Oh, for the love of Pete. Will someone please get Bill Clinton a glass of water?
He's on the fainting couch again.
Apparently the Big Dog, who has been relishing his role as Hillary's attack dog a little too much lately has decided that the strategy of alienating half of South Carolinians with race-baiting and code words, may not have been such a good idea after all. And now that Obama is fighting back and Hillary's lead is erased in SC, Bill's got some explaining to do.
But luckily for the Clintons, there's always the defense mechansims that they have become good at: making excuses, purposefully distorting the facts and playing the victims of unfair attacks. Nevermind that too often they are guilty of the exact same behavior or worse, that the media often does the bidding of the Clintons (did anyone read that GQ article on Hillary's campaign? I didn't think so), or that both have gone on record as enjoying "mixing it up".
Bill Clinton has a message for everyone who has been offended by their divisive political strategy- it's all the media's fault.
Welcome to Clintonian Politics 101: The art of passive-aggressive politics.
Watching Bill Clinton's recent behavior on the campaign trail, it's easy to spot his reliance on some of the common defense mechanisms of passive-aggressive behavior- blaming others, complaining, fostering chaos, making excuses, lying (I'll be kind and call it stretching the truth), resentment, sarcasm...
But today's performance with a CNN performer wraps it up in one nice, little package:
http://www.cnn.com/... (don't know how to embed the video, sorry)
While this type of confrontation is nothing new for Clinton, who came out swinging in an interview with Chris Wallace last year, this kind of display is a poor reflection on our party. It distracts from the debate that we should be having on the issues when Bill Clinton is in the news for being pulled away from a California reporter who asked of the lawsuit by Clinton backers to try to disenfranchise Vegas strip employees. It cheapens our party when our last Democratic President channels Dick Cheney to play "Bad Cop" in order to provide political cover for his wife. And it makes a mockery of our party's idealism when one campaign gives us Mark Penn's cocaine comments, Bob Kerrey's references to Obama's Muslim heritage, Billy Shaheen's musing of whether or not Republicans might think Obama was a drug dealer, Bob Johnson's innuendo of what Obama was doing "in the neighborhood", Andrew Cuomo's comments of shucking and jiving at press conferences, and Clinton volunteers forwarding on emails smearing Obama's religious preference yet accuses the media of playing the race card.
But consistency and integrity isn't important when you are playing passive-aggressive, it's not getting caught playing the game that is. And with former SC Democratic chairman Dick Harpootlian calling Bill Clinton out, we see how the Clintons will respond- by shifting the blame, playing the victim, and shedding crocodile tears for the voters of South Carolina that have been alienated by their camp's race-baiting and divisive politics.
So the question still remains, will Democrats allow Bill to continue to debase his position as leader of one of the heads of the party in order to suit his wife's political purpose? Will Hillary continue to demonstrate her fear of competition with an "win at any cost" strategy that is dividing our party and weakening our chances in the general election? Will our party's leaders continue to plead with Clinton behind closed doors to clean up his act?
Who will put an end to the Clintonian politics of passive-aggression and demand we return to the honest debate that the Democratic Party deserves?