Yellowdogtexan
06-18-2008, 05:49 PM
This thread ties into a couple of thread including the age thread and the smear thread. The mc :cane campaign is shocked that the Obama campaign are really playing the game and are responding fast and hard to any inaccurate claims made by mc :cane and are pointing out when mc :cane makes mistakes. The result is that the mc :cane campaign is whining and looking like losers http://www.observer.com/2008/obama-bully-mccain-crew-says-he-plays-age-card?page=0%2C0In the weeks since Barack Obama effectively wrapped up the Democratic nomination, he and his campaign have savaged their Republican counterparts, pouncing on errors great and small and drawing attention to a pattern of “confused” remarks by Mr. McCain, who the Obama campaign has accused of “dusting off the tired, old, worn-out ideas of George Bush.” They have, in that time, successfully hounded the McCain campaign into cutting loose several top aides; incessantly used a careful selection of Mr. McCain’s words to raise doubts both about his understanding of economics and his concern for the welfare of U.S. soldiers in Iraq; and, perhaps most insulting of all, laughed off the Arizona senator’s offer to engage in a series of town-hall-style joint appearances with Mr. Obama.
Add to their aggressive tactics an enormous financial advantage, a favorable political climate and lots of adrenaline pumping after an unexpected primary victory, and one remarkable thing becomes clear: This year, it’s the Democrat who’s shaping up to be the bully.
“It feels great,” said Simon Rosenberg, the president of the New Democrat Network who was a young staffer in Bill Clinton’s famed 1992 war room. “Look—the Democrats have basically been without a strong single leader since [the Monica Lewinsky scandal in] early 1998.”
Chris Lehane, one of the Democratic Party’s fiercest operatives, who worked in the Clinton White House and left John Kerry’s campaign, reportedly, because it wasn’t aggressive enough, said he saw “parallels” between Clinton’s war room and the Obama campaign.
Both, he said, believed “that if you got into a knife fight in a telephone booth, you made sure you brought a gun.” (On June 13 in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama had said much the same thing: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”)
Mr. Lehane said that the idea of the Obama campaign, as was the case with Mrs. Clinton’s primary campaign, was to brand him “as a different kind of Democrat—a Democrat who was playing to win.”
In this, Mr. Obama also has the advantage—to the obvious annoyance of the McCain campaign—of a reputation for gentleness that allows him to avoid paying the public costs of running a bare-knuckles campaign. It is, simply put, difficult for people to reconcile his appearance with some of the things that are done in his name.....
Separately, the Obama campaign has been unusually aggressive in targeting not only Mr. McCain, but his aides.
In May, after Mr. McCain let go of five campaign aides, including his finance co-chair, Tom Loeffler, after intense criticism of their lobbying ties, Mr. Obama boasted, “John McCain now has had to get rid of five of his top advisers because it turns out they’re all lobbying, many of them for foreign governments. That’s because he practices the same kind of politics that we’ve grown accustomed to in Washington.”
(Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, called it “bullyish” to have gone after “a volunteer from another campaign when entirely unprovoked.”) .....
But it seems, somehow, to have taken the McCain campaign off guard, and their aggrieved response, much like Mrs. Clinton’s throughout the heated Democratic nomination fight, is to accuse Mr. Obama of hypocrisy.
As McCain economic adviser and surrogate Carly Fiorina put it, “The rhetoric is that Barack Obama’s campaign is a new style of politics—the reality is that the attacks that are leveled against John McCain or surrogates or staff are politics as usual.”
Ms. Fiorina said the Obama campaign had purposefully used the word “confused” to evoke the question of age and hurt Mr. McCain, who is 71. “One thing everyone acknowledges about Barack Obama is that he uses words very well,” she said. “I do not think that was a casual use of words. I think that was a very deliberate use of words.” ....
Mr. Obama’s supporters say he’s only doing what’s necessary, and promise more of the same.
“Just because his message is high-minded doesn’t mean Barack will tolerate anything less than a rapid response to silence those who lie about him,” Senator John Kerry wrote in an e-mail to The Observer. “He gets it.”
“From the Democratic side, there were lessons learned in the last elections,” said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, one of Mr. Obama’s closest allies. “What they did to Kerry with the Swift-boat attack was something we handled very poorly. We didn’t respond decisively, quickly, and we paid a heavy price for it. It’s not going to happen again.”
Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said, “Change and speaking the truth forcefully are not mutually exclusive -- in fact, one depends on the other.”.....
Mr. Lehane, the Democratic operative, pronounced himself delighted that the McCain campaign was feeling victimized.
“When you are crying foul in a presidential campaign,” he said, “it usually means you are losing.”
I was disappointed in 2004 that Senator Kerry did not respond as fast and as strong as he should have to the swiftboat liars. The bushies got by with a large number of lies about Gore in 2000. The Democrats have learned from these mistakes and I like the campaign that the Obama campaign is running.
I agree with Mr. Lehane in that the fact that the mc :cane campaign is whinning means that they know that they are losing. So far, the mc :cane campaign has been simply outclassed and out manuevered at every step by the Obama campaign and I am enjoying the show.
Add to their aggressive tactics an enormous financial advantage, a favorable political climate and lots of adrenaline pumping after an unexpected primary victory, and one remarkable thing becomes clear: This year, it’s the Democrat who’s shaping up to be the bully.
“It feels great,” said Simon Rosenberg, the president of the New Democrat Network who was a young staffer in Bill Clinton’s famed 1992 war room. “Look—the Democrats have basically been without a strong single leader since [the Monica Lewinsky scandal in] early 1998.”
Chris Lehane, one of the Democratic Party’s fiercest operatives, who worked in the Clinton White House and left John Kerry’s campaign, reportedly, because it wasn’t aggressive enough, said he saw “parallels” between Clinton’s war room and the Obama campaign.
Both, he said, believed “that if you got into a knife fight in a telephone booth, you made sure you brought a gun.” (On June 13 in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama had said much the same thing: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”)
Mr. Lehane said that the idea of the Obama campaign, as was the case with Mrs. Clinton’s primary campaign, was to brand him “as a different kind of Democrat—a Democrat who was playing to win.”
In this, Mr. Obama also has the advantage—to the obvious annoyance of the McCain campaign—of a reputation for gentleness that allows him to avoid paying the public costs of running a bare-knuckles campaign. It is, simply put, difficult for people to reconcile his appearance with some of the things that are done in his name.....
Separately, the Obama campaign has been unusually aggressive in targeting not only Mr. McCain, but his aides.
In May, after Mr. McCain let go of five campaign aides, including his finance co-chair, Tom Loeffler, after intense criticism of their lobbying ties, Mr. Obama boasted, “John McCain now has had to get rid of five of his top advisers because it turns out they’re all lobbying, many of them for foreign governments. That’s because he practices the same kind of politics that we’ve grown accustomed to in Washington.”
(Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, called it “bullyish” to have gone after “a volunteer from another campaign when entirely unprovoked.”) .....
But it seems, somehow, to have taken the McCain campaign off guard, and their aggrieved response, much like Mrs. Clinton’s throughout the heated Democratic nomination fight, is to accuse Mr. Obama of hypocrisy.
As McCain economic adviser and surrogate Carly Fiorina put it, “The rhetoric is that Barack Obama’s campaign is a new style of politics—the reality is that the attacks that are leveled against John McCain or surrogates or staff are politics as usual.”
Ms. Fiorina said the Obama campaign had purposefully used the word “confused” to evoke the question of age and hurt Mr. McCain, who is 71. “One thing everyone acknowledges about Barack Obama is that he uses words very well,” she said. “I do not think that was a casual use of words. I think that was a very deliberate use of words.” ....
Mr. Obama’s supporters say he’s only doing what’s necessary, and promise more of the same.
“Just because his message is high-minded doesn’t mean Barack will tolerate anything less than a rapid response to silence those who lie about him,” Senator John Kerry wrote in an e-mail to The Observer. “He gets it.”
“From the Democratic side, there were lessons learned in the last elections,” said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, one of Mr. Obama’s closest allies. “What they did to Kerry with the Swift-boat attack was something we handled very poorly. We didn’t respond decisively, quickly, and we paid a heavy price for it. It’s not going to happen again.”
Obama campaign spokesman Hari Sevugan said, “Change and speaking the truth forcefully are not mutually exclusive -- in fact, one depends on the other.”.....
Mr. Lehane, the Democratic operative, pronounced himself delighted that the McCain campaign was feeling victimized.
“When you are crying foul in a presidential campaign,” he said, “it usually means you are losing.”
I was disappointed in 2004 that Senator Kerry did not respond as fast and as strong as he should have to the swiftboat liars. The bushies got by with a large number of lies about Gore in 2000. The Democrats have learned from these mistakes and I like the campaign that the Obama campaign is running.
I agree with Mr. Lehane in that the fact that the mc :cane campaign is whinning means that they know that they are losing. So far, the mc :cane campaign has been simply outclassed and out manuevered at every step by the Obama campaign and I am enjoying the show.