This was inspired by another diary posted here tonight, looking back on the primary wars. It caused me to come across this article, which gives yet another perspective on how far we have come in putting back the bitterness of the primary behind us. The main credit for his healing, goes to the principals themselves, President Obama and Secretary Clinton. Bitterly rifted by the careless fate of a long and close contest, Obama and Clinton mended their fences by conscious choice and will. The result comes as quite a surprise considering the tone just over a year ago, and it is clearer today than it even was a few months ago.
I am just going to quote extensively from this piece, which I think is quite apt and should be read all the way. In the end, the rumors about Clinton say less about her than they do about certain segments in the right wing with influence in the media.
When Hillary was announced as Secretary of State,
Beltway crowd seemed to delight in the prospect of being able to cover continued bickering, spotlight-stealing and possible turf wars between the two former rivals...
When no outward signs of "drama" emerged, by late spring, the media began to push a new story- that Clinton was being 'shunted aside.'
While Secretary Clinton's early approval ratings were among the highest of any in the administration, there began to be whispers that she had been tossed aside by Obama and that she was essentially the victim of a clever plot by the President to render her powerless. This theme seemed to be helped along when, in May of this year, the former Bill Clinton adviser turned professional Clinton-basher, Dick Morris, penned this commentary, entitled "The Incredible Shrinking Clintons,"
Fascinating... I didn't realize Morris was the source of this story. But of course, frames originating on right- wing sites, then spreading their way across the media is a well- worn template.
Interestingly, after Morris' commentary appeared, a whole new crop of "Hillary is invisible and has no power" articles began to appear in the mainstream media and blogosphere. Call me paranoid, but I can't help but think it's not a coincidence that many of these articles seemed to borrow themes from from Dick Morris' general template.
This story then appeared on Politico and then finally made its way to mainstream outlets including CNN. Of course, the Politico story was filled with nothing but insider quotes praising how well Obama and Clinton were working together. Politico, ironically, drew its thesis that Clinton was being shunted aside from Lexis counts of the number of news stories that mentioned Clinton's name, noting that they had declined in early 2009 from 2008. No wonder! Politico never realized what was going on in 2008 that wasn't going on in 2009. At the time, Clinton also was in the hospital for a fall and couldn't be as visible as she ordinarily would have been.
Since then, she seems to have been considerably more visible.
And yet it continues.
Just this week, the rumors of Secretary Clinton's dissatisfaction with her current job and boss surfaced yet again, and actually went viral on the internet. This time, it was all the result of a one sentence blog post written by Michael Goldfarb at the conservative Weekly Standard Online, which stated: "The boss hears from two sources that Hillary Clinton is considering stepping down as Secretary of State this fall in order to run for Governor of New York."
That's it, the sentence that launched a thousand blog posts. And she's stepping down from her post as Secretary of State to run for Governor of New York? Did I miss something? Has she ever said she was interested in that job? Why run for Governor of New York when you can run again for President of the United States? And great sourcing for Goldfarb's blurb, huh? I'm thinking that "the boss" Goldfarb is referring to is likely Weekly Standard managing editor, William Kristol, whose track record with political predictions leaves a lot to be desired.
What makes these rumors of rifts between Obama and Clinton so frustrating, is that if one weren’t paying attention, one might be tempted to think that these media pundits are trying to do Hillary a favor by insinuating, albeit insultingly, that President Obama is under utilizing his smart, popular and very well respected Secretary of State; don’t get me wrong, in the very beginning, that thought gave me pause. But then as the articles started piling up, I started to wonder if perhaps some of these writers were just trying to create a controversy to cover while cleverly hiding behind what seemed, at the time, to be concern for Hillary Clinton's best interests. To some extent it's worked, as many of my fellow Hillary supporters did their part to give these stories such wide exposure, apparently in the hopes that they were/are true.
Precisely, that's just it. If anyone thinks that people like Dick Morris and William Kristol are friends of the Clintons or what the Clintons stand for, they need to think again. As the author of this article (a Hillary supporter) points out, this kind of talk does nothing but undermine Hillary by painting her as some kind of silenced victim and distracting from her work on international issues. It's an attempt to kick up "drama" where none exists- a pattern Hillary supporters should be quite well familiar with.
It's time that the right wing dirt peddlers attempting to keep the divisiveness of the Democratic primary alive by peddling a constant stream of shit to the media get called out and refuted.