liberal Progressives Bill Moyers and Thom Hartmann both have had similar observations http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/18/1470565/-Most-Trusted-Name-in-Journalism-Rebukes-Clinton-Surrogate-s-Lie-Tactics-on-Bern-s-Healthcare-Plan. Hartman wondered, “So was this Bill's idea? Was this Debbie Wasserman Schultz's idea? Robby Mook’s idea? Whoever's idea this is should be fired.”
Jonathan Tasini observed this in his excellent diary http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/17/1471036/-3-Week-Bernie-Road-Trip-To-Victory-1-A-17-year-old-Former-Republican-Woman-A-Cast-of-Sleazebags, after his debate with the infamous Hillary attack-dog David Brock,
I was struck after the program by the circle of lowlifes, scam artists and sleazebags who orbit the Clinton world. You can understand when you connect some of these dots how easily this group can attack the most honorable politician I’ve had the privilege to advocate for, with lies, falsehoods and just garbage.
They care about one thing: power, money and access. And they don’t care what they have to do to get what they want. And more is coming, whatever the cost to the Democratic Party.
She’s at it again, eight years later. It’s the same old, same old.
She will never, ever, win in a contest with Bernie Sanders on honesty, trustworthiness, or character. So she has to grope, grope, grope; when this time we really do need Hope.
Makes me think of one of my favorite quotes I heard from Chris Hedges, attributed to an obscure St. Augustine of Hippo, “Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger at the way things are, and Courage to change them.”
Bernie understands that in a deep fundamental way, which is why he’s drawing such huge and impassioned crowds. It’s why he will draw large amounts of people out to caucus and vote in the primary.
It’s pretty simple: give then something to believe in by standing up to the powerful vested interests everybody now knows (thanks Occupy!) run our country. Belief in government is at severe all-time lows, as gjohnsit points out in his diary “The Two Most Important Political Trends.” The really bad news is that fewer and fewer people identify as Democrats because we keep running shitty candidates and are afraid to call out the corrosive influence of lobbyists, banks and corporations, when a majority no longer believe in the broken system anymore.
The American People deserve better than this interminable quadrennial circus of corporate-sponsored candidates beholden to their donors who only know how to fear-monger and dispense trite little empty platitudes. It bring out the worst in candidates. Bernie has been exceptional in this regard. And that may be all the difference in the world.
"Senator Sanders doesn't have an enemy in the world in the Democratic Party, and doesn’t have an enemy in the world in his home State.”
“He's a very well-respected figure.”
“Your campaign is essentially fighting with him in a way that is casting aspersions on his character.”
There’s plenty of evidence the American people are responding this way too, everything from “Poll: Bernie Sanders is walloping Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire” to “http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/20/1472388/-Minnesota-Clinton-48-Sanders-45-WOW”
Game Over can’t happen soon enough.