{"id":14676,"date":"2008-02-23T18:53:06","date_gmt":"2008-02-23T23:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14676.html"},"modified":"2008-02-23T18:53:06","modified_gmt":"2008-02-23T23:53:06","slug":"clinton-unloads-over-obama-mailings-but-is-she-vulnerable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clinton-unloads-over-obama-mailings-but-is-she-vulnerable\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton unloads over Obama mailings — but is she vulnerable?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hillary Clinton, hoping to utilize an untapped area of attack, unloaded<\/a> on Barack Obama today. The subject: a couple of direct-mail pieces.<\/p>\n

In one of her sharpest attacks of the 2008 race, Clinton blasted two mailings Obama’s campaign has put out criticizing Clinton’s views on health care and trade, accusing him of “using tactics that are straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook.” […]<\/p>\n

“I have to express my deep disappointment that he is continuing to send false and discredited mailings,” Clinton said at a press conference after a speech here, holding the mailings in her hand as she railed against them. “He says one things in his speeches and then he turns around does this. It is not the new politics the speeches are about. It is not hopeful. It is destructive.”<\/p>\n

She added: “Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That’s not what I expect from you. Meet me in Ohio — let’s have a debate about your tactics.”<\/p>\n

“Enough about the speeches, and the big rallies, and then using tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” she said angrily. “This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given the degree of outrage, one might assume these are new Obama mailings, but they’re actually old ones, which the Clinton campaign hopes to exploit now for new mileage.<\/p>\n

The merit of the charges is a little more complex than the campaigns would probably prefer.
\n<\/p>\n

One mailing says that Clinton’s health care plan would force people to purchase insurance, even if they can’t afford it, which the former first lady likened to the ads by insurance companies that attacked the universal health care plan she crafted in the 1990s. Another mailer quotes a newspaper article saying Clinton considered the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement a “boon” to the economy, which Clinton says she did not say and which the N.Y. newspaper in question has since clarified was its word, not hers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Substantively, Clinton is right. The healthcare piece from the Obama campaign is wrong, and I denounced<\/a> it several weeks ago, when it first started hitting mailboxes. The NAFTA ad isn’t as problematic, but it does misquote Clinton, which is clearly wrong.<\/p>\n

The reason I think today’s Clinton response may be excessive, though, in addition to the delayed outrage, is that both campaigns have been playing fast and loose when it comes to their mailings.<\/p>\n

Throughout January, for example, Clinton sent a conservative mailing on taxes<\/a> that could have just as easily been written by the Republican National Committee or Grover Norquist. Clinton used anti-tax rhetoric that Democrats usually reject as nonsense, not embrace as fodder for attacks against other Democrats. <\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, the Clinton campaign relied on a very sketchy mailing<\/a> in New Hampshire that falsely questioned Obama’s support for reproductive rights. And shortly after that, the Clinton campaign sent a misleading mailer<\/a> about the manufactured controversy about Obama’s “present” votes.<\/p>\n

They’re the kind of mailings that step all over Clinton’s message today. If we’re being fair and even-handed, both campaigns have been guilty of the same mistake — misleading mailings that rely on conservative frames to make bogus charges. It’s unfortunate, but on the political richter scale, the mail pieces are annoying, but ultimately forgettable.<\/p>\n

It’s what makes today’s complaining seem a little over the top. “Karl Rove’s playbook”? “Shame on you”? Had the Clinton campaign not ceded the moral high ground earlier, the outrage might be a little more compelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hillary Clinton, hoping to utilize an untapped area of attack, unloaded on Barack Obama today. The subject: a couple of direct-mail pieces. In one of her sharpest attacks of the 2008 race, Clinton blasted two mailings Obama’s campaign has put out criticizing Clinton’s views on health care and trade, accusing him of “using tactics that […]<\/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-14676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676","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=14676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}