Sermon on the Mound
Media, opponents, not fair! Suffer the little Clintons! Bill tantalizingly raises the prospect of him and Hill figuratively ending it all. But lip-biting might work better than rhetorical self-martyrdom. Bill’s bitter “Father, why have you forsaken me?” speech after the Gesthemane that was Iowa gets rave reviews from readers who seem to think “put (presumeably metaphorical) bullets in their brains” sounds like a good idea. Politico:
Bill Clinton voiced his abiding anger at the media’s coverage of him and his wife in Durham, N.H., today, and suggested that media bias will force Clinton to go negative on Barack Obama.
He also expressed his frustration that his wife is perceived by voters as divisive through, he said, no fault of her own.
Clinton, like his wife, is traveling New Hampshire taking questions from voters, and he spoke at the University of New Hampshire in Durham in response to a plea from a woman who said she’d like it “if you and Clinton joined Barack Obama in putting the Republicans on notice” that it was time to “change the game” and end the “meanness” and “manipulation” in politics.
…
“Nobody would like it better than us if you could get that personal vilification out of there, because nobody’s been vilified more than we have,” he said …
“Nobody would be happier to see all this go away than us. But you can’t ask somebody who is at a breathtaking disadvantage in the information coming to the voters to ignore that disadvantage and basically agree to put bullets in their brains,” he said.
So what’s next. New Hampshire = Pilate? Boos at NH Demfest sounds like a flogging pre you know what.
More Politico:
Cheek unturned as HRC team retools, predicts NH win
NASHUA, N.H. — Hillary Rodham Clinton opened a five-day campaign to target what her aides call Barack Obama’s inexperience, delivering sharper attacks against the Iowa winner that are likely to become more personal and negative, according to Democrats familiar with the evolving strategy.
“Of all the people running for president, I’ve been the most vetted, the most investigated and — my goodness — the most innocent, it turns out,” she told a cheering crowd in an airport hangar.
That’s great! She who is innocent can cast the first stone. But she raises an interesting point. Innocent or not, how many times does America want its president to have been investigated?
Meanwhile, St. Obama regrets he may have to hang up the halo but intends to fire back, beatifically. Also, having picked up white Iowa, hopes for black South:
Though the Obama campaign is always reluctant to talk about race, the adviser did say Obama’s victory in nearly all-white Iowa will have a major impact on black voters who are currently backing Hillary Clinton.
“They now see white people voting for a black candidate,” the Obama adviser said. “That will have an impact.”
The Obama campaign expects Clinton to hit Obama on the issue of health care and take swipes at him in the debate scheduled for Saturday in New Hampshire.
“I don’t think anybody is going to sit there and be a punching bag,” the adviser said.
“If hit, he will respond. But he won’t do it in a biting way. He will not be an attack dog.”
The adviser also compared Clinton’s Thursday night speech to Obama’s, in which he said: “In the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.”
“Which speech sounded more presidential?” the Obama adviser said.
“And how many times did she use the word ‘I’ compared to how many times Obama talked about the country as a whole?”
Maybe ”He” is running out of things to say about “Himself.” Anyway, plans to take New Hampshire.
The Obama campaign says that in the five days until the New Hampshire primary, it will work to “close the deal” there.
“We will beat her there the same way we did in Iowa,” he said.
Meanwhile, both Clintons’ legacies may rest on NH. Clinton biographer John Harris delivers a cold, evenhanded assessment of the Clintons’ respective political skills and their collective legacy:
People always state the obvious: That Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is not the politician her husband is.
They tend to overlook the less obvious: She has never been forced to be that kind of politician.
Until now.
The essence of Bill Clinton’s political skill was a fearsome — and usually fear-driven — instinct for survival. Time and again, he summoned an almost mystical ability to connect with voters at the very moment he was confronting disaster. And the first place that astonishing talent sprang to national notice was the very place the 2008 campaign has arrived at now: New Hampshire.
It was in the Granite State 16 years ago that he fought his way from a political near-death experience, in a blaze of raspy-voiced, round-the-clock campaigning that quickly became the stuff of legend. In the next four days she’ll be trying to do the same.
The outcome of her contest against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will determine her future, but in large ways will also shape Bill Clinton’s legacy.
A second Clinton presidency would suggest that Clintonism was not just a 1990s-era bag of political tricks, but a historical movement dominating American politics for a generation or more.
Without a second Clinton presidency, Bill Clinton might be remembered as a colorful but in the end not terribly consequential president who governed in comparatively placid times between two war presidents named Bush.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:35 am on Saturday, January 5, 2008
6 Responses to “Sermon on the Mound”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
January 5th, 2008 at 10:48 am
This is going to be great fun. Make sure there is plenty of cold beer, and pass the popcorn.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:10 am
suggested that media bias will force Clinton to go negative on Barack Obama.
Here we go. Just that old evil and unfair media machine forcing the Clintons to go where they really live…
…negative
The very same media machine that has been collectively promulgating the notion for at least a year that Hillary! was the inevitable candidate of the Democrat party.
When Bill defends himself (and “his own”, since Hillary is now an extension of his ego) he can be quite entertaining.
January 5th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Nobody would be happier to see all this go away than us.
Yes, please, just… go away.
January 5th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Hillary reminds me of the mother of a friend. That mother was so over-bearing that I seriously considered cooling the relationship just so I didn’t have to be around her. I never cared to be a part of that person’s particular village.
What are we going to be left with?
January 5th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
[...] Crittenden has amusing and insightful [...]
January 7th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Nobody can sling the bushwa like Billy, baby. I love the bit where it’s the MSM’s fault, they’ll FORCE poor little Hilly to go negative!
What a load.