Talk About Bringin' the Snark Bringing the Noise!
My friends, in this world, there is Snarky, there is Snarkier, and then there is a level of hip, funny, sarcasm that can only be described as: "Snark-a-licious". Today we got a rare example of the last, from an oridnarily staid and buttoned up crew that I just had to share.
Apparently having reached their USDA allowance of BS this week. The Guys in Obama's communications department got awful damn snarky today and LAID THE WOOD to the latest laughable spin being peddled by the Clinton camp in the process. I once thought I had some talent at Snark-fu, but Obama's Boys (and Girls) prove they are the true Jedi Masters of the form
In a move that was both brutal and an utter thing of beauty: Obama's Campaign re-released the latest Clinton memo with a line by line rebuttal of the contents. Thier comments had me simultaneously wincing, and laughing out loud. Let's take a look together shall we?:
(for ease of reading the memo will be reproduced inside the blocks Hillary original in regular type, Obama's rebuttal in italics)
From: Bill Burton
Sent: Wed 3/12/2008 6:36 PM
To: Bill Burton
Subject: FW: The Clinton Memo... as annotated by the Obama communicationsdepartment
To: Interested Parties
From: Clinton Campaign
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Re: Keystone Test: Obama Losing Ground [Get ready for a good one.]
Well it's got a snappy title anyway...Keystone test...keystone state...get it? But that's about the last logical thing the memo says before punching it's passport for cloud-cuckoo land:
The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania so if Barack Obama can't win there, how will he win the general election?
[Answer: I suppose by holding obviously Democratic states like California and New York, and beating McCain in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin where Clinton lost to Obama by mostly crushing margins. But good question.]
Not bad, not bad, but too tame.
Hillary Guys, can you get a little more outrageous?
Team Obama can you smack them down jest a little harder please? That'd be great, thanks:
After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the last state with more than 15 electoral votes on the primary calendar and Barack Obama has lost six of the seven other largest states so far - every state except his home state of Illinois.
[If you define "setback" as netting enough delegates out of our 20-plus-point wins in Mississippi and Wyoming to completely erase any delegate advantage the Clinton campaign earned out of March 4th, then yeah, we feel pretty setback.]
Woof. That's the Stuff! punch and counter punch. Still you guys are almost civil, can you fix that?
Pennsylvania is of particular importance, along with Ohio, Florida and Michigan, because it is dominated by the swing voters who are critical to a Democratic victory in November. No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since 1948. And no candidate has won the Democratic nomination without winning Pennsylvania since 1972.
[What the Clinton campaign secretly means: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT WE'VE LOST 14 OF THE LAST 17 CONTESTS AND SAID THAT MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA WOULDN'T COUNT FOR ANYTHING. Also, we're still trying to wrap our minds around the amazing coincidence that the only "important" states in the nominating process are the ones that Clinton won.]
Ahh just lovely, a slight Wizard of OZ reference for extra impact. God Damn, this is too easy when you have the facts so solidly on your side. Kinda like shooting fish in a barrel. Almost unsporting.
Still Clinton's camp only has itself to blame when they set themselves up like this:
But the Obama campaign has just announced that it is turning its attention away from Pennsylvania.
[Huh?]
This is not a strategy that can beat John McCain in November.
[I don't think Clinton's strategy of losing in state after state after promising more of the same politics is working all that well either.]
OH SNAP!
That's just COLD I mean, wait, hang on a sec, the Booth is reviewing the Call of "Oh Snap!" on the field while the refs are conferring let review the rules:
and the referee is back and the call is ...Upheld!
and both sides are just getting warmed up
In the last two weeks, Barack Obama has lost ground among men, women, Democrats, independents and Republicans - all of which point to a candidacy past its prime.
["A candidacy past its prime." These guys kill me.]
Now that may seem minor but that was excellent tactics by th Obama guys. While utterly meaningless in any quantifiable way, " candidate past his prime" rolls right off the tongue and sounds really bad somehow. Like all good memes it had the potential for sneaking into reportorial vocabulary through the subconscious-except, that, by highlighting it an mocking it, it is revealed for being a bit of meaningless fluff, and reporters are now inoculated against it.
And then Clinton's Kids try to turn one of Obama's best positives into a negative:
For example, just a few weeks ago, Barack Obama won 68% of men in Virginia, 67% in Wisconsin and 62% in Maryland. He won 60% of Virginia women and 55% of Maryland women. He won 62% of independents in Maryland, 64% in Wisconsin and 69% in Virginia. Obama won 59% of Democrats in Maryland, 53% in Wisconsin and 62% in Virginia. And among Republicans, Obama won 72% in both Virginia and Wisconsin.
But now Obama's support has dropped among all these groups.
[That's true, if you don't count all the winning we've been up to. As it turns out, it's difficult to maintain 40-point demographic advantages, even over Clinton]
Yeee-owch! but still, give Team Clinton credit for Chutzpah. Trying to turn the right royal ass-kicking they got in the Chesapeake primaries into a pro-Clinton talking point? That's some amazing spin right there...
Then of course we get a bit of "More in sorrow than in anger" concern trolling by Clinton's team:
n Mississippi, he won only 25% of Republicans and barely half of independents. In Ohio, he won only 48% of men, 41% of women and 42% of Democrats. In Texas, he won only 49% of independents and 46% of Democrats. And in Rhode Island, Obama won just 33% of women and 37% of Democrats.
[I'm sympathetic to their attempt to parse crushing defeats. And I'm sure Rush Limbaugh's full-throated endorsement of Clinton didn't make any difference. Right]
Why are so many voters turning away from Barack Obama in state after state?
[You mean besides the fact that we're ahead in votes, states won and delegates?]
"Sympathetic to their attempts to parse crushing defeats". That's bloody snark poetry that is, Shakespeare worthy sarcasm.
Still, never one to resist piling statistics on top of their lies and damnable lies on the Clinton guys go for what they think is the throat:
In the last few weeks, questions have arisen about Obama's readiness to be president. In Virginia, 56% of Democratic primary voters said Obama was most qualified to be commander-in-chief. That number fell to 37% in Ohio, 35% in Rhode Island and 39% in Texas.
[Only the Clinton campaign could cherry pick states like this. But in contrast to their logic, in the most recent contest of Mississippi, voters said that Obama was more qualified to be commander in chief than Clinton by a margin of 55-42.]
So the late deciders - those making up their minds in the last days before the election - have been shifting to Hillary Clinton. Among those who made their decision in the last three days, Obama won 55% in Virginia and 53% in Wisconsin, but only 43% in Mississippi, 40% in Ohio, 39% in Texas and 37% in Rhode Island.
[If only there were enough late deciders for the Clinton campaign to actually be ahead, they would really be on to something.]
Clinton's team keeps settin em up' and Obama's keeps knocking them down
and then, in a loverly bit of Political Judo, Team Clinton's outrageous big finish, their big push to set expectations impossibly high for Obama gets shoved back into their face as the Obamanians prove without a shadow of a doubt that they are in the pockets of the powerful Big Snark Lobby
If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November.
[If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us - I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.]
Boo-yah! and dare I say?, en Fuego!
In closing let me just say to team Obama what they said to team Clinton:
[
Thanks for the laughs guys. This was great.]