You know you've touched a nerve when your opponent's spin team equates you with one of the most reviled figures in your party's recent memory.
According to Howard Wolfson, Obama's recent questioning of Clinton's unwillingness to release her tax returns means that he is no better than _______________ (can you fill in the blank?)
No, not GWB.
No, not Cheney.
No, not Rove.
If you said "Kenneth Starr," congratulations!!
Greg Sargent of "TPM Election Central" writes:
Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson, on a conference call with reporters just now, drew an intriguing comparison between Obama and a somewhat-forgotten figure who is still deeply hated by Dems...
"When Senator Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be Commander-in-Chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Senator Clinton. I for one do not belive that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president."
Wolfson is referring to oblique references to Whitewater and other past Clinton stories that the Obama camp has made lately -- attacks Wolfson is trying to discredit by associating them with Starr's panty-sniffing inquisition.
That episode, of course, is a nightmare that's lodged deeply in the collective memory of Dem primary voters, and Ken Starr himself is perhaps almost as reviled by Dems as Arch Demon Karl Rove. Talk about throwing down the gauntlet.
Here's my take, dear readers. If we've got HRC's team equating Obama with Ken Starr, we know we're on the right track -- not because Dems love Ken Starr, justly reviled bogeyman of the late 1990s, but because Clintonians would only raise his specter if they feel truly threatened by something. Obama needs to keep pressing, keep asking the relevant questions.
Andrew Sullivan writes today:
It is one of the most basic tests of personal ethics and transparency: the release into the public domain of a candidate's tax returns. Yet the Clintons still have not done it in this campaign - despite loaning themselves $5 million, despite many legitimate questions about the involvement of mogul Ron Burkle in their financial affairs, despite a massive increase in their income in the last few years to make them multi-millionaires.
More disturbingly, they have absolutely no argument as to why. When Senator Clinton says she is "too busy" to release the returns, or says she will not release them until after she has won the Democratic nomination, the correct response for the press is incredulity. These are self-evidently nonsensical explanations. When a candidate with the Clintons' long record of sleaze cannot come up with a halfway reasonable defense of this secrecy, the press should assume that they are hiding something. Their current position - that they will release their returns around April 15 - is also bizarre. Did they file an extension for the past few years? If they didn't, the forms are available now. Throwing strange arbitrary future deadlines around is unacceptable flim flam.
Sullivan concludes with several pertinent questions that I put forward for your consideration.
Why do the Clintons believe that they are somehow above the normal rules of other politicians? And why does the press allow them to get away with this? Why aren't there demands for them to fully disclose their financial details now? No excuses. No delays. Now.