I know you are, but what am I
Posted: Saturday, April 19, 2008 6:53 PM by Domenico Montanaro
Filed Under:
Democrats
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
The food fight continues.
The Obama campaign went on the offensive with two new ads, one of which attacks Clinton on her health-care mandate. The other highlighting why, they say, newspapers haven't endorsed Clinton. (We reported on those here.)
The Obama camp also held a conference call hitting Clinton for her
Bosnia “sniper fire” remarks, and the Clinton campaign returned fire,
calling Obama a “hypocrite” on the issue of “negative” attacks.
"When it comes to negative campaign tactics,
Senator Obama has been a hypocrite from day one, decrying attack
politics from one side of his mouth while he and his campaign wage a
character assassination effort from the other," spokesman Phil Singer
wrote. "The juxtaposition of Senator Obama's comments in the debate and
the remarks made on his campaign conference call this afternoon prove
the point."
On Obama's ad, Clinton herself, attacked back
at Obama. She recycled an argument on this rare area policy difference
(and marginal at that) between them: “I just heard that my opponent has
put up an ad attacking my health care plan, which is kind of curious,
because my plan covers everybody and his leaves out 15 million people
-- just leaves them out in the cold," she said. (The statement was also
issued in a release by the campaign.) "Now, instead of attacking the
problem, he chooses to attack my solution. I don't think that we can
just make speeches about this -- we have to have a plan that we can
actually implement that will provide quality affordable health care.
That's what I've been fighting for for 15 years, and that's what I will
fight for as your president.”
Not so fast, says the Obama campaign. It says their health care ad attack is, in fact, a response to a pro-Clinton 527 group's attack ad (and
other mailers) on his health-care plan. "The Obama ad is responding
to a flurry of negative attacks from the Clinton campaign and their
well-financed allies," spokesman Hari Sevugan wrote. "Given that they
have been engaging in a self-professed 'kitchen sink' strategy that
Senator Clinton describes as 'the fun part,' their charges today are
laughable. While they continue to employ the say-and-do-anything
tactics of the past, Senator Obama is going to focus on the issues that
are affecting the American people."
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign also brought to the forefront Clinton's MoveOn.org comments, revealed by the Huffington Post, framing them as more proof of Clinton's “credibility” problem.
"Hillary Clinton's decision to trash Democratic
activists in a closed-door meeting with donors after publicly praising
them when she needed their support is just another example of why she
has such a serious credibility problem with the American people,"
Sevugan wrote.
A summary of warring conference calls and
candidates' attacks at campaign stops follows below, as reported by
NBC/National Journal campaign reporters Aswini Anburajan (following
Obama) and Athena Jones (following Clinton).
On the one hand, but on the other…
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan
DOWNINGTON, Pa. -- Obama trained his eye on rival Clinton at subsequent stops on his train tour today, accusing her of practicing "slash-and-burn, say-anything, do-anything, special-interest-driven politics."
A claim that his campaign appeared to undermine when they held a press-conference between train stops with former military veterans who had served in Bosnia to discuss Clinton's claim that she had landed in the middle of sniper fire, reprising an argument that Obama had criticized just two days ago as the type of "gotcha games" politics that eroded the quality of the national political dialogue.
In the call former Gen. Walter Stewart claimed Clinton didn't have the "moral authority" to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, because she had lied about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia and then joked about it on Jay Leno.
"We can make the assumption here that the honored dead within the Tomb of the Unknown was killed by a sniper,” Stewart said. “Imagine the lack of moral authority she has now to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Memorial Day.”
Stewart's claim was just a half an hour after Obama spoke in Paoli, Pa., where he sharply criticized Clinton for making negative attacks. Obama told the crowd that "Democratic Party was divided now" and that "there was a real choice to be made" between him and Clinton.
"She also believes that you know the nature of politics is you say what the people want to hear," Obama said of his rival. "So maybe you say something about trade when you're campaigning with your husband eight, 10, 12 years ago. You say something different now that you're campaigning in Ohio or Pennsylvania. Maybe you say one thing about the war when it looks like the war is popular. Maybe you say something different when the war gets to be unpopular. That's how business is done in Washington. That's become typical."
He claimed that Clinton's acceptance of contributions from lobbyists underscored this argument, because she couldn't claim to change politics while she was in the pocket of the people who were choosing to influence it. Obama said things had gotten "nasty" in Pennsylvania, and that Clinton was using what her advisors called a "kitchen-sink strategy," because she was behind.
"We are going to throw whatever we want at Barack, whether it's true, whether it's false, whether it's exaggerated. It's what the Republicans will do to Barack anyway, so I might as well do it too," he said using the third person to talk about attacks against him, a rhetorical strategy he rarely uses. "So what's happened is that Sen. Clinton has internalized a lot of the strategies, the tactics that have made Washington such a miserable place where all we do is bicker, where all we do is fight."
When reporters questioned the generals on the call on why they could attack Clinton, while their candidate was calling for politics to be elevated, they had little to say, simply repeating the claim that it was Obama who had more "moral authority" and that was an essential quality for leadership. On the stump, as his train rolls through small, economically depressed towns, Obama's criticism of what he calls "Washington politics" is playing well.
"I'm not running for office in Washington, so Washington can change me. I am running to change Washington," he said to loud cheers under bright skies at the Paoli train station.
Clinton conference call hits back on Obama ad
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
Moments after Hillary Clinton criticized Barack Obama's new ad attacking her healthcare plan during a campaign stop in southern Pennsylvania, her campaign held a conference call to do the same.
Policy Director Neera Tanden said Obama's plan had a mandate for coverage for children, which was really a mandate for parents. She said the best way to reduce healthcare costs was to provide universal coverage and that Clinton's plan would do that. Tanden also said it was ironic that Sen. Obama's healthcare plan wastes money and still leaves 15 million Americans without coverage and said the issue of universal coverage was very important to people of Pennsylvania.
Communications Director Howard Wolfson said Sen. Obama was using the kitchen-sink strategy against Clinton, citing ads and a robocall that says, Clinton will do anything to win.
"Here in the closing days Sen. Obama is doing everything he can to win this contest," Wolfson said, adding that the Illinois senator had set a new spending record this week and was launching "last-minute false attacks" against Clinton to win.
He reiterated the argument that if Obama can't win the Keystone State after outspending them 3-to-1, it will show that he has a significant problem winning in the large swing states that Democrats need to win to win the general.
Wolfson said Obama should be more forthright in answering questions about his associate with 60s radical William Ayers and about his support of a hand-gun ban while running for state office.
When asked whether Clinton's Bosnia sniper fire flap hurt her credibility, an issue one reporter said had been brought up in an Obama campaign conference call, Wolfson noted that Obama's use of negative campaigning showed he was not committed to a new kind of politics.
Notably, there seemed to be two prank callers. One asked, “What is Bill Clinton packing?” and the other asked a difficult-to-understand question, after which Wolfson ended the call, saying the campaign sought to make these conference calls open to journalists across the country and that the Obama campaign had a different philosophy. It was unclear if he was suggesting the callers were from Obama's campaign.
This is at least the third call on which people have come on to ask strange or inappropriate questions or have sought to hijack the call, as an Obama staffer did on the night of the March 4 primary.
