When Barack Obama began his candidacy, many in the liberal community had reservations about his cross-party message. Was Obama saying that he wouldn't fight back hard against the GOP and it smear tactics? Was he saying that he'd water down noble goals - health care, worker protections, an end to the Iraq occupation - all in the name of high-mindedness?
Well, we're near the end of Primary season. And it's become clear that just because you vow to work across the aisle, it doesn't mean you have to embrace Republican political tactics. Indeed, if anyone's embraced such tactics in this campaign, it's Hillary Clinton.
This came home to roost for me recently after I saw that Clinton had attempted to resurrect the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy after Obama's speech had effectively buried it. Clinton emphatically said that she would have left Wright's church, in marked contrast to Obama's impassioned defense of sticking by his spiritual mentor.
But now, it turns out that even Hillary Clinton's own pastor isn't prepared to disown Wright. Here's what Dean J. Snyder, senior pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church, had to say about the man:
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times. He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. He has been a vocal critic of the racism, sexism and homophobia which still tarnish the American dream. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear.
There is nothing controversial - to Democrats, at least - in what Snyder's saying here. These are fairly standard liberal sentiments. But in her Quixotic quest to secure the Democratic nomination by turning Tonya Harding to Obama's Nancy Kerrigan, Clinton and her campaign have decided it's better to discard this truth, and throw Rev. Wright under the bus instead.
(Okay, perhaps I'm being uncharitable with that "throw under the bus" bit. Maybe they'd be happy if he just sat at the back of it.)
If you need any further indication of how in bed Clinton's campaign has become with Republican political tactics, you need look no further than Talking Points Memo, where Josh Marshall and Eric Kleefeld have discovered that Richard Mellon Scaife - "the nerve center of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy," as Marshall aptly describes him - was sitting right next to Hillary Clinton when she tried to bring The Wright Imbroglio back from the political grave.
![](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2009/2363203967_aea6cd4fa9.jpg?v=0)
I've not wanted to get in the habit of ragging on Clinton too badly in public. I like to tell people that I'm not against Clinton - I'm for Barack Obama. We do a great disservice to this remarkable man and rising political figure when, through our words and actions, we cast him as the "anti-Hillary" vote. And Clinton, being a consummate politician herself, has indeed done great things for our party.
But I can't sit idly by while the Clinton campaign continues not only to adopt Republican tactics, but to ally themselves with figures who are still actively inimical to the aspirations of the Democratic Party. Such attempts to prop up a Presidential quest at the expense of the progressive agenda are odious and harmful, and their perpetrators must be held to account.