Hardball or Dirt Ball?
It was as low a blow as has lately been landed in national politics.
And it had all the subtlety of a surprise kick to the groin.
Bill Shaheen, husband of ex-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a national co-chair of the Clinton campaign, volunteered to the Washington Post his concern at what might happen to Barack Obama, were he to be nominated.
"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight, and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is drug use," said Shaheen. And, as Obama has admitted in his autobiography to using drugs, this will "open the door" to further probing.
It'll be: "When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?" There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome.
Well, it's sure going to be harder to overcome, now that Bill Shaheen has suggested young Barack might have been a drug-dealer on the South Side of Chicago, and now that the press has been alerted as to precisely what questions should be put to him—before Iowa.
Having planted this poisonous weed, Shaheen dutifully resigned. Then Mark Penn, Hillary's top adviser, went on Hardball to assure us his campaign would not stoop so low as to raise the issue. Said Penn, "I think we have made clear that . . . the issue related to cocaine use is not something that the campaign was in any way raising."
By introducing cocaine, Penn alerted the press that, if Obama did deal drugs, we are not talking airplane glue or mushrooms. This little episode validates Robert Novak's report a month ago, when, relying on a Clinton source among other Democrats, Novak wrote:
Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.
This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now discarded plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.
Putting it all together, it would appear that:
A) The Clinton campaign has acquired and been sitting on information about Obama's past involvement with drugs.
B) The Clintonites initially decided not to use it, but to leak word they had it. This would shake Obama up and knock him off his game.
C) Bill Shaheen, and perhaps others, decided that the situation has become so dire for Hillary in the early caucus and primary states they had to move the story, to stop Obama's surge after his Oprah moment.
And the Clinton campaign has reason to be nervous. According to Howard Fineman of Newsweek, Obama has taken the lead in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, the first four contests. Should Obama win the four, he could electrify the party and swamp the Clinton machine on Feb. 5.
Comes now the dilemma for Democrats. Should Obama lose Iowa to Hillary, he will likely lose New Hampshire and the nomination, as well. But Hillary's victory would be tarnished. For Obama's supporters would see the Clintonites as having done him in by raising the specter of drug-dealing and planting terror in the hearts of Democrats of a dark Obama past being exposed after his nomination.
And this is exactly what Shaheen was implying might happen. But what does Shaheen know that the press and the public do not? Has the Clinton opposition research team dug into Obama's past and unearthed there scandalous matters the nation does not know?
If it has, that would disqualify Obama for the vice presidential nomination, as well—and his huge following, now tasting victory, might take out their anger on the party that dissed him come November.
Yet, if Obama makes it to the nomination, Republicans, and the press, will now raise the issue of whether Obama, who has admitted using marijuana and perhaps cocaine, ever bought drugs for others or, more critically, sold drugs. Nor is this a trivial matter. U.S. Appellate Court Judge Douglas Ginsburg had to withdraw as Reagan's nominee to the Supreme Court after admitting to having "experimented" with marijuana and shared it with law students.
What the Clintonites have implied about Obama is far worse.
Obama is going to have to address this. And when he does, his credibility will be on the line. For unless the Clintonites have put out deliberate falsehoods, they know something we do not.
The question, "What is it?" will, if Barack is nominated, haunt Democrats to Election Day. This is a dirty trick that appears to have damaged both would-be beneficiary and intended victim.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Entries(RSS)
FWIW, Obama wrote of his teenage cocaine use in his own memoir, so it was already public knolwedge. Clinton just drug it up now for her own gain.
“Hardball or Dirt Ball?” ... Who cares ... they all are about the same. Stay home next November (and don't watch TV)...
In a dirty water the worst comes out...they are indeed the same.
Rep or Dem it is plaiing games w the public,take more money away from them/for campaines-just like lottery,gambling/..
It does not realy matter who wins.
They all have the same position,as Queen of GB:
just to read and tell what 'they' tell her/him to do.
FreeMasons are in the shadow runing and the President is just a show of for the public.
I think that ppl are very naive or just to busy to dedicate and try to find out what and who is behind any election:
You do what we tell you or you are out of the game.
/Word democracy is just for the dictionary/.
when H Clinton came on the scene I think that she was back as a college student than:
-a young happy hippy,than
-German than
-Irish than when she wanted to become a Senator she 'suddenly discoverd'how she had a Jewish blood:)
/By the way,Jewish ppl are hard working ppl and know how to invest they money and she needed a lot of money to be Pushed Up...soooo what did you expect 'Jewish genetics'will Help and it helped her/...
-Wow she even promised indipendent to Kosovo,Serbia land to famous drug dealersAlbanianas/in revers $$for compain/.. Looks like
she is Serbian to and she'inhereted Kosovo from her Grandpa and lets give it away:(
very ambition:(an iron lady:(
great Parody isn't..
Anything for personal FAME and breaking the iron door into History,no pardon...
Re: response #2
Hear, hear. Short of a Ron Paul nomination, I will be staying home on election day, as I imagine many other Chronicles readers will too.
Daniel - Don't stay home man. Go vote for anybody but the two Republicrat contenders. It (almost) doesn't matter who, as long as it is not one of them. Show everyone that there are folks who care enough to vote, but refuse to pick between two barely distinguishable poisons....
"... man ... Show everyone that there are folks who care enough to vote"
Huh:-?... "Show" what to whom exactly?... Who is your "everyone"?... Aunt Millie?... What are you talking about "man"? Are you OK?... Here, here, please sit down ... There... Want a cup of cofffee?... Good, good boy...
It is not enough to stay home. One must vote against the Republicans. Punish them and keep on punishing them. That's the only way they will learn to behave. And don't tell me the Democrat will be worse. Only the stupid or the self-deluded believe that will make any difference. Bush minor and his wouldbe successors have already scraped the bottom.
"Bush minor and his wouldbe successors have already scraped the bottom."
Not to pick nits, CW, but although Bush the younger and every other crypto/kleptocrat of whatever stripe have sunk to new lows, there are always new depths to sound. Indeed what is the further program of both parties if not to challenge the depths and thereby master all? This is not to say that a rational man wouldn't welcome the destruction of the stupid party. An open season on phony conservatives would do more to resolve the ills besetting this once great land than more chest-thumping for the Republicans could ever accomplish.
Barack Obama may be some sort of divine retribution for, as Toni Morrison dubbed him, "Our First Black President."
The cocaine rumours: Mena and "My little brother's gotta a nose like a vacuum cleaner." The illegitimate black child rumours. Ron Brown, Lani Gunier, Marian Wright Edelman (Welfare Reform) and Ricky Ray Rector. The natural fathers they never knew. The easy rap on both of them as foreign policy greenhorns, which was also leveled at Clinton's idol President Kennedy.
They have been playing with fire for a long time, but this one may truly burn.
Mr. Wilson, your objections to the Republicans are noted, but I have not always agreed with you on this. Unfortunately, as much as I would like to punish the Republicans, voting for equal statists like the Democrats is like pouring lemon juice on a fresh paper cut - it only makes things worse. Like I said above, unless the honorable Ron Paul gets the nomination, I will be sitting this one out.
Re #11 Daniel: Right you say.
Q. Someone has mentioned, how it would be nice if Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich run as a P/VP ticket, presumably as independents. What is the chance of that happening?