Is Hillary’s campaign about to self-destruct? That’s the buzz today. From calling for delegates to be reinstated in Michigan and Florida to the disguised smear of John McCain, the Clintons are playing dirty. And the cherry on top: Bill’s racial remark in South Carolina. Today in the New York Times, the boss discusses Bill Clinton’s latest:
Bloggers agree that Bill is hurting Hillary–and this statement doesn’t help. At the Corner, Shannen Coffin notes, “But Bill didn’t mention yesterday that he took nearly 70 percent of Democratic voters in the 1992 South Carolina primary (and ran unopposed in 1996). Did Bill feel it necessary to point out Jesse Jackson’s success in the Palmetto State when he was cruising to victory in 1992?” Captain Ed says, “As long as the Clintons remain on the national stage, this kind of politicking — the smears, the lies, and the prevarications — will also remain.” And Andrew Sullivan remarks, “Maybe the Clintons can bring the country together again – in revulsion at their expediency.” But what’s more interesting is that left-wing pundits and bloggers are increasingly agreeing with their conservative colleagues. In Saturday’s LA Times, Jonathan Chait displayed his growing distaste for Clinton politics, which he referred to as “lying and sleaze-mongering”:
Matthew Yglesias explains why: “It looks like Bill Clinton’s heavy-handed attacks on Barack Obama didn’t serve his wife well in South Carolina, with about sixty percent of voters saying Clinton’s actions were a factor in their decision in what looks to have been a landslide win for Barack Obama.”
Glenn Greenwald agrees: “The Clintons’ strategy has become increasingly trashy, even ugly, and yesterday’s remarks by Bill Clinton — in which he pointedly compared Obama’s candidacy to Jesse Jackson’s and thus implicitly (though clearly) dismissed South Carolina as a state where the ‘black candidate’ wins, followed up by the Clinton campaign’s anonymous branding of Obama as ‘the black candidate’ — reeked of desperation.” He links to similar opinions. And Josh Marshall at TPM puts it simply: “I cannot deny that I’ve felt a mounting sense of unease verging into disgust with Bill Clinton’s increasingly aggressive role in the campaign over the last couple of weeks.” Our response: “we told you so.”
