It seems to me that maybe I'm missing something.
Across the Internets I've been seeing pieces about Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. One prominent recommended diary says that he's "hurting the Democratic party." An email to Josh Marshall refers to "the venom Bill Clinton has been unleashing on his wife's behalf." The Guardian characterizes a "scorched-earth campaign."
But what's at the base of these claims?
No, seriously, I'm asking!
I think I follow the news pretty closely. But I feel like I've been seeing and hearing a meta-discussion about tone and tactics... without the specifics. I hear that Bill Clinton has to stop doing what he's doing, and that Hillary Clinton should stop using Bill Clinton to do what he's been doing. So what's he been doing?
Really, I'm serious. Fill me in. What have I missed?
Is this still an echo effect from the comments like "roll the dice" and "fairy tale," and the Martin Luther King dispute? I didn't take those to be the racist dog-whistles that many others noted, but I at least knew the litany of remarks and could see what was being made of them.
The same goes for Obama's Reagan/"party of ideas" remarks, which seemed to draw the kinds of criticisms -- from the Clinton campaign and from others -- that are really to me rather commonplace: if Obama thinks the Republicans were the "party of ideas," let's talk about what those ideas were, and whether he supports those. Name-drop Reagan in a Democratic primary and, hey, expect a fierce reaction. Make a remark, watch that remark get interpreted in its connotations and suggestions as well as its overt meaning. That seems like a rather routine part of politics. And it's pretty much what happened to Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and the statements that could be brought to bear on race.
I know there was a dispute about the Nevada caucuses, too. Is that part of it? What was Bill Clinton's involvement in that episode? I think I remember reading that he said he had seen intimidation against Hillary Clinton supporters, but he wasn't taken very seriously in that.
Are those are the fundamental building blocks of the charge that the Clinton campaign, with tactics particularly epitomized by the acts of Bill Clinton, has been vicious, damaging, venomous, scorched-earth and what have you?
If so, then I'm having a hard time accepting that judgment.
But if there has been something else said or done, and I've missed it, I'd love to know. Enlighten me!
There's been such a mismatch between my own perception and that of so many others, everywhere I frequent... I figured I might as well draw from the distributed network of knowledge that is the DKos community.