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   XPost: alt.politics.radical-left, alt.politics.socialism, soc.rights.human   
   XPost: alt.activism.peacefire   
   From: johnnyasia2013@yahoo.com   
      
   Attention Obonzo: You're Fucked, And It's All (B)ill (J)efferson   
   Clinton's Fault!   
   The New York Times Reports That The Dems Begin the Post-Obama Blame   
   Game   
   Some Democrats are apparently not waiting for Barack Obama to lose the   
   presidential election before starting the inevitable recriminations   
   about whose fault it was. Whether writing strictly on his own hook or   
   as a result of conversations with campaign officials, New York Times   
   political writer Matt Bai has fired the first shot in what may turn   
   out to be a very nasty battle over who deserves the lion’s share of   
   the blame for what may turn out to be a November disaster for the   
   Democrats. That the Times would publish a piece on October 24 that   
   takes as its starting point the very real possibility that the   
   president will lose, and that blame for that loss needs to be   
   allocated, is astonishing enough. But that their nominee for scapegoat   
   is the man who is almost certainly the most popular living Democrat is   
   the sort of thing that is not only shocking, but might be regarded as   
   a foretaste of the coming battle to control the party in 2016.   
      
   Bai’s choice for the person who steered the president wrong this year   
   is none other than former President Bill Clinton, who has widely been   
   credited for having helped produce a post-convention boost for the   
   Democrats. Clinton’s speech on behalf of Obama was viewed, with good   
   reason, as being far more effective than anything the president or   
   anyone else said on his behalf this year. But Bai points to Clinton as   
   the primary advocate within high Democratic circles for changing the   
   party’s strategy from one of bashing Mitt Romney as an inauthentic   
   flip-flopper to one that centered on trying to assert that he was a   
   conservative monster. Given that Romney demolished that false image in   
   one smashing debate performance in Denver that seems to have changed   
   the arc of the election, Clinton’s advice seems ripe for second-   
   guessing right now. But we have to ask why Bai thinks Clinton was the   
   one who single-handedly forced the change, and what is motivating   
   those feeding the reporter this information?   
      
   Here’s the gist of Bai’s blame-Clinton thesis:   
   You may recall that last spring, just after Mr. Romney locked up the   
   Republican nomination, Mr. Obama’s team abruptly switched its strategy   
   for how to define him. Up to then, the White House had been portraying   
   Mr. Romney much as George W. Bush had gone after John Kerry in 2004 –   
   as inauthentic and inconstant, a soulless climber who would say   
   anything to get the job.   
      
   But it was Mr. Clinton who forcefully argued to Mr. Obama’s aides that   
   the campaign had it wrong. The best way to go after Mr. Romney, the   
   former president said, was to publicly grant that he was the “severe   
   conservative” he claimed to be, and then hang that unpopular ideology   
   around his neck.   
      
   In other words, Mr. Clinton counseled that independent voters might   
   forgive Mr. Romney for having said whatever he had to say to win his   
   party’s nomination, but they would be far more reluctant to vote for   
   him if they thought they were getting the third term of George W.   
   Bush. Ever since, the Obama campaign has been hammering Mr. Romney as   
   too conservative, while essentially giving him a pass for having   
   traveled a tortured path on issues like health care reform, abortion   
   and gay rights.   
      
   This is clearly intended to absolve the anonymous Obama aides for   
   making a decision that they — and the president — must have signed off   
   on before it was implemented. Bai goes to great lengths to take them   
   off the hook, and even compares their position to a ballplayer who   
   would reject advice from Derek Jeter. In other words Bai is saying   
   that anyone, even really smart political operatives like those working   
   in Obama’s Chicago headquarters, or the top guys themselves like David   
   Axelrod or David Plouffe, had no choice but to bow to the 42nd   
   president’s wisdom.   
      
   Bai is right on target when he notes that the strategy — regardless of   
   whose bright idea it was — was a clunker. While there is no guarantee   
   that calling Romney a flip-flopper would have worked better, the   
   investment of tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in negative   
   ads trying to convince Americans that the Republican was a heartless   
   plutocrat who abused dogs, outsourced jobs, killed cancer patients and   
   hated ordinary people set the Democrats up for a fall once their   
   target showed himself to be a likeable and reasonable person. The same   
   tactic failed 32 years ago when it was tried by the Jimmy Carter   
   campaign against Ronald Reagan, and right now that precedent is   
   causing the knots in the stomachs of Obama campaign officials to   
   tighten as they contemplate defeat.   
      
   If Clinton thought that he could apply the lessons of his own   
   victories to President Obama’s re-election problem, he was wrong. As   
   Bai points out, Clinton truly was a centrist, something that no one   
   (except perhaps the president himself) thinks about Obama.   
      
   But the idea that it was only Clinton that advocated this strategy or   
   that without his influence the geniuses running the Obama campaign   
   would not have made this mistake is so patently self-serving on the   
   part of his sources that it’s a wonder that a generally savvy observer   
   like Bai doesn’t point this out.   
      
   If anything this omission, like the general thrust of his piece,   
   points to an effort by Obama’s chief strategists to get out in front   
   of the story of who led the president to defeat. Moreover, it is hard   
   not to avoid the suspicion that pointing the finger at Clinton is a   
   way of reminding him that if he thinks Obama loyalists owe him for his   
   herculean efforts on behalf of the president he’s got another thing   
   coming. Especially, that is, if he tries to call in IOUs from the   
   Obama camp on behalf of another presidential run by Hillary Clinton in   
   2016.   
      
   But no matter where the Democratic fingers are pointing, the fact that   
   they are already starting to blame each other for an Obama loss has to   
   send chills down the spines of Democrats who are still operating under   
   the assumption that Romney can’t win.   
   http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/24/dems-begin-the-post   
   obama-blame-game-clinton-obama/   
      
   +   
      
   Pucker your butt for the Apocalypse!   
      
   Johnny Asia, Asshole from the Future   
      
   http://twitter.com/johnnyasia   
   http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/blasphemy.html   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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