Wolfson:
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, taking the campaign a bit meta on a conference call today, attacked Obama for attacking Clinton, and compared him to a notorious Clinton foe.
"When Sen. Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be commander in chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Sen. Clinton," Wolfson said. "I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president."
Ms. Clinton, you are not a victim--nor are you a champion of beleaguered women's rights.
When you jumped ahead of far more deserving women like Barbara Boxer to run for president, simply on the basis of having been First Lady, you were not a victim, but rather a setback for the millions of deserving women who make their way on their own names rather than those of their husbands.
When you and your husband claimed that the entire Lewinsky scandal was the product of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, you were not victims.
When you and your husband created a crack team to tamp down any bimbo eruptions and silence Bill's former girlfriends, you were not victims--and certainly not champions of oppressed women.
When you crushed the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans--including a large number of minority women--with welfare "reform" and neoliberal trade policies just to secure a few more white conservative and corporatist votes, you were not victims.
When you and your husband helped create and chair the most effective group in destroying the Democratic Party from within, all to ensure the election and influence of more southern, white, conservative men in the Democratic Party, you were neither victims nor champions of the oppressed in America.
When you elbowed out other deserving Democrats to run for New York Senate despite not being from New York, and used your influence with your husband to trade four corrupt pardons for votes in a community where women are to be unseen and unheard, you were not a victim, nor a proponent of women's rights in chauvinist, fundamentalist communities.
When you chose to use your position of influence within the Democratic Party to vote to allow Bush to send thousands of young women and men to die in the sands of Iraq and create widows and orphans of countless Iraqi mothers and children, simply so that you could look "tougher" on national security, you were not a victim.
When you inexplicably voted for Kyl-Lieberman to allow Dick Cheney to create even more widows and orphans by bombing Iran, you were not a victim.
When you spent much of the rest of your time as Senator censoring videogames and sponsoring flag-burning amendments, you were not a victim.
When you used your name recognition as First Lady and wide variety of favors owed you and your husband to take the Democratic Establishment and jump to 30-point national poll leads early in this nominating contest, you were not a victim.
When you took advantage of anti-African-American sentiment in the Hispanic community to "earn" vast percentages of their votes in spite of you and your husband's having done almost nothing substantive for their communities and allowing Bush to rack up between 39% to 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004, you were not a victim.
When you and your husband did everything in your power to make Obama the Jesse Jackson candidate, you were neither victims nor advocates of the oppressed in the United States of America.
When Fortune magazine said that business loves you, you were not a victim, but a corporate insider.
When you hired the biggest union-busting asshole this side of the Democratic Party to run your campaign and its message, you were not a victim.
When you used the corrupt Nevada machine to cheat and suppress votes in over 1600 instances in the Nevada caucuses, you were not a victim.
When you doctored Obama's face to make his skin darker and his nose wider in an attack ad, you were not a victim.
When you used a kitchen sink strategy to trash Obama in any way possible even as he ran a high-ground campaign, no matter the cost to the Democratic Party, you were not a victim.
When you endorsed the misogynist-backed, warmongering Republican nominee over Obama based on the distorted notion that you both have more "experience", you were neither a victim nor a friend to women.
When you used fearmongering tactics in the worst tradition of political advertisements, you were not a victim.
When you not only supported the death of the American Rust Belt with NAFTA, but then attempted to say were against it even as you took credit for all the other events of your husband's presidency, then assured the Canadians that you really did love NAFTA after all, and then lied and accused the Obama campaign of having done what you did, you were not a victim, but a lying, disgusting cheat.
When you used fearmongering and potentially racist coding by accusing your opponent of not having been "vetted", in spite of your campaign having raked him over the coals for anything and everything you could, you were not a victim.
When you reserve the right to overturn the will of the majority of voters and pledged delegates to steal the nomination with insider superdelegates, you are not a victim.
And now that you are lying by saying that you're just too busy to release your tax records before April 15, all while claiming that your opponent isn't sufficiently vetted, you are NOT a victim.
You and your husband are masters of making vicious attacks and engaging in scurrilous behavior, all while painting yourselves as victims of an anti-Clinton bias or even conspiracy. You are not victims; you are perpetrators. You are not advocates for the battered and under-represented; you are the batterers. You are not the ones standing up for the oppressed; you are the oppressors.
And if you do manage to steal this nomination from a campaign of Hope that will almost assuredly have more pledged delegates and votes by the time it's all over, no one will fall for your claims of victimization when all the mistakes you made during the primary campaign get repeated in a disastrous campaign against John McCain. Many of us Democrats fell for your victim line during the 90s; we will not do so again.
It is high time that you suffered the slings and arrows of the same abusive tactics that you yourselves have been the masters of. And this time, no one will be crying for you but yourselves.