Somebody has to trash Hillary, but I expected it to be somebody on the right. I'm sure Obama is angry at having frittered away all that favorable publicity, but that hardly justifies this sort of attack on a fellow Democrat.
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh102907.shtmlBARACK DOES BILL BRADLEY! Pundits cheered when Bradley trashed Gore. Now, someone else takes a turn
<edit>
Obama is going to be “more aggressive” about Clinton—and he’s starting with Social Security. According to Obama, Clinton has been hedging, ducking, dodging and spinning the issue. And omigod! The point of this new approach by Obama is even more clear in what follows:
BACON (continuing directly):
The statements marked the latest escalation of campaign rhetoric from a candidate who earlier this year declined to criticize his chief opponent for the nomination. Increasingly, he is taking on not just Clinton's policy views but also her character, and is casting the Democratic front-runner as someone who makes decisions based on polls and calculation, rather than on her convictions.
Increasingly, Obama is talking about Clinton’s “character.” Granted, that’s an assessment by Bacon, not a quote from Obama. But when you say that someone is ducking, hedging, dodging and spinning a serious issue, you are, of course, critiquing her character. And that is the way your claims will be reported—especially since the candidate in question has the last name of Clinton.Of course, Clinton really hasn’t been ducking or hedging or dodging or spinning this non-issue issue. In a recent Washington Post news report, she made a perfectly accurate statement about Social Security—a statement that is massively more accurate than the embarrassing blather Obama offered at the September 26 Dem debate. At that debate, the plutocrat tribune, Timothy Russert, pushed this non-issue back onto the table. Quite correctly, here’s what Clinton told the Post’s Anne Kornblut in the wake of that familiar performance:
KORNBLUT (10/10/07): Clinton offered insights into the governing priorities she would bring to the White House, speaking cautiously about extricating the nation from Iraq and urgently about health-care reform. She also said she will take no position on how to fix Social Security and made it clear she does not regard it as a front-burner issue.
"I do not believe it is in a crisis," she said of the retirement program.“She will take no position” is, of course, Kornblut’s top-heavy spin. “I do not believe it is in a crisis” was Clinton’s actual statement—and her statement is perfectly accurate. Indeed, we would have though that all Democrats knew that—until that embarrassing debate. At that session, the plutocrat Russert continued trying to push this non-issue center stage, and Obama and Edwards embarrassed themselves, even reciting the tired old plutocrat line: College kids don’t even think they’ll ever get Social Security! Good God!
Plutocrat “think tanks” have pimped that line for decades now, attempting to create a false sense of crisis. And there were Candidates Obama and Edwards, reciting their bogus cant for them (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/28/07). Again, Clinton is right on this silly non-issue, as Democrats all seemed to know in 2005. But so what? Now, we read that Obama is going to push the issue as a referendum on Clinton’s bad character! And make no mistake: A plutocrat press corps will praise Obama for both parts of this approach. They’ll praise him for attacking Clinton’s character—a long-time, favorite focus of theirs. And they’ll praise him for pimping the “problem” of Social Security, as plutocrat think tanks have so long done—as they themselves did, without mercy, in their two-year-long War Against Gore.
more...