Clinton denounces Obama tactics
After the debate in Texas - and her touching end statement in that debate - I had not foreseen Hillary suddenly engaging in the most negative attacks on Obama seen so far in the entire campaign.
In a stunningly negative attack she said:
The truth is that she came across rather well during this outburst and looked to all the world like a person suffering from genuine outrage.Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton lashed out at rival Barack Obama today for using a strategy out of “Karl Rove’s playbook” by making grandiose speeches of hope while sending Ohioans what she called “false and discredited mailings” on health care and trade policy.
“Shame on you Barack Obama,” Clinton told reporters after delivering a speech at Cincinnati Technical and Community College in which she reminded voters that in 2000, an untested George W. Bush called for change--just as Obama is now--and “the American people got shafted.”
“Let’s have a real campaign. Enough of the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook. This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged because this is the kind of attack that not only undermines core Democratic values but gives aid and comfort to the very special interests and their allies in the Republican Party who are against doing what we want to for America,” she said.
“Time and time again, you hear one thing in speeches and then you see a campaign that has the worst kind of tactics, reminiscent of the same sort of Republican attack on Democrats,” Clinton asked.
Clinton said it was time Obama “ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public.”
“That’s what I expect from you,” she said. “Meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign.”
Although I couldn't help but notice that her final call was for yet another bloody debate. She is obviously aware that the only way that she now has any chance of holding back this Obama juggernaut is to challenge him to debates and hope that he makes some kind of fatal slip.
Obama has responded by pointing out that the fliers that she claims to be enraged by have been circulating for weeks now and that her timing and her outrage appears to be "tactical".
Indeed, the BBC's Kevin Connolly agrees with Obama that this represents a new shift for Team Hillary:
Mrs Clinton's campaign has struggled to find an effective way to cope with her rival's extraordinary momentum and has decided to "go negative", says the BBC's Kevin Connolly in Washington.
She and her advisors have clearly calculated that the state of the race now calls for sharper elbows and a sharper tone, our correspondent adds.
Negative campaigning hasn't worked for her so far; indeed, there were indications that her silly charges of plagiarism only drove voters into Obama's camp, so it's an extraordinary decision to go for broke in this way now.
The problem for Hillary - and the video of Obama's reaction to this charge clearly shows this - is that she has not managed to rile him. She hopes that if she prods him enough that she can force him to overplay his hand and give her some way to redefine him. The problem with this tactic is that, if she fails to elicit a reaction as she is clearly failing to do, then this backfires on her and makes her look like part of a bygone age.Hillary Clinton apparently thought that she had a killer sound bite during Thursday's debate when she ripped Barack Obama as a promoter of "change your can Xerox."
Instead, the audience booed, critics winced and once again the New York senator's attempt to demonize her rival fell flat, another illustration of how 2008, at least so far, is the year that negative campaigning just doesn't work as it once did.
"It looks like people are just burned out on that stuff," said Peter W. Schramm, the executive director of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs in Ohio.
Don't get me wrong, she's very good at it. The problem for Hillary appears to be that, during this particular election cycle at least, "it" appears to be the problem."What Hillary Clinton says just seems like dirty politics. Obama offers a very positive message," said Roshay Malone, a Milwaukee child-care business owner.
"Clinton's just too polarizing. Obama is able to inject some enthusiasm into the process," added Bryan Hale, a land surveyor from Smithsburg, Md.
Analysts warn that the campaign still could turn on negatives, should a major scandal erupt. And the rules are likely to change in the general election, which will pit candidates at largely opposite ideological poles against each other.
But for now, voters and analysts saw at least five reasons that going negative isn't a positive development for campaigns that try it:
_ Voters are excited about the candidates. "When you have two firsts — the first woman and the first African-American — there's an enormous amount of enthusiasm, and people don't want to be reminded of anything negative," said Karlyn Bowman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.
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