Once again, we have Hillary's supporters throwing up a smokescreen and engaging in historical revisionism. If anyone else is thinking of revising the historical record, I have one word for you -- don't. In politics, you can never get the Perfect Candidate. There is no point in trying to defend the indefensible. I wish Obama would be more strident on the environment and reject such technologies as liquid coal or nuclear power, for instance. I wish he had been more visible in his opposition to Iraq, which is partly why I supported Edwards. In the same way, for instance, there is no defense for Hillary Clinton's AUMF vote or her Bankruptcy Bill vote or her vote for Kyl/Lieberman. In politics, you have to support someone despite their flaws. Trying to argue that your candidate walks on water and can't do anything wrong does not do either you or your candidate any favors.
And we have another such effort by Mike Pridmore -- an attempt to paint His Girl as the perfect candidate who can walk on water and who never did anything wrong. And what is more, he engages in the very sort of divisive rhetoric that Hillary supporters claim we are guilty of -- accusing other candidates or their supporters of lying is simply not a good way to win them over or win over undecided voters. The he lied/she lied debate is the same sort of nonsense that has turned the American public off of the media and their he said/she said debates.
That said, let's go through his diary point by point:
1. Foreign policy:
Pridmore goes to this quote by Obama where he suggests that foreign policy experience does matter:
I am a big believer in knowing what you're doing when you apply for a job. And I think that, if I were to seriously condsider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now before having served a day in the Senate. Now there's some people who might be comfortable doing that. But I'm not one of those people.
Well, I can speak to that statement. I would like to think that our leaders, Democratic or Republican, know what the hell they are doing. And I suggest that Obama thought the same way. But when we have a front-runner who caved into the Bush administration on Iraq, who supported permanent bases in Iraq as late as 2005, and who claimed that the surge was working as late as August 2007, then it is obvious that Hillary is not putting her highly-touted experience to good use. And by Pridmore's logic, if we are going to make this election about experience, then we should all go out and vote for John McCain, since he has even more experience than Hillary Clinton. I should think not -- John McCain is too radical, given his advocacy of perpetual warfare in Iraq as well as his vote to eliminate the federal minimum wage.
Sometimes, when those who purport to be our leaders fail, we have to get new leadership into power. That is the whole basis for our movement here at Daily Kos -- our goal is no longer just to elect Democrats, but to elect better Democrats as well. And that is the whole basis of Markos' thinking -- the problem is that the Democratic party has been taken over by the DLC, which has ushered in a consultancy where people make their millions whether we win or lose, and where candidates are answerable to corporate donors rather than to the people who elected them. Changing this mindset within the party is critical to our chances of creating a permanent progressive majority and making our government accountable to the people rather than to corporate donors and the consultancy.
It is not a matter of "changing his mind," as Pridmore likes to put it. It is a matter of recognizing that the old ways have failed to bring results and that we need a change in direction.
2. Intelligence on Iraq
Pridmore, and many other Hillary supporters, like to try to make hay out of the Obama statement that he was not privy to the intelligence that shaped Senators' thinking on Iraq. But Obama is in the same boat as the rest of us with regard to the intelligence. Is Pridmore saying that since we didn't have access to the intelligence, that we do not have a right to question how those in charge vote? Just because those in charge have access to stuff that we do not does not mean that we have no right to question what is going on. If that were the case, then we might as well shut this site down. And on top of that, the fact of the matter is that Obama, an outsider, got it right while Hillary, an insider, got it wrong. The fact that Obama was not in the Senate at the time only makes it even more embarrasing for Hillary, who was in the Senate. The whole world begged her and the rest of the Senate not to vote to let George Bush go to war.
The fact of the matter is that when you are an outsider, like Obama, then that gives one a certain detatchment and ability to see the big picture. Saddam was not a clear and present danger. The process was working. There was no need to step in and change it.
Pridmore goes on to claim that Hillary voted based on the best available intelligence at the time. But once again, this goes back to how Obama was so right on this issue and Clinton was so wrong. If Obama could come to the right decision without ever having to see the intelligence, and Hillary could come to the wrong decision while reaching out to contacts within the intelligence community, then who do we want answering the phone that rings at 3 a.m.? It is always easier to do the right thing in hindsight than it is with foresight -- a thing that John Edwards learned the hard way. And Clinton is learning this the hard way as well. If Hillary Clinton was so suspicious of the intelligence like Pridmore says she was, then she should have done all she could to hold this bill up until she was satisfied. What we are really seeing...
After being briefed on the NIE, Senator Clinton was suspicious of the intelligence it contained and so went beyond it to reach out to contacts in the international intelligence community.
...is a Senator who voted against her better judgement.
3. The political risk.
What Pridmore ignores here is that 75% of the American people were behind Bush's claims that we needed to go to war in 2002 and 2003. So, when Obama came out against Iraq, he did so even though it was unpopular. It stands to reason that a good chunk of Illinois voters were for Bush's war as well as the rest of the country.
Pridmore then goes on to recount the pressure that Obama was under in 2003 to sweep his 2002 anti-war speech under the rug. Obama was under pressure from the African-American wing of the party to put his opposition front and center; he was under pressure from the establishment wing to sweep it under the rug. It was clear that Obama was conflicted about this despite his strident opposition in 2002. The DLC even went so far as to claim Obama as one of their own, putting him on their website. But by 2005, the Afro-American base had won out -- Obama went so far as to ask the DLC to take his name off their website.
The point of all this is that it is OK to struggle, to go through conflicts about one's stands on the issues. I know through personal experience how hard it is to be pushed around by people on both sides of the issue. But the fact of the matter is that once again, Obama got it right -- he threw his lot in with the grassroots and the base of the party at the same time that Hillary was still calling for permanent bases in Iraq. When we go through conflict and it does not destroy us, it only makes us stronger.
There is another point that needs to be made. The fact of the matter, conceded by Pridmore, is that Obama understood through this conflict what many Democrats still do not -- NOT opposing Iraq's war is politically risky. Just ask Clelland, Carnahan, Daschle, and Frost how supporting AUMF tanked their chances for reelection. Rove was able to build his majority in Congress thanks in part to Democrats refusing to take a stand against Iraq. This is one more example of how Obama's judgement is superior -- he understood that it was politically risky not to oppose the war when the Very Important People said otherwise. His growth in the polls both at Daily Kos and in the general electorate is directly related to his increasing opposition to the war -- the more he opposed the war, the more he got support from the party.
Pridmore concludes:
Mixed opposition to the Iraq War from a candidate who carried little political risk is not brave, contrary to what Senator Obama suggested in his recent ad.
But again, that misses the whole point -- Obama understood what many Democrats did not. And the numbers have borne him out. Dick Durbin won reelection in 2002 with over 60% of the vote after getting only 54% in 1996. Russ Feingold won reelection by a landslide against Karl Rove's hand-picked man after barely winning reelection in 1998. Barbara Boxer won by over 2 million votes in California, outperforming John Kerry.
But if Pridmore and the rest of Hillary's supporters want to keep going negative on Obama, by all means, keep doing so. Hillary is continuing to slip in the polls, with Obama back up by 5 in Gallup's tracking poll. Obama has now drawn even in Texas and Ohio. And Hillary scored her lowest marks in the Austin debate when she tried to go negative on Obama. People are getting sick and fed up with Hillary's negative attitude and her attack ads on Obama. And the Ringing Telephone Ad will be no different.