Sorry - I made a small typo below. Obama's statement specifically referred to the Republican Party being the Party of ideas for the past 10-15 years - not as I initially state, the last '15-20 years'.
Regarding eddiewhere's rationale (below) for not voting for Clinton 'too many scandals' - there's a famous story of Richard Nixon meeting in the Oval Office with Kissinger. Nixon's dog. King Timahoe, was chewing the carpet. To get him to stop Nixon gave the dog a biscuit. To which Kissinger said the following "Mr President if you give him a biscuit he'll just continue chewing the carpet." Eddie - you are just giving the Republicans a biscuit. It's actually the last thing you want to do.
Are you Democrats suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?
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The Clintons’ Patronizing Strategy
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I'm all for aggressive, even negative, campaigning, but I'm not so sure this patronizing approach will work for Hillary down the stretch. Let's take the battle in New Jersey, a delegate-rich state that votes on Feb. 5. Hillary will almost certainly win there, in her backyard, but the question is by how much. New Jersey delegates are awarded proportionally, which means that if Obama can come within five or ten points, he's ahead of the game in the national delegate hunt.
As the Reagan ad aired in South Carolina, Hillary was campaigning in New Jersey. That gave the Obama campaign an excuse to assemble a rapid response team to create a little backlash in the Garden State.
Cory Booker, the inspiring mayor of Newark, is especially popular with white liberals in the suburbs. Here's what he said about the Clinton ads, beyond calling them "outrageous" and "dishonest":
"We're trying to offer an alternative to the Republicans' fear and smear campaigns, and now we're being dragged down to their level by the Clintons."
I live in New Jersey and can attest that plenty of Democrats there will be responsive to Booker's argument, as well as that of New York-area newspapers blasting Hillary for the Reagan shot. Disgust with this kind of thing may help bring Obama closer than expected.
Bill Clinton rightly complained in the 1990s about the politics of personal destruction. In both 1992 and 1996 he managed to run general election campaigns against George Bush and Bob Dole that mostly stayed on the high road. Then, in 1998, he survived a withering assault by relying on the common sense of average people.
On the day his testimony about his sex life was being replayed on TV—arguably the most embarrassing day in the history of the presidency—I slipped into a reception for Clinton in New York.
He was amazingly serene. With enough time and information, the president told me, the American people figure out the truth. They aren't as dumb as [former House GOP strategist] Tom DeLay thinks, he suggested. "The people always get it right," Clinton said.
They did then, supporting Clinton against a witch hunt. But will they now?
© 2008
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