Unity ponies for everyone!
The Obama camp is in meltdown. They’re looking at a loss in Indiana and a squeaker in North Carolina; the national polls are killing them; the media is suddenly treating Hillary like a contender; and worst of all, the DNC mouthpieces are making unaccustomed noises about how this is still an open contest.
They need something nuclear to turn the tables before Tuesday. In the past 48 hours they’ve made three attempts to gin up a Clinton scandal — all three heavily peddled and all three completely bogus.
First there was the Women’s Voices Women’s Votes business. Then there was the Color of Change petition. And now we have the Mickey Kantor doctored video.
The Kantor “scandal” consists of this: in a documentary from 1993 called The War Room, the camera shows Kantor, James Carville, and George Stephanopoulos reading the returns on election night 1992, which of course were very good for Clinton and very, very bad for Bush. When Kantor gets to Indiana he says, “Those people are shitting…How’d you like to be in the White House right now?”
Incredibly — and it is incredible to me — somebody in the Obama camp has dug up this 15-year-old documentary and argued that what Kantor is really saying is, “Those people are shit…How’d you like to be a worthless white n—-r?” — supposedly referring to the good people in Indiana.
No, of course it doesn’t make sense. It’s a desperate move by desperate people. What they’re gambling on is that a single idea will sink into the public mind: “somebody on the Clinton campaign said the people in Indiana are white n—–s.” Never mind that nobody said any such thing; never mind that it’s not even the current Clinton campaign. The dirty tricksters behind this know that most people don’t read and won’t bother to track down the YouTube clip.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that this stunt is so crude it could backfire. Maybe the meme that will reach escape velocity won’t be the lie about Mickey Kantor, but the truth about Obama supporters circulating a doctored video to smear Clinton.
Over at the Mighty Corrente Building, vastleft is suggesting we embrace the zeitgeist by making up our own Clinton scandals. It occurs to me that what we really need is an automated Clinton Scandal Generator, something like a cross between Blogwarbot and the Daily Mail headline thing. Any code cowboys out there?
10 Responses to “Unity ponies for everyone!”
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Infidel says:
The two scenarios I’m waiting to see are:
1) Hillary gets in and you never hear another word from Violet about Obama and Violet doggedly defends Hillary from all her critics. And Hillary and Nancy get along.
or
2) Obama gets in and he earnestly seeks to be a greater communicator then “The Great Communicator” and we are constantly bombarded with his speeches telling us how we have to be better and pitch in and work and strive and he knows how great America can be.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:47 pm EST -
Paul Tergeist says:
I don’t know if this is national news yet, but I don’t think you can blame it on Obama.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Here it is in her words. Deal or no deal?
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Violet says:
Huh?
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Bruce says:
And maybe the Clinton team doctored the video and then spread it around the Internet in order to cause a backlash against Obama???
OK, I’m kidding. The point is that we don’t know who created that video, so just like it was careless to take it at face value and use it against Clinton, it is also careless to use it against Obama until we know all the facts.
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Adorable Girlfriend says:
I am delighted to read that others were bothered by that petition from the Color of Change people. When I received it, I was furious. I was annoyed that they were making it a race issue that Hillary personally had not. I was fuming and canceled my membership and wrote a letter.
Thank you for reminding me I wasn’t the only one.
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Violet says:
Bruce, there’s no question it came from an Obama supporter, though we don’t know who exactly.
Lambert has an update on where things stand:
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Violet says:
I am delighted to read that others were bothered by that petition from the Color of Change people.
When I read it I immediately thought of my Puerto Rican relatives in Florida. So who’s being disenfranchised?
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Maud says:
My email from Color of Change goes - or did - to my public email address, which I only check every couple of days. This post sent me straight there to read the email and then let Color of Change know why I’m not interested in hearing from them any further.
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No Blood for Hubris says:
You go, Violet!
