My title is a quotation from Hillary Clinton's attack on TUCC, the currently recommended diary by Kid Oakland, as thoughtful a writer as there is in the blogosphere. The words appear at the end of his piece in this setting:
Clinton has also shown that she thinks that attacking an opposing candidate's house of worship is fair game in a televised debate.
In that, Hillary Clinton is deeply, grievously, morally wrong. She is also practicing heinously destructive politics.
practicing heinously destructive politics
I think we will increasingly hear those kind of statements from thoughtful Democrats. But I want to back almost two months to some similar statements, offered before the controversy over Rev. Wright, and then look forward.
On March 8 I posted a diary that probably earned me some infamy. Originally entitled simply In Sorrow, it explained why I could no longer consider supporting Clinton should she win the nomination, based on what I had seen of her campaign to that point . . . and also I suppose on what I anticipated as the campaign went forward.
Let me offer just a few quotations from that piece.
A political candidate is ultimately responsible for the campaign actions done on his or her behalf. If one acquiesces, remains silent, gives winks and nods, one is accepting or even encouraging actions that should be beyond the pale. If one rationalizes that what the Republicans would do would be even worse, then one is participating in the kind of degradation of the political process that has so turned off so many Americans. This election cycle offers a real chance to change our politics for the better, and perhaps rescue this nation from its current downward spiral into political apathy. That should concern all who seek something better.
Let me be blunt. As I look at the campaign run by Hillary Clinton, not just the words and actions of her surrogates and employees, but her own words and actions, I have regrettably come to the conclusion that based on that campaign, and in light of that campaign her record as a Senator, that she is morally unfit to be President of the United States.
There are some actions and words that cannot be excused, and must be challenged, lest we abandon our own sense of morality and rightness.
I want to return to the words of Kid Oakland, to the end of his diary, the words coming immediately after what I have already quoted:
Clinton is free to disagree with Reverend Wright. Barack Obama did just that in Philadelphia.
But she went further than that.
Senator Clinton went scorched earth on Barack Obama's church.
And, as far as I can tell, nobody's called her on it.
In all likelihood, nobody in the media will.
If blogs are media, certainly Clinton HAS been called on that. And at least a few voices in the so-called MSM have at least raised questions about that tack by HRC, although he is correct that it has not gotten the attention it deserves. It IS a morally destructive approach, one that legitimizes demeaning the faith of other people, and attempting to diminish them because of the associations they have. While Clinton's reference in the debate even after Obama's speech in Philadelphia is particularly grievous, I do not think it should have surprised anyone. At the time I wrote my diary in March, the pattern was already clear.
Perhaps my earliest political memories are from the Army McCarthy hearings, in which attorney Joseph Welch said to the Senator from Wisconsin
You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
I feel as if those words are appropriate to apply to the Clinton campaign, and after the performance that so bothers Kid Oakland to the Senator herself.
The press will NOT call Clinton on such remarks unless and until either Obama does so directly or other major voices in the Democratic party do so. It is upon the latter on which my approbation falls: I have yet to hear clear statements that Sen. Clinton has gone too far.
And as a result the Clinton apparatus gets ever more embolden to continue with its distortions. This morning I check the op ed page of The Washington Post only to encounter an op ed piece by her new chief strategist, Geoff Garin, entitled Fair is Fair, in which Garin opines:
The bottom line is that one campaign really has engaged in a mean-spirited, unfair character attack on the other candidate -- but it has been Obama's campaign, not ours.
Will any senior Democrat challenge that statement? Or do we now need to change our acronym of IOKIYAR to IOKIYAC, the R for Republican behind replaced by a C for CLinton or Clinton-supporter.
There is one clear path open to stopping the destructiveness. That is for several senior Democrats, "super-delegates," to endorse Obama and to say clearly that the reason they are doing so is because they can not tolerate what the Clinton campaign is doing. If acknowledged leaders among the Democrats will make that point, the press will have no choice but to acknowledge it, and perhaps to examine even further.
Yes, Obama could raise it himself, and of course the Clintons would immediately repeat the meme applied inappropriately from Harry Truman, that if you cannot stand the heat get out of the kitchen. While there some truth to the statement, that does not entitle the Clintons to deliberate set the kitchen on fire, which is what their campaign has been doing. It seems as if their approach is if they cannot be the chef they are prepared to burn the entire house down.
I know there are senior Democrats who are quite disgusted by the Clintonian approach, but so far have been unwilling to address it directly. We may be seeing some change in that, given the remarks yesterday of House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, and the surmise that the Senate Chairman who is ready to endorse is Harkin, in large part because of his reaction to the kind of campaign the Clintons are running. I know that some of the seniors are trying to stay neutral to be in a position to heal the party after the obvious - that Obama will win the nomination. And at least some important commentators are now beginning to speak that point a bit more openly - the Charlie Cooks and Chuck Todds are beginning to lay down a marker that legitimizes other questioning the rationale for the kinds of pettiness and destructiveness we are seeing from the Clinton campaign.
I reached the point of no return almost two months ago. But I realize others still struggle with coming to that point. So let me offer one more thought, again courtesy of Kid Oakland's diary. It is a quote from Hillary Clinton, rationalizing her continuing to raise the issue of Jeremiah Wright:
It is clear that, as leaders, we have a choice who we associate with and who we apparently give some kind of seal of approval to.
Hillary Clinton met with and sought the approval of Richard Mellon Scaife, despite that man's long history of smears of Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular. He has never apologized for any of that. When questioned on this by Keith Olbermann, Clinton laughed and offered words about believing in the possibility of redemption. So if as a practicing Christian she believes in redemption, why does she insist that Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, and TUCC be thrown beneath the bus, but does not apply the same criteria to Richard Mellon Scaife or some of the others whose support she now solicits and accepts. We rightly criticize the John McCain who in the 2000 cycle denounced the Jerry Falwells but who in this cycle embraced them. Anyone who is a serious Christian would certainly remember the words about motes and beams, Sen. Clinton. Do you? Or is your standard of redemption that if someone is willing to support you all else is forgiven, that your sense of political expediency has so debased your moral judgment that an unapologetic Scaife is superior to the flawed but genuinely Christian Jeremiah Wright. You have chosen to affiliate with a man who used inherited wealth to attempt to bully and destroy others and are willing to ignore that because it gains you political support. Jeremiah Wright several times chose a life of service, of little personal benefit, of the hard road of challenging people to go beyond themselves, as seen in the many ministries of TUCC, and yet you are willing to attempt to use him as a blunt instrument to destroy Obama, not caring for the thousands of others whom you smear at the same time, many who heard the words to which you object and yet did not leave that church.
If the standard Clinton wishes applied is that to hear offensive words should cause one to get up and leave, then the words she offered in that debate, the words that so bother Kid Oakland, should be the standard applied to her. Like Sen. McCarthy's actions led the mild-mannered Joe Welch to posit the concern that the Senator no longer had a sense of decency, I am waiting for serious leading Democrats to fire that shot across the bow of the SS Clinton Candidacy, with the clear meaning that continuing on this destructive path will lead to rejection of her and her campaign.
On March 8, one of the things I included near the end of my diary was this well-known expression:
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent in its presence.
While I hope that even the destructiveness we see from the Clinton campaign can NOT win the nomination for her, the damage she is doing represents a triumph of evil and brings real hurt to the Democratic party. It is time for senior Democrats to make this clear, at first in private and if she and her campaign will not listen then in public.
Kid Oakland's diary is the reason I have written this. So let me end by repeating some of his words, yet again:
... Hillary Clinton is deeply, grievously, morally wrong. She is also practicing heinously destructive politics.
Peace.