OrangeEmpire
The White Debonair
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2005
- Messages
- 74,988
- Likes
- 59
Clinton aide compares Obama to Ken Starr - Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com
Advisers for Clinton Plan the Endgame - New York Times
Thoughts?
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson, taking the campaign a bit meta on a conference call today, attacked Obama for attacking Clinton, and compared him to a notorious Clinton foe.
"When Sen. Obama was confronted with questions over whether he was ready to be commander in chief and steward of the economy, he chose not to address those questions, but to attack Sen. Clinton," Wolfson said. "I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president."
Wolfson was attacking Obama's explicit strategy, in the wake of his March 4 losses, to attack elements of Clinton's record on the grounds of secrecy, and to revisit the questions raised by Clinton foes in the 1990s and earlier. Obama has demanded Clinton's tax returns, cited delays in releasing her White House schedules, and even made reference to trades in cattle futures in the late 1970s that became a subject of allegations during the White House years.
Wolfson also responded to the substance of Obama's complaint, that Clinton hasn't released her recent tax returns, and to the reminder today that Clinton (via Wolfson) attacked her 2000 Senate rival, Rick Lazio, for failing to release his tax returns.
"Over 20 years of the Clintons' tax returns are part of the public record," he said, referring to their White House years and also to her more recent Senate disclosure forms. "Everyone knows we have made clear that all of the post-White House tax returns will be put out by the campaign on or about tax time April 15," he said, though he didn't explain why they wouldn't be out sooner.
"As somebody who led the effort to ensure that Mr. Lazio provided his tax returns, certainly at that point he had not provided 20 years of his tax returns to the people of New York," he said.
He also promised the tax returns would be out before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.
UPDATE: Obama spokesman Bill Burton responds:
It is absurd that after weeks of badgering the media to vet Sen. Obama, the Clinton campaign believes that they should be held to an entirely different standard. We dont believe that expecting candidates for the presidency to disclose their tax returns somehow constitutes Ken Starr-tactics, but the kind of transparency and accountability that Americans are looking for and thats been missing in Washington for far too long. And if Sen. Clinton doesnt think that the Republicans will ask these very same questions, then shes not as ready to go toe-to-toe with John McCain as she claims.
Advisers for Clinton Plan the Endgame - New York Times
Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today began plotting a ground game, advertising budgets and a confidence-brimming outreach strategy in hopes of both scoring a big victory in Aprils Pennsylvania primary and accumulating enough superdelegates over time to even the nomination fight against Senator Barack Obama.
Mr. Obama, who had 11 straight primary and caucus victories in February, has enjoyed momentum lately in picking off superdelegates, the party leaders who have a vote in the nomination. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers now believe that with her victories in Texas and Ohio last night, she can convince superdelegates to stand with her after a Pennsylvania victory.
She also believes that a strong showing in Pennsylvania, which has 188 delegates at stake, could set up a powerful one-two punch two weeks later in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, which have a combined 218 delegates. Her team believes she has an especially good shot at winning Indiana, where the states influential Democratic senator, Evan Bayh, a former two-term governor, was one of Mrs. Clintons earliest supporters.
Clinton advisers acknowledged on Wednesday that the delegate arithmetic still has them at a disadvantage; Mr. Obama has 1,456.5 delegates to Mrs. Clintons 1,370, and the upcoming primaries will award delegates proportionally to both the winner and the loser. That will have the effect making each candidate inch toward the 2,025 delegates needed for the nomination.
Senator Clinton is also hoping to get an extra boost by adding delegates to her column from Michigan and Florida, and her advisers today have been discussing ways to deal with the conundrum in those states.
The Democratic Party stripped the two states of their delegates after they moved up their primaries to January, but Mrs. Clinton remained on the ballot in both _as Mr. Obama did in Florida. She won in both Florida and Michigan and is now seeking to have the delegates counted.
While Clinton advisers have publicly opposed talk of a do-over vote in either state, which is possible, some of her advisers said today that they would now be inclined to support such a vote. They believe her strength with Hispanics, women and Jewish voters in Florida, and with union workers and women in Michigan, would be enough to overtake Mr. Obamas advantage with black and young voters in both states.
Mrs. Clinton and her top officials continue to oppose such a do-over. The alternative is waiting until July for the party to consider allowing Florida and Michigan delegates to count at the August convention. But the Clinton advisers who support a new vote said they expected conversations on the issue to intensify in her camp.
In the short term, the campaign announced today that it was dispatching former President Bill Clinton tomorrow to Wyoming which holds Democratic caucuses on Saturday and on Friday to Mississippi, which holds presidential primaries next Tuesday. Mrs. Clintons upcoming travel plans are still under wraps.
As for other upcoming primaries, Mark Penn, the campaigns chief strategist, predicted today that a fuller vetting process of Mr. Obama by the media would heighten concerns among voters about Mr. Obamas candidacy and open up a number of other states where Mrs. Clinton could compete intensively for delegates. He spoke on a conference call with reporters.
Campaign advisers said they believed Kentucky and West Virginia could ultimately be in play. They also predicted that Mrs. Clinton would win the final contest on June 7 in Puerto Rico, where 63 delegates will be at stake.
Mrs. Clinton is not simply looking for outright victories in all of the states to come, of course, but is also looking to narrow Mr. Obamas margin of victory so that even in defeat, she can pick up a number of proportionally allocated delegates in each state.
Harold Ickes, a senior adviser to Senator Clinton, said on the conference call that the Clinton campaigns chief objective was not to sully Mr. Obamas image or record, but to cast a spotlight on lightly examined or unknown aspects of both.
This is not a question of trying to damage somebody this is a question of trying to fully understand all the particular aspects of each of the candidates, Mr. Ickes said. Theres not another shoe in her closet to drop. It is clear that too much is yet unknown about Senator Obama.
The Clinton campaign also released a memo stressing confidently that it would have enough money to compete against Mr. Obama this spring and summer, after nearly going broke in early February at a time when Mr. Obama was raising $1 million or more a day. Since the Feb. 5 national primary, Mrs. Clinton has also been raising money at a clip of $1 million a day, mostly online.
In February, the Clinton campaign raised approximately $35 million, according to the campaign memo, e-mailed to reporters and supporters. This deep level of support gives Hillary the resources she needs to compete between now and the convention.
Thoughts?
