Wednesday, January 30, 2008

OUTLYING PRECINCTS


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Sam Smith

JONATHAN CHAIT noted in the LA Times, "Something strange happened the
other day. All these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives,
people on a liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing:
They've suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe
this is just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable
turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons."

I've noticed the same thing, with one twist. Even before the Clintons
started playing the race game, I hadn't run into a single person who was
enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton the way others were about Obama,
Edwards or Kucinich.

But certainly the past couple of weeks have been unusual. As one of the
first journalists outside of Arkansas to take on the Clinton myth –
including listing in the spring of 1992 two dozen individuals and
institutions almost all later part of the Whitewater scandal – I have
been just this side of stunned by the current implosion of the Clinton
campaign.

From the start, the story the media created about the Clintons was a
badly misleading myth. By the time of the 1992 New Hampshire primary the
press would be overwhelmingly in the Clinton camp. Hendrik Hertzberg in
the New Republic reported he had surveyed several dozen journalists and
found that all of them, had they been a New Hampshire voter, would have
chosen Clinton. Hertzberg noted that this was a change from previous
elections when the press had tended to split their primary choices,
sometimes sharply.

The effusiveness was one of the great media disservices of modern time.
This was a time when Dan Rather, talking with the Clintons via satellite
at a CBS affiliates meeting, said, "If we could be one-hundredth as
great as you and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in the White House,
we'd take it right now and walk away winners."

And Martha Sherrill in the Washington Post: "The new First Lady has
already begun working on her next project, far more metaphysical and
uplifting.... She is both impersonal and poignant -- with much more
depth, intellect and spirituality than we are used to in a politician .
. . She has goals, but they appear to be so huge and far off -- grand
and noble things twinkling in the distance -- that it's hard to see what
she sees."

White liberals bought into this nonsense and so did blacks. A reporter
about to interview Clinton asked me if I had any questions. I replied,
"Yes, ask him why he likes blacks so much more in church then when they
are some place else." It was true. Black imprisonment soared under
Clinton and the social welfare system started to be dismantled. Liberals
kept applauding as Clinton undid the work of Democratic administrations
from Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson and sent jobs abroad.

And the Democratic Party paid for it. According to the National
Conference of State Legislatures, Democrats held a 1,542 seat lead in
the state bodies in 1990. As of 1998 that lead had shrunk to 288. That's
a loss of over 1,200 state legislative seats, nearly all of them under
Clinton. Across the US, the Democrats controlled only 65 more state
senate seats than the Republicans.

Further, in 1992, the Democrats controlled 17 more state legislatures
than the Republicans. After 1998, the Republicans controlled one more
than the Democrats. Not only was this a loss of 9 legislatures under
Clinton, but it was the first time since 1954 that the GOP had
controlled more state legislatures than the Democrats (they tied in
1968).

In addition, according our count near the end of the Clinton
administration:

- GOP seats gained in House after Clinton became president: 48
- GOP seats gained in Senate after Clinton became president: 8
- GOP governorships gained after Clinton became president: 11
- Democrat officeholders who have become Republicans after Clinton
became
president: 439 as of 1998
- Republican officeholders who have become Democrats after Clinton
became president: 3

This journal was one of the few places to tell its readers such facts.

Clinton, the allegedly wondrous politician, was actually only good at
holding his own office, not at helping others win theirs.

For sixteen years, I have taken a lot of guff for trying to report on
the Clintons just as I try to report any story. I found myself up
against, to borrow a term from Bill Clinton, a fairy tale - in which the
facts just didn't matter.

Once I was scolded by two friends for what I had written about the
Clintons. I asked them, "But what if it's true?" The reply: "You
shouldn't be writing it."
And they were serious.

And now, from the exit polls in South Carolina, I learn that "74% of
African-American voters think that Clinton unfairly attacked Obama. But
when we look at the same question among white voters, a comparable
number thought Clinton unfairly attacked Obama - 68%. Also worth
mentioning, a majority of the voters -- 56% -- said that Bill Clinton's
campaigning was important to their vote."

Thank you, South Carolina, and to the newly disillusioned all I can say
is: welcome aboard.

JONATHAN CHAIT, LA TIMES - Something strange happened the other day. All
these different people -- friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a
liberal e-mail list I read -- kept saying the same thing: They've
suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is
just a coincidence, but I think we've reached an irrevocable turning
point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters.
Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but
the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational
loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic
nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We're not
frothing Clinton haters like ... well, name pretty much any
conservative. We just really wish they'd go away. . .

I crossed the Clinton Rubicon a couple of weeks ago when, in the course
of introducing Hillary, Clinton supporter and Black Entertainment
Television founder Robert L. Johnson invoked Obama's youthful drug use.
This was disgusting on its own terms, but worse still if you know
anything about Johnson. I do - I once wrote a long profile of him. He
has a sleazy habit of appropriating the logic of civil rights for his
own financial gain. He also has a habit of aiding conservative crusades
to eliminate the estate tax and privatize Social Security by falsely
claiming they redistribute wealth from African Americans to whites. The
episode reminded me of the Clintons' habit of surrounding themselves
with the most egregious characters: Dick Morris, Marc Rich and so on. .
.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-chait26jan26,0,7890763.column

DAVEY D, DAVEY D'S HIP-HOP CORNER - I keep asking myself: Where does
[Bob] Johnson get off slamming Obama about the wrongs of drug use when
he piloted one of the largest media institutions that provided a
worldwide platform that for the most part glorified and legitimized the
lifestyles of those who not only used drugs but also sold them? In all
the years we've known of billionaire Bob Johnson, we have not seen him
get on any stage and diss former drug dealers like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Rick
Ross or any number of artists whose videos he would routinely play
coupled with sit-down interviews conducted by fawning hosts who never,
ever challenged these artists for resurrecting a "criminal" lifestyle
they supposedly left behind in both their songs and videos.

The Bob Johnson we know has never gone out of his way to publicly smash
on artists who like Mary J Blige or Fergie, who admitted to using drugs
in the past and have since gotten their lives together and moved onward
and upward. If anything, the former head of BET could be seen publicly
praising them while courting them to appear at his award shows or Spring
Bling concerts.

Johnson certainly never came out swinging on admitted drug abusing
artists like Whitney Houston, Bobby Brown, Flava Flav or DMX, who all
had reality shows either on BET or one of the other stations within the
Viacom network where he had influence as a VP. . .

Sadly the Bob Johnson we know has seemingly had no problem in making
billions from highlighting the drug-dealing, drug-using lifestyle.
Adding to this disappointment is the fact that this proud
African-American billionaire did things like remove programming that
would make us question and shun such questionable behavior. It was on
Johnson's watch that BET got rid of great award-winning shows like Teen
Summit. It was on Johnson's watch that we saw incredible commentators
like Tavis Smiley and Ed Gordon disappear. It was on Johnson's watch we
saw the BET nightly news shrink and then become nonexistent. These shows
were shut down in spite of the objections ranging from scholars like Dr.
Cornel West to the eight major black fraternities and sororities to,
more recently, church groups leading the "Enough Is Enough" campaign. It
was on Johnson's watch that many in the community were up in arms
protesting BET when they had that Step-N-Fetcher-like cartoon called
"Cita's World." Y'all remember that one, right?

http://www.alternet.org/stories/74753/

BOB HERBERT, NY TIMES - Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of
his wife's candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who's gone off his
medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out
reprehensible.

Andrew Young, for instance. . . Here's what Mr. Young, who is black and
a former ambassador to the United Nations, had to say last month in an
interview posted online: "Bill is every bit as black as Barack. He's
probably gone with more black women than Barack. He then went on to make
disgusting comments about the way that Bill and Hillary Clinton defended
themselves years ago against the fallout from the former president's
womanizing. That's coming from the Clinton camp!

And then there was Bob Kerrey, the former senator and another Clinton
supporter, who slimed up the campaign with the following comments:

"It's probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact
that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim
and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people
on the planet that are Muslims, and I think that experience is a big
deal.

Pressing the point, Mr. Kerrey told CNN's John King: "I've watched the
blogs try to say that you can't trust him because he spent a little bit
of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite. . .

The Clinton camp knows what it's doing, and its slimy maneuvers have
been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of
his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator
Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of
these and other lowlife tactics. . .

Mr. Obama's campaign was always going to be difficult, and the climb is
even steeper now. There is no reason to feel sorry for him. He's a
politician out of Chicago who must have known that campaigns often
degenerate into demolition derbies.

Still, it's legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the
last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but
divisive. The electorate seems more polarized now than it was just a few
weeks ago, and the Clintons have seemed positively gleeful in that
atmosphere.

It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for
the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of
pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another.

What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play
in a new Clinton White House? Can they look beyond winning to a wounded
nation's need for healing and unifying?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/opinion/26herbert.htm?ex=
1359090000&en=3d23612479d0d222&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss



ROBERT REICH - I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill
Clinton's ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing
no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife's campaign.
Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is
fair in love, war, and politics, it's not fair ­ indeed, it's demeaning
­ for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such
as Obama's anti-war position is a "fairy tale) or to insinuate that
Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is
himself doing it.

Meanwhile, the attack ads being run in South Carolina by the Clinton
camp which quote Obama as saying Republicans had all the ideas under
Reagan, is disingenuous. For years, Bill Clinton and many other leading
Democrats have made precisely the same point ­ that starting in the
Reagan administration, Republicans put forth a range of new ideas while
the Democrats sat on their hands. Many of these ideas were wrong-headed
and dangerous, such as supply-side economics. But for too long Democrats
failed counter with new ideas of their own; they wrongly assumed that
the old Democratic positions and visions would be enough.

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/01/bill-clintons-old-politics.htm

[Reich was Secretary of Labor under Clinton]

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