{"id":13903,"date":"2007-12-12T16:40:37","date_gmt":"2007-12-12T21:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13903.html"},"modified":"2007-12-12T16:40:37","modified_gmt":"2007-12-12T21:40:37","slug":"would-the-clinton-campaign-put-drug-use-on-the-table","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/would-the-clinton-campaign-put-drug-use-on-the-table\/","title":{"rendered":"Would the Clinton campaign put drug use on the table?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Huffington Post’s Tom Edsall reported<\/a> that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign may be subtly, quietly targeting Barack Obama over his teenaged drug use. Edsall’s article, though, felt a little thin — it said the Clinton campaign had sent out a “cryptic” email alluding to “shortcomings” in “Obama’s past. The message from the campaign headquarters did not go into any detail.<\/p>\n

The Clinton campaign email did not spell out Obama’s “shortcomings, inconsistencies or misstatements,” but other Democratic activists have quietly received messages from Clinton allies pointing in the likely direction. Those messages provided a link to an Iowa Independent story by Douglas Burns headlined “The Politics Of Obama’s Past Cocaine Use.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, this isn’t exactly rock-solid. Unnamed activists have received ambiguous messages from “Clinton allies” about Obama’s drug use? I need a little more. If the Clinton campaign is seriously going to pursue this, it would be a pretty dramatic escalation, but I need something tangible.<\/p>\n

This qualifies<\/a>. (via Greg Sargent<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Billy Shaheen, the co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in New Hampshire, raised the issue of Sen. Barack Obama’s past admissions of drug use in discussing the relative electability of the Democrats seeking the presidential nomination today. […]<\/p>\n

“The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight … and one of the things they’re certainly going to jump on is his drug use,” said Shaheen, the husband of former N.H. governor Jeanne Shaheen, who is planning to run for the Senate next year. Billy Shaheen contrasted Obama’s openness about his past drug use — which Obama mentioned again at a recent campaign appearance in New Hampshire — with the approach taken by George W. Bush in 1999 and 2000, when he ruled out questions about his behavior when he was “young and irresponsible.”<\/p>\n

Shaheen said Obama’s candor on the subject would “open the door” to further questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Clinton campaign really ought to be careful with this; they’re playing with fire.
\n
\nShaheen isn’t just some county volunteer spreading around the stupid Obama\/Muslim emails; he’s the chairman of the Clinton campaign in the first primary state, and a major player in the state’s Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Of course, you’ll notice that the attack here is indirect — Shaheen didn’t go after Obama for drug experimentation as a teenager, he went after Obama because, he said, Republicans<\/i> would use drug experimentation as a teenager against him.<\/p>\n

But this, I suspect, a big mistake for the Clinton campaign. For one thing, it reeks of desperation — perhaps even more so than using Obama’s kindergarten essays as evidence of excessive ambition. For another, it feels like an awfully cheap shot.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Shaheen implicitly told the Washington Post that George W. Bush handled the drug issue well<\/i> by fudging the truth, while Obama has handled it poorly by acknowledging the truth. As a rule, praising Bush — and urging a Dem rival to follow his example — is a bad idea in a Democratic presidential primary.<\/p>\n

This issue has been pretty thoroughly vetted. Obama has written about it, spoken about it, and answered questions about it. Voters don’t care, reporters don’t care, even Rudy Giuliani — hardly sympathetic to Dems — has said he believes the issue should be off the table.<\/p>\n

For the Clinton campaign to push this, at this late hour, could backfire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Huffington Post’s Tom Edsall reported that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign may be subtly, quietly targeting Barack Obama over his teenaged drug use. Edsall’s article, though, felt a little thin — it said the Clinton campaign had sent out a “cryptic” email alluding to “shortcomings” in “Obama’s past. The message from the campaign headquarters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}