into endorsing Hillary....that and a terrific new peice by Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker.
I was reading the New Yorker this morning when I stumbled upon this terrific piece by Hendrik Hertzberg about Hillary and her negative campaigning. I will get into the details of his piece later, but he provided a link to what I thought was truly amazing. I dont know if this has been covered before, but if it has been my apologies...you can move on to his piece. but this what was in his link to the New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/...
According to Times sources, the paper almost didn't back Clinton. The divisions within the Gray Lady's editorial board mirrored the deep divide that has split Democrats in this tightly contested campaign. The 20-member board had initially leaned toward Obama, Times sources say. But in January, after the board had debated the endorsement in two separate sessions, Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. decided to favor Clinton. Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, declining to comment on the internal debate, acknowledged that the vote was a difficult one. "It was a really hard one, no question about it," Rosenthal told me. "We talked about this within our board for hours. It was a very lively, interesting discussion. Several members of the board said it was the best discussion they've had."
I know how most of us Obama fans really love to hate the NYT. I do too. I could never understand how they could have supported her after knowing that she had the bad judgment to support the Iraq war and then vote to designate Iran's army as terrorist (knowing full well that Bush would use it as a pretext for war). But it seems that all was not well even within the NYT board and the Hillary endorsement.
At the Times, Obama received a lukewarm reception when he first visited the paper's editorial board last spring, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting. Some staffers who attended the Q&A were disappointed with Obama's delivery and what some viewed as measured responses to thorny policy questions. Arthur Sulzberger didn't even attend.
When Obama returned to the Times on November 28 for his second meeting with the paper's editorial board, held in a 13th floor conference room at the Times's new 8th Avenue skyscraper, his reception was much warmer. In a column, Maureen Dowd described the excitement over his arrival, writing that "young female assistants lined the halls on Wednesday to watch him glide into a second meeting with editorial board writers and editors." Shortly after 3:00 p.m., Sulzberger opened the meeting, attended by more than 20 board members, editors and Times columnists including Dowd, Frank Rich, and Nicholas Kristof. Sulzberger told Obama that he heard the candidate was underwhelming at his first interview, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. An awkward pall descended over the room for a moment, though Obama took the exchange in stride. Later in the Q&A, he made light of Sulzberger's quip. "Some folks like this even if it doesn't meet the approval of the editorial board," he responded to one question, a person who attended recalled. About 20 minutes before the meeting ended, Sulzberger got up and left the room. (A Times spokesperson says, "It is wrong to suggest any question Arthur posed was flippant or done as a joke.")
Clinton visited the Times on January 14 for her only meeting with the editorial board, after rescheduling her visit several times. Following Clinton's meeting, the editorial board debated the endorsement in two heated sessions, before Sulzberger tipped the scales in her favor. Some have noted that one source of Sulzberger's support for Clinton might be his close friendship with Steve Rattner, the former Times reporter-turned-private equity financier who is a prominent Clinton donor (and Sulzberger's gym buddy). Through a spokesperson, Sulzberger said, "Our endorsements represent the best thinking of the editorial board and we do not comment on them beyond what we say to our readers."
So there we pretty much have it. Clinton's buddies pressurizing journalistic media sources to endorse her because they are good buddies with the media staff as opposed to endorsing her because of they think she can do some good for the country (like maybe protecting USA by nuking Iran).
But aside from that I loved what Hendrik Hertzberg had to say about Hillary and her negative campaigning in PA.
http://www.newyorker.com/...
Hillary and her lieutenants, many of them, have evidently persuaded themselves that (a) it is absolutely certain that Obama would lose in November and (b) they are courageously braving the squeamish disapproval of bien pensants such as the Times (and The New Yorker) by destroying him before he can lure the Democratic Party to disaster. To the extent that they sincerely believe this, they are acting in a kind of twisted good faith—the kind that often marks those who have got hold of an end they see as justifying almost any means.
Their backup justification is that they are performing a service to the Party and to Obama by toughening him up and giving him practice in parrying the Republican thrusts he would face as the nominee. And they are surely right that those thrusts would be nastier than the ones he has faced from the Clintons. The reasoning is that while Clinton is (to quote myself from this week’s Comment) "a seasoned survivor of the worst that the Republican attack machine can dish out," Obama isn’t.
Or is she? Clinton has thrown her kitchen sink at him, but—for hardheaded as well as high-minded reasons—he has not thrown his at her. (I know—turning the other cheek got Jesus crucified. But it also got Montgomery’s buses integrated. And India liberated.)
I think this is precisely the stuff that the media has been ignoring. Obama hasnt gone negative on Hillary because she is the Former First Lady and no one would appreciate his mudslinging on the sexual shenanigans of Bill that caused Democrats so much grief during Bill's reign. Considering that Obama avoided that, the fact that he came only within 9 pts of defeating Hillary in PA speaks volumes about how much he achieved there, while Hillary, and the media pretty much threw the kitchen sink at him.
Hillary has her own vulnerability in this general area, and it is larger than the fact, mentioned by Obama in his riposte to her, that her husband, on his last day in office, commuted the sentences of a couple of old Weather Underground jailbirds. (After a decade and a half in stir, they had been denied parole, apparently unfairly. Good for Bill.) What Obama did not mention was Hillary’s internship, back in the groovy summer of 1971, at the Oakland law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein. Treuhaft (Robert Treuhaft, husband of Jessica Mitford) had left the Communist Party thirteen years earlier, but Walker (Doris Walker) was still a member, and the firm was a pillar of the Bay Area Old Left. I assume that Obama didn’t mention this because doing so would have rightly pissed off a lot of Democrats, because he is running as a non-kneecapping uniter, and because there is no evidence that Clinton has or has ever had the slightest sympathy with Communism. (Of course, there is no such evidence with respect to Obama and Weather Underground-ism, either, but that didn’t stop Hillary from twisting that particular knife.)
My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton "scandals" of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls "distractions." To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not "fair game," big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a "there" where the Democratic Party really wants to go?
Well said Hendrink, well said.
Update: Changed the title to "pressured"