When pols power is under threat, all that crap goes away to be replaced by sleeze and attack. I note a story this morning at MSNBC, which reports on the comments from Barrack Obama Campaign manager David Plouffe, who has started what only weeks ago was labeled ‘name calling’, ‘mud slinging’, and was generally speaking, off limits:
The Obama campaign is stepping up the rhetoric. Campaign Manager David Plouffe went so far as to call Hillary Clinton the “most secretive politician in America today.”
The tough talk underscored not only the negative shift in tone of the Obama campaign in the past 24 hours, but just how contentious this fight for the nomination is becoming.
Part of what the Obama campaign would like the focus to be on is ethics — something adviser David Axelrod said they would be glad to have a debate over. But the Obama campaign may be a victim of time, since an argument on ethics could be tough to steer with the ongoing Rezko trial.”I think that you know Sen. Clinton has talked a lot about disclosure in the last few days,” Plouffe told reporters. “Sen. Clinton is the most secretive politician in America today. This has been a pattern throughout her career of the lack of disclosure.”
Echoing Axelrod, Plouffe said the campaign would be more than willing to tangle with the Clintons, appearing to suggest that if needed they would raise issues like Whitewater that plagued the Clintons in the 90s..
The pattern is already clear. Politicians .. of any stripe… in reality, can only afford to be magnanimous so long as their power or their path to is as the case may be, isn’t threatened. With her wins in Texas and Ohio Hillary Clinton suddenly presents a serious threat to to Obama’s attainment of power. And so he goes negative before the echo dies. The relationship between such threats and such responses is as predictable as any physical law.
Of course, the same is true for John McCain. Once his path to power was no longer threatened by his fellow Republicans, he suddenly became unwilling to discuss the negative points of the people running against him. Since he now has the Republican nomination sewn up, the only threat in his path is whatever Democrat candidate manages to survive the mess the Democrats have built for themselves. We’ll see that coming forth shortly.
Mind you, I don’t see this as a bad thing. It is what it is. That’s one major reason why all of McCain’s bluster about not going negative and chastising his supporters who do, strikes me as totally disingenuous, and is for me a total turnoff. He’s as likley to go negative as anyone when his path to power is under threat.
At least, he’d better, if he wants to win.
Tags: attack, Barrack Obama, BO, Campaign, change, Clinton, debate, Democrat, Democrats, fight, going negative, hate, Hillary Clinton, hope, John McCain, McCain, Men, MSNBC, nomination, NY, Obama, Ohio, POW, Republican, Republicans, Rezko, Texas, The Clintons, UN
