The Political A Team Falters (Dick Morris on the Clintons)

VOTE.COM ^ | March 22, 2007 | DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

[2ndDivisionVet]

They were supposed to be the A Team in American politics. The Clinton Machine that inspired fear and admiration throughout the political world.

They had guided Hillary through two successful Senate races in a state where she had never lived and helped her recover from scandals that nearly crippled her -- the pardons, the White House gifts, the Peter Paul fundraiser.

They seemed invincible.

But ever since the presidential campaign started, the Clinton operation has looked amateurish, flat-footed, defensive, and tactically clumsy.

They don't seem to be at all ready for the big time.

Obama has repeatedly outmaneuvered Hillary's campaign, and he's gaining on her every minute. This week's Rasmussen Poll has narrowed the race between them to a five-point lead by Hillary. It's obvious that Obama is getting under the Clintons' skin, and they're responding in the only way they know: attack!

But, it's not working.

This week they blundered once more when campaign strategist Mark Penn criticized Obama on the Iraq war issue at a Harvard seminar. In a transparently choreographed tirade, Penn echoed the same false charges about Obama that Bill Clinton had dropped at a private fundraiser days earlier. Taking a partial quote, Penn -- and Bill Clinton -- claimed that Obama had said that he was "unsure" of how he would have voted on the Iraq War Authorization Bill, if he had been in the Senate in 2002.

Penn and Clinton were wrong -- and, of course, they knew that they were wrong, but they wanted to get some doubt about Obama out there to deflect criticism against Hillary. But mischaracterizing Obama's positions was a dumb move.

Obama has been consistently against the war and there is a record to prove it.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Dick Morris, FWIW.

[unkus]

I don't know if I trust Dick Morris. You can bet the Clintonistas read him. I know he detests Hitlery.

[Alter Kaker]

This is the scariest article yet. Morris has a near-flawless record as a counter-indicator of political reality. If he says Hillary's dead, she should start measuring the drapes for the Oval Office.

[Neville72]

Does Osamabama have a wife?

[Neville72]

Does Osamabama have a wife?

[Neville72]

Does Osamabama have a wife?

[Jack Black]

Yes, a lovely Black woman.

[SoCal Pubbie]

He just stated a couple of weeks ago on TV that Hillary would be the next President. Rest assured there is no issue or prediction that Dicky boy can't take both sides of.

[GeorgiaDawg32]

Barack Obama is not just an opponent. He is a role model for tens of millions of African-Americans. Whether or not they vote for him, at some level all Americans -- except for a racist few -- are rooting that it will be possible for a presidential candidate to cross the color barrier.

so does this statement mean that you're a racist if you don't vote for him in the primary or general? and if the dems vote for him in the primary, are they sexist for not voting for hillary?? oh the possibilities..

[Jack Black]

I'm already very, very tired of Dick Morris coverage of 2008. He is a huge part of the problem. Dick will spew out a column a week for the next year and it will be all 'baseball'. That is strategy, tactics, counter-tactics, advertising critques.

At no point will he report on what the candidates have done in their recent legislative pasts, what they say they are going to do.

He is the poster child for the content free, Presidential-race-as-American-idol, style of media.

Enough already.

How about discussing some issues? What does Fred Thompson say about universal healthcare? How does Hillary intent to fix Social Security? What plan, exactly, does she support in Iraq.

By focusing exclusively on the mechanics he does his own part to further degrade our political system.

[Kenny Bunk]

Morris has a near-flawless record as a counter-indicator of political reality

The Kaker shoots...he scores!

[PatrickF4]

An enormous reservoir of hypocrisy is building up for the Democrats. A crisis of conscience looms. Hillary and company have no conscience, but they pretend, and the libs seem to believe them; or rather, they want to believe them.

[OCCASparky]

I listen to Morris on Fox or Hannity and I can't help but feeling like I need a "Crying Game" shower afterwards.

[upchuck]

IMHO, the big difference between the Clintons then and now is that the populace, in general, knows they are grifting shysters.

And, with the Internet, we have alternative avenues of communication that were not available in the 1990s.

Again IMHO, politically the Clintons are dead meat. They just don't know it yet.

[CBart95]

Morris is Hil's media "pimp". Plain and simple.

He plants silly-assed stories that keep her in the news no matter what.

The role of the anti-Hero advocate is an old trick that ancient philosophers frequently used to keep their cause-celebre foremost as a controversial subject.

These creeps are that clueless. Morris speaks: ignore.

[Miss Didi]

Rush just read this article and remains perplexed.

[Dilbert San Diego]

WHAT'S that old saying that you can't make chicken salad out of chicken pickins'???

Clintons have a strong political operation but they are running a very weak candidate. The best organization will have trouble with a bad candidate.

[Beckwith]

She's not that lovely.

[Beckwith]

... except for a racist few ...

Obama cherished every cause for complaint he can discern against white folks. He is constantly distressed at being half-white. Obama says he “ceased to advertise my mother’s race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites,”

When his grandmother wants a ride to work because the day before, while awaiting the bus, she was threatened by a black panhandler, he is outraged—at his grandparents.

Later, when he moves to the South Side of Chicago in 1984, he eventually discovers that, like his grandmother, he’s sometimes scared of black males on the street, too.

In the period from high school in Hawaii, to Columbia University and then to the streets of Chicago as a community organizer, Obama is the classic angry young black man, describing his world thusly: "We were always playing on the white man's court -- by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had the power and you didn't. The only thing you could choose was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage."

Obama’s once described the white race as “that ghostly figure that haunted black dreams.” “That hate hadn't gone away,” he wrote, blaming “white people — some cruel, some ignorant, sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives.”

During college, Obama disapproved of what he called other "half-breeds" who gravitated toward whites instead of blacks.  And yet after college, he once fell in love with a white woman, only to push her away when he concluded he would have to assimilate into her world, not the other way around.  He later married a black woman.

Obama  describes his grandparents, the people who raised him, as "white folk."

Thank God, we all know that black people can't be racist?

[DuncanWaring]

...the Peter Paul fundraiser.

Speaking of which, any news on that front?