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The RFK Smear

16 Responses to “The RFK Smear”

1. Mrs. Polly Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 2:37 pm

   Now that Vastleft has brought up the “as far as I know” incident, which I’d forgotten about, seeing as how our Secretary of State and President are working together very nicely, I’m willing to go there, too.

   Yes, she denied he was a Muslim two or three times, then added, “As far as I know.” And a Vastleft crew. Not to make Obama messianistic or anything.

   Now that may not have been Hillarycode for anything, she may have been tired, to give her every benefit of the doubt. But decent behavior, unimpeachable (sorry) behavior, would have been to rouse herself and say something like, “Now look. Not that it should matter, but Barack Obama is not a Muslim. I think it’s important enough to say I want to win on the issues, not on a false rumor spread about my opponent’s faith.”

   All along the campaign, there were chances for Hillary to have such moments of grace. She missed them.

2. Kerry Reid Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm

   Indeed, Mrs. Polly. I too am perfectly fine with Mrs. Clinton as Secretary of State, despite some initial misgivings predicated in part because of her unfortunate habit of “mis-speaking” so often during the campaign — Bosnia, “hardworking Americans, white Americans,” and the assassination references. The plural there is necessary, of course, because she first referenced the RFK assassination in March, so it wasn’t just a one-time oopsie.

   For me, the biggest contrast between Clinton and Obama came during that disgraceful ABC debate, when she got behind almost every right-wing talking point going against Obama (Wright, Farrakhan), yet he refused to make hay out of her demonstrable lies about Bosnia. (You “mis-speak” once. When it’s a story that is part of your “why I am ready to be commander-in-chief” arsenal, it’s something you either believe to be true or don’t care if it’s true or not.)

   If anyone can link to any credible evidence of Barack Obama using misogyny against Hillary Clinton as routinely as her campaign dog-whistled the racists and played up McCain over Obama (did he ever say anything approaching her “commander-in-chief threshold” nonsense?), I’d quite honestly love to see it. But since I’ve asked this so many times to no avail from any of her disgruntled bitter-ender supporters, I suppose it’s only reasonable to conclude that such evidence exists only in their alternative realities.

   And no, “periodically” doesn’t cut it, any more than someone using the term “niggardly” can be called a racist. “Claws out” I might give you.

3. YAFB Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 pm

   I’m driven to ask here - though with little expectation of a substantive explanation - what Vastleft hopes to achieve by this latest exercise in revisionist disinterment of events a year or more ago.

   If I were Hillary, I’d hazard a guess that I’d be only too happy to write off a lot, if not all, of what was said during the never-ending primaries as all part and parcel of the hurly-burly of a hard-fought campaign, and look to the present and the future as a way of redeeming myself if necessary, and in any case making the best of what IS, rather than what was never to be. I’d be thoroughly embarrassed to see all this dragged up yet another time.

   Attempting to defend the indefensible just drags all this shit up all over again, to no constructive purpose.

   It’s not going to re-shape the form of campaigns to come (the standard excuse for raking over these long-dead coals), because it stubbornly refuses to get to the nub of what went on - shit happened. Let it go, and join the discourse of what Clinton and Obama are now trying to achieve.

   God knows, they’re neither of them perfect, but it doesn’t take a Kool-Aid drinker to see they’re both at least trying to make the best of the terrible hand they were dealt. That feels like real change from where I’m sitting, compared to the alternative in the last election and what came before.

   It could evaporate at the turn of a voting machine. Make the most of, FFS!

   And thanks, as ever, to AltHippo for providing this in-between space where people who probably have more in common than they’d comfortably acknowledge get a chance to have at it. If they turn up …

4. AltHippo Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm

   @YAFB: I think it goes along the lines of feeling wronged, and a desire to have that acknowledged by the ones that wronged you.

   But what if you don’t think you wronged anyone? Then, it’s kind of hard to apologize.

5. Kerry Reid Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm

   Alt, I think you’re right. I think the larger issue is that the liberal blogosphere wasn’t the key to Obama winning the election, no matter how much one wants to believe they stormed the gates or what have you. Al Giordano has written about this far more exhaustively and eloquently than I could begin to do, but the key to Obama’s success was his ability to build a widespread coalition that relied at least as much on good ole community organizing tactics and old-fashioned door-to-door personal contact (particularly crucial in caucus states, of course)as it did the good graces (or lack thereof) of a handful of bloggers. So the sad thing is that the bitters feel hurt about being shut out of a process that wasn’t even the deciding factor in this past election by a long shot. It’s like being upset about not making the finals in Ottumwa Idol. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But so are the inflated claims of importance about how the bloggers won the day for Obama and the Dems.

   I volunteered for months at a neighborhood office in Chicago, and I know very damn few of my fellow volunteers (many of them older people and people of color) ever spent a moment of their time at Kos, HuffPo, or any of the usual suspects. I also know that they would have voted for Hillary if she had won the nomination, because they weren’t suicidally egotistical about the need for “their candidate” to be vindicated, no matter the cost.

6. TheBigotBasher Says:
   June 22nd, 2009 at 9:41 pm

   Althippo, I am happy to accept that Hillary was not deliberately trying to encourage assassination. It just becomes very difficult to hold to that view point when at the same time she was putting out this leaflet

   http://thebigotbasher.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/puma-a-year-of-bitterness/

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