Update- One other thing that I just thought of for the post below: My tin-foil antenna have been twitching lately over the disturbing increase in the number of stories in the conventional media about unrest in Africa (See here and here). Expect the recent tensions in Kenya and Chad to get a lot of attention this year. Expect to see stories about Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe. There will be an attempt to link the idea of corrupt African leaders, unrest, violence and economic collapse with Obama.
You heard it here first, folks. Now, to the original post:
So, I’m watching This Week With George Stephanopolis and Hillary is trying to not come right out and say why she thinks Obama is vulnerable to GOP and media attacks. She’s trying to keep things positive and divert George’s attention to how she’s survived.
So, I’ll just say it for her: Senator Obama, you’re a fine and decent human being. Your wife is intelligent and well spoken (even if she can’t pronounce Nevada) You’re children are lovely and delightful and a nice wooden playset, complete with fort, slide and swings would be so refreshing to see on the South Lawn. You likely have no skeletons in your closet.
*sigh*
So the GOP will have to make some up. And they are probably going to point to your urban youth. They’re going to highlight your urban lope, Limbaugh will call it a pimp-walk. They will explore your drug use, your former girlfriends, your sexual prowess.
They will rewrite your time in Harvard to make you look like a calculating shape shifter, but an effete one. You will be feminized ruthlessly by the pundits, Maureen Dowd already has a head start. I think your one personal flaw is that you’re a schmoozer but that shouldn’t kill you as a candidate. The fact that you seem to be particularly adept at this speaks well for your abilities as a politician. It’s WHO you schmooze up to and who is doing to the movement toward that is my problem with you. But, nevermind, expect laziness to reenter the debate after the summer.
You will be made to look weak. It won’t be overt. No, Newt Gingrich wrote a pamphlet on how this is done. It will creep into the mouths of the reporters and pundits who cover you. They won’t even know how it got there. But you will be described as “tall, lean and somewhat fragile”,”nonchalant when responding to a voter’s concerns on terrorism” or “cold”. Tweety already used this to describe your comments regarding Beanzir Bhutto’s death. He said you were “cold”, as if your passion for change could not be channeled into a passion against terrorism. And, let’s face it, against John McCain, you don’t stand a chance in the national security area. Your chances are good if the focus stays on the economy but if the Republico-Media complex shifts its attention to fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, you’re screwed.
Oh, the public has been fooled alright. They’ve been unaware of the media fluffing, for the most part. They think you must be OK if they media isn’t going after you hammer and tongs. But we all know it’s not anything you’ve ever done, it’s nothing personal. They’ll just be doing their jobs when you’ve locked up the nomination and their supervisors give them the signal. You’ll look like the biggest asskissing, immature, weak, effete, ghetto “black” presidential candidate that ever was. Fathers will lock up their daughters and mothers will lock up their sons and they’ll all hide under the bed when the next OBL video gets played just before election day in November.
I won’t believe any of this and I will speak out against it every chance I get. Not that it’ll make any difference. They didn’t trust *my* judgment on the Iraq War Resolution either. If people just trusted my judgment, they would vote for Hillary and for more good reasons than the media blitzkrieg. But the Republico-Media complex is particularly good at neutralizing the effects of good judgment and drowning our voices out. Except for some blogs, you’ll be pretty much on your own.
This is what Clinton didn’t say. Experience *does* matter.
Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Presidential Election 2008 | Tagged: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Media, Republico-Media complex |
The Confluence 
You are right on target except for one thing – the skeletons in the closet. The Rezko affair, especially the part about Obama getting his house for $300,000 below the asking price while the Rezkos paid full price for the lot next door has all the earmarks of a sweetheart deal. If so, this is in serious violation of the Senate gift ban which forbids acceptance of anything of more than $250 in value. In addition Obama has clearly gotten free use of the yard next door which is completely fenced in with access only from Obama’s property. Obama even maintains the yard.
Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens of Alaska have both gotten in trouble for getting similar kinds of sweetheart deals involving real estate. I find it hard that the Swiftboat crowd or even more dangerous, the Republican-controlled Justice Department won’t go after this with everything they have. The truth looks bad, so imagine what they can do to make it look even worse. After all these creeps managed to turn John Kerry’s incredible bravery in Vietnam into a liability. They could make Mother Theresa look like a serial killer.
Obama’s response to the run-of-the-mill opposition that he has gotten from Hillary’ caompaign is not reassuring. He is so thin-skinned that, according to Mark Halperin of Time magazine, he would not agree to sit with her at the SOTU address even though Democratic leaders wanted this as a show of party unity. Hillary, who had just been humiliated by Ted and Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack had the class to agree, but Obama refused and blamed Hillary for not asking him personally.Then he avoids shaking her hand. If this is how he acts when he is riding high what the heck will he do when he is getting beaten down by the right wing attack machine? After all he will not be opposing the clownish Alan Keyes this time around.
You heard it here first, folks.
I think NO QUARTER beat you to it. http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/01/31/obamas-african-hubris-2/
I posted a link to this story and I was accused of being “despicable.” By an Obama supporter, of course.
But when they warn us about what the right wing will do to Hillary in the GE, all they can come up with is cattle futures, Wal-Mart, etc. etc. Nothing new.
Of course I don’t underestimate the ability of the RW to come up with new, more inventive, and more scurrilous nonstories on Hillary’s vulnerabilities. It’s just that yes, she has the experience of dealing with crap that would/will flatten Obama.
He just has NO IDEA who he is dealing with.
echinopsia: Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that Obama’s family in Kenya is important or not to this election. If the Republicans make anythig out of it, it would just be the run-of-the-mill scandal for them.
No, the Republican’s gift is ‘perception management’. They are very good at altering voter’s perception of reality. And the thing they are particularly good at is pushing the fear button because they know that studies show that people vote conservative when they feel they are i mortal danger.
So, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and bird flu have already been played to death and voters are on to them. How do they provoke fear now? Turn the media attention to Africa and play up all of the civil wars, tribal massacres, unrest, violence, corruption, famine and failed states. Focus a lot of attntion on Robert Mugabe of Zimabwe and detail how he confiscated farms from white farmers and gave them to his political allies. Describe the massive inflation there, the subsistence diet. Talk about Charles Taylor and Liberia and Sierra Leone and the way innocent civilians had their limbs hacked off with machetes. Make sure stories about Barack Obama are followed by African unrest stories. Never present one without the other. Then throw Osama bin Laden into the mix. In fact, this has already happened. Click on one of the links and you’ll see a picture of OBL on the page. Maybe I’m just seeing things. Or maybe I’m seeing things before other people do.
I think this is what they have in mind for the general election.
Now, I hope I’m clear that I like Obama and if he is my nominee, I will follow him to the grave and I don’t want to spend my time on this blog highlighting an unsubstantiated rumors about him. That doesn’t help us. I’m just telling you what my tin-foil antenna are saying.
I know, I know, up my meds.