Posted by
rycK on Sunday, February 24, 2008 1:24:05 PM
The New York Times Plays a Funeral Dirge in E Minor for The Vanquished Clinton Machine.
Blame is now laid down for Hillary and her lackeys for the impeding loss next Tuesday. Frank Rich, of Pratfall Fame, has now shown us the warts and tumors and arrogance that derailed the Clinton Surge to Greatness. The Dynasty is now finished.
From the Riches of the past works of Rich:
““By telling an Iowa audience on Tuesday night that he had opposed the Iraq war “from the beginning,” Bill Clinton committed a double pratfall. Not only did he refocus attention on his wife’s most hazardous issue, Iraq, just as it was receding as the nation’s Topic A, but he also revived unhappy memories of the truth-dodging nadirs of the Clinton White House”
And today:
“WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.”
So, Frank was right left!
After one correct prediction we need more information from the sages:
“It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency. “
Didn’t General Douglas McArthur take some flak for saying he would return to the Philippines?
And the guilty are enumerated:
“That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since. And no matter how much bad stuff happened, she kept to the Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Like his prototype, Mr. Penn is bigger on loyalty and arrogance than strategic brilliance. But he’s actually not even all that loyal. …..”
A Rummy Dummy in charge!
“Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.”
Well, that must be given partial credit. O’Bama talks about the changeless changletts of change as if he could change the changes that need to changed.
“This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.”
As the sins of the past are revisited upon the heads of the unwise.
“If the press were as prejudiced against Mrs. Clinton as her campaign constantly whines, debate moderators would have pushed for the Clinton tax returns and the full list of Clinton foundation donors to be made public with the same vigor it devoted to Mr. Obama’s “plagiarism.” And it would have showered her with the same ridicule that Rudy Giuliani received in his endgame. With 11 straight losses in nominating contests, Mrs. Clinton has now nearly doubled the Giuliani losing streak (six) by the time he reached his Florida graveyard. But we gamely pay lip service to the illusion that she can erect one more firewall.”
A point well made. The Clintons were always protected from the truth and the damning evidence of their own creations. The potential and enticing Clinton Tax Gate might be as interesting a piece of reading as the M.K.L. FBI file, which was sealed for 75 years. Recall that she buried subpoenaed evidence in the Rose Law Firm Billing Records scandal that proved that she lied under oath, the very little thing that got Bill impeached. Sometimes, as in VENONA, political horrors can be kept in the crypt long after the voters made their final mistakes.
“The single biggest factor in Hillary Clinton’s collapse is less sexism in general than one man in particular — the man who began the campaign as her biggest political asset. The moment Bill Clinton started trash-talking about Mr. Obama and raising the specter of a co-presidency, even to the point of giving his own televised speech ahead of his wife’s on the night she lost South Carolina, her candidacy started spiraling downward.”
Very well stated and others on the NYT agree.
And to finish it off:
“What’s next? Despite Mrs. Clinton’s valedictory tone at Thursday’s debate, there remains the fear in some quarters that whether through sleights of hand involving superdelegates or bogus delegates from Michigan or Florida, the Clintons might yet game or even steal the nomination. I’m starting to wonder. An operation that has waged political war as incompetently as the Bush administration waged war in Iraq is unlikely to suddenly become smart enough to pull off that duplicitous a “victory.” Besides, after spending $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts in January alone, this campaign simply may not have the cash on hand to mount a surge.”
Very good Frank.
It is rare that the NYT gets down to the nuts and bolts of any issue without swooning over tax cuts, scouring the sidewalks for the latent footprints of Nazis or rehashing McCarthyism.
I think Rich is mostly correct here, but would interject that salient fact that many people are tired of the Clinton Era and are not ready to revisit 16 more years of Bill and his antics. But, the issue of whether Obama is ‘electible’ given his 100% liberal rating and his skin color remains to be debated in depth at the Old Gray Lady. His wife made a huge mistake with her ‘angry black girl’ performance last week. The theoretical South Carolina racial backlash might surge forward it they cannot fix this. We can blame Bill for that one.
Sooner or later, that issue must come up for consideration. Liberal Senators from the East have not been exactly winning material for the Democrats since JFK and he was not even liberal. A reading of Jack’s notions on tax cuts alone would spoil his nomination today. By default, we have to choose among three senators and if Ralph Nader misses the WH then we will get some form of a liberal senator anyway.
These are difficult times for the Times.
rycK
Comments: ryckki@gmail.com
Noun 1. pratfall - a fall onto your buttocks. 2. pratfall - an embarrassing mistake. See