Hillary Clinton, the Republican Smear Machine, and Our Duty Not to Fall For It

By: Lowell
Published On: 1/22/2007 4:14:26 PM

There's an excellent diary at Daily Kos by Dave Johnson and James Boyce (wrtier for Huffington Post, former senior advisor to the Kerry campaign) entitled, "Hillary's Primary Challenge: Shattering The Prism Of The Right."  I strongly recommend that everyone read it and recommend it.  The key 'grafs:

This is not a conspiracy theory nor is it an endorsement of Senator Clinton.

But this simply is a fact of modern politics in America. For the past three decades, the right wing has employed a powerful strategy of "$ell and $mear." They insist on being the gatekeepers to public opinion and have developed a powerful machine that tells us who to like - and who to hate.

They $ell their heroes, turning a B-movie actor into the Marlboro Man and President.

They $mear Democratic and Progressive heroes, reducing American success stories such as George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis into humiliated historical footnotes.  They destroy our leaders. They destroy those that might become our leaders. There is no Democratic or Progressive leader of any note of the last twenty years that has not been attacked.


[...]

Even now, many Democrats state they "just don't like Hillary." Much like they "just don't like John Kerry."  She has "baggage."  Or there is something about her "that just bothers me." This is the result of the campaign against her.  Just as these people like Coca-Cola or Nike products but can't tell you why, they don't like Hillary. Without conscious reason or explanation.

[...]

The only reason we think Hillary is less electable than the others is that we are conditioned to think that the right's smear machine is unstoppable.  (And of course plenty of us will do almost anything just to get them to stop screeching.)

[...]

The $mear machine will take aim at any Democrat who starts to gain traction. Look back over the years - every single Democratic Presidential candidate has faced the machine, and is now perceived negatively by the public.  Again: they destroy our leaders.

[...]

It's not that they think each and every one of these Democrats are potential Presidents.

It's just that they want to destroy each and every Democrat. And they're going to start with a remarkable woman who just might be the next President of the United States. 

It's up to each and everyone to stop us.

And it's up to each and everyone of us to look at Senator Clinton without the right telling us what we're looking at.

The point is, I don't care if you support Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards or Wes Clark or Dennis Kucinich.  The issue is this: they're all Democrats, and we've got to defend them against the right-wing smear machine.  At the minimum, we've got to make up our own minds and not let the right wingnuts get into our heads. 

Frankly, that's a loser way to live life. 

Instead, we should be thinking about how to get inside THEIR heads, how to split THEIR party apart, and how to demolish/deconstruct THEIR candidates.  In the Jim Webb race, we just proved how strong we can be when we stay united.  Let's do the same in 2007 and 2008, and we'll take back the White House. 

If we don't hang together in the face of the right-wing smear machine?  Well, as the saying goes, then we'll hang separately.

Comments



Amen (Teddy - 1/22/2007 4:29:05 PM)
So very true in every way. We held together for Jim Webb, answering every single slime attack on the blogs, with letters to the editor, and press releases, to name a few methods. And we also did good oppo research on the republican candidates and their hired guns (the main perpetrators of the slime attacks), and let the world know the truth about them, through YouTube, the blogs, letters to the editor, press releases, and so on. We have to do the same, starting now, for ALL of the Democratic candidates. 

The quoted article, is I hope the first among many, and we should issue red alerts letting the public know "there they go again," pointing out the republican attacks are a sign the republicans are frightened... and should be.

Once their grubby little paws are ripped from the levers of power, they know a lot of filth and corruption, a lot of their heartless, greedy manipulation will come pouring out, possibly ending the republican party once and for all.



Olbermann on Hillary (Andrea Chamblee - 1/22/2007 5:28:31 PM)
Healthcare for 9/11 workers is a big issue. After EPA lied about the air safety of NY, workers won a class action where EPA politicians were blasted for suppressing the science about the hazards, effectively killing those people (remember this, pro-life marchers). Your tax dollars have to pay millions for their damages, but they will still die. Did they learn from this terrible fraud? No; EPA pols then suppressed information about water safety in New Orleans after Katrina.

Tonight on Countdown
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One day after declaring for president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) gave her first public glimpse of how she will run: as the mother of a daughter, as a serious student of policy and as a two-term senator from New York. With minimal staff, no family members and not even a sound system to amplify her remarks, Clinton appeared on Sunday at a colorless community clinic in Manhattan to announce a piece of health-care legislation, her first real outing since launching her presidential bid online. Despite a media crush that overwhelmed the participants, Clinton treated the event like a routine stop, acknowledging only during a question period at the end that she had finally decided to run. http://www.washingto...

Senator Hillary Clinton is getting high marks this morning for the weekend launch of her presidential campaign. The senator will be at Ground Zero this morning, talking about 9/11 and the health of recovery crews. http://abclocal.go.c...
What will the Clinton campaign look like?  And what about Bill?



Hillary low key for a reason.... (bladerunner - 1/22/2007 6:07:15 PM)
She's playing this whole thing low key, cause like someone wrote earlier, if your in front your game. It would be a lot of pressure for her to be the front runner all the way up to the election. Politics is a lot like running, you have to pace yourself. There's no way she wanted to get in this early, but obviously she had no choice. Hopefully she'll come to her senses and continue doing an awesome job in New York, and stay there.


One thing for sure, blogging alone is not going to do it (Quizzical - 1/22/2007 8:46:12 PM)
The quoted thread from KOS is along the same lines as Bob Somerby's theme at  http://www.dailyhowl...

Fighting back in blogs is good, but I'm afraid that that alone isn't enough to counter coordinated smear compaigns that cover radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and direct mail.  There basically has to be a push-back of some kind in each medium.  If you don't have the time or energy to do any of that, give a little money to the organizations that will, and/or subscribe to a magazine with high standards that will give Democratic candidates fair treatment.